| 317. Curative Education: Lecture VII
02 Jul 1924, Dornach Translated by Mary Adams Rudolf Steiner |
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| So you see, it is an inherited organism that the child has had in the epoch through which he has already lived. The I (ego) organisation is now beginning to come forward, but it lacks the ability to bring about much deviation from the first physical organism. |
| We find in this boy a relatively very weak astral body and a weak ego organization, which cannot make headway against the inherited organism. And we have also to note that this inherited organism has itself remained small. |
| For if the astral body does not succeed in bringing about the right streamings from the head to the limbs, then the intestines and the whole digestive organisation must necessarily remain weak. The ego organisation is not properly in them. Consider now for a moment this weak digestive organisation—that is to say, a digestion that is weak in its forces, not having the ego organisation properly in it. |
| 317. Curative Education: Lecture VII
02 Jul 1924, Dornach Translated by Mary Adams Rudolf Steiner |
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Before we pass on to another case, I would like to say a little more about the boy we were considering yesterday. For in this boy we can really see a whole series of psychic facts demonstrated. Right at the beginning of his stay with us—indeed, he brought it with him—he would speak of a little sprite that he had on the forefinger of his right hand. He has always, quite consistently, called this little sprite “Bebe Assey”. He carries on conversations with it just as one does with one's fellow beings, speaking to it, talking with it and altogether treating it as a real being. And then I must tell you of another idiosyncrasy. The boy will every now and then suddenly undergo a change, something like the changes we read of in the Werewolf stories. For a considerable time, for instance, he thought he was a lion and went about roaring like a lion. Has he changed into any other kind of animal? His favourite animal, anyway, has been a lion. We have here a sign that the boy's astral body is not in good working order. The astral body should by rights dive right down into the physical body. Instead of this, remnants of it have got left behind. For obviously, this “Bebe Assey” is (to begin with) nothing else than a remnant of the boy's own astral body. Then of course it can happen that this piece of astral body, which is left hanging out loose, becomes ensouled by an objective elemental being from the world outside. Subject and object then merge completely in one another. What is of main importance for us as educators is the fact that, owing to the organism having become hardened, the astral body does not entirely enter it. Supposing you were to draw your astral body out of your physical body, so that you no longer had it pulsating there in its entirety within your physical body, then that astral body of yours would begin to show itself in all possible metamorphoses, it would begin to assume animal-like shapes. For when the astral body loosens itself from the physical and etheric—it may be still quite near to them, it may perhaps be still half or even three-quarters united with them—but so soon as the astral body becomes to any extent independent of the physical and ether bodies, it begins to manifest in animal form. All these symptoms are particularly characteristic of the boy's condition, and they go to show how very difficult it will be to establish in him the right and proper harmony between the astral and etheric and physical bodies. Now we will go on to consider another child. Let me give you the history of the case. The mother says that the child was born four weeks late. In the first four months of pregnancy the mother was on the stage and sometimes had to jump a great deal. Later on, she had a fall. At the age of two and a quarter, the child suffered from a digestive disturbance. Not until two years old was he able to stand. Throughout the first four years he was apathetic, but greedy for food. The first sound he uttered was R, which is most unusual. He even cried in R. Up to the fourth year he could only stammer out isolated words. Then he was given speech exercises; he had to speak sentences forwards and backwards. This was done by my advice. At the same time that he was learning to speak, he began to be restless, to make restless movements. He sleeps little, and does not fall asleep at all easily. In the evening he is very excited and tired, and cannot go to sleep. He takes his food greedily. You would not be able to tell, from looking at the boy, how old he is. He is now six and three-quarters—not far off seven years old. As you see, he is backward in the development of his whole physical organisation. The head is rather too big, though scarcely enough to be noticeable. Taken altogether, the boy is backward. In the first period of life, from birth to change of teeth, the period during which the physical organisation ought to be particularly active—just in this period the physical organisation has in his case been inactive. Let me remind you of what I said about the physical organisation in the first period of life—that it is the inherited organism. So you see, it is an inherited organism that the child has had in the epoch through which he has already lived. The I (ego) organisation is now beginning to come forward, but it lacks the ability to bring about much deviation from the first physical organism. For it is the ether body that is active now, and the boy's ether body has adapted itself extraordinarily closely to the model body of the first seven years. The boy is behind-hand also with the change of teeth; that has not yet begun. So that there too we have to note a retardation of development. Before going any further let us see that we are quite clear about the objective facts of the case. We find in this boy a relatively very weak astral body and a weak ego organization, which cannot make headway against the inherited organism. And we have also to note that this inherited organism has itself remained small. Now there is room for doubt whether the information given us is correct—for we are not at all obliged to assume that it was correct!—the information namely, that the child was born four weeks late. If this was so, then it was owing to the child's being too small; the child will have remained an embryo longer than usual because it was too small, because at the end of the ten lunar months it was not fully developed. And now we have to ask ourselves the question: how has it come about that the child is in this condition? The explanation is given to us in the fact that the mother was acting on the stage during the first four months of pregnancy. She was a member of an independent troupe, who worked enthusiastically, and there can be no doubt that she was following her calling with enthusiasm and devotion. This meant that a considerable strain was put upon the astral body of the mother, which actually affected the form of the astral body of the child and turned its activity in a direction where it cannot do much in the way of growth—in the direction, namely, of intellectual capability. And so the process of intellectualisation begins in this boy even before birth, with the configuration that was given to the astral body during the embryonic period. We have then to do with a case of retardation, the causes of which lie right back in the embryonic period. And now we have to consider how we are to treat a child of this kind who is altogether behind-hand in his development. As you will see for yourselves, the body has remained quite powerless. Throughout his earliest years, the boy was apathetic and developed nothing but the purely animal instincts of the physical organism. He was greedy, and late in learning to speak. And then, as I told you, the very first sound he learned to say was R. (Turning to the boy) Say “Robert runs!” (The boy says it in a deep, growling voice.) He is, you see, completely at home in the sound R. Do not forget that in a symptom like this a whole life can be expressed! Think of the mother during pregnancy. Think how she was continually in movement on the stage. And then try to enter into the being and character of R, which we have described in the Eurythmy lectures as the sound that has to do with turning and you will discern in the boy's speech a continuation of the play-acting of his mother. This one fact is of such overwhelming significance as to throw all others into the background. In this one fact opportunity is given us to acquire an extraordinarily deep insight into connections that need to be grasped and understood if we want to be clear in our minds about the condition of this child. Let me remind you that what ought to happen during the first years of life is that the metabolism-and-limbs system of man is ordered and regulated by a strong astral body and ego. In this child the astral body is weak, and fails in its task; hence we find in him two symptoms to which we must give careful attention. I do not know whether all of you were present at the lectures where I explained the true significance of the human brain.1 I spoke of how the entire human organisation—all that we carry within us—is divided into upbuilding processes and breaking-down processes. With the latter are always connected products of excretion, for these are simply relics or traces that have been left behind by the process of disintegration. Let us look, first, at the boy's head. In the head a process of disintegration, a process of breaking down, is taking place. As you know, the intellectual activity of the soul, the whole thought-and-feeling activity of the soul, in so far as it makes use of the head as its organ of support, originates in a disintegration process. In this boy, the process of disintegration, having to be carried out by a weak astral body, is itself irregular. Waste products are not carried away with regularity, they remain; moreover, they do not harden as much as they should. We have not here to do with an actual case of hydrocephalus, but you see before you a head that holds within it too soft a brain. And now turn your attention to the reflected image of the brain—the content, that is, of the intestines. This too cannot be in order, and will not be. The activity of the intestines cannot ever have been in good order. Irregular brain activity and irregular intestinal activity go parallel with one another, especially in a child. This does not mean that you can set out with the resolve: I will see to it that the intestinal activity becomes regular—and imagine that thereby you will bring order into the activity of the brain. If you want to adjust the latter and bring it also into good harmony, you will have to work with medical knowledge. Then there is a certain impurity in the relation and behaviour of the soul to the outside world. Try asking the boy to do something which he quite well understands; he will just grin a little, he won't meet what you say with openness and candour. I shall have more to say afterwards about this case. I would like now only to add, in regard to the speech exercises that were begun with him at four years of age, that whenever speech exercises are done in this way, first forwards and then backwards, they help to regulate the connection of ether body with astral body. The exercises that were given to the boy at that time had this end definitely in view: to induce a harmonious co-operation of astral and ether bodies. What the child needs is to be brought to feel and perceive his own physical organism. For as he does so, forces of growth will begin at the same time to insinuate themselves, as it were, into this physical organism. We must therefore choose for him exercises in Curative Eurythmy, which bring it about that he “discovers” his own physical organism. E (Eh, as in gate) is particularly helpful here, for in Eh man touches himself in his own organism; also U (as in rune) and O. O is chosen for its regulating influence. U and Eh are chosen for the purpose of helping the child to become aware of himself in himself. In his case, everything that makes for the realisation and apprehension of one's own organism can be of help. What else have we been doing with him besides Curative Eurythmy and Speech exercises? He has painting with the group. He must of course have painting; he is just about reaching school age. Progress with this child may be slow but it will be sure. (The next child is brought in.) I got to know this boy on a Journey. A rather difficult child! He is eleven years old. And now let me tell you where the trouble lies. The boy is an only child. Birth is reported to have been normal, although the mother is said to have lived unwisely during pregnancy; it seems she even drank a good deal. Development is said to have taken its course in the first three years without any marked individual feature. We will say more about that later. As a matter of fact, it cannot have been quite as represented, for at three years old the child fell suddenly ill, with high fever, and had convulsions during the night, the attack lasting only a short time. Such attacks became then for a while very frequent, coming on as a rule at night; later they grew much less frequent, occurring on an average once in three months. The attacks have, as you see, the characteristic symptoms of convulsions, that we spoke of earlier. Characteristically also, they began in the fourth year. Before that, the organism had not developed so far as to push back the astral organisation; the point had not been reached when the outside coverings—the walls—of certain organs began to repel the astral organisation. During the convulsions there is complete unconsciousness. This too, we saw, is quite usual. The child has violent spasms of twitching, particularly over the left half of the body; the eyes are also turned to the left. Afterwards he is very exhausted, and vomiting often occurs. This means, you see, that by the time the child reached the third year, the walls of the organs were beginning to hold back the astral organisation, not allowing it to get through. Hence the convulsions. And with the convulsions—for the reason I explained to you—is associated loss of consciousness. But now in his case the astral organisation does succeed after a time in breaking through the walls of the organs to some extent. The child, unconsciously or semi-consciously, strains every effort to bring this about, and this struggle on his part lasts exactly as long as the attack. Then he has won through; but there is in consequence a certain emptiness in the organism in comparison with the previous condition, and this anomaly finds expression in the violent twitchings and spasms. Now, as you know, the left half of the body of man is rather weaker than the right. When, the attack being over, the astral body is wanting to get free, it will naturally try to escape in the direction of the weaker part of the organism—that is, it will seek escape to the left. This finds expression also in the fact that the child turns his eyes to the left. According to the diagnosis of doctors in Jena, the boy had encephalitis—a year ago, in January, was it? At that time, he had severe convulsions following on digestive disturbance and fever. So that here we have, preceded by stomach trouble, a major fit. Two weeks after the child was better again, paralysis of the left arm and leg showed itself—a most characteristic symptom, and easily explained. For, you see, what happens is this. The child goes on wanting to push the astral body through; but each time he puts forth these efforts and succeeds, he becomes aware afterwards of an emptiness behind the place where he succeeded in pushing the astral body through. Then he gets twitchings, and lets his astral body escape—to the left. A process is taking place here which it is important to observe. Anything that enters into the organisation from without—that is to say, that has not been duly prepared by the organisation itself, but has forced its way in—is poison for the human organism. Suppose the astral organisation has suffered a displacement from right to left, and this displacement is continued—as it may well be, when it is a serious one—into the etheric organism, with the result that the physical organism also becomes involved. Then a slight infiltration of poison is set up towards the left side of the body, and this manifests outwardly in the symptom of paralysis. The child was given massage, and after three months the paralysis showed signs of improvement. The affected part was left a little weak, as one can still observe. (Turning to the boy and holding out an object) Take hold of it like this! As you see, he is clumsy with the left arm. Since January 1923, the fits have essentially changed in character. They last now only a very short time, coming on as a rule nine hours after falling asleep. Suddenly the child will cry out, wake up, and stand up on his feet. At such moments you can observe also that extreme flatulence is present—a characteristic symptom. At the present time the boy has a fit nearly every week, but there is no longer the disturbance of consciousness. Neither do the twitchings occur. The fits pass and he jumps up all right. In 1924 a puncture was made in the corpus callosum, but with no result. The latest thing we have tried is treatment with calcium lactate. The child is late in going to sleep and often talks in his sleep, especially if he has had a late meal. Appetite is good. He has no liking for fruit or vegetables or anything acid, but shows a marked preference for meat. Digestion is at present fairly good; earlier on, he was inclined to be constipated and was also very quickly tired. The boy has a lively fantasy. He is friendly with everyone, but has no special affection for anyone in particular, not even for his parents. He is quick-tempered, and loves animals and plants. And we must not omit to note a trait that is strikingly characteristic of his condition, namely that he is a great chatterbox! That is part of the illness. It is for him a real need; he simply must chatter. I think the very behaviour of the boy will have revealed to you the facts of his condition; you cannot help seeing them all simply by looking at him. There is however another feature of the case to which I must call your attention. The child is now at the stage where the second body has already been developed for a long time, for he is eleven years old; but the condition in which we find him suggests that the model organism had itself become decadent, owing to the fact that the mother did not live wisely and carefully during the time of pregnancy, but drank a good deal. The whole manner and condition of the child now, makes it highly probable that the first body, the model body, was exceedingly irregular. And we are strongly inclined to the view that, although no such information has been given us, the birth may have occurred too soon, perhaps early by as much as two weeks—the mother failing to maintain her own organism in a condition that would render it a right and fit home for the embryo, which requires of course plenty of room to develop on all sides. This is frequently the case when alcohol is taken during pregnancy. It is stated in the report given us that development in the first three years was without any peculiar features or symptoms. What seems to me more probable is that there has not been the readiness or ability to watch for more delicate deviations and irregularities. The astral (and the ego) organisation have been hanging out about the neck or mouth, and it is clear from this that the child must at any rate have felt, comparatively early, a need to speak. He must always have found difficulty in diving down into the ether and physical bodies. A certain nervous excitement, that manifests externally and that tends to hold back the principle of imitation and to allow more play to the inner organic impulses in evolution, must have already been present in the first three years. And then we have, manifesting especially as the age of three-and-a-half approaches—the age that is halfway through the first seven-year epoch—the reactions that naturally arise when during the first seven years the ego and astral body are unable to work as they should from the direction of the head organisation. These organs here, which were at that time slowly and gradually coming into being—for they are finished and complete at seven years of age—turn out to be stunted in their growth. Why should they be so? The organs are stunted because the child did not finish the embryo period. They would have been more complete and more perfectly shaped if the child had gone through the whole embryo period. As it was, he had no fully developed model. When therefore, at the important age of three-and-a-half, the organs are beginning to take shape, the model comes short, and a condition develops where the astral body wants to penetrate the whole organisation and make its way through the walls of the organs, but is unable to get through; and there follow all the symptoms of which we have spoken. That in such a case the stomach and intestines must also inevitably become disordered ought not to be difficult to understand. For if the astral body does not succeed in bringing about the right streamings from the head to the limbs, then the intestines and the whole digestive organisation must necessarily remain weak. The ego organisation is not properly in them. Consider now for a moment this weak digestive organisation—that is to say, a digestion that is weak in its forces, not having the ego organisation properly in it. Such a digestive system simply cannot tolerate just the particular kind of food that should find its specific field of activity in the digestive organisation. Imagine you have before you the plant.  Where in man does the root of the plant have its field of activity? In the head organisation; and the foliage in the rhythmic system; and all that develops above in the way of fruit or flower works in the intestines, in the whole digestive organisation. There is however no affinity between such a weakly developed digestive organisation and these upper parts of the plant. On the other hand, the boy's astral body, which is lying freely, as it were, in the whole belly without making its way right into the digestive organisation, has a hankering for meat. (The astral body of man is, you know, by its very nature strongly attracted to meat). We saw also that the boy shows a dislike of anything acid or sour. That again is understandable. Acid substances work with particular force upon the astral body. If the latter has dived down properly into the organism, then it unloads, as it were, upon the physical organism the acid influences it has received. But if it has not entered rightly into the physical organism, then this astral body is left painfully sensitive to the acid influences that reach it. It is from observations such as these that you can obtain a true picture of how the organism works. When there is an irregularity of the kind I have described, one need not be at all surprised when stomach disorders occur. Stomach disorder is only a symptom of the presence in the metabolism of this irregularity. The illness consists entirely in the irregularity; the symptoms are occasioned by it, and there is naturally always the possibility that the onset of a fit should be preceded by stomach disturbance. Since January 1923, there has, as I said, been an important change in the character of the fits. These last now only a short time, coming on about nine hours after the boy has fallen asleep. He suddenly starts screaming and crying, and wakes up. There is also extreme flatulence in the bowels. At present a fit occurs about once a week. With such a state of affairs, the outlook seems at first distinctly serious; it has nevertheless hopeful features. For there are signs of recovery, there are signs that a natural betterment is taking place. We have in fact reached a kind of crisis, that is expressing itself inwardly in an explosive manner; it takes its course slowly, but we could not expect anything else. Why do the fits occur nine hours after falling asleep? Because that is the time when the astral body is beginning to set out on its return journey into the physical body. It still has difficulty in returning, it cannot make its way in; it keeps diving down, and then being driven back again. You can well imagine how all the symptoms follow from this—the starting up and the screaming. When however the astral body is once inside the whole physical organism, it is an easier matter for it to remain there throughout the day. The extreme flatulence arises from the fact that the astral body is not completely membered into the bowels organisation. To the relative independence and detachment of the astral body are due also the characteristic features of the boy's soul life—his continuous chattering, his excitability, his lively fantasy. And now the question is: what are we to do in such a case? Important before all else is to remove from the astral body—which works powerfully and independently—all possibility of its developing forces that hinder it in the process of adaptation to ether body and physical body. When you have the child standing before you as you did today, you can see at once the first thing that needs to be done—his toy must be taken from him. That toy is a veritable poison for his soul. What he needs above all, is to have his imagination stimulated—as it can be only when he has to handle something that is not already complete and perfect. He must be got to paint as much as possible, but especially also to fashion forms, to carve. He should simply be given a piece of wood, and encouraged to “form” it in the shape of a human being. Here then will be our point of attack, as it were, in the educational sense. We must avoid bringing him in contact with things that are finished and perfect, and have it as our aim that he shall be constantly making things himself. This will bring his limbs into movement. We have not yet hit upon quite the right ways to achieve this; that still needs to be done. A peculiar feature of this boy's condition is that one cannot say it is some particular organ which does not let the astral body through; the totality of the organs is formed and developed in such a way that they all equally hold back the astral body. Hence the slight tendency to deformity. And since, when the astral body does succeed in diving down, it is by the left side that it manages to escape, the danger is always present that symptoms of paralysis will show themselves on the left side. At his age they do not matter very much—as long as they are slight. They could, however, lead on to a more severe paralysis. It would be good if along with foods for which he has a liking, the boy could be given sour fruit in exceedingly small quantities. (You will remember, we explained how his very constitution obliges him to have a strong dislike of all acid foods.) If this is done, then, while grabbing at the food he likes, he will take also with it your little dose of acid. All you have to do, before you give him some meat, is to pour on to the plate a small quantity of some dish that contains acid fruit juice. In this way you will find you can accustom him to eating very small helpings of stewed fruit with his meat. And then it will be important that he should begin—or continue—to receive regular teaching on a right and sensible method, such as the method followed in the Waldorf School—irrespective of whether he makes rapid progress or not. We shall give him Eurythmy exercises, not limiting ourselves to particular sounds, but doing with him whatever brings the limbs especially into movement. In this way we can strengthen the limbs in their efforts to give form to the astral body. In his present condition the boy himself helps in his own progress. On the other hand, a child like the one we were considering earlier is extraordinarily difficult to deal with, the reason being that you have there before you a kind of little demon. What you must realise is that while the child remains small in his physical body, his astral body is all the time growing in inverse proportion. It does not adapt itself to the physical organism, but is as big as the latter is small. Now as a matter of fact, the child is, without knowing it, well on the way to become an actor in his astral body. Supposing you decide to appoint, instead of one teacher, a whole staff of teachers to train actors for speaking on the stage, assigning a particular task to each member of the college—then, if you were to develop him in a one-sided way, this squat little fellow could quite well be trained to teach the actors the sound R and related sounds. In spite of his apparent quietness and calm, the child is in reality very excited and agitated. You have before you, as I said, a kind of demonic being. An absolutely real super-sensible being is present in this boy. What you had sitting there in front of you was just a dwarfish little fellow, a mere Tom Thumb. But the actor is present there too all the time in full force, turning all kinds of somersaults etc., while the boy is perhaps sauntering along in an indolent manner. You have here, you see, to do with a child who is most difficult of access. Whatever you attempt with the physical body meets with no response there, but only from the mercurial astral body—with the exception of Curative Eurythmy and speech exercises. These do contact the physical body and bring the intellect into activity; but it is no good trying to approach the child via the physical body by any other means. Indeed, it is quite possible you may fare like the “sorcerer's apprentice” who split the broomstick which would not behave and then found he had two broomsticks to deal with instead of one. For if you should ever succeed in making some sort of approach via the physical body—apart from Curative Eurythmy and Speech exercises—it may easily happen that through your intervention the constant restlessness is actually aggravated. That, then, will be your main problem in connection with this boy—that you are dealing all the time with an extraordinarily mobile and restless astral body. How must we proceed, if we want to educate the boy? We must arrange our lessons so as to achieve a reversal of what we very frequently set out to achieve. Very often, as you know, we attach particular importance to making the course of the lesson lead up gradually to a dramatic climax. But for the boy we are considering, this gradual enhancement of interest must then at once be followed by a decline of interest. The dramatic quality must ebb away and subside. And this principle must be observed throughout all the teaching we undertake with him. We must have the patience and perseverance to carry it through. First, we must bring it about that the boy's attention is thoroughly roused. He, of course, has no knowledge at all of what is going on in his astral body; but anything that has the quality of true fantasy and imagination will help you to make your approach to this astral organism. You must invent the most delightful stories, full of vivacity and movement. When you are with this child, you must really become a poet, rich in imagination. And then, having gradually worked your story up to a high pitch of dramatic movement, and having succeeded at last in gaining entrance into the sub-conscious astral organisation—then you must, as it were, reverse and try to tone it all down, try to push back the stream of interest. Perhaps you hold up to ridicule some incident in the story, so that the charm of the thing is a little spoiled. Let us say, you begin to poke fun at the one who is the hero of the story and with whom the child has been enraptured. You could say: This great hero, you know, whenever he sets out to do his valiant deeds, he cannot begin until he has first blown his nose! With some such remark or other, you raise a smile at the person or thing that has aroused such enthusiasm and interest. And you go on in this way, until at last the whole thing evaporates like a soap-bubble. But beware that you do not at the same time spoil the child's enjoyment; you must see to it that the anticlimax, the discovery of how it all vanishes like a soap bubble, is also followed with pleasure and delight. And now while this is taking place, while you are undoing, as it were, the inner process which you yourself first stimulated the child's astral body is all the time gradually adapting itself to the physical body. If you have the patience to undertake this kind of education with the child—first becoming a poet, and then again turning round on yourself and pulling your poetry to pieces with your irony until no shred of it remains—if you can have the patience to do this, you will manage to bring it about that by his ninth or tenth year the child will begin to grow in quite a natural manner. And that would be a great achievement. The super-fantastic organism that was created long ago during embryonic development would then be changed back again. The symptoms now present would gradually disappear in the course of your treatment. On the other hand, the very least result of all will be obtained by making direct attack on the symptoms themselves. To set about trying to break the child of his R would be as hopeless as it was once with a certain actor in Weimar—although he was no child!—who had a habit of emphasising each single syllable in every word. This actor would never say “Fréunderl” as we say it, but adhered strictly to the principle of giving equal emphasis to both syllables. Thus he used to say “Fréundérl”, “Kópfchén”, “Kíndléin”.2 It is impossible to combat symptoms of this kind by direct attack. Any attempt to break our boy of saying and living in R would be utterly futile. It would only leave him empty and lazy and indolent. If, on the other hand, you carry out the measures I have described, the predilection for R will disappear of itself. 
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| 352. A Spiritual Scientific View of Nature and Man: Structure and Breakdown in the Human Organism — The Significance of Secretions
23 Feb 1924, Dornach Translated by Steiner Online Library Rudolf Steiner |
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| The astral body and the ego break down again. When you build a house, you try to build it as quickly as possible and live in it for as long as possible. |
| When we wake up early of our own accord, we go back inside with our ego and astral body, which have left the physical body during the night, and that is why we break out in sweat. |
| And the secretions of the intestines are particularly under the influence of the ego – in animals they are also under the influence of the astral body, but in humans they are under the influence of the ego. |
| 352. A Spiritual Scientific View of Nature and Man: Structure and Breakdown in the Human Organism — The Significance of Secretions
23 Feb 1924, Dornach Translated by Steiner Online Library Rudolf Steiner |
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Good morning, gentlemen! Perhaps one or the other of you has thought of something else you would like to ask? Or anything else about what we discussed the other day? Mr. Müller asks if Dr. Steiner would like to say something about a question he asked the other day: There are quacks who can diagnose people's illnesses from their urine. Dr. Steiner: Yes, you asked that recently. I just overlooked the question, or I didn't have time to answer it. Mr. Müller continues as the person asking the question: In the Basel area, there is a man who has his practice, urine tests, and the remedies he has prescribed have achieved good results. What do you think of that? Dr. Steiner: Well, regarding the question about urine testing, I have the following to say. Urine testing is not limited to quacks and the like, but it also plays a major role in medicine today, which is recognized as scientific. However, there is a big difference between the way in which today's physicians and the people you are actually talking about – and you were basically talking about non-medical practitioners – treat things, and that is based on the following. Urinalysis has always played an extremely important role in all disease investigations since ancient times. However, you have to bear the following in mind. If you go back to the old medicine that existed until the 18th century – because medicine was only reformed in the 18th century in Italy in the direction of materialism – you will find that both the recognition of diseases and healing were based on completely different principles. Today, this old medicine is completely despised by science. To a certain extent, this is justified, but it is not entirely justified. And one must be aware of the difference between the old medicine and the newer medicine in order to understand what it actually means today. The old medicine knew very well that man is not just this physical body that you see with your eyes and touch with your hands, but is also a supersensible being that permeates the body, as we have always emphasized. You will find the differences between this old medicine and the newer medicine if you go back very far in human life, namely if you go back to the time before birth. I do not mean the spiritual before birth, but the physical, the body of the human being in the womb. Today, medicine and science in general see the essential thing about a human being as it develops in the womb, the essential thing is how the egg gradually builds up. At first, we are only dealing with the egg that has been fertilized. This is therefore a small cell, only visible under the microscope. This cell then multiplies and takes on a kind of cup shape. And in the third week, this cup shape bulges out on one side. Then, in the sixth or seventh week, the human being becomes similar to a small fish. On one side, the head then develops (see drawing), and the first nerve cords form here. And so it continues. And in this way, observing formation after formation, today science is trying to get closer to understanding the origin of man and also of animals.  But apart from what is present in this way, there is also a thick liquid around the human being in the womb. This thick liquid is present in this way (it is drawn), and only then is the uterus all around it. This thick liquid, with all kinds of thick inclusions, then flows out at birth as the so-called afterbirth. This is considered to be a waste product, something that has no significance, because everything that occurs in a living being today, that is, that occurs in such a way that it comes out, is considered a waste product. But that is not the case. Here, in the way the cell multiplies and the physical human body forms, the external natural force is at work inside, while in the surrounding fluid, which is then expelled as the afterbirth, the spiritual-soul element is at work. This spiritual-soul substance is first in the vicinity of the small human body; only later does it move into the human body. And one must actually look for the spirit in what is later rejected as the afterbirth. This is, of course, very surprising, but it is extremely important. Today, there is so much denial of the spiritual that a friend of mine has set himself the task of examining this afterbirth, as it gradually releases the spirit to the actual embryo, the actual physical. One could examine this quite well scientifically; but that fails only because, where one gets human germs - it is not the case in very many cases - the fact that the mother dies or has to be operated on, the present-day natural scientists immediately take away everything that is around, and one does not get a human germ to examine in order to find out. So even the way things are treated today is a hindrance to real science. This materialistic way of thinking, I might say, begins with the examination of the origin of man. Now you know that a person also secretes while they are alive. The secretions are not particularly popular in the external world, because they do not smell good. Almost all secretions do not smell good. Today, however, all secretions are considered, and quite rightly so, to be something that simply has to be secreted, washed away, and so on. So the secretions in humans are, first of all, what you have mentioned: urine, perspiration, right, and then there are the coarse secretions, the feces and a few others. After all, what you cut from the nails is also a secretion of the human body. It is just a solid secretion. But some things that are also secretions are not recognized as secretions, but in reality they are secretions. You see, the eye is often thought of as the noblest organ in the human being. Well, you just have to consider how easily an eye can be removed. It lies almost completely isolated in the eye socket. And what is in the eye as fluid – I have explained this to you – is also a secretion. And that there are secretions in the various organs of hearing, in the ear, that the secretion plays a role there, you can already see from the formation of earwax, which is the outermost secretion. So we are dealing with secretions everywhere in the human being; on the one hand the human being is built up, but on the other hand he dissolves, he secretes. Now, what follows from this? I told you something the other day that might be instructive for you in this regard. I said: People see the nerves, the whole brain, as something that is just such an organ as the other organs, like the liver or spleen. But that is not true, gentlemen. The brain is a secretion. The whole brain, I told you, is a secretion! And if you want to compare the brain to something, then you should not compare it to the intestines, but to what is inside the intestines. So if you have a piece of intestine, there is the intestinal wall, and there is the intestinal contents (see drawing p. 159, bottom). The thing is that the intestinal wall is so corrugated. In the brain, in the nerve, the wall is missing; it is also there, but it is transparent, it is not visible, and only the contents are there (see drawing, above). You can quite rightly say: What is our brain actually filled with? It is filled with a very special kind of intestinal content! And if you call the intestinal content dirt, you can say that the brain is dirt. That is absolutely scientifically correct. For the activity of thinking does not consist in an activity of the brain, but the activity of thinking consists in the brain being separated out by thinking. The more you go from bottom to top in man, the more man is separation. Now I have spoken to you about the sensual and the supersensible man, about the man you see and the man who is also in you, whom you do not see. That which you see in a person is what is continually being built up, what comes from what forms the physical human body. That is where he gets the arm stump (see drawing on p. 156), and the leg stump. But the supersensible, the astral body and the ego, are there to separate, they are constantly separating. Only the physical body and the etheric body build up. The astral body and the ego break down again. When you build a house, you try to build it as quickly as possible and live in it for as long as possible. Little by little, nature also breaks it down. Otherwise, you would still have to see the houses that stood in ancient India today. But you will find few of our houses that stood here three hundred years ago. In the human being, building up and breaking down happens simultaneously. First, there is building up: We eat, absorb things; they come to the liver, where they are transformed. Then the breakdown begins again, the sorting out. And in this building and breaking down, the whole activity of the human being actually consists. If we only built up, we would be dull and stupid. We would be nothing but stupid fellows. We would not even be stupid fellows, but we would be completely spiritless plants if we only built. The fact that we break down, that we, for example, continually excrete in the brain, that we therefore have excretory organs, glands, is what it is that we are not stupid guys, but that we are clever people, with differences of course. But the spiritual is based on breaking down, not on building up. And that is why the secretions are of particular importance. You see, the thing is this: the same activity that takes place when the afterbirth is secreted takes place during every decomposition. Whenever more and more is destroyed around the structure of the human being, then the spirit is at work. And when the spirit can then work in the human body itself, when the human being is born, then the afterbirth is no longer needed; then it is simply expelled. But it is expelled throughout life. It is expelled in the more or less solid-soft intestinal secretions, it is expelled in the urine, it is expelled in sweat, for example. You can observe the significance of sweat as a secretion when you have a real anxiety dream. Just observe it once when you have a real anxiety dream. If, for example, you dream that someone is chasing you with the intention of killing you or at least beating you up, you run away from him, you run in your dream, run, run, run; you wake up quickly, but not without being completely bathed in sweat. This activity, which is so intensified that you have such frightening images, takes place in the form of sweating attacks. And these sweats are the physical accompaniment of what the anxiety dream is. Or think of a person with a serious lung disease who is not in the last stage, but whose lungs are not in order. The lungs cannot breathe well, causing the lungs to compress: he suffers greatly from anxiety dreams. But he also always sweats when he sleeps. So you have the connection between the perspiration and these mental activities, images that come in dreams. Yes, then, gentlemen, the etheric body is active because the anxiety dream actually arises only at the moment of waking up. You only think that dreaming lasted almost the whole night. The whole dream takes place at the moment of waking up. It can be proven that dreams play out at the moment of waking up. I once told you a characteristic dream, when many of you were not yet here, from which you can see how, when you wake up, you first have the whole dream flashing through your mind. A student is standing at the door of the lecture hall. Another student comes up to him and jostles him. Now, being jostled is a terrible insult among students! It can only end in a duel; there's no other way. So now, immediately, the moment the other student bumps into him, one of them looks for a second; the other student also has to look for a second – this is a long story that the student dreams – the whole thing is agreed, the negotiations for the seconds, everything; apparently it takes an awfully long time. He dreams of how they go out into the forest, how they line up, how the distance is determined, how they pace off how far away they are. The pistols are loaded – he dreams all this –; how they are then raised, the first shot is fired, and he wakes up! He quickly realizes that, because he has become restless in his sleep, he has tipped over the chair; but it falls while he is waking up. So the chair falling over made the whole dream; at that moment the whole dream shot through his mind. The dream only expands inwardly to the length. In reality, one actually dreams in the moment of waking up. And that is why it is also the case that such sick people have the frightening dreams when they wake up; they sleep, wake up, and in doing so, they start to sweat. That is the etheric body at work. When we wake up early of our own accord, we go back inside with our ego and astral body, which have left the physical body during the night, and that is why we break out in sweat. So when we sweat, it is the etheric body that mainly brings about the fact that we are spiritual beings, because stones and plants do not dream, and therefore are not spiritual beings. But then there is the secretion of urine. You see, this is not as noticeable as it is with sweat because sweat can do nothing but come out, and then it covers the skin. But if the skin had small sacs where the sweat is secreted inside, and if there were a fine skin to cover it, you would not notice it at all. It could be that you have small sacs inside the skin. The sweat goes in there, and at certain times – you could have fine muscles – you press the skin and the sweat could run off. Just as the sweat is secreted through the etheric body, so is the urine secreted through the astral body. But you don't realize that, for example, when you have more vivid feelings, more urine is secreted than when you have weak feelings, because the urine does not pour out immediately. You see, it's like this: If a person is filled with enthusiasm and remains so, regardless of whether it finds expression in external deeds or whether he is contemplating something, and if he did not have a urinary bladder, then he would have to pass urine continuously, especially when filled with enthusiasm. It would be a very bad arrangement. A person could not go to a museum, because when he sees the pictures there and becomes excited, there would have to be toilets nearby! It just so happens that human nature provides for this secretion. It accumulates in the urinary bladder and can be drained at certain times. But urine is secreted primarily by the astral body, and this fills the human being everywhere; urine comes from everywhere, collects in the kidneys and then goes into the urinary bladder. And the secretions of the intestines are particularly under the influence of the ego – in animals they are also under the influence of the astral body, but in humans they are under the influence of the ego. And not only the intestines are activated for secretion, but the whole human being is activated. In the whole human being, secretion is constantly taking place. The intestines are only the drainage system. So you can say that it is precisely in the secretion that you can see that the etheric body is active in sweat, the astral body is active in urine, and the ego is active in the secretion of feces. If you consider this, you will not think of the secretions as something so unimportant. Because let us assume that a person has normal urine. Yes, then the astral body in the person is also active in a normal way. But whether a person is healthy or sick depends on how the astral body is active. Everything in health and illness basically depends on how the astral body is active. For example, when we eat eggs and the eggs are to be digested, the egg must first go into the mouth, then into the stomach; then it goes into the intestines, and there, as I once said, it is completely destroyed as an egg. The egg white is destroyed. But then, on the way into the liver, the destroyed egg white is rebuilt, and human egg white is formed from animal and vegetable egg white on the way from the intestines to the liver. The human egg white then enters the blood. If you look at the human organism, here is the diaphragm (see drawing), here is the liver, and here is the heart; they are only separated by the diaphragm. What comes from the intestines into the liver is transformed from animal and vegetable proteins – I will color this yellow – into human proteins (a darker yellow). This is held together in the liver and then passes over into the heart. The thing is this: when we eat protein, our astral body has to work to properly transform animal and vegetable protein into human protein. If the astral body is lazy, it cannot work properly, and the animal protein is not converted into human protein in the liver, but goes directly into the kidneys and is secreted in the urine. If you now examine the urine – which is what modern scientific medicine does – you will find protein in the urine. Or imagine, gentlemen, you are eating potatoes. The potato is usually already converted in the mouth, because starch is an important food in general, it is not just there to starch shirts. The potato consists almost entirely of starch. On the way from the mouth to the stomach and into the intestines, the potato is now gradually converted into sugar. The potato starch first becomes dextrin and then sugar. Potatoes are only bad in the mouth; in the intestines they are extremely sweet because they are converted into sugar there. But when the potato starch has been converted into sugar in the intestines, and when the liver has converted potato sugar or any other sugar into human sugar, then it delivers this inner sugar to the entire body, which becomes warmer as a result, which has its inner warmth as a result. But for that to happen, the astral body has to work properly again. If it does not work properly, then the proper transformation into human sugar does not take place, but the animal and especially the vegetable sugar goes directly to the kidneys. The sugar is excreted, and the person becomes diabetic. You can see from the sugar content of the urine that the person is ill. All of this is something that modern medicine also does and considers to be extremely important. That is the first thing that is done today: the urine is examined for protein and sugar. This immediately provides a clue as to whether the person may have this or that disease. Or take the following: if we want to have a healthy head, which, after all, is not something entirely unimportant for the physical human being here on earth – people want to have a healthy head because they believe that the head organ in the human being; so they want to have a healthy head. If we want to have a healthy head, then we have to bring up a substance that is constantly being produced in us, namely clover acid, through the chest into the head. A healthy head must have a certain amount of clover acid. We produce the clover acid ourselves, as we also produce the alcohol we need. But for this, the head must work in the right way again, so that the clover acid, oxalic acid, is produced. If it does not work properly and it stays down, we get a head that is anemic, and the clover acid is passed into the urine and goes away. From this you can see, gentlemen, that even today the most important diseases can be identified by means of the most ordinary chemical examination of urine. But this chemistry that we have today was not available in the past. And there was medicine even then! Now the matter is this: suppose a person has a fever; I will take a drastic case. What does it mean when a person has a fever? It does not mean that his astral body has become weak and listless, sluggish, but rather that it is in a state of excessive activity, so that it affects the I. Then the I is as if whipped when the astral body is in excessive activity. But the I causes the blood to circulate. And an excessively active astral body, which wants to enter the organs everywhere and cannot, and therefore seethes within itself like a storm-lashed sea, produces fever within itself. Now the person has a fever from his whipped astral body. What will be the further consequence? The blood is rushed through the body too quickly. The Blur is not properly transformed. The blood does not have time to form the organs, but goes as blood from the heart to the kidneys and from there into the urine, and we get a urine that is very dark in color. Those who know how to judge the dark color of urine know that, under all circumstances, whether it is a little darker or very dark, the fever is flooding the human organism. Suppose the astral body becomes very sluggish, it will no longer work properly. The blood passes very slowly through the body, the pulse becomes barely noticeable. You can feel it at the pulse, how the blood passes slowly everywhere. Everything in the body comes together. The body experiences pain in all sorts of places; the urine turns light yellow or even white. Now, between the urine being dark and the urine being white, there are all kinds of shades, color nuances. If you focus on these color nuances and take the urine and look at it through the light, you can see a wide range of things from the colors of the urine. The blood is constantly trying to replace what is leaving the organs. As a result, the blood has a constant tendency to solidify. If the blood rushes through the organs too quickly, it cannot give anything to the organs. But it wants to solidify. When it comes out of the kidneys as urine, the urine becomes flaky in such blood. If you look through it again, you will see flaky urine. If the astral body is sluggish and the pulse weak, then you don't have cloudy urine, but rather urine that is almost as clear as water, pure urine. So not only from the color, but also from this cloudiness or purity of the urine, one can conclude a lot. If the urine, when you look through it, looks like a stormy summer's day, with dark clouds and everything in it showing, where everything is bubbling in the urine, so if it is like a stormy summer's day, then the person has something that causes a strong fever. And if you can judge what is going on, you can draw conclusions about the illness. If the urine, when examined, looks delightfully clear like a bright summer's day when the sun illuminates everything, one can conclude that the person is ill on the other side, that he has a very slight tendency towards all kinds of perishing organs; one organ becomes inactive, another becomes inactive, and so on. So you see, the thing is this: if you have specialized in the secretions of the urine, you can tell a great deal from it. But that is precisely the difference between today's newer medicine and the old one: the old medicine looked at the urine in the same way that one looks at a summer's day as a bright or storm-lashed summer's day, thus judging more in the rough, but, having trained itself, judged more from the facts. Today's more materialistic medicine chemically analyzes the urine, finding protein, oxalic acid, sugar and so on in it. So the difference is that one did it according to how it presented itself, and the other did it more according to chemistry. Now, of course, in the early days, when this view was still given a great deal of consideration, people learned it properly and there were no charlatans. Today, most of those who do this are charlatans, although I am not saying that all of them are. A person can train himself so well that he can actually recognize all possible illnesses. But that requires a great deal of experience, and this experience must be applied. Now the difference is: people today do not give much importance to the mind. The mind is almost about to be abolished. What chemistry offers can be learned by anyone. To examine a substance chemically, that is simply learned in the three, four, five, six years one spends at the university. Basically, any fool can do that, examine the substance chemically. And that is what they are striving for. The mind is to be abolished. Everyone is to be able to do the same. That was not the case in the past. In the past, the mind was highly respected. But you have to have a mind to be able to look at urine. That is the difference: in the past, people were made spiritual by being taught; today they are made into henchmen. The story is this: if you want to work, you need your hands, and your hands should be guided by your mind. Today there is much talk of manual labor and brain work, but the two should not be distinguished. Those who do manual labor should be given the opportunity to educate themselves spiritually so that they can approach the spirit just as much as the so-called intellectual workers. These distinctions can only be made among people by valuing real spiritual work. But today they want to do away with the spirit. Well, gentlemen, you can see from this that earlier medicine placed more emphasis on looking at things directly. But that had another consequence. I don't know if you know that today's so-called scientific medicine makes rather high noses, well, you can't make them as high as today's doctor makes them, with which he looks down on the old “dirty pharmacy”, because in the past they made the remedies from all sorts of secretions. And they said to themselves: the human being secretes the secretions. If you bring them back into the body in the right way, they want to come out again. But what are they doing there? In this way, for example, they bring a sluggish astral body into regular activity or a sluggish ether body into regular activity. Now you can say: If you find that a person's astral body has become lethargic, you could give them sweat as a remedy – you could say that. And you could say: Well, that's just the old dirty pharmacy, it really does have something like that! – Yes, the difference is not that great. If you were to look at the products used in remedies today, you would find that they are the same products found in sweat, only they are applied externally, in a mineral combination. The ancients used sweat directly. And in many ways it was more effective than what is only put together later, because, as I have shown you in many cases, nature is much cleverer than man. Man can synthesize in his remedies what nature synthesizes. The ancients did something very remarkable: they valued something that is no longer valued today. The ancients said: when a person really sweats, he actually has a whole sweat blanket around him (see drawing). — Now, that is the first thing. But a person secretes sweat all over his surface. If you could hold on to this sweat that a person secretes and take the person away – imagine what it would be like: here someone is sweating terribly; his body is covered with sweat all over the surface – imagine if I could take this person out and the sweat would remain here: That would be the whole imprint of the human being, the whole person would be there in the sweat! Very interesting, isn't it? So it is that the sweat constantly has the intention of imitating the human form. The ancients did something else as well. They did not just look at sweat in this way, they also looked at urine in this way. Now, for example, they had a small glass of urine (see illustration on page 170). The ancients now had an even better mental image; and lo and behold: something like a ghost of a human being emerged from this urine! What sweat forms by itself, by being on the surface, emerged from the urine. In fact, in ancient times, if you had a vial of urine, you could see that. Yes, there emerged – I don't know if you know this legend, that the goddess Venus emerged from the sea foam? —a human astral specter arose from the urine. And in a person who was prone to a certain disease, let's say a person who was prone to wasting, this astral specter was thin and scrawny. In a person who, let's say, was prone to morbid fatness, this specter was swelling in all directions. Call it an illusion for my sake; it can be an illusion if you want that someone who sees a light-colored urine sees a different ghost than when he sees dark urine. But he sees it. And as an experienced doctor, he judged the illnesses accordingly. And it was the same in the days when not only urine but also feces, the intestinal secretions, were examined. In the old days, these were particularly important for determining the diseases. Just imagine, someone had taken the intestinal secretions. You can find out that one person has a lot of sulfur in it, iron in it. Depending on what is in it, you can have more sulfurous intestinal contents. Dogs, for example, have a lot of sulfur in their intestinal contents, which then goes outwards. The more sulfur in it, the whiter and firmer the intestinal contents. The more carbon, carbonaceous matter, the softer and darker the intestinal contents; this is found in cats. Now, from the intestinal contents that come out, from the feces, you can deduce the disease much better than from the urine. Even with intestinal contents, the ancients, shall we say, had a vision; they just had such visions. This is something very strange! With sweat, they said: When man secretes sweat, he envelops himself in his own ghost. When man secretes urine, there is his ghost in it, rising up. And in the case of intestinal contents, it is completely contained on all sides and has certain colors. And according to these - call it visions or dreams, as you like - but according to these dreams, diseases were often diagnosed in ancient times. And in an unspecific, sometimes quite foolish way, people like the ones you mention do it by reading old books that are hard to understand today. There are also those who diagnose diseases based on feces; this usually doesn't yield much. But a person can gain a great deal of experience, and something may come of it. Only today's science doesn't pay attention to this because it prefers to examine everything chemically. But, as I said, urine analysis is just as important to today's medical science as it is to unscientific medicine, which is a remnant of ancient times. If you leaf through old medical books, you will come across expressions that you will not usually understand. All kinds of mystics and people who always say that they have all the wisdom, not only science but also wisdom, will always tell you what they have read in old books. This is not of much value because they do not understand the old books. But if you read them, you will come across an expression. The expression mummy appears again and again. One is told: if the mummy is light, then the person is afflicted with all kinds of diseases that drive him to emaciation and so on; if the mummy is very dark, blackish, then the person is afflicted with fever, with feverish diseases. It is told everywhere what the mummy is like, and the diseases are judged by it. What then is the mummy? If a person today reads this, they only know that these are the Egyptian mummies. Well, what do they make of it when they read that the mummy is light or dark? They don't even get what is meant. But what did the ancient people who wrote the old medical books mean? They called the form that is in the sweat and the form that emerged from the urine and feces “mummy.” The mummy was the spiritual human being. And the spiritual human being becomes visible through the secretions. And the ancients said: When the child is born, the afterbirth goes away, and the last remnant of the spiritual human being goes away. And if people could examine this today, they would find that when a small child is born, sometimes there is very little afterbirth and thus something supernatural. But there are also some where quite a lot goes away. The latter, where quite a lot goes away – there the spirit leaves at birth – they then become materialists. And so it is, gentlemen: the spiritual activity in man, the astral and ego activity, has an extraordinary deal to do with the secretion. And when one speaks of the old dirt pharmacy, it just indicates that today one no longer appreciates what was once appreciated. Waste phenomena are no longer appreciated today. In some respects it is good not to value them too much, because all kinds of things happen. I knew someone who wanted to get rid of washing because he said – after hearing that the spirit lives in the secretions – that you should keep what is secreted, so you should also keep the dirt. And the result of that was that he came to value dirt extremely! Yes, gentlemen, all this sometimes seems foolish. But it is not always foolishness. Take horses, for example. Horses have hooves, and the hooves then merge into the soft part of the horse's toe. Dirt collects there. And if you constantly scrape away the dirt on a horse, it can become ill. You have to have an instinct for how long you have to leave the dirt so that the horse can keep up with creating it. So there you can see quite tangibly, I would say, how significant the dirt, the secretion, is. The matter is significant for the spiritual in man; it is also significant for health and illness. Health and illness can be found in the secretion. And the ancients called the spiritual in the secretion the mummy. If you find the word mummy in old writings, you will understand it from now on, because I have told you how the mummy actually comes into being: that it arises precisely from the secretion products. As you can see, Mr. Müller's question involves a very large science, but one that can only be mastered if one delves into the spiritual. Otherwise, everything that is secreted is simply a product of secretion; no attention is paid to it. But in the secretion, the human being shows what kind of spirit he is. And that this is the case with feces is evident even from a superficial glance. Compare horse feces with cow feces. The cattle feces are larger, spread out. The horse feces are almost small heads, round. You can't help it if you have a sense of beauty – isn't it true, beauty doesn't lie in the fact that you only find odorless things beautiful – if you have a sense of beauty at all, you can't help saying when you see a cow pat: The whole cow! In it she is reflected with her broad appearance, with her casual activity, with her tendency to want to lie down; she is completely within the feces. And the horse, this jumper among animals, always wanting to get away from the earth, wanting to hop and jump out into the world – a horse's dung shows the whole horse! And so it is with the excrement of all animals, you can recognize the whole animal in them. And from this you can see what the ancients understood by mummy and what is simply astral. The supersensible animal, the supersensible human being, lives in the secretions. With spiritual science, we can master these things. Of course, we must not allow the enemies to say that spiritual science deals with sweat, urine and so on, and that it is therefore actually a dirty science. That is what the enemies would like best! So, gentlemen, by raising the question, I had to point out to you what is true. But you can also point out at every opportunity that it is not about any particular considerations of what is dirty, but what is spiritual. Because man becomes unconscious when the build-up in him is too strong. Then the growths arise in him when he only builds up. He must break down accordingly. He must break down. Man becomes unconscious, constantly unconscious and absent-minded, when a lump forms in the brain, because then there is only building up. The lump is built up when there is no proper breakdown in the brain. And the brain nerves arise as breakdown products, as spiritual breakdown products. Only when it gets too strong, then the blood comes in too strongly; inflammation develops. And there you have the difference between tumors and inflammations. If you have dark urine, you tend to have inflammations somewhere in the body. If you have light-colored urine, you tend to have tumors. That's one thing. But in this way you can draw conclusions about all diseases from the urine, if you only examine the urine correctly. So, more on this on Wednesday. |
| 84. What is the Purpose of Anthroposophy and the Goetheanum?: The Enhancement of Human Cognitive Ability to Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition
14 Apr 1923, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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| And that which wants, and which remains in dreamless sleep, we call the ego. And so we get these three invisible parts of the human being through mere observation: etheric body, astral body and ego. |
| And when one finally develops intuition, when one not only feels what one has learned in life as walking, but when one feels oneself as the other person who works and is, when one passes completely over into the other person, then intuition comes. And through this one understands the ego and the will. So that one can say: The etheric body is grasped through imagination, the astral body is grasped through inspiration, the ego is grasped through intuition. In ordinary life one does not have the ego, but the ego sleeps. One only knows something of one's I, which is asleep, just as one knows in the dark that it is dark. |
| 84. What is the Purpose of Anthroposophy and the Goetheanum?: The Enhancement of Human Cognitive Ability to Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition
14 Apr 1923, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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Dornach, April 14, 1923 While this course is taking place for teachers and those interested in education, I will give the lectures that are taking place simultaneously with this course as special anthroposophical courses in such a way that they can also be understood by those personalities who have only recently found their way to anthroposophy, or who are at the very beginning of it. Therefore, some of what I will be presenting here in these lectures in the course of this week will be a kind of repetition for the “enlightened anthroposophists”. But I think that such a repetition can also be quite useful from one point of view or another. What I am presenting today is first of all intended to be a kind of further elaboration of what I presented in the public lecture that I had to give last week in various places in Switzerland. It is intended to follow on from that lecture and expand on some of it. When we look at human life in its entirety, we find that this life is divided into two strictly separate life contents: one life content, which we always go through in the time between waking up and falling asleep, i.e. in ordinary daytime consciousness; the other part of life, which is the shorter one in normal people, is the one we go through between falling asleep and waking up. It is that part which is immersed in unconsciousness and only shines forth into consciousness by allowing the colorful diversity of the dream world to flow into it. So that, when we speak from the point of view of human consciousness, we must say: This consciousness is filled during the waking hours with the content that our senses provide us with. What is made known to us of the world through our senses is, let us say, present in our consciousness in a pictorial way. We experience this. Whether in ordinary life or in science, we link our ideas, our thoughts, to what the senses deliver to us; that is, we combine the sensory perceptions and try to find laws in the world of sensory perceptions. We do all this with our faculty of thought. We connect the thoughts, the ideas that we can obtain through our faculty of thought, to the sensory impressions. But then we develop something else within our waking life. We are pleasantly touched by one event, by one impression of the day, and unpleasantly touched by another; we sympathize with one impression, the other impression is antipathetic to us. This sympathy and antipathy exists in the most varied ways and in the most varied gradations. And we describe what we experience in things, I would like to say, according to our human inner being, in such a way that they give us pleasure, that they cause us pain, that they uplift us, that they make us upset, we describe this as our feeling with things, and we distinguish clearly between our feeling and our thoughts, which represent something external to us. Our thoughts do not merely live within us, they represent something external to us. Through our ideas we gain something about the external world. It is already in the word “imagination” that we thereby gain something about the outer world. That which we imagine, we do not place within, but we place before us. Thought therefore points us outwards. Feeling points us inwards. We have the clear experience that what we feel is experienced inwards, and that it does not have anything to do with the outside to the same extent as thought or imagination. But we experience something else in the world. When it happens to some people that they encounter, say, a vicious dog here or there, they run away. Some people run away when they see a mouse; but something similar also happens under other impressions of the outside world. In this case we say that our will is aroused. While feeling proceeds in such a way that we remain calm, we set our whole organism in motion in relation to the outside world through our will, roughly speaking. This is how we speak when we want to talk about our consciousness as it develops during waking hours. From this consciousness we clearly distinguish the unconsciousness, which also belongs to our life, and which we spend between falling asleep and waking up. But it is from this unconsciousness of sleep that the colorful diversity of the dream world streams forth. Now let us enlighten ourselves a little about what has a certain value for the ordinary human consciousness. We can say: For this ordinary human consciousness, the dream world plays out of the unconscious. It shines into the conscious mind. And then thinking, feeling and willing emerge in consciousness from the experiences of the day, from the experiences of the waking state. How can we first of all, I would like to say in a popular, external way, indicate this difference between the unconscious state of man, out of which dreams shine, and the fully awake state? Well, you will not need to think about it for long, you will find that in the waking state man feels involved in that which he calls his physical organism. Take the world of dreams. It runs before you in pictures. You must say to yourself that while the world of the dream runs in pictures before you, you are not switched into your physical organism. When a person wakes up, he feels above all that his will is penetrating his physical organism. We also need our senses when we are awake because we control them through our will. So we can say: The sleeping state, from which the dream emerges, passes into the waking state by switching the will into the physical organism, so to speak. So let us now look at this physical organism. Even as I say: Let us look at the physical organism - I am actually appealing to your sensory faculty of perception. I am appealing to what you know through this sensory faculty of perception. First of all, you cannot know anything about this physical organism of the human being other than what the senses convey to you, what you can think about the physical organism. Even no anatomy, no physiology knows anything about this physical organism other than what the senses teach us to recognize and what can be grasped by man through thinking, combining the sensory perceptions. This, however, draws our attention to the fact that it is first of all the senses - we also become aware of this in the use of our consciousness - to which we must turn if we want to know something about the world in general and about the physical organism of man - the senses and thinking. Let us take a look at the senses and examine in a very popular way what we have through the senses in relation to the two characteristically differentiated states of waking and sleeping. Man thinks all too little about what comes into consideration there because, if he is not exactly blind, the lion's share of what he is conscious of in his experience comes from the eyes, and the eyes are precisely those organs that are closed in the human sleeping state, whereby the external impressions are kept out. But think of the other senses. Can you believe that your ear, if you do not block it, gives you different experiences during sleep than during the day in relation to the physical body? If you keep the physical body properly in mind and do not block your ear at night, you cannot possibly think that something different happens through the ear in your physical organism when you are asleep than when you are awake. There is no reason for it. The fact that you don't know that is quite another matter. Or let us ask in relation to the sense of warmth. We perceive warmth and cold. Yes, do you believe that the warmth you perceive during the day stops at your skin when you are asleep? It will of course have the same effect on your skin. So during sleep, with the exception of your face, you are exposed to exactly the same impressions that you are exposed to when you are awake. If this were not the case, you would have to assume that during sleep you have a mantle of warmth around you that keeps the heat out. You would have to think that a good spirit is plugging your ears so that the processes that are otherwise caused from the outside are not brought about. When you think of all this, you will come to say to yourself: Well, the eye is so sensitive that the human organism has adapted itself to use its will to hang the curtains of the eyelids over the eyes during sleep. However, the outside world does ensure to some extent that the sensory impressions are absent during sleep time. But even if we read in the newspaper the other day that it would be more pleasant for those people in Basel who want to sleep and live near pubs if the concerts were to end at half past ten instead of eleven, this clearly indicates that people want to protect their ears, but they have to be protected from the outside. Even if all this is the case, it must be said that just as the outside world is shaped as it is during sleep, so it affects our senses with the exception of our eyes. And then we must ask ourselves further: what about our thinking, our thoughts? You see, in order to answer this question, one could start from many different points of view; but for today's man, modern science has become popular, and therefore modern man knows that from every sense there is a continuation to the inside of the organism, namely the nerve cords, and that because the nerve cords go inwards as a continuation of the senses, thinking, imagining, follows on from sensory perception. Yes, if you now hear, even if it is only the relative silence in the night - and it is quite natural that you hear it, because your ear is open, what is in your surroundings is audible, that causes the same processes that it would cause if you were awake - why should that stop before the nerves, that is before thinking? So you must say to yourself, through your physical organism you - as I said, always with the exception of the eyes - do not stop the sensory impressions. But you do not keep thoughts out either. And you can even imagine - it remains hypothetical for the time being for external observation - that even if there is a relative calm during the night for certain senses due to the social facilities, it is certainly not present for other senses; certainly not for the sense of warmth and cold, for example, and certainly not for the sense of touch either, because, isn't it true, when you press your thumb on the blackboard, you perceive the pressure. Why should the perception of pressure not be the case when you lay your back on the bed? You must of course perceive this pressure, which is conveyed by the sense of touch, throughout the night. Likewise, if you place something on your hand, you will feel it. Why shouldn't you be aware of the comforter you put on yourself throughout the night and so on? But not only that, but the continuation inwards, the formation of ideas and thoughts, why should we stop at them? Because they are mediated by the organism. So that if we look impartially at what is actually there, we must say to ourselves: Even when the physical body lies in bed during sleep, it has the usual impressions through the senses. It also has the usual experiences that appear to us as conscious ideas when we wake up during the day. Just as we know nothing of sensory impressions at night and yet they can be there, so we know nothing of our thoughts; but they are there. A person does not usually realize that when he is asleep he is constantly thinking. But he knows nothing about it. Just as he knows nothing of the pressure of the blanket that lies on him, so he knows nothing of the thoughts that go on continually in his sleep. They are there. Man thinks the whole time of his life, not only during the day. Even if he does not consciously have thoughts, he still thinks, but these thoughts are in him. So that we are guided to how man is permeated by a world of thoughts from the moment he falls asleep until he wakes up. Now take the person who wakes up. He wakes up. He wakes up from his dreams, we say. By studying certain dreams one can very easily perceive how quickly the dream runs its course, so that it has actually taken place immediately upon waking. You need only remember that you can dream - of course I don't want to put anyone through this, every individual is exempt, but it could happen to someone - that you get into a heated exchange of words with someone which degenerates into a brawl. You know that sometimes people are much naughtier in their dreams than during the day. It degenerates into a brawl; the other person smacks you down, as they say, and lo and behold, you wake up: You realize that a raindrop has fallen on your cheek. It even woke you up, the raindrop. The whole dream, which looks as if it has lasted a long time, is only caused by this raindrop at the moment of waking up. You can experience this with countless dreams. They actually happen in a flash, caused by something, and have a very dramatic content. So we can say: you wake up with a dream. You will find, if you really go to work properly, that the dream gives you something that you could otherwise have thought according to your experiences, but you would have thought it differently when you were awake. We know that dreams clothe what they bring to experience in a certain fantasy. Take the example I have just given. If a drop of rain falls on your cheek during the day, you have different images of the whole process than the dramatic process where you get into an exchange of words with someone and begin to scuffle; the exchange of words can perhaps last a very long time, the scuffle also a relatively long time, and then comes, let's say, the cheek strike, and that's the end, that's when you wake up. During the day you would have had a very simple experience, a sensory perception and an associated idea. When you wake up, you have a very dramatic experience. It is embellished. But you see, you will hardly dream anything other than what is made up of sensory experiences that you have somehow already had or could have had, or inner bodily experiences and the like. That's what you dream. If you look at the whole process, the more dreams you observe, the more you will realize what dreaming actually consists of. When you are awake, you see colors through your eyes - light, dark; you hear this or that, you perceive warmth and cold. You combine this through your mind. You have the clear feeling that when you do all this, you are working from the inside out. You have the will inside with which you penetrate all of this. You work from the inside out. Let us leave untouched for the moment what is working from the inside outwards; but you have the feeling that you are seizing your sensory impressions, that you are somehow bringing them into order through your ideas. You combine these sensory impressions and so on. But you do it all from the inside. Yes, when you dream, just think about it once, you have similar images to the sensory impressions. You only need to remember a vivid dream and you will say to yourself: there are similar images. You see colors, you see someone moving and so on; images are there just as they are in the sense world. Only that in the sense world these images are, so to speak, superimposed on the hard objects; in dreams they float freely, these sense images. And ideas are also present in dreams, even cause and effect, of which natural science is so proud. One does not merely dream images, one dreams connections. It's all in there. Only if you look closely at the dream, you will have to say to yourself: Yes, what I experience in dreams is actually the opposite of what I experience when I am awake. It is the other way around. When I am awake, I know that I am receiving sensory impressions, I control them through my thoughts. When I am not dreaming, the sensory impressions assail me first, and then a kind of connection lives within the sensory impressions, as it otherwise lives through the thoughts. Just as if the context were behind the sensory images, so it is in dreams. And if you think about these things properly, you will find that this dreaming is actually the other way round. It is as if you first encountered the sensory perceptions and then could not quite grasp the thinking. That is why the sensory images are so inconsistent, so illogical. You cannot grasp thinking. When you are awake, you have more or less, depending on whether you are more philistine or more imaginative, the sensory images in your power, in your strength. You know that thinking is within you, and with thinking you control the sensory images that are somewhat further away from you. In dreams, you encounter the sensory images. Thinking is now further away, you cannot catch it. In short, if you look at the matter rationally, you get the impression that when you are awake, you live from the inside out, the sensory images are on the outside (yellow arrows), and thinking is on the inside (violet arrows). This makes itself felt. When you dream, it is the other way around (red arrows), then you first approach the sensory images, but cannot catch the thinking behind them; you cannot get to it properly. This is why the thinking inside the dream is so colorful. You can distinguish between dreams and sensory reality through proper observation. In ordinary waking sensual reality you live from the inside out. You are quite intimate with your thoughts. Thinking is closer to you. With this thinking you combine the sensory impressions.  When dreaming - it follows from observation - you have to be outside, because you cannot properly approach thinking. That is why dreams have such a curious logic, because thinking is beyond. So when you are awake, you are there, and when you are dreaming, you are out there (see drawing). But you have just come in, because this then passes over into the ordinary waking state, where you are intimate with thinking. Just feel that when the dream runs its course, it runs into ordinary daytime consciousness. You rush into your ordinary thinking, you pass through the surface of your body. You pass through your eyes, but from the outside. You do not yet have the optic nerve. You have the eyes, they pass through you. And the optic nerve, which works from the other side, from a kind of beyond, is still playing around with the images when you slip in; then you are intimate with the nerve, which makes an orderly world out of the images. It is the same with all the other senses. So you can see, simply by stating the facts, how awakening really consists of slipping into the body. So what must sleep consist of? You only need to place these facts properly before the eye of your soul and you will say to yourself: I must somehow be outside my body. And now let us go through the ordinary consciousness of the day. The “enlightened ones” will only have a repetition of what I have to say now. If we go through the imaginations, we will find: In the imagination we are really awake, there we are intimately together with our thinking, there we are really awake. So we are intimately together in waking with that which sits within us as our thinking, with reference to which we are really awake. But now let's take feeling. If you observe properly what you experience, you will not be able to say to yourself that feeling is just as intense as thinking. You will have to say to yourself: Feeling is already less logical than thinking. One allows oneself much less logic in feeling than in thinking. We allow ourselves much greater freedom and arbitrariness about what we like or dislike than about what is mathematical. It is clear that if it were a matter of feeling, housewives would prefer to take two francs and two francs again, that would be five francs instead of four, and not only housewives, but I think all people would probably prefer it. However, in thinking it is not indeterminacy but determinacy that matters. In short, even if we see how different feeling is from dreaming in terms of the content of experience, feeling is not inferior to “dreaming in terms of indeterminacy. When we feel, we are in the same state as when we dream. Only that dreaming gives us images, whereas feeling gives us that peculiar content of life which we call feelings. In its state, feeling is definitely a waking dream. We also know that if we want to immerse our logical ideas in the artistic, we have to use feeling. Without feeling there is no artistry. We have to immerse it in feeling. We feel, we have to give it an element that is similar to dreaming. In this way we create something similar on the inside to what the dream world creates on the outside. We do not create logical ideas internally, but images of the imagination. And this has been felt at all times, how dreams from the outside are filled with all the unfamiliarity and all the astonishing things that come from the outside, but are nevertheless similar to the fantasies that go inwards. And let's move on to the will - well, let's just be very clear about this: the waking consciousness knows nothing of the will. It first has the thought that you want to go there or there. Even if we have to speak of wanting just then, when we wake up, because we feel that we are then taking possession of our body, we still know nothing about wanting. We have a thought: you want to go here or there. How this now shoots down into the organism and moves the legs so that it becomes will remains unknown. You only see in yourself how you move. What passes between the thought and the manifestation of the will is unknown to the consciousness, as unknown as what you sleep through. In fact, by developing a will, you sleep into your organism. We can therefore say: Feeling is dreaming during the waking of the day; willing is sleeping during the waking of the day. With regard to the will, one does not wake up at all with the ordinary daytime consciousness. This also takes place in sleep during daytime consciousness. So that we can say: If we are decent people, we sleep on average only a third of our lives - quite seriously - some more, some less. But on the other hand we are compensated by the fact that we also carry sleeping within us while we are awake, namely in our will. And if you add this up, you will get something other than a third. And the feeling, that is the dreams that arise out of the will, that is again out of sleep, and arouse the imagination. Just as dreams reveal themselves out of sleep, feeling reveals itself out of the will. You can also observe this in a certain way. Just think for a moment that you have, say, a flower in front of you. If you are able to pick it and take it with you, then you have it. You have applied an impulse of will. If you are not able to take it with you, then you are content with the fragrance, with the pleasantness of the fragrance, with the pleasantness. You only experience the flower internally, in your emotional life. But you could almost say: what is a pleasant feeling? A pleasant feeling is the inner, attenuated experience of that for which the strong experience you are actually striving is a decision of will. One wants to have what is pleasant to one; if one does not come to have it, it remains merely pleasant to one. So feeling is a weakened will. Dreaming only comes about in a different way during waking hours than during sleep. Dreaming during sleep is a restrained sleep. Feeling during daytime waking is a will that has not fully materialized. If we did not have inhibitions within us, we would want everything that is pleasant to us, we would push everything away from us, even an expression of will that is not pleasant to us. We only hold on to the will when we feel. We merely dream of wanting instead of really wanting when we feel.  Now, we can say: If we draw the boundary between sleeping and waking with an ordinary line, then we have thinking during waking. We have nothing for it during sleep; that is gone. During sleep we have dreaming. Feeling corresponds to this during waking. During waking we have the will. The real sleep, the sleep state, the dreamless sleep corresponds to this during sleep. Now take a look at this. We have found out: Feeling and dreaming, willing and sleeping actually live in the same element. In a way, dreaming is what we do at night and feeling is what we do during the day. It is the same, the same state. So that which feels by day must dream, and that which wills by day must sleep dreamlessly. So in order for me to feel and want during the day, to dream while sleeping and to live out this sleeping state of wanting, it must be inside the body. So you get an idea of a human being that can be inside and outside in relation to the body. If it is outside the body, it sleeps dreamlessly or lets its dreams arise; if it is in the body, it wills or feels. Only when it enters the body does it encounter thinking. You cannot see thinking externally. It is therefore something that is in man throughout life, as we have said, but as something invisible. Now, because it is an invisible thing - we shall see that it can also be called so for another reason - let us call that which thinks, in addition to the physically visible, the etheric body. This etheric body remains asleep and awake in the physical body throughout life. That which feels does not remain in there; it wanders out during sleep and gives the possibility of dreams. We call it the astral body. And that which wants, and which remains in dreamless sleep, we call the ego. And so we get these three invisible parts of the human being through mere observation: etheric body, astral body and ego. We need not doubt the physical body. Now it is a matter of this: we see the physical body with the physical senses. What else is in the human being cannot be perceived with the physical senses. Can it somehow be made visible, perceptible, visible? This can be done by bringing about the following in the human being. I told you that if you live awake, you live from the inside out. Now imagine that for my sake you have the eye or some other sense organ. That's where the nerves come from. They end inside the eye, they have ends somewhere. Now let's look at this waking state. We live intimately together with our thinking, that is, in the physical body with the nerve. We live together with this nerve. But we not only live in thinking, we live in the sensory impression. The nerve radiates, so to speak, into that which is the sensory image. It can also be expressed physiologically: The nerve comes into contact with the blood circulation, and through this it enters the sensory image. There we perceive the outside world. But remember, we do not perceive the outside world, we merely develop life in the nerve itself and only reach the end of the nerve. We do not go into the blood circulation of the eye, but we stop where the nerve has its stumps; we only go to the end of the nerve. There we have an idea of a sensation, thus also a thought. The thing remains a memory. It is therefore shadowy because it does not reach the blood.  You see, in ordinary life, you do it in such a way that you have perceptions. They pass into the nerves. The nerves end inside the body. Then they are experienced in the memory up to the final state of the nerve. That's where the imagination starts, that's where it becomes memory-imagination. If it penetrates to the end of the nerve, it becomes perception; if it only reaches the stump, if it does not penetrate, it becomes memory. But at first one can remember nothing other than what one carries within oneself. Now imagine that through certain exercises you not only bring what you carry within you to the end of the nerve, but also what you take in from the other side, from outside. Imagine that you not only push to your nerve endings what you first let into your head, but that what you take in from the world without perception, or what you take in through your spinal cord nerve without perception, then the experience enters the nerve on the other side. It hits here. (See drawing.) That does not go to perception. Then you get those images that we call the content of the imagination. And then you perceive this etheric body, which contains the activity of thinking within it. And in the same way, as we will see tomorrow, you can also take into feeling that which does not first come from outside and is reflected, but which you take into the body from backwards, so to speak. Then comes the inspiration. It does not go into the nerves, it goes into the breathing process and the circulation process. In this way one understands the astral body. And when one finally develops intuition, when one not only feels what one has learned in life as walking, but when one feels oneself as the other person who works and is, when one passes completely over into the other person, then intuition comes. And through this one understands the ego and the will. So that one can say:
In ordinary life one does not have the ego, but the ego sleeps. One only knows something of one's I, which is asleep, just as one knows in the dark that it is dark. But one does not have the objects that are there. So the I is also asleep. In the most intense thinking you can find, so to speak, those things that you find described in my “Theosophy” from the beginning: Physical body, etheric body, astral body, I. And then you can point out how these members of human nature can also be grasped in a visible way through imagination, inspiration and intuition. |
| 110. The Spiritual Hierarchies (1928): Lecture IX
18 Apr 1909, Düsseldorf Translated by Harry Collison Rudolf Steiner |
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| Man receives the physical body, the etheric and astral bodies and the Ego, and then again the Ego works back on the other members, transforming the astral body, the etheric and physical bodies, into Manas, Budhi, and Atma, into Spirit self, spirit-Life and Spirit-man. Primeval wisdom has always taught that man transforms his astral body in such a way that this astral body consists at first partly of Manas and partly of the old astrality, but that later it becomes completely transformed, completely penetrated by the work and action of the Ego. Let us take a man who has not yet reached that grade of development when the astral body is completely penetrated by the work of the Ego; almost all men, with very few exceptions, are in that condition. |
| One who has not yet brought his astral body under the rule of his Ego must certainly wait until he has come thus far; but the man who already is lord of his astral and etheric bodies, has them at his free disposal. |
| 110. The Spiritual Hierarchies (1928): Lecture IX
18 Apr 1909, Düsseldorf Translated by Harry Collison Rudolf Steiner |
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[ 1 ] It is only natural that after such an exposition as that of yesterday, numerous questions should arise, and that with regard to representation of such universal all-embracing truths about the Cosmos, heard for the first time, some things should remain incomprehensible. I beg you always to remember that — I have already said that here things explained are not the result of any speculation, or of any sort of artificial scheme, but are derived from real facts, which are called the facts of the Akashic Record; and it is only later that these facts can be gathered together into a sort of system. But one question which may arise in many minds must be answered to-day: the question as to the planets which have accomplished their task. In a certain way we traced yesterday the origin of the life of a planet up to its end, up to the time when it became a separate, visible, planet. Now someone might affirm that some of these planets we see in the heavens did not originate from the time described yesterday, or are not now coming into being. [ 2 ] We must clearly realise that a new epoch begins for a planet when it has reached that point which we described yesterday. Let us suppose we wished to follow the origin of a planet, not as it was with ancient Saturn when it alone was there, but as it was when the formation of our Earth took place. Ancient Saturn was then formed again, as a repetition; so that after the evolution of ancient Saturn, when ancient Sun and ancient Moon were all three finished, the evolution of the earth first began in the form of a huge warmth or fire-body, on which was repeated all that had happened during the ancient Saturn evolution. Then came a time when, under the influence of the Zodiacal region called the Lion, the single planet Saturn (that which we call Saturn to-day) detached itself from that mighty self-revolving globe of fire, thus reaching its highest point. It was in this manner that the single planet Saturn originated. [ 3 ] Now, you must not picture to yourselves that the pacifying influence of the Lion brought the forward motion of Saturn to an end when that point of time was reached. No, only the inner movements which existed formerly were then stopped. Saturn had grown into a being which drew into it all that was formerly distributed in the circumference, and united it all within itself. All this happened though the influence of the Lion; but the large globe, from which this Saturn was detached, contracted, and became a smaller globe. Whilst this whole globe contracted inwardly and after the influence (from the Lion) had been able to work and the inward motions been brought to rest, Saturn retained to a certain degree the movement which it had originally received. Formerly Saturn used its own impulse for its movements; for it was necessary for it to continue the movement; to move on further as by a swimming motion. When that globe had withdrawn, it continued to move by itself, although the inward motion was stopped. And that self-movement, after it had received the first impulse, is the movement according to which Saturn is revolving to-day. [ 4 ] It happened in a similar way with Jupiter. For what had just been described happened when the earth began its formation. Then differentiation in the globe took place when it began to contract, inwardly. Then also occurred the killing of the single globes under the constellation of the Scorpion. They crowded on top of one another. Through this began for each their own inner life. After Jupiter, as a mighty living being, had been, so to speak, killed; there began within him the life of the single being belonging to him, and the whole globe having contracted, now moved on, after having found by this means the impulse for movement within itself. That which we have been considering to-day as the movements of Saturn, of Jupiter, etc. was a result, a consequence, which arose after the formative process. — which I described yesterday — had come to an end. [ 5 ] Another difficulty seems to have arisen because I said that the second planet which detached itself from our earth in the course of its evolution was Jupiter, the third Mars, whereas the sequence in time which I described was that the Saturn development came first, then the Sun development, and then the Moon's. But, this is completely justified; for, with the planets of the present day, we have to do with what took place as a repetition, during the fourth evolution of the earth. When the first Saturn was formed, Saturn was there alone; during the Sun development (the second globe), the conditions were such that we have to speak of a Sun. But when after the Saturn development, the Sun developments continued, the whole process of Saturn came to an end with the Sun, so that when we look backwards at those first planetary developments of our earth, the ancient Saturn, Sun and Moon, we must realise that they were finished with once and for all. [ 6 ] But when we speak of the Earth's development it is not so. Saturn first arises, then, by way of repetition — the Sun; but everything progresses further inwardly, it is not yet finished. Jupiter is left behind as a relic of the repetition of the Sun-development. Then the earth is a repetition of the Moon development, which — if we regard the whole of evolution — was then at an end. But as regards earthly evolution the Moon is not finished. Mars remains behind after this repetition. [ 7 ] Thus we see, that the planets of the present day which are visible to us in the heavens must be thought of as having originated during the time which we call the fourth period of the evolution of the earth. These are the things over which we must ponder. It is impossible to touch on everything, when one speaks of the whole world.  [ 8 ] In speaking of Saturn, I spoke of a globe of fire or of a large fiery egg, and then of a revolving motion. And it was in fact originally a sort of ball or egg. Whilst that globe, which corresponds to the very first Saturn condition, is revolving, the following is gradually formed; it acquires a sort of girdle, which does not surround the whole egg, but which is there as a sort of broad band. And within that belt these single forms collect which are being formed all around. (see Diagram) This belt formation is a general Cosmic law. This law — which rests on an accumulation in the form of an equator or belt — you can see exemplified in the Cosmos, as far as your sight can reach, in the Milky Way, which owes its existence to that law. When you look at the Milky Way, stretching like an external belt around the heavens, with the stars shining sparsely in between, you must think of its being the result of that law which causes things to draw together into a belt as soon as a rotatory process begins. Our world system, as we have it, has really the form of a bean; it is not round, as is usually accepted, and the belt is drawn around as a distant equator. You must also think of such a belt when a planet originates. If — trivially speaking — one took an egg desiring to make a diagram on it of these various conditions, one would have first to paint such a belt around it, with red if you like. One would not paint the whole egg red, but only just a belt. Along this belt assemble those bodies which were selected to form later a heavenly body. One would have to draw on it a point where all these were gathered together. Thus you see that the configuration and the distribution of the stars as we see them in space, is a result of the action of the spiritual Beings or Hierarchies. For when we speak of the contraction of large masses, we must realise that this does not happen of itself, but that it is brought about by the action of those Beings of the higher Hierarchies which we have described. And when we take a general view of all that has been described, we may say: When ancient Saturn was in formation, when all that mighty mass of fire out of which all our solar system has arisen organised itself into ancient Saturn, the Spirits of Personality were passing through their human stage of existence; during the Sun formation the Archangels or Spirits of Fire were passing through their human stage; during the Moon evolution the Angels, and on the earth Man, is passing through his human existence. But it must be realised that this Man had also taken part in all that happened before. What is called the physical body to-day had its first foundations during the very earliest Saturn formation. That physical body was not as yet interpenetrated by an etheric body, or by an astral body; but it was already so organised that after passing through all the transformations it experienced later, it could become the bearer of the spiritual earth-man of to-day. Very slowly and gradually was this physical body organised during the ancient Saturn evolution, and, whilst ancient Saturn itself was being formed, the different signs of the Zodiac slowly revolved, and the human body member by member, took on its earliest form. When Saturn stood under the sign of the Lion the beginning of the heart was formed; the ribs or the thoracic cage were started while Saturn was under the sign of the Crab; the foundation of the symmetrical shape of man, that is the reason for his being symmetrically built on two sides, arose while Saturn was under the constellation of Gemini. Thus we follow piece by piece the formation of the human body, and when we look up to that part of the Zodiac, where Aries the Ram is, we can say: The upper part of our head originated when ancient Saturn stood under the sign of Aries; the foundation of our organ of speech, when Saturn stood under the sign of the Bull. And when you think of man distributed thus, you can see in the Zodiacal circle the creative forces for each of the human organs. [ 9 ] This was represented pictorially in the old Mysteries, and the Zodiac was drawn as you see it here on the ceiling of this hall. By chance — but there is no such thing as chance — we have met in a hall which is adorned above by the signs of the Zodiac. Formerly the Zodiac was not designed by depicting the animal form corresponding to each sign, but the different human members were drawn in the corresponding region of the heavens: for instance, for Aries a head; further on, for the Bull, the region of the throat; that which most of all expresses symmetry — the arms, for Gemini; the thoracic cage, for the Crab; the heart, for the Lion; and thus they came to the lower parts of the legs, for the Waterman; and to the feet, for Pisces. Think of such a Zodiacal circle as a man designed out there in the Cosmos, then you have that which corresponds to the powers of the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim who created the first beginnings of the physical human body. This is the great Cosmic Man, the Man who is found in all the World Myths, and all the national legends or sagas, out of whom single individuals of the earth are composed in the most varied forms. Think of the giant YMIR who is spread out in the great Cosmos; microcosmic man is formed out of this giant. Up above is the macrocosmic man who is a Creator, who, out there, comprises all that man has within him. Profound truth lies in the depths of such representations, truth which comes to light more or less imperfectly, according to the degrees of the clairvoyant power of the nations. It also shines through that wisdom which finds its outward expression in the old Testament. It shines in that wisdom which, as the old Hebrew mystery-teaching, leads back to that Mystery teaching which was the foundation of the Old Testament — to Adam Cadmon of the Kabbala. The macrocosmic Man is none other than the one we have now designed in the Cosmos; only we must form our conceptions of him in the right way. [ 10 ] What I have now explained to you, and which culminated in the teaching of the macrocosmic man, is a teaching which in fact includes the deepest cosmic mysteries, and which in the future will gradually flow into the general education of humanity at large. To-day we are still far from understanding this teaching; and if anyone who is merely a scientist had listened to these lectures, he would have surely held this audience for something other than an intelligent company of people. We are very far from understanding these things to-day. But we are now at the beginning of an epoch, when the facts which are discovered in accordance with the fantastic theories of modern science, will compel men to seek these truths of the great primeval wisdom. The mystery for instance, of the process of conception, about which people speculate so erroneously to-day, will never be known until the teaching of the macrocosmic man regarding that same process is understood. Precisely that into which true Mystery enters, and as a real Mystery eludes the instruments of modern research, will receive illumination to the minutest detail. For how small, in relation to the Cosmos, is the cell wherein fructification takes place! The mysteries of the great Cosmos will alone solve that which takes place in the smallest cells; nothing else can solve the problems they contain. The investigations of external science in relation to this problem are not without use, they have a certain merit, but they are childish in comparison with the great mystery which is contained there, and which will only be solved when people realise that the answer to the happenings in a centre is to be found in the great circumference. Hence, all teachers of the Mysteries said: If you want to understand the centre, investigate the circumference, for it contains the key. [ 11 ] When you remember that each world globe retains its movement, after it has, so to speak, come to a conclusion, when it is complete; you will also understand what must be called the Karma of each of these globes. From the moment when each of these planets has come of itself to an end, the beings which belong to it have to take part in its dissolution, in its disappearance from all connection with the world. Thus if we follow up the ancient Saturn evolution, we have an advancing process up to the fusion of the whole globe of warmth; or you might consider it a descending one for it is a process of condensation. In the moment when Saturn begins to revolve — we are speaking of the first Saturn development — the Saturn globe is completed, all the conditions are accomplished with which it is concerned. The spirits who are assigned to it have to consider at this moment of its dissolution, what has been built up during its formation, and that is Karma. This cannot be escaped; things have to be dissolved again in the same way in which they were put together. The Karma of the first half of evolution, fulfills itself in the second half. The formation of worlds is the preparation of Karma; the passing away of worlds, in the broadest sense of the word, is nothing else than pain under the action of Karma, and again the wiping out of that same Karma. As in big things, so it is also in small things, with every planet. For each planet mirrors faithfully the conditions of the great world. You can see the same process in a nation. Think of a nation rising in its youth, full of strength, of activity, of energy; think of this nation as producing epoch after epoch the most varied elements of civilisation and of culture. This has all to reach its highest point; but whilst all this is accumulating, the Karma of the nation is also accumulating. Just as Karma accrued during the Saturn development, and we have to take into consideration what had been brought about, so Karma accrues to a nation during the time its civilisation is being built up. This Karma is at its highest point, at its strongest, when the nation has given birth to all the primeval, elemental forces. [ 12 ] Now we have seen that guiding Beings are everywhere. We have seen with the earth, how the higher spiritual Beings — Angels, Archangels, Archai — descended, and at a time when humanity could not as yet help itself, they guided it until it reached a certain height. These are the spiritual beings of the Hierarchies who had reached their maturity in earlier times; but when this height is reached, when those Beings who had descended from the heights reach their goal, then other Beings have to become the leaders and guides of the said nations. When nations have to rise in a certain way still higher than their highest point, leading personalities have to give themselves up of their own free will to become the bearers of higher spiritual Beings; only then does it become possible to lead the nation a few stages beyond that which was originally planned for it. But in such cases one thing must happen; those who descend into the beings who have to lead the nation to a still higher point of civilisation, must take upon themselves all the Karma which the nation has been accumulating. This is the important law as regards taking upon oneself the Karma of nations and of races. From a definite point of time the guiding personalities have themselves to bear all the Karma of those nations and races. That was the essential reason that such individualities as Hermes, for instance, had to take upon them — their nations Karma, which had accumulated up to then. On each planet, such things are the reflected images of great Cosmic processes. [ 13 ] But we have reflected images which go further still. We have seen that the Thrones became Thrones, only because from created beings they themselves became Creators, that they were enabled to pass from a condition of taking to one of giving. The Thrones had once upon a time passed through their development in other world systems, and had progressed so far that they were able to let their own Substance stream out from them. It is a higher grade of development to be able to give, to bring sacrifices, than merely to store up for oneself all that the Cosmos gives. This is again mirrored in human life. What is this human development? Look backwards in spirit to the Atlantean and Lemurian times, and then look forwards! Man receives the physical body, the etheric and astral bodies and the Ego, and then again the Ego works back on the other members, transforming the astral body, the etheric and physical bodies, into Manas, Budhi, and Atma, into Spirit self, spirit-Life and Spirit-man. Primeval wisdom has always taught that man transforms his astral body in such a way that this astral body consists at first partly of Manas and partly of the old astrality, but that later it becomes completely transformed, completely penetrated by the work and action of the Ego. Let us take a man who has not yet reached that grade of development when the astral body is completely penetrated by the work of the Ego; almost all men, with very few exceptions, are in that condition. That which man has already transformed goes with him through all eternity; that which he has not yet changed in which his Ego has had no part, must leave him, as a sort of astral shell, after he has passed through Kama-Loka; that shell dissolves in the astral world, not without its having brought about considerable mischief if as an astral body, it had bad desires and evil passions. Thus we can say that the development of man consists in. his leaving always less and less behind him in the astral world. [ 14 ] Let us follow the process; the man dies. Soon after death the etheric body is dissolved; and the extract of it remains. The man passes through. Kama-Loka, and the untransformed shell detaches itself; that which has been re-worked goes with man through all eternity, it is brought back into each new incarnation. The more perfect the man is, the less there will be of those remnants left in the astral world; till at last he will have progressed so far that he leaves nothing of his astral body in Kama-Loka, so far — that he can injure no living being on earth through the remnants he leaves in Kama-Loka. Such. a man has then the possibility of seeing into spiritual worlds. For it is not possible to reach this condition without having reached a certain degree of clairvoyance in the Astral. The whole astral body has then been spiritualised, it has become Spirit-Self, and the whole of it is taken with him by the man to the spiritual world. Formerly that which was bad was left behind, now the whole astral body can be taken with him into all futurity. And in the moment when the astral body is so far advanced that it is completely transformed, in that moment the whole of this new astral shape is impressed upon the etheric body, so that the etheric body becomes a counterpart of the astral body. The etheric body does not need to be as yet quite transformed, but that is impressed upon it which has been refashioned in the astral body. You see, that we have here described a particularly exalted being, one who is eminently far advanced, because he has developed the whole of the Spirit-self. This Being is called Nirmana-Kaya in Eastern Science; for his astral body, his astral Kaya, has reached the stage when it leaves no remnants in the astral world. [ 15 ] Let us now go further. Man can always develop further and further; at last he influences or transforms his etheric body, then his physical body. What happens when the etheric and the physical body are transformed so that they are ruled by the man? When the etheric body is thus changed, when man has not only ‘Spirit Self’ in the astral body, but Budhi or ‘Life Spirit’ has also been gradually developed in his etheric body, and when this Life-Spirit or Budhi impresses itself upon the physical body — then yet a further stage of development is reached. Man then reaches the point when his etheric body also leaves nothing behind it, so that he retains this etheric body in the same shape through all time, the etheric body in which he has formed the Life-Spirit or Budhi. [ 16 ] Through such transmutations man becomes more and more ruler over his astral and his etheric bodies. Such control enables him also to direct in a certain way his astral and etheric bodies. One who has not yet brought his astral body under the rule of his Ego must certainly wait until he has come thus far; but the man who already is lord of his astral and etheric bodies, has them at his free disposal. He can say: ‘Because with my “I,” I have passed through so many incarnations which have taught me to transform my astral and etheric bodies, I am now enabled, when I have to return to earth again, to form for myself out of astral and etheric substances, an astral and an etheric body which will be equally perfect.’ He is also enabled to sacrifice his own astral and etheric bodies, to pass them on to others. You now see, that there are individualities who, because they have become rulers of their astral and etheric bodies, are able to sacrifice these bodies, because they have learnt how to build them. If they wish to return to earth again, they will themselves form them anew out of the existing material. The perfection to which they have attained, they pass on to other personalities who have to perform certain tasks in the world. Thus personalities of later days have woven into them, organised into them, the astral and etheric bodies of these who lived in times of yore. You see that when this happens the personality of olden times did not only influence the time in which he lived, but that his influence works on also into the future. Thus, for instance, Zarathustra who was capable of governing his astral body, and who later passed it over to Hermes, could say to himself: ‘I live, but in the future I will not only work as I do now, as a person in the outer world, but, I will penetrate the astral body of the Egyptian Hermes, he in whom the Egyptian epoch of civilisation has its beginning.’ Such a personality has a body, a Kaya, which does not only operate in the place and time when it lives, but which acts into the future, and gives law unto the future. Law for the future is called Dharma. Such a body is called Dharmakaya. These are names, expressions which one often meets with in Eastern science. You have here the true explanation as it is always given in primeval wisdom. Now if we look back at the many things which have passed before our minds during these days, our souls might well put the question: What is that, which, up to now, we have really called man? Man is a name given to a certain stage of development. We have found that the Spirits of Personality were men on Saturn; that even the Thrones must have been men once upon a time; we have learnt that man progresses further, and rises to higher Beings; we have learnt to know the first stages of the ascent in the Angels, Archangels, etc.; we have learnt to know in them Beings, who are sacrificing something; we have seen the beginning of the sacrifice which is found at its highest point in the Thrones. The first gleam of creative activity we have seen in those who are the leaders of nations and races, who know how to influence their own bodies in such a way that they can let some of their influence stream out. As the Thrones let their essence flow out, so in another way the Nirmana-Kayas let their own bodies flow out into the future, for the sake of future individualities, who could not have reached such a far point in their evolution, if they had not received embodied into them, what the former Beings gave out for them. [ 17 ] Thus we build up our idea of evolution from the point when it begins, up to the time when one can give out, can create. The idea of the creator rises before our spiritual sight, and we say to ourselves, each separate being develops from the creature to the creator. The Archangels developed to the human stage on ancient Sun, the Spirits of Personality on ancient Saturn, the Angels on the ancient Moon, we men, upon the earth; and so it will continue always, in all times, Beings will be developing into men. Does all that continue endlessly? Is it really only a succession of circles, in which is repeated on the Sun that which previously took place on Saturn, only that a number of beings are added to the former ones with each circle? Is it really all, that out of originally helpless creatures beings should ever be developing into those who can sacrifice themselves? This is not at all the case! But the great question arises: Is the humanity which was experienced on Saturn by the Spirits of Personality, the humanity experienced on the Sun by the Archangels, and that experienced by the Angels on Mars, are these all the same kind of humanity as that which we are now experiencing upon earth? When we consider the nature of the Angels, for instance, do we see in them the image of what we shall be in our next Jupiter epoch? Do we see in the spirits of fire only the image of those beings we shall ourselves be in Venus? Can it really be said with reason that, in reaching to higher stages in the evolution of the world, and rising even into the Hierarchies, we shall develop only into Beings which exist already? Has our path of evolution been trod already by others? These are the great questions which each of you may ask who has let these lectures act impartially upon his soul. [ 18 ] Have we only to do with a humanity which is externally repeated in the same way, so that we are now as the Spirits of Personality were on the Saturn, the Fire Spirits or Archangels on the Sun, the Angels on the Moon? For us this might be important, but for the higher Gods it would only be a multiplication of their own creations, and they would not have achieved any special progress. But there is another question: Will men, just because they have become men upon the earth, be enabled some day, perhaps, to develop into beings capable of something of which the Angels are incapable, something of which also the Archangels and the Spirits of Personality are incapable? Has the whole of Creation learnt something through having produced men after the Archangels, and after the Angels? Has Creation made progress through that? Is it possible that man, because he was fitted to descend deeper, will, therefore, have gained the possibility, the right, to rise still higher? We ask ourselves this as a sort of consequential question. The remainder of our considerations must be dedicated to this question: What is the whole significance and importance of man in the Cosmos and his relation to the Hierarchies? What will Man become in the succeeding stages of the Hierarchies? |