| 170. The Riddle of Humanity: Lecture XIV
02 Sep 1916, Dornach Tr. John F. Logan Rudolf Steiner |
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| The truths of ordinary life and ordinary science are like descriptions of how the shapes of a row of letters are combined into words or, at most, they are like a clarification based on grammatical laws. But understanding the kind of truths we have been describing is comparable to reading without first having to resort to a special description of the shapes of the letters or to a grammatical consideration of how they are combined into words. |
| Once more, a luciferic impulse. Thus, alterations in the fundamental nature of the human being are due to influences from two sides, the luciferic side and the ahrimanic side. |
| Available in English in typescript. (See Spiritual Science as a foundation for Social Forma—lecture 3)31. Ernst Mach (1838 – 1916): philosopher. |
| 170. The Riddle of Humanity: Lecture XIV
02 Sep 1916, Dornach Tr. John F. Logan Rudolf Steiner |
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Recently we have had repeated occasion to cite a result of spiritual-scientific investigation that, in fact, is of most far-reaching significance. You will remember how we described the relationship of the human head and the rest of the human body to the whole cosmos, and how this then shows the way the head is related to the rest of the body. We said that the shape and structure of the human head and all that pertains to it is a transformation, a metamorphosis. The head is a transformation and reconstruction of the entire body from the previous incarnation. So, when we observe the entire body of the present incarnation, we can see how it contains forces that are capable of transforming it into nothing but a head, a head with all that pertains to it: with the twelve pairs of nerves that originate in it, and so on. And this head that is developed from our entire body will be the head we bear in our next incarnation. The body of our next incarnation and everything to do with it, on the other hand, will be produced during the time after our present life is over, the time between death and the birth which begins our next incarnation. In part it will be produced during the time between death and a new birth from the forces of the spiritual world, and in part from forces of the physical world during the time between our conception and birth into the next incarnation. These facts should be viewed as truths that testify to their own inherent validity, truths that point to connections of major significance; they should not be treated like the truths of everyday life or of normal science. The truths of everyday life consist more or less in descriptions of ourselves and our surroundings; but truths like those we have just mentioned provide us with the light by which we are able to read the cosmic significance of our surroundings and ourselves. The truths of ordinary life and ordinary science are like descriptions of how the shapes of a row of letters are combined into words or, at most, they are like a clarification based on grammatical laws. But understanding the kind of truths we have been describing is comparable to reading without first having to resort to a special description of the shapes of the letters or to a grammatical consideration of how they are combined into words. Just consider how different is the content of what we read from what our eyes see written upon the page. And so it is that, when we cite truths such as those we have just been discussing, we have before our eyes not only what is now being said, but also the whole, far-reaching significance of such things for the role of humanity in the cosmos. Thereby we are, so to speak, able to read profound, living, spiritual truths that have nothing to do with the shape of the body or the head as it is studied by an anatomist or physiologist, or as one refers to it in ordinary life. It is not enough to describe the human being in the manner of ordinary life and ordinary science; only if one can read man can he be understood. In the light of the foregoing considerations, and in the sense they indicate, I want to turn yet again to what we have been considering during the past few weeks. I want to direct your attention to the twelve senses of man.30 Let us once more allow these twelve senses to pass in review before us. The I sense: Again I ask you to remember what has been said about this sense of the I. The sense of I does not refer to our capacity to be aware of our own I. This sense is not for perceiving our own I, that I which we first received on Earth; it is for perceiving the I of other men. What this sense perceives is everything that is contained in our encounters with another I in the physical world. Second, comes the sense of thought: Similarly, the sense of thought has nothing to do with the formation of our own thoughts. Something entirely different is involved when we ourselves are thinking; this thinking is not an activity of our sense of thought. That still remains to be discussed. Our sense of thought is what gives us the ability to understand and perceive the thoughts of others. Thus this sense of thought does not, primarily, have anything to do with the formation of our own thoughts. The sense of speech: Once again, this sense has nothing primarily to do with the formation of our own speech or with our ability to speak. It is the sense that enables us to understand what others say to us. The sense of hearing, or tone: This sense cannot be misunderstood. The senses of warmth, sight, taste, smell and balance: I have already characterised these senses on previous occasions, as well as in this course of lectures. The senses of movement, life and touch. Those are the twelve senses, the senses that enable us to perceive the external world while we are here in the physical world. As you know, materialistic thinking speaks of only five senses, for it only distinguishes the sense of hearing, the sense of warmth—which it throws together with the sense of touch—the sense of sight, the sense of taste and the sense of smell. But it must be said that the physiology of our more recent science has now added the senses of balance, movement and life, and also distinguishes between the senses of warmth and touch. But the physiology of our ordinary science still does not refer to a special sense of speech, or to a special sense of thinking—or thought. Nor, because of the nature of the thinking it employs today, is it able to speak of a special ego sense. Materialistic thinking is happy to restrict its view of the world to only those things that can be perceived by the senses. Of course, there is a certain contradiction in saying ‘perceived by the senses’, because the realm of the sensibly perceptible has been arbitrarily restricted—namely to what can be perceived by the five senses. But all of you know what is meant when one says, ‘Only what can be perceived by the senses is valid according to the ordinary materialistic point of view, so it also investigates the organs of perception that belong to these senses.’ Since there are no apparent organs to be found for perception of another's I, or for thought or speech,—nothing, for example, that would correspond to them as the ear corresponds to the sense of hearing or the eye to the sense of sight—it makes no mention of the sense of another I, the sense of thought or of the sense of speech. For us, however, a question arises: Is there really an organ for the I sense, for the sense of thought and for the sense of speech? Today I would like to investigate these matters more exactly. So the I sense gives us the ability to perceive the I of others. One of the especially restricted and inadequate views of modern thinking is the view that we always more or less deduce the existence of another ego, but do not ever perceive it directly. According to this line of thought, we deduce that something we encounter is the bearer of an I: We see it walking upright on two legs, putting one leg after the other or placing one next to the other; we see that these two legs support a trunk which has, hanging from it, two arms which move in various ways and carry out certain actions. Upon this trunk is placed a head which produces sounds, which speaks and changes expression. On the basis of these observations—so goes the materialistic line of thought—we deduce that what is approaching us is the bearer of an I. But this is utter nonsense; it is really pure nonsense. The truth is that we actually perceive the I of another just as we see colours with our eyes and hear sounds with our ears. Without a doubt, we perceive it. Furthermore, this perception is independent. The perception of another I is a direct reality, a self-sufficient truth that we arrive at independently of seeing or hearing the person; it does not depend on our drawing any conclusions, any more than seeing or hearing depend on drawing conclusions. Apart from the fact that we hear someone speak, that we see the colour of his skin, that we are affected by his gestures—apart from all of these things—we are directly aware of his I. The ego sense has no more to do with the senses of sight or sound, or with any other sense, than the sense of sight has to do with the sense of sound. The perception of another I is independent. The science of the senses will not rest on solid foundations until this has been understood. So now the question arises: What is the organ for perceiving another I? What is our organ for perceiving an I, as the eyes perceive colours and the ears perceive tones? What organ perceives the I of another? There is indeed an organ for perceiving an I, just as there are organs for perceiving colours and tones. But the organ for perceiving an I only originates in the head; from there it spreads out into the entire body, in so far as the body is appended to the head, making of the entire body an organ of perception. So the whole perceptible, physical form of a human being really does function as an organ of perception, the organ for perceiving the I of another. In a certain sense you could also say that the head, in so far as the rest of the body is appended to it and in so far as it sends its ability to perceive another I through the whole human being, is the organ for perceiving another's I. The entire, immobile human being is the organ for perceiving an I—the whole of the human form at rest, with the head as a kind of central point. The organ for perceiving another I is thus the largest of our organs of perception; we ourselves, as physical human beings, constitute the largest of our organs of perception. Now we come to the sense of thought. What is the organ for perceiving the thoughts of others? Everything that we are, in so far as we are aware of the stirrings of life within us, is our organ for perceiving others' thoughts. Think of yourself, not with regard to your form, but with regard to the life you bear within you. Your whole organism is permeated with life. This life is a unity. In so far as the life of our entire organism is expressed physically, it is the organ for perceiving thoughts that come toward us from without. We would not be able to perceive the I of another if we were not shaped the way we are; we would not be able to perceive the thoughts of another if we did not bear life in the way that we do. Here I am not talking about the sense of life. What is in question here is not the inner perception of our general vital state of being—and that is what the sense of life gives us—rather is it the extent to which we are bearers of life. And it is the life we bear within us, the physical organism that bears the life within us, that is the organ by which we perceive the thoughts that others share with us. Furthermore, we are able to initiate movement from within ourselves. We have the power to express all the movements of our inner nature through movement—through hand movements, for example, or by the way we turn our head or move it up and down. Now, the basis for our ability to bring our bodies into movement is provided by the physical organism. This is not the physical organism of life, but the physical organism that provides us with the ability to move. And it is also the organ for perceiving speech, for perceiving the words which others address to us. We would not be able to understand a single word if we did not possess the physical apparatus of movement. It is really true: in sending out nerves for apprehending the whole process of movement, our central nervous system also provides us with the sensory apparatus for perceiving the words that are spoken to us. The sense organs are specialised in this fashion. The whole man: sense organ for the I; the physical basis of life: sense organ for thought; man, in so far as he is capable of movement: sense organ for the word. The sense of tone is even more specialised. Even though the apparatus for hearing includes more than physiology usually includes, it is nevertheless more specialised. It is not necessary for me to discuss the sense of tone. You only need to lay your hands on a normal textbook on the physiology of the senses to find a description of the organ on which the sense of tone is based. But today it is still difficult to find a description of the organ for the sense of warmth because, as I mentioned, it is still confused with the sense of touch. But the sense of warmth is actually a very specialised sense. Whereas the sense of touch is really spread over the whole organism, the sense of warmth only appears to be spread over the whole organism. Naturally, the entire organism is sensitive to the influence of warmth, but the sense for perceiving warmth is very much concentrated in the breast portion of the human body. As for the specialised organs of sight, taste and smell, these are, of course, generally known to normal observation, and can be found in what ordinary science has to say. Now it is possible to make a real distinction between the middle part, the upper part, and the lower part of our sense life, and today I would like to include some special observations with regard to this distinction. Let us begin by observing the sense of speech. I said that our organism of movement is what enables us to perceive words. It provides the basis for our sense of speech. But not only are we able to perceive and understand the words of others; it is also possible for us to speak: we are able to speak, too. And it is interesting and important to understand the connection between our ability to speak and our ability to understand the speech of others. Please note that I am not speaking about our ability to hear the tones, but about our ability to understand speech. The senses of tone and speech must be clearly distinguished from one another. Not only can we hear the words another speaks, we ourselves can speak. How, then, is one of these related to the other? How is speaking related to understanding speech? If we use spiritual-scientific means to investigate the human being, we discover that the things on which the capacity to speak and the capacity for understanding speech are based are very closely related to one other. If we want to look at what furnishes the basis of speech, we can start by tracing it back to where every reasonable person will agree its beginnings must undeniably be, namely, to experiences of the human soul. Speaking originates in the realm of the soul; the will kindles speech in the soul. Naturally, no words would ever be spoken if our will were not active, if we did not develop will impulses. Observing a person spiritually-scientifically, we can see that what happens in him when he speaks is similar to what happens when he understands something that is being spoken. But what happens when a person himself speaks involves a much smaller portion of the organism, much less of the organism of movement. Remember that the entire organism of movement must be taken into account in the case of the sense of speech, the sense of word—the entire organism of movement is also the organ for apprehending speech. A part of it, a part of the movement organism, is isolated and brought into motion when we speak. The larynx is the principal organ of this isolated portion of the organism of movement, and speaking occurs when will impulses rouse the larynx into motion. When we ourselves speak, what happens in our larynx happens because impulses of will originating in our soul bring the part of our movement organism that is concentrated in the larynx into motion. The entire movement organism, however, is the sense organ for understanding speech; but we keep it still while we are perceiving words. And it is precisely for this reason, precisely because we keep the movement organism still, that we are able to perceive words and understand them. In a certain respect everyone knows this instinctively, for every now and then everyone does something that shows he unconsciously understands what I have just been discussing. I will speak in very broad outlines. Suppose I make a movement like this (a hand raised in a gesture of holding off). Now, even the smallest of movements is not just localised in one part of the movement organism, but comes from the entire movement organism. And when you consider this motion as coming from the entire movement organism, it has a very particular effect. When another person expresses something in words, I am doing what I need to do to understand it by not making this gesture. Because I do not make this gesture, but repress it instead, I am able to understand what someone else is saying; my movement organism wakes up right to the tips of my fingers, but I hold back the motion, delay it, block it. By blocking this motion, I am enabled to understand what is being said. When one does not wish to hear something, one will often make such a gesture to show that one wants to repress one's hearing. This shows that there is an instinctive understanding for what it means to hold back such a motion. Now, according to the original plan of the human constitution, it is the whole of the organism of movement—which is at the same time the organism of the sense of word—that belongs in the rightful course of human evolution. At one time, in the Lemurian period, when we were being released from our connection with the whole of the cosmos, we were given a constitution that enabled us to understand words. But that constitution did not enable us to speak words. You will find it strange that we should be constituted so that we could understand words, but not be able to speak words. But it only seems strange, for our organism of movement is not so exactly constituted for hearing the words of others, for understanding other men's words—rather is it adapted to understanding various other things. Originally, we had a much greater gift for understanding the elemental language of nature and for perceiving how certain elemental beings rule over the external world. That ability has been lost; in exchange for it we have received our own capacity to speak. This happened because, during the Atlantean period, the ahrimanic powers set about altering the organism of movement that had originally been given to us. We have the ahrimanic powers to thank for the fact that we can speak; they gave us the gift of speech. So we have to say that the way in which a human being perceives speech now is different from the way we were originally intended to understand it. Such a long time has passed since the Atlantean period that we have grown accustomed to what has happened, and we find it extraordinary to think that our gift of understanding speech was originally for perceiving more or less the whole of the other human being: it gave us the ability to perceive the silent expression in the gestures and bearing of other men, and, without using a physically perceptible speech, to communicate by imitating it, using our own apparatus of movement. Our original way of communicating was much more spiritual. But Ahriman took hold of this original, more spiritual way of communicating. He specialised a part of our organism, creating the larynx, which is designed to produce sounding words. And he designed the part of the larynx that is not used to produce words, so that it would enable us to understand words; that is also a gift of Ahriman. We are able to perceive the thoughts of others in so far as our organism is alive. Once again, our present ability to understand others' thoughts is much less spiritual than the gift we originally possessed. Our original gift enabled us to feel another's thoughts inwardly, to resonate with their life, simply by being in their presence. The way in which we perceive each other's thoughts today is a coarse physical reflection of the way it once was, and only through the detour of speech is it possible at all. At most, we can experience an echo of the kind of perception that was originally intended for us by training ourselves to attend to others' gestures, to the play of their features, and to their physiognomy. We were once able to perceive the whole direction of another's thinking and to live in it, simply by being in his presence, and the particular thoughts were expressed in his particular gestures and in the play of his features. And it is once again thanks to Ahriman that this more spiritual manner of perceiving another's thoughts has, in the course of human evolution, become more and more concentrated in external speech. We do not have to look very far back in the development of humanity to find a period when there was still a very highly developed understanding for the way the life of thought was expressed through the physiognomy, through the gestures, even through the posture—through the whole manner in which one human being presents himself to another. There is no need to speak of Old India: we only have to go back to the period before the Greco-Roman period, to the Egypto-Chaldean period. There we still find a highly-developed understanding of the life of thought. Humanity has lost this understanding. Less and less of it has been retained, until now there are very few who understand how the art and manner in which a person meets us can enable us to listen in on the inner secrets of his thinking. What a man says to us through the words we hear is almost the only thing we listen to any more—what these tell us about his thoughts, about their content and their purpose. But, because this has happened, we have been able to retain the ability to use our organism of life and the apparatus of life as an instrument for thinking. If there had been no ahrimanic intervention, if the things I have been describing had never happened, we would not possess the gift of thought. So you can see that, in a certain sense, our present ability to speak is related to the sense of speech, to the sense of the word. But it is related because of an ahrimanic deviation. And again because of an ahrimanic deviation, our present ability to think is related to the sense of thought. We were constituted, furthermore, so as to be able to be conscious of another's I in a more subtle manner—so that we would not merely experience it, but would perceive it inwardly—for our entire human form is the organ of the sense of the ego. Ahriman is still hard at work today, specialising the ego sense just as he has specialised and remodelled the senses of speech and thought. In fact, that is happening now, as is revealed by an extraordinary, related tendency that is coming towards humanity. In order to talk about what I am referring to, one is forced to say something quite paradoxical. As yet, only the early stages of it are showing themselves, mainly in a philosophical way. Today there are already philosophers who entirely deny the inner capacity to perceive the I: Mach,31 for example, as well as others. I have spoken about them in a recent lecture concerned with philosophy. These men really have to be described as holding the view that man is not able to perceive the I inwardly, and that the awareness of the I is based on the perception of other things. There is a tendency to think along the following lines—I will give you a grotesque example of it. People are getting to the point where they say to themselves, in the way I described earlier, ‘I encounter others who walk about on two limb-like appendages and from this I conclude that there is an I within them. And, since I look just like them, I apply this conclusion to myself and decide that I must also possess an I.’ According to this, one derives the existence of one's own I from the existence of the I of others. This is implied by many of the assertions of those about whom I am speaking, when they come to describe how the ego is supposed to develop as the result of our evolution during the interval between the birth and death of a single incarnation. If you read our current psychologists, you will already find descriptions of how our sense of our own I is derived from other persons. We do not have it to begin with, as children, but we are supposed to have watched others and applied what we see them doing to ourselves. In any event, our capacity to come to conclusions about ourselves on the basis of other people seems to be growing ever greater! Just as the capacity to think gradually developed out of the sense of thought, and the capacity to speak out of the sense of speech, so the capacity to experience oneself as belonging to the whole of the world is increasingly developing alongside the ability to perceive another's I. We are talking about fine distinctions, but they must be grasped. To this end, Ahriman is very busy working alongside humanity—he is very much involved. Let us look at the human being from the other side. There we find the sense of touch. As I have said, the sense of touch is an internal sense. When you touch something like a table, it exerts pressure on you, but what you actually perceive is an inner experience. If you bump into it, it is what happens within you that is the content of the perceptual experience. In such an event, what you experience through your sense of touch is entirely contained within you. Thus, fundamentally the sense of touch can only reach as far as the outermost periphery of the skin: we experience touching something because the external world pushes against the periphery formed by the skin, because inner experiences arise when the external world pushes against us or otherwise comes into contact with us. So the sense of touch is fundamentally an internal sense, even though it is the most peripheral of these. The apparatus for touching is found mainly at the periphery. From there it sends only delicate branches inward, and our external scientific physiology has not been able to isolate these systematically because it has not systematically distinguished the sense of touch from the sense of warmth. Our organ of touch is spread like a network over the whole outer surface of our body; it sends delicate branches inward. What is this network, really? (If I may use this word, for ‘network’ is inexact.) What was its original purpose? Our attention is immediately caught by the fact that the sense of touch makes us aware of inner experiences, even though it is now used to perceive how we come into contact with the external world. This fact is as undeniable as it is noteworthy and exceptional. And, as spiritual science shows us, it is connected with the fact that the sense of touch was not originally destined for perception of the external world. The sense of touch has undergone a metamorphosis—it was not originally intended to be used, as it is today, to perceive the external world. The sense of touch was really intended for an entirely spiritual perception, for perceiving how our I, the fourth member of our organism, spiritually permeates our entire body. What the organs of touch really gave us, originally, was an inner feeling for our own I, an inner feeling of the I. So now we have come to the inner perception of the I. Here you must make a clear distinction. The I that is within us and extends to the surface of the sense of touch, really exists in its own right; it is a substantial, spiritual being. And when the I extends itself and comes into contact with the surface created by the sense of touch, this produces a perception of the I. If the sense of touch had remained in its original form, the nature of which I have just indicated, it would not provide us with the kind of perceptions it now provides. Certainly, we would still bump into the things of the external world, but this would be a matter of total indifference to us. We would not experience the collisions through touch; nor, for that matter, would the sense of touch be involved when we run our fingertips over things, as we are fond of doing. We would experience our I through such contacts with the external world; we would experience our I, but would not speak of perceiving the external world. In order for the organ which generated an inner perception of the I to become an organ of touch, capable of perceiving the external world through touch, it has been necessary for our organism to undergo a series of alterations. These began in the Lemurian period and are to be attributed to luciferic influences. They are deeds of Lucifer. Through them, our sense of I was specialised so that we could experience the external world through touch, but our inner experience of the I, of course, was thereby clouded. If, as we go about the world, it were not necessary for us to pay constant heed to the things that bump into us and press against us, to what is rough and what is smooth, and so on, we would have an entirely different experience of the I. In other words, by re-shaping the sense of touch, luciferic influences were introduced into the experience of the I. In this case, what is most inward has been adulterated by something external, just as, in the sense of speech, what is external has been adulterated by something internal. The sense of speech was designed for the perception of words—a sense perception, but not one that depended on anything being expressed in sounds. Then the inner activity of speaking was intermixed with this. So, in this case, the original perception was internal, and external perception has been added to it. The sense of life: Luciferic influence has accomplished a similar alteration in the organs of the sense of life. For these organs, organs which enable us to experience our inner structure and inner condition, were originally meant only for the perception of our astral body as it works within our living organism. Now, however, the ability to experience the internal condition of the body in feelings of well-being or feelings of being ill has been intermixed with it. A luciferic impulse has been mixed in with it. Here the astral body has been linked to the feelings of well-being or illness that show the condition of our body, just as the I has been linked to the sense of touch. And, again, our organism of movement was originally designed so that we would only experience the interactions between our etheric body and our organism of movement. The capacity to perceive and experience our inner mobility, which is the sense of movement, properly speaking, has been added to this. Once more, a luciferic impulse. Thus, alterations in the fundamental nature of the human being are due to influences from two sides, the luciferic side and the ahrimanic side. The sense of the I, the sense of thought, and the sense of speech have been altered by ahrimanic influences from the form which was actually intended for the physical plane. Only through these changes and through the changes wrought by luciferic influences on the senses of touch, life and movement, have we become what, on the physical plane, we now are. And there remains to us, free from these influences, only an intermediate area. This, then, is a more exact, more detailed presentation of our human organism. It would be a good idea to consider what has been said thus far, so I will wait until tomorrow before pursuing these matters any further. Tomorrow we will see how fruitful these considerations are. We will see how they expand that great and significant truth that is the key to so many things: the truth about the relation of our head to the body of our previous incarnation, the relation of the body of our present incarnation to the head of our next incarnation, and what follows from this regarding our relationship to the cosmos. We can already see how necessary it is to pay attention to that state of balance which needs to be established between the luciferic and the ahrimanic forces in the world. This is the most essential and significant thing. Just consider how the human I is involved in the extremes of both sides: here, the I without and, in the sense of touch, the I within. (See the orange arrows in the drawing.) Similarly, the astral body is involved both in thinking, and also, from within, in the life organism. (Red arrows.) The etheric body is involved here, as long as speech does not occur, but is also involved from within in the sense of movement. (Blue arrows.) And, holding the middle, like the unmoving hypomochlion at the centre of a pair of scales, we have a sphere that is not so involved in the ‘I touch—I think—I live—I speak—I move.’ The more closely one approaches this centre, the more immobile the arm of the scales becomes. To either side, it is deflected. Thus there is a kind of state of balance at the middle. Here we see how the being of man is subject to significant influences from two sides. In order to understand present-day human activity, and the structure of the human being, it is necessary to have the correct view of Lucifer and Ahriman. 
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| 183. The Science of Human Development: Ninth Lecture
02 Sep 1918, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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| It can only be that people realize ideas in their social order. But when the earth has reached its end, the whole dream of ideas will have been dreamt. Nothing else is possible according to such a philosophy. |
| Let us assume the possibility that applies today, that through the so-called law of entropy, the evolution of the earth will one day pass into a kind of general warming, and that all other natural forces will cease, then within this final state, of course, all ideals would have died out. |
| All the substances and forces that exist today will no longer be there in the future. The law of conservation of matter and energy does not exist. Where we look for substance, we find nothing but the influence of something Ahrimanic that has passed away. |
| 183. The Science of Human Development: Ninth Lecture
02 Sep 1918, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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The considerations we are currently undertaking concern matters that are treated as mysteries by many people who know something about them in one form or another. And for certain reasons, knowledge of these things is kept away from the world from many sides, because it is believed that the things in question are parts of a comprehensive knowledge of supersensible matters that should not yet be communicated to mankind. I do not consider this view to be correct with regard to certain things that are being discussed here. On the contrary, it seems to me necessary for humanity to make the courageous decision to enter into a real consideration of the supersensible worlds. And one cannot do that otherwise than by directly grasping what is specifically considered in relation to the question in question. Today, I would like to deal with a preliminary question first. Yesterday we spoke about the stages a person goes through between death and a new birth. A very common objection to discussing these things, not on the part of the initiated, but on the part of the uninitiated, is that one simply says: Yes, why is it necessary to know something about these things? One could indeed wait until one passes through the gate of death, and then one will see what it is actually like in the spiritual world. It is something that is said very often. Now, the thing is that we can never answer such questions from a so-called absolute point of view when we talk about reality, but that we, from a spiritual-scientific point of view, must always answer them from the point of view of the time in which we live. We live in the fifth post-Atlantic period, which began in the 15th century of our calendar. It concluded the fourth post-Atlantic period, which, as we know, began in the 8th century BC and came to an end in the 15th century AD. There are seven such cultural periods. From this, however, it can be seen that we have passed the midpoint of the cultural development of the earth, which was in the fourth post-Atlantic period, and that we are simply entering – we are, after all, also in the fifth great earth period – the time when the earth is in a descending development. The considerations we have been making in these days can already draw your attention to the fact that it is important to look at the descending development, at that which is, so to speak, not in evolution but in devolution, which is in retrogression. Our whole evolution on earth is in retrogression. Certain abilities and powers that were present in the previous period of ascending development cease to exist, and others have to take the place of these ceasing powers and abilities. This is particularly the case with certain inner psychic abilities of the human being. It can be said that until the fourth post-Atlantic period, until around the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, people still had the ability to have a certain connection with the supersensible world. We know that these abilities have disappeared in the most diverse ways. They no longer exist as elementary abilities; they have, so to speak, dwindled away. Not only has the life of man on earth changed between birth and death with regard to such abilities, but actually, and even more radically, has the life of man changed between death and a new birth. And it must be said that for this period of time, from death to a new birth, in the present cycle of mankind, which thus already belongs to the descending ones, it is so that men, when they go through the gate of death , they must have certain memories of what they have acquired here in the physical body if they want to find the right attitude and the right relationship to the events to which they are exposed between death and a new birth. It is one of the necessary prerequisites for a right life after death that people here before death acquire more and more certain ideas about life after death, because only when they remember these ideas, which they have acquired here, can they orient themselves in the time between death and a new birth. It is factually incorrect to claim that one can wait until death to have such ideas about the life between death and a new birth. If people continued to live in these prejudices, if they persistently refused to want to gain insights here already about life between death and a new birth, then this life, this life free of the body, would become a dark one for them, one in which they would be disoriented; they would not be able to penetrate their spiritual surroundings in the right way through everything that I described to you yesterday. Until almost the Mystery of Golgotha, it was the case that people brought abilities into their physical life here that originated in the spiritual world. That is why they had atavistic clairvoyance. This atavistic clairvoyance came from the fact that certain spiritual abilities extended from the pre-birth state into this life. That stopped. People no longer have abilities here in physical life that extend from the prenatal life. You know that. But the other thing must be done instead: people must acquire more and more ideas here on earth about the post-mortem life, the life after death, so that they can remember after death, so that they can carry something through the gates of death. That is what I want to comment on in particular regarding this preliminary question. So the comfortable notion that one can wait until death to form such ideas does not apply if one considers in concrete terms at what point in time of the development of the earth we actually are. And this must always be borne in mind. For views that are absolutely valid, that apply at all times, do not exist; there are only views that can guide people for a certain period of time. This is what one must acquire in such an eminent sense through spiritual science. And now I would like to discuss a few things that can bring our considerations to a preliminary conclusion. We started from the assumption that the present human being feels a gulf between what he calls ideals, be they moral or other ideals, which he also calls ideas, and what he feels to be his views on the purely natural order of the world. The concepts and views that man forms about the natural order of the world do not enable him to assume that what he carries in his heart as ideals has real power and can actually be realized like a natural force. The essential thing to consider in this question is now the following: We now know how it is with the structure of the human being here on the physical earth. We also know how it is with the structure of the human being in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Some time ago I raised a question which actually already comes before the human soul as a concrete question when the human being looks at life, but which is precisely a question to which one cannot say anything when one is faced with the gap just characterized between idealism and realism between idealism and realism, that is the question: How is it that in our world order some people die very young, as children or young people or in middle age, while others only die when they have grown old? What is the connection with the order of the world? Neither idealism on the one hand nor realism on the other, which cannot regard ideals as real powers, can shed any light on such questions, which are, however, questions of life. These questions can only be approached if one has something very definite in mind. And that is to realize that the present human being, as he will one day stand before us as an earthly human being, can cope relatively easily with space, but he does not cope in the same way with time. In this respect, the sum of all existing philosophical views does not really offer any significant insight, and the question of the nature of time has so far only been treated in the narrowest human circles. It is not that easy to speak about time and its essence in a way that is accessible to the general public, but perhaps I can succeed in giving you an idea of what I mean by bringing time into discussion in analogy to space. I will have to tax your patience a little, because the brief consideration I want to give to this subject seems to have a somewhat abstract character. If you simply overlook a piece of the room, you know that what you overlook reveals itself to you in a perspective character. You have to take into account the perspective of the room when you overlook a piece of it. If you now bring the piece of room that you overlook and to which you instinctively ascribe a perspective character onto a surface, then you take the perspective into account. If you look down an avenue, you see the distant trees of the avenue as smaller and closer together. You can express this in perspective, and you can, in a sense, express in perspective on a surface what you see in space. Now it is clear that what you see in space is juxtaposed in a flat surface. In space, it is not juxtaposed; there are two trees in front (see drawing on p. 164), and two trees are far away. But by bringing the visible space into the flat surface, you place what is behind one another next to one another. You have the instinctive ability to transpose what you have painted or drawn on a surface into three dimensions. That you have this ability is due to the fact that man, as he is now as an earthly man, has become relatively detached from space as such. Man has not detached himself from time in the same way. And that is something tremendously important and significant, but something that unfortunately is hardly noticed, hardly noticed by science. Man believes that when he develops in time, he has time. But in reality he does not have real time. He does not have real time at all, but what you experience as time is actually, in relation to real time, something that can be called an image. Just as this image (see drawing) in the plane relates to space, so what the ordinary person calls time relates to real time. The ordinary person does not experience real time, but rather experiences an image of time. And that is very difficult to imagine.  For example, it is extremely difficult for you to imagine that something that is effective today does not need to be present at the present moment in time, but is real at a much earlier point in time and is not real at the present moment in time. You can, so to speak, project that which is present in a very early period of time into your own time. What I have just said has a very significant consequence. It has the consequence that everything we call nature has a completely different character than everything we have to regard as a certain part of the human being itself. For example, Ahriman also works in nature outside, or rather the Ahrimanic powers work; but the Ahrimanic powers never work in nature outside at the present time. If you look at nature as a whole, Ahriman is at work in nature, but he is working from a distant time. Ahriman works from the past. And whether you look at the mineral, the vegetable or the animal kingdom, you must never say that there is something in what is currently unfolding before your eyes in which Ahriman is active. And yet Ahriman is active in it; but from the past. If I were to describe the matter, I would have to say: Here is the line of development from the past into the future, and here you survey nature.  Yes, now you have to imagine looking into it. What you see before you in the present contains no ahrimanic powers, but Ahriman works through nature from the past, from a particular past.  And to you, Ahriman appears in nature, when you become aware of him there, in perspective. If you were to say: Ahriman is at work in the present — then you would be making the same mistake in relation to nature as if you were to say: When I survey a room, the distant trees stand beside the near trees (see drawing on page 164) because they can be placed in perspective within the space. A fundamental requirement for a real view into the spiritual world is this: that one learns to see in perspective in time, that one learns to place every being at its correct point in time. If I said yesterday that after death the I is, as it were, transferred from a fluid state into a kind of solid state, that is not all there is to it. Suppose you lived here on earth with your I from 1850 to 1920, and in 1920 you became aware of your I. I mean: you will become aware of it earlier, but now you look back, with the spirit self through the hierarchies you look back at your ego; there you see your ego always as it was from 1850 to 1920. The ego stays there, stays put. This means that your experiences do not go with you soon after your death, but you look back on them. You now look back from a temporally distant perspective and you see into the length of time, just as you see into the length of space here in the physical world. I can also express it this way: when you die, say, in 1920, you live with all that I described to you yesterday as the members of your being, but then you look back on the stretch of time in which you lived here on earth with your ego. And that stretch of time remains there, and you always see it as you continue to live in perspective, at the point in time where it was. And so you have to imagine that Ahriman is active outside in nature, but from an earlier point in time. This is very important. It is something that is given very little consideration. If one wants to understand the world, if one wants to speak spiritually of time, then one must absolutely imagine time in a spatial way and must consider this connection of the spiritual substance with time. This is very important. Now, what I said to you about the Ahrimanic powers, that they work from the past, is true for nature. But with human beings it is different. For the human being, while he lives here between birth and death, it is different precisely because everything that comes to an end in time becomes maya, deception, for him. While he lives here, the human being lives within the course of time itself, and by living through a certain number of years, he lives through the course of time. As time passes, he himself passes with time. That is not the case with space. When you walk down an avenue, the trees remain behind and you move forward, and you do not take the trees, which are left behind, and your impressions with you in such a way that you would have the impression that the tree image is moving with you when you take a step. You do that with the image of time. Here in the physical body you actually do this – because you yourself continue to develop in time – by allowing yourself to be deceived about time in relation to its perspective. You do not notice the perspective of time. And in particular, the subconscious mind does not notice it. The subconscious mind does not notice this living with time at all, and gives itself over to a complete deception with regard to the perspective of time. But this has a very definite consequence. It has the consequence that Ahrimanic powers can now work as present powers in what happens in man. Ahrimanic powers work in the life of the human soul as present powers. So that man stands in relation to nature in this way: when he looks out into nature, there is nothing Ahrimanic in the present. The Ahrimanic works in him as a presence, precisely as Maja, as deception. But the human being is given over to this deception about the things that I have explained to you, so that through the human being the Ahrimanic powers gain the possibility of creeping into the present, of walking into the present. We can say that the Ahrimanic forces – and the same applies to the Luciferic forces, albeit from a somewhat different point of view, which we will discuss in a moment – work in nature in such a way that they actually have nothing to do with the present, but extend their effects from prehistoric times. These Ahrimanic forces are currently at work in the human being. What are the consequences? The consequence is that, in his deepest soul, man cannot feel related to nature in relation to the point just discussed. He looks at his being, or rather feels himself in his being, senses the nature-based being. Because ahrimanic powers are countervailing powers in him, and ahrimanic powers are past powers in nature, everything that is natural appears to him differently from that which develops within himself. Man does not unravel the difference he perceives between himself and nature in the right way. If he unraveled it in the right way, it would be as I have just explained. He would say: Outside in nature, Ahriman works from the past; in me, Ahriman works as a present power. But because of this, even if he does not know the difference, he behaves in the sense of this difference and perceives nature as spiritless. He does perceive that in the present the Ahrimanic powers are not directly active in nature, but he perceives nature as spiritless because he does not say to himself: Ahriman works from the past – instead, he only looks at present-day nature. Ahriman does not work in it. But Ahriman, however strange it may sound, is the power that the general creation of the world uses to bring forth nature. When one speaks of the spirit of nature, when one speaks of the pure spirit of nature, one should actually speak of the ahrimanic spirit. There it is fully justified, the ahrimanic spirit. The beings of the normal hierarchies make use of the ahrimanic spirit to bring forth what extends around us as nature. The fact that we do not perceive nature in a spiritualized way is precisely because in the present life of nature the spirit is not contained, but works from the past. And that is the secret, I would say, of the world-creative powers, that they make use of a spirit that they have left at an earlier stage to work at a later stage, but let it work from the past. When we speak of nature, we should not speak of matter, nor of forces; we should speak of ahrimanic entities. But then we would have to place these ahrimanic entities in the past. The result is a strange one: suppose some natural philosopher ponders, ponders what is behind the phenomena of nature. Well, he comes up with all sorts of theories and hypotheses about atomic connections and the like. But that is not the case. Behind what is spread out around us in a way that appeals to the senses, there is not actually what the natural philosophers usually assume, but behind all of this there is the sum of the Ahrimanic powers, but not as a presence. So if the natural philosopher is compelled to assume, let us say, that there are some atomic structures behind the chemical elements, then that is wrong; behind the chemical elements there are Ahrimanic powers. But if you could detach what you see from the chemical elements and look beyond, you would see nothing behind them in the present: it would be hollow where you look for atoms, and what is at work there comes from the past and works in this hollow space. That is how it is in reality. Hence the many unsuccessful theories about what the “thing in itself” is; for this “thing in itself” is not there at all in the present. Rather, where the “thing in itself” is sought, there is nothing; but the effect is there from the past. So that one could say that if Kart had sought his “thing in itself,” he would have had to say: Where I want to approach the 'thing in itself', there I cannot approach. — That is what he said. But he did not realize that in the beginning he would have found nothing there at all, and that if he had gone behind the veil of things, he would have had to go far back; then he would have found Ahrimanic powers. In man himself it is different. It is precisely because man is vividly placed in time that it has been possible for the Ahrimanic powers to enter our world through the gateway of humanity and to work within man as such. And the consequence of the Ahrimanic powers working in man is that man detaches what he sees in the present from the spiritual, that man detaches his present existence from the spiritual. This is the consequence of our carrying the Ahrimanic powers within the Maja in us. So that one can say: Just as we view the world materially, detached from the spirit, as a mere natural order that believes it has reached its peak in the law of the conservation of energy and matter — which is an illusion — what we see as a natural order is merely brought about by the fact that we carry the Ahrimanic powers within us, and that they are not present as powers in nature outside us. Therefore, what we think about nature, in that we think of it merely materially, does not correspond to nature, but only to present nature. But this present nature is precisely an abstraction, because the past Ahriman always works in it. Now, not only the Ahrimanic but also the Luciferic is at work in people. This Luciferic, however, has, so to speak, a different tendency in the universe than the Ahrimanic. Let us visualize the tendency of the Ahrimanic as we have now expressed it. The tendency of the Ahrimanic in us is to present the world in materialistic terms. That we conceive the world materialistically, that we think of a mere natural order, is the consequence of the fact that we carry Ahrimanic in us. That we carry ideals within us, which detach themselves from the general nature, according to which we want to orient ourselves in our mutual behavior, but which must appear to us only like dreams within the present world view, which are dreamed out when, according to the natural order, the earth has arrived at its final state , that is the consequence of the fact that the luciferic powers, which, like the ahrimanic ones, live in us, are constantly striving to tear the part of us that is accessible to them completely out of the natural order and to spiritualize it completely. The main tendency of the luciferic powers, insofar as they live in us, is to make us as spiritual as possible, to tear us away from all material life if possible. That is why they present us with ideals that are not natural powers, but that are powerless in the present natural order. And if, in the course of the future period of the earth, man were to fall entirely prey to the influence of Lucifer, so that he would believe that ideals are just imagined things towards which the mind can be directed, then this man would follow the luciferic powers. The material earth, to which we belong, would decay, scatter in the universe, would not fulfill its purpose, and the luciferic powers would lead man into another spiritual world to which he does not belong. To do this, they need the trick of making us believe in ideals that are actually mere dreams. Just as Ahriman, on the one hand, presents us with a world that is a mere natural order, so Lucifer, on the other hand, presents us with a world that consists purely of imagined ideals. This is something very significant. And at present, I would say, a balance is only being struck in those areas that still lie in the human unconscious. But people must become more and more aware of this, otherwise they will not get out of this dilemma, they will not be able to build a bridge between idealism and realism, but this bridge is necessary. What currently still creates a kind of balance is the following. When very young people die, for example children, these children – and the same applies to young people – have just looked into the world; they have not fully lived out their existence here on the physical plane. With a life unlived on the physical plane, they pass over into the other world, which is lived between death and a new birth, as I described yesterday. Because they have only lived part of their earthly life, they bring something of earthly life with them into the spiritual world that cannot be brought across when one has grown old. You arrive differently in the spiritual world if you have grown old than if you die young. If you die young, you have lived your life in such a way that you still have a lot of strength in you from your prenatal life. As a child and as a young person, you have lived your physical life in such a way that you still have a lot of the strength in you that you had in the spiritual world before you were born. In this way, a close connection has been created between the spiritual part that one has brought with one and the physical part that one has experienced here. And through this close connection, one can take something that one acquires on earth with one into the spiritual world. Children or people who have died young take something from earthly life with them into the spiritual world that cannot be taken at all if one dies as an older person. That which is taken along is then over there in the spiritual world, and what is carried over by children and young people gives the spiritual world a certain heaviness that it would not otherwise have, the spiritual world in which people then live together, gives a certain heaviness to the spiritual world and prevents the luciferic powers from completely separating the spiritual world from the physical one. So you see, we are looking at an enormous secret! When children and young people die, they take something with them from here, which the luciferic powers use to prevent us from completely detaching ourselves from earthly life. It is extremely important to realize this. If you get older here on earth, you cannot thwart the luciferic powers in the way described, because after a certain age you no longer have that intimate connection between what you brought with you at birth and physical life on earth. When one has grown old, this inner connection is dissolved and just the opposite occurs. From a certain age onwards we instill our own nature in a certain way into the spiritual substance within the physical earth. We make the physical earth more spiritual than it would otherwise be. So from a certain age onwards we spiritualize the physical earth in a certain way, which cannot be perceived by the outer senses. We carry spiritual into the physical earth, as we carry physical up into the spiritual world when we die young; we squeeze out, so to speak, spiritual when we grow old, I cannot say it any other way. Growing old consists in the spiritual sense from a certain aspect of squeezing out spiritual here on earth. This in turn prevents the reckoning of Ahriman. As a result, Ahriman cannot, in the long run, have such an intense effect on people that the opinion that ideals do have a certain meaning could completely die out. But in today's time frame, we are already very, very close to people falling into the most terrible errors precisely with regard to what has been said. Even well-meaning people easily fall into such errors with regard to what has been said. And these errors will become ever greater and greater and, with increasing earth development, can become enormous. To give you an example: a very ingenious philosopher, Robert Zimmermann, wrote an “Anthroposophy” in 1882. I have already mentioned this in a context. This “Anthroposophy” is not what we now call Anthroposophy, it is more or less a concept jungle. But that is because Robert Zimmermann was not able to see into the spiritual world, he was only a Herbartian philosopher. Now he has written this “Anthroposophy”. But it is precisely in this “Anthroposophy” that Robert Zimmermann deals with the question that I have placed at the top of our considerations these days from his point of view. On the one hand, he sees ideas: logical ideas, aesthetic ideas, ethical ideas; on the other hand, he sees the order of nature. And he cannot somehow find a bridge between the logical, the aesthetic, the ethical ideas and the order of nature, but he does stop at it: on the one hand, there is the order of nature, and on the other hand, there are the ideas. And the conclusion he comes to is extremely interesting, because it is actually typical of a person in the present day. He comes to the conclusion that it is forbidden to man once and for all to populate nature with ideas and to ascribe to ideas the power of nature. The two worlds can actually only be connected in the mind of man. So he says. And so he means at one point, where he summarizes almost everything he says and thinks: “The realization of ideas is neither a fact of the past nor a fact of the present, but a task whose fulfillment lies in the future and in the hands of man. The dream of a “golden age”, of which a sober rationalist like Kant as of that of “eternal peace, as an extreme positivist like Comte as the ‘état positif’, raved about, will be fulfilled when the entire world of ideas has become real and the entire reality is permeated by the ideas, that is to say, when that which Schiller called “the secret of the master's art,” the “consumption” of matter by form, becomes manifest, or, as Schleiermacher put it, “when ethics become physics and physics become ethics.” Yes, but that can never be! It can only be that people realize ideas in their social order. But when the earth has reached its end, the whole dream of ideas will have been dreamt. Nothing else is possible according to such a philosophy. Therefore such a philosophy always remains abstract and must finally confess: “A philosophy which, like the one above, neither takes the theocentric point of view, inaccessible to human knowledge, as in theosophy, and regards the ‘dream of reason’ as a reality that has long since been created, nor, like anthropology, takes the anthropocentric but uncritical standpoint of common experience, in order to view from there a reality filled with ideas as a 'dream of reason', which thus simultaneously wants to be anthropocentric, that is, starting from human experience, and yet philosophical, that is, going beyond it, at the hand of logical thinking, is Arihroposophie.” “Anthroposophy” is therefore here the admission that one can never cross this chasm between unreal ideas and idea-less reality. But in man himself there is a natural being, which thus belongs to the natural order, connected with a spiritual being that can absorb the spiritual. This is not denied by an anthroposophist like Robert Zimmermann. But man cannot be regarded by contemporary science either in such a way that the riddle would be solved through man, through this microcosm. Let us now look back at something we have already mentioned during this stay. We have said that we actually have to divide the human being into three parts, not as conveniently as the skeleton, of course, as I have already explained. But I have also spoken about this in the final notes to my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (Mysteries of the Soul). We can divide the human being into three parts: the head, the trunk and the extremities, with everything that belongs to the extremities belonging to the extremities, including everything sexual. If we divide the human being in this way and now apply what we already know: that the formation of the head, the shape of the head points to forces of the previous incarnation, the limb man points to the future incarnation and actually only the trunk belongs to the present. So, after what I have explained today, you will no longer find it very incomprehensible when I tell you: insofar as the human being carries his head, this head points back to the earlier incarnation, into the past. The forces of the past, Ahrimanic forces, are at work in the head, and what applies to Ahrimanic forces in general applies to the human head in particular. Everything that is actually formed in the human head does not actually belong to the present, but the forces of the previous incarnation have an effect on the head; and the creative powers make use of the ahrimanic powers to shape our head, to give our head its actual form. If the creative powers did not make use of the ahrimanic spirits to shape our heads, then we would all – forgive me, but it is so – wear a much softer head, but we would all have an animal head: one who is bullish in character would have a bull's head, another who is lamb-like in character would have a lamb's head, and so on. It is due to the influence of the Ahrimanic powers, which the creative forces use to shape us, that this animal head, which we would otherwise wear, does not really sit on us, as the Egyptians drew it on some of their figures; that we do not go around like these Egyptian figures, who have good reasons for this, because in the Egyptian mysteries, too, though from an atavistic point of view, things were taught that can be taught again now. We also do not go around like that, as in the Rosicrucian pictures, where every woman is painted with a lion's head and every man with an ox's head. That is the Rosicrucian painting of man. The Rosicrucians chose a more average animal and therefore gave the women the head of the animal that most resembles them, the lion, and the man the head of the animal that most resembles him, the ox, the bull. That is why in Rosicrucian figures you see man and woman placed side by side: the woman with the most beautiful lion's head, the man with a bull's head. But this is absolutely correct. That metamorphosis – to use a Goethean term – can take place, that our head, which tends towards the animalistic in its form, can be shaped so that it is a human head, comes from the influence of the Ahrimanic powers. If the deities did not make use of Ahriman to shape our bony heads, then we would walk around with animal heads. But the divine powers also make use of the luciferic spirits. If they did not make use of these luciferic spirits, our limbless man would not be able to transform from the present to the next incarnation. The luciferic beings are necessary for this. And it is to the luciferic entities that we again owe the fact that, by dying, the form that the man of the extremities still has now is gradually transformed into the broader form that he is to have in the next incarnation. Then, in the middle of the path between death and a new birth, Ahriman must intervene to take on the other task: to reshape the head in the appropriate way. Just as we would go around with animal heads if we did not owe it to Ahriman that we get a human head, so our nature of the extremities would not metamorphose into the human until the next incarnation, but would pass over into the demonic. We lose our head, as we now have it, under all circumstances through death, not only as matter that unites with the earth, but also as form; in the next incarnation we carry over what will become the head from the extremity of man. But this would become a demonic being if we did not have the luciferic powers, who are connected with us, to thank for the fact that the transformation can take place from a demon, which is merely a spiritual soul, into the human form of the next incarnation. Thus, Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers must participate in our becoming human, and the human cannot be understood without calling upon the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic for help. Humanity cannot be spared the task of truly understanding the activity of Ahriman and Lucifer in the future. The Bible quite rightly says that the Deity of whom it speaks at the beginning breathed the living spirit into man. But the living spirit works in the trunk of the human being. Insofar as we are dealing with the normally functioning divine entities, we are dealing only with the trunk of the human being. Insofar as we are dealing with the head man, we are dealing with an opponent of the powers of Yahweh, and thus also with an opponent of the Christ. And insofar as we are dealing with the man of the extremities, we are dealing with the Luciferic opponent. Therefore, one will only understand the human being if one presents him under these three aspects. In our central group for our building, we therefore have this trinity: the representative of humanity, who is trained in such a way that the forces of breathing, of the trunk, of heart activity and so on are primarily active in him – this is the middle figure; then the figure in which everything main, head-related is active: Ahriman; and the figure in which everything extremity-related is active: Lucifer. We must dissect the human being in this way if we want to understand the human being, because in the human being, the human being as such is united with Ahriman and Lucifer. At the same time, this is an indication that everything that is more or less connected with human thinking, which, after all, is bound to the head in relation to its physical connection to the head — human thinking flows on the basis of perceptions as something external and obvious — that all this has an Ahrimanic character. Through the senses of the head we perceive nature primarily, and we build up an image of nature with the ahrimanic character just described, because we ourselves carry the ahrimanic in the formation, in the shaping of our head. Ideals, on the other hand, have a great deal to do with love, with everything that belongs to the man of the extremities, inwardly, psychologically. I shall come back to this in the near future. That is why the Luciferic power has special access to ideals. Ahriman takes hold of us through our head, Lucifer through our extremities. Through our head Ahriman tempts us to conceive of nature without spirit; through our extremity man Lucifer tempts us to conceive of ideals without the power of nature. But it is the task of the present human being, by surveying such things, to arrive at a correct overview. For you see, there is a certain boundary within us, precisely in our chest-humanity, in our trunk-humanity, whereby the forces of the head, which are Ahrimanic forces, are separated from the luciferic forces that belong to the extremity-humanity. If we were able to see ourselves completely by looking mystically into ourselves, then we would indeed comprehend the natural order through the head, but we would also see into ourselves through the natural order. And if the luciferic powers were to decide in us, then the luciferic powers would also enlighten us about the ahrimanic powers, and in this way we would come to a connection between the natural order and the spiritual order. But for a certain reason we cannot do this, and that is because we have a memory. What we absorb from nature in the way of ideas and concepts, of impressions, we store in our memory. And if here (see diagram on page 179) we have only schematically drawn the head human being, the trunk and torso human being, and the extremities human being, then in the trunk human being there is the septum, which leads to that which we take in through the head, in the natural order, coming back to us as memory material. As a result, we do not see down to the Luciferic, and thus we do not notice the Ahrimanic, as we do not see what is behind a mirror, but rather what is reflected. Here the natural order is reflected in what at the same time separates our Ahrimanic from our Luciferic, and what is the basis for the forming memory, for the forming power of recollection. If we could not remember the things we have experienced, if this partition were not there, if, looking into ourselves, we could see through ourselves, we would look down into ourselves as far as the Luciferic. Then we would also perceive the Ahrimanic.  But now consider: what appears to us in this mirror is what we live through in the course of our lives, what we look back on after death, what becomes a solid ego from a fluid ego. This is what we look back on. That is what we live with. And Ahriman and Lucifer work with us, working with us in such a way that Ahriman brings us to wearing a human head, and Lucifer brings us to not becoming a demon, but to having the possibility of coming to a next incarnation. I have perhaps tried your patience a little with things that are perhaps a little more difficult to understand, but I wanted to at least evoke a feeling for what actually creates the gap between idealism and realism. It arises from the fact that the Luciferic in us arouses idealism, which is powerless in nature, that the Ahrimanic in us evokes the mere natural order, which appears spiritless to us. Thus idealists, abstract idealists, are actually under the influence of Lucifer, while materialists are under the influence of Ahriman. It is necessary to engage with these things, not just to engage in so-called theosophy in a schematic way, but to engage with these more precise things. For it is necessary that man should become conscious of the fact that he must do something to remain united with the spirit for the rest of his development on earth. It is an uncomfortable truth, one might say, even a hated truth, truly a hated truth, for it contradicts so much that is pleasant to man, that is pleasant to him out of laziness. Nothing is more difficult for people today than when they are told: If you want to maintain your connection with the spirit in the future, you have to do something about it. Most people would like the Mystery of Golgotha to have dissolved into the ground, so that they have nothing to do with their own affairs, so that they can be redeemed from their sins through Christ and go to heaven without having to do anything. And that is why most theologians get so angry about anthroposophy, because the anthroposophical side can never admit that man has nothing to do to maintain his connection with the spirit, that this can also happen in the future of the development of the earth without any action on his part. The connection between the physical and the spiritual, between what the members of man are between birth and death, and what the members of man are between death and new birth, this connection is called into question by the future development of the earth, and it will only not come into disorder if men will really occupy themselves with the spiritual towards the future. Spiritual scientific evidence for this already exists today. This spiritual scientific evidence is highly, highly inconvenient truth, but it sheds light on important and significant matters. I would like to say that the connection between the soul-spiritual and the physical-etheric in the human being of the counterweight has already become very loose, and it is necessary for the human being to be more and more alert to himself, so that nothing happens in the connection between his physical-etheric and soul-spiritual that could, so to speak, suck him dry, that could suck him dry soul-spiritually. For when such prejudices become more and more active, when one does not need to know anything about what happens after death in life, or when the gulf between so-called idealism and pure natural order becomes ever greater, then people are in danger of losing their soul more and more. Today, I might say, this loss is still held in check by the fact that when young people die, a certain heaviness is given to the spiritual world and Lucifer is thwarted, and when old people die, so much spirituality is poured into the physical world that Ahriman is thwarted. But one must not forget that as a result of people turning away from the spiritual realm, the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers become more and more powerful, and that little by little, as the devolution of the earth goes on and on, this dam could no longer be fully effective. That is what I would like to see emerging from our deliberations as a kind of bottom line, a feeling – and feelings are always the most important thing that can arise from spiritual scientific life – of the necessity of dealing with the spiritual from the present earth cycle onwards. I have emphasized this from the most diverse points of view, that it is necessary from the present point of view that people occupy themselves with the spiritual. And there will be no other way of dealing with spiritual matters in the future than by acquiring understanding and not resisting the process of really absorbing even the more difficult considerations such as we have been discussing in recent days and particularly today. People must come to understand the perspectivity of time. When this understanding of the perspectivity of time comes among people, then they will no longer say: Here is idealism, but it is only a mere dream that has no force of nature, and on the other side lies the natural order. Instead, people will come to recognize that what lives in us as ideals is the germ for the future, and that what is the natural order is the fruit of the past. This sentence is a golden rule: every ideal is the germ of a future natural event; every natural event is the fruit of a past spiritual event. Only by this rule can one find the bridge between idealism and realism. But for this one thing is necessary: any ideal could never become the germ of a future natural event if this future natural event were prevented by the present natural event. We can put any hypothesis before our eyes. Let us assume the possibility that applies today, that through the so-called law of entropy, the evolution of the earth will one day pass into a kind of general warming, and that all other natural forces will cease, then within this final state, of course, all ideals would have died out. This final state follows quite well if one assumes that, according to pure causality, the present physical states will simply continue. If one thinks as present-day physics does, that such a final state will one day exist according to the law of conservation of energy and matter, then there is no room in this final state for an ideal to arise in it as a future natural event, because the future will simply be the consequence of the present natural event. But that is not how it is, that is not how it presents itself to the present study of nature, but it presents itself differently. All the substances and forces that exist today will no longer be there in the future. The law of conservation of matter and energy does not exist. Where we look for substance, we find nothing but the influence of something Ahrimanic that has passed away. And what surrounds us in the world of the senses will no longer be there in the future. And then, when nothing of what is physical now remains, when all this has been completely dissolved, the time will have come when the present ideals will join the natural process of what is now perishing. This is how it is in the great universe. And for the individual human being, it is the case that he will be incarnated again in the next world incarnation when everything that he has grown into with the present incarnation has been partially overcome, when, that is, an environment can be created for him that is different from the present environment, when everything that is keeping him here on earth can be removed from the present environment. If all this has changed so that he can experience new things, then he will be incarnated again. The present ideals that can form in man will be nature, when all that is now nature will no longer be there, but something new will have emerged. But the new that arises is nothing other than the spiritual that has become nature. Behind appearances and ideals we must seek that which forms the bridge over the abyss. But one must discover it. Today one can only discover it if one is not afraid to develop the concepts so powerfully that they themselves can penetrate reality. Therefore, the present time really has the necessity to engage very much in everything that can be experienced spiritually. But — let me add this as a postscript — it will be necessary for people to be able to develop ever greater and greater impartiality towards spiritual considerations. The day before yesterday, I ended by pointing out, as it might seem unnecessary to do for some people, but I do not like to do it, it is never unnecessary, a number of things that stand in the way of fruitful spiritual scientific work, including on the part of the Anthroposophical Society. Above all, what is needed here is real impartiality. Time and again, we see that the dissolving power that actually brought about materialism and destroyed the old spirituality is penetrating into human thinking, especially into the spiritual, into the willed spiritual. I have pointed out how materialistic some theosophical views are. Of course, it is not easy to find the right words when discussing spiritual-scientific matters, because our language today is no longer suitable for the spiritual, because we first have to search again for such a connection between language and the subject that is suitable for the spiritual. But it is necessary that the spiritual-scientific movement is not always corrupted by what is most harmful. One must characterize impartially what takes place in the spirit. Again and again I experience that I am asked: There is someone, there is someone who has spiritual experiences. — The meaning of the questions, which are often asked in this way, is that the actual question is: Is it now possible to surrender to what this or that person sees with blind faith in the truth? And if the answer is in the affirmative, then blind devotion arises; if it is in the negative, then the person in question is immediately denounced as a heretic and it is said: Well, that is atavistic clairvoyance, you don't give anything to that. — Yes, this either-or must be taken quite differently in this field. We must really face up to the statements about the spiritual with all our healthy reason. But if we want to become dogmatists, we cannot become spiritual scientists. If we want to either idolize or condemn, we cannot become spiritual scientists. There will also be infinitely valuable contributions to the characterization of the spiritual world from sides that one does not necessarily want to swear by. On the other hand, there are times when people swear by some esoteric personality. Then it can be shown that this seer personality has at some point – well, maybe even once – retouched a little, or retouched a lot; then that personality is finished. Before, the same people swore by them, and now they have been undone. Yes, you don't get ahead within humanity in this way. You don't get ahead within humanity with the either/or of deification or demonization, but only by facing things with your common sense. For example, it may also be the case that someone, of whom one even knows: Well, he does not disdain to tell a tall tale now and then – something quite true, important, essential comes out of the spiritual world. We would not have the either/or that I am talking about if we wanted to introduce dogmatics, but if we wanted to place ourselves with common sense, precisely within this anthroposophical movement. That is one thing. The other is this: it is extremely difficult, because of the way things are often handled within our circle, to place the Anthroposophical Society in the cultural movement of the present day. This requires discernment on the part of those who are already members of this society. Once you are a member, you have a certain obligation to exercise this discernment. For we will go completely wrong with this Anthroposophical Society if we do not seek to connect with the general spiritual culture of the present, if we repeatedly and repeatedly fall back into the error of being sectarian. That will be the death of our movement if we become sectarian. Just consider that things like the ones we have discussed these days will not seem particularly strange to someone who is currently involved in science and cultural life, if he or she only acquires the necessary lack of prejudice. But in order to achieve something in this way, it is necessary to have the will to distinguish. With us it can easily happen that a question is asked in a stereotyped way when it is a matter of: should someone listen to anthroposophical lectures or should he be given a cycle? So the question is asked in a stereotyped way, without taking into account the level of education, the whole world position of the person concerned. But the stereotyped way is what is absolutely harmful to us. It is the schematic that makes it possible for a person like the one in Holland, around whom a whole bunch of nonsense has crystallized, to swim into the Anthroposophical Society and find protectors there, while people who are capable of judgment are often repelled by it. To mention a specific example: some time ago, Mr. von Bernus appeared within the Anthroposophical Society with the clear aim — which one may find a little better, a little worse, as common sense may speak — of building a bridge between the general cultural life, the literary and scientific life of the present, and our anthroposophical life. Now, Mr. von Bernus, in his own way, has poetically reworked and brought out into the world a number of things, some of which are in my books and some of which are in cycles. He showed me himself: he has received a pile of letters, letters of criticism, because a truly contemporary attempt has been made here! One would not be surprised if someone who perhaps has a lot at stake could be repelled by such behavior as was perpetrated against him by the Anthroposophical Society in the past. Nevertheless, the journal he founded will be of tremendous service to the Anthroposophical Movement. He had, after all, managed to get the Anthroposophical Society represented in Munich in his art gallery. But everywhere one could see certain resistances to something that was as justified as possible! And if one looks at Bernus' experiences, they give a good picture of how the Anthroposophical Society should learn to be a real society. In so far as the Dornach structure came into being, it is a society. But much else, in particular, is left undone, clearly showing that the Anthroposophical Society does not see itself as a society at all, but as a sum of individual sectarian little circles. But we must get beyond this stage of sectarianism. And we will not get beyond it unless some thought is given to the matter. It is so difficult, and it is true that one does not like to say such things, but after all, many things are necessarily said to me because I am personally so closely involved with this anthroposophical movement. If the Anthroposophical Society should gradually develop more and more into a society with an expressed tendency to keep me completely quiet — which is what it is actually developing into and what it has always had as a tendency — then it is not a matter of personal vanity when I emphasize this. It makes me very uncomfortable that I have to emphasize it, but in the Anthroposophical Society there is a tendency to keep quiet about me, and there the personal is linked to the factual. Because of this – because everything that a society otherwise does is not being done – only the venomous words that the apostate members have created bubble to the surface. Yes, these are things that I sometimes have to point out and that must not remain unspoken. I have raised them in the places where I have been able to speak recently, because I really believe that in these catastrophic times it is very important that anthroposophy is represented in the world in the right way. But it is so difficult to get people to reflect more deeply on how one should actually proceed in the anthroposophical field in order to make this Anthroposophical Society a real society. — Individuals have indeed made a start, but as a rule everything gets stuck in the starting blocks. Now, I think that perhaps, by drawing attention to the matter a second time, it will be given a little thought. I am not saying this for personal reasons, but because of certain necessities of the time, as you will indeed gather from what I have just said, from which you will be able to discern many seeds that can serve to help you understand our catastrophic times. [Blackboard writing] September 2, 1918 Every ideal is a germ for a future natural event. Every natural event is the fruit of past spiritual events. |