Spirit as Sculptor of the Human Organism E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Rudolf Steiner tackles an eclectic series of subjects united by the common theme of rediscovering how spirit pervades life. Among these, he discusses: experiences during sleep; the human spirit and soul between death and a new birth; how spirit 'sculpts' the human organism; karma and the to a new life on earth; and the human being's faculties of hearing, speaking, singing, walking, and thinking. Together, these lectures offer a cornucopia of spiritual insights and wisdom for the present day.

Leseprobe

SPIRIT AS SCULPTOR

OF THE HUMAN ORGANISM

SPIRIT AS SCULPTOROF THE HUMAN ORGANISM

Sixteen lectures given in Stuttgart, Dornach, The Hague, London and Berlin in 1922

TRANSLATED BY MATTHEW BARTON

INTRODUCTION BY MATTHEW BARTON

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS CW 218

The publishers gratefully acknowledge the generous funding of this publication by the estate of Dr Eva Frommer MD (1927–2004) and the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain

Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2014

Originally published in German under the title Geistige Zusammenhänge in der Gestaltung des menschlichen Organismus (volume 218 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on shorthand transcripts (not reviewed by the speaker). This authorized translation is based on the latest available (third) edition, 1992, edited by Dr H.W. Zbinden

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 2011

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 452 0

Cover by Mary Giddens Typeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan

CONTENTS

Editor’s Preface

Introduction, by Matthew Barton

PART ONE

LECTURE 1

STUTTGART, 9 OCTOBER 1922

Experiences During Sleep: Their Spiritual Context and Significance for our Daily Life

Knowledge of the ‘unconscious’. Sleep and dream. First stage of sleep: from a nebulous sense of self to search for the spirit. The consequence in a waking state: relating separate things to the general. Second stage: from anxiety arising through fragmentation into separate entities, to permeation by planetary powers. The consequence in a waking state: refreshing of blood circulation and the breathing process. Third stage: experience of the fixed star constellations. Consequence: kindling of the nutritional process. Leading the human being back through the three stages to waking through the moon powers.

LECTURE 2

STUTTGART, 14 OCTOBER 1922

The Human Spirit and Soul Between Death and a New Birth

Imaginative perception of the spirit and soul. Memory pictures, body-developing wisdom as the spirit and soul’s panoramic tableau before birth. Connection of the human being with the universe through Inspiration. Transition from direct experiencing of the spiritual cosmos to its secondary manifestation. The urge for a new incarnation. Moral essence and I after death, moon and sun sphere. The Christ event and its meaning.

PART TWO THE SPIRIT AS SCULPTOR OF THE HUMAN ORGANISM

LECTURE 3

DORNACH, 20 OCTOBER 1922

Visual processes in the eye. Meeting of the I/astral body with the ether body/physical body. Shaping, configuring forces in the head, dissolving ones in the kidney system. Memory as a process between a slower rhythm of consolidation and a quicker one of dissolution. Imagination-sustaining kidney function. The importance of head and kidney system in the seven-year periods of human life. These rhythms in the eye. Rhythmic disorders: childhood convulsions. The rhythms made tangible in the statue of the Representative of Humanity.

LECTURE 4

DORNACH, 22 OCTOBER 1922

The nature of digestion: deadening of the etheric and astral in food. Re-enlivening of nutrients by the human ether body and how oxygen renders them earthly on the path towards the heart. Astralization by the kidneys and organ formation in interplay with the head system and nitrogen. The whole taken hold of by the I with the aid of the liver and gall bladder system and hydrogen. Illnesses caused by a disorder of the interplay in all these systems. Inflammation and tumours. The pancreas as an organ of the Spirit Self in connection with sulphur. Cultural evolution and physiological changes.

LECTURE 5

DORNACH, 23 OCTOBER 1922

Characteristics of the ancient era of light. The nature of illness and health; the human being’s relationship to light. Illness and healing in the ages of light and darkness: dynamic knowledge and perception. The Christ event and enlivening of dead light.

PART THREE

LECTURE 6

THE HAGUE, 5 NOVEMBER 1922

Hidden Aspects of Human Existence and the Christ Impulse

States of being for the human being during sleep and in the life between death and rebirth. Reciprocal effect between sleep and waking. First stage of sleep: cosmic anxiety and longing for God. Second: after-images of the planetary motions, Third: and of the fixed star heavens; conditions before and after Christ. Life between death and a new birth. A path to new birth through the planets and fixed star intelligences. The second human being in us engendered through our moral actions. The importance of the Christ event for life after death, and following birth.

PART FOUR THE HUMAN SOUL’S EXPERIENCE DURING SLEEP AND AFTER DEATH IN THE WORLD OF SPIRIT

LECTURE 7

LONDON, 12 NOVEMBER 1922

Experiences of Spirit and Soul During Sleep

Sleep life. Religious and moral consciousness remains behind in the physical and etheric body. Ahriman’s access, in consequence, to the human soul—temptation to evil in sleep. Experience before and after Christ of the physical and etheric body. Corresponding approaches to healing. Preparing a new life on earth through our exposure to the spiritual powers of the planets. The moon: determination of gender, Venus: of the family, Mercury: of the nation/race.

LECTURE 8

LONDON, 16 NOVEMBER 1922

The Battle for Human Nature Between Luciferic and Ahrimanic Beings

Our natural surroundings: supersensible and subsensible nature. Luciferic beings in the air which seek to make the human being into a moral automaton, and the ahrimanic beings under the earth who continually try to make him earthly. Yahweh-moon as regulator of instinctual nature together with the beings of Mercury and Venus in the battle with Ahriman. The influence of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn on the human being; their battle against luciferic beings. Pathological states as safeguard against succumbing to luciferic or ahrimanic beings. The redeeming and reconciling power of Christ.

LECTURE 9

LONDON, 19 NOVEMBER 1922

Experience Between Death and a New Birth as Consequence of Karma. Creating the Conditions for our Return to a New Life on Earth

Dissolution of the ether body after death. Moon powers as powers of birth and death; the bearer of karma. Reverse retrospective after-death experience of our past life. Memory of earthly life hindering our passage through the planetary sphere. The urge to embark on a new, compensating earthly life at the moment of cosmic midnight. Assimilation of karma memory. The activity and influence of Christ and Michael: preparing an earthly body for others in future.

PART FIVE

LECTURE 10

LONDON, 17 NOVEMBER 1922 (semi-public)

Exact Knowledge of Supersensible Worlds Through Anthroposophic Spiritual Science

Spiritual research as an ‘exact science’. Living intensively in pure thoughts: experience of the temporal body. Experience of the pictorial world of the ether body after death. Practice of fully aware and voluntarily empty consciousness: continuity of memory in waking life and sleep. Living with after-images of the planetary and star worlds. Experience of the future: life after death. Schooling of the will to attain a higher level of consciousness: ideal magic, to develop the spirit germ for a new earthly life. Direct community of the soul with connected souls after death.

LECTURE 11

LONDON, 18 NOVEMBER 1922 (semi-public)

Christ from the Perspective of Anthroposophy

Deepening our relationship to Christ through knowledge. In primordial times, relationship to worlds of spirit mediated by mystery teachers: guidance of thinking, mantric verse and knowledge of pre-birth existence as foundation of culture. The high being of the sun as guide after death. The reconfiguration of this through the Christ event; the path to freedom. The importance of the anthroposophic path of schooling. Paths towards Christ: the initiate, and naive piety. Finding Christ within.

LECTURE 12

LONDON, 19 NOVEMBER 1922 (semi-public)

Moral Education from the Perspective of Anthroposophy

The temporal body; its importance in the phases of human life. The nature of the child’s soul up to the age of six; the importance of adult life for the next generation. Child development in the second stage of life nurtured by love for the teacher and his knowledge, ability and judgement. Unconscious question of destiny, of the nature of good and evil; the nine- to ten-year-old child’s need of the teacher’s conduct. Change in moral education to the pictorial. Choosing the right moment for this. Imponderable effect of the teacher who works out of real experience. Intellectual grasp of morality in the third seven-year period: the morally free person in the shaping of society.

PART SIX

LECTURE 13

LONDON, 20 NOVEMBER 1922 (public lecture)

The Art of Education Founded on Insights into the Human Being

Perceiving soul and spirit in the child. The effects of environment on the development of the child’s organism. The importance of imitation and forces of inheritance. After second dentition, soul devotion to the teacher as a natural authority figure. Living concepts through images that have reality. Learning to read and write. Engaging with what the child’s nature really requires of us. The pedagogical aspect of eurythmy. The goal of education: the free human being.

PART SEVEN

LECTURE 14

STUTTGART, 4 DECEMBER 1922

How the Human Being’s Life on Earth Relates to his Life Between Death and a New Birth

Human life on earth as a reflection of the life between death and rebirth. Morality and freedom on earth as recollection of pre-birth experience of the hierarchies and the self. Pre-birth experience of loneliness and the capacity of memory. The importance of loving and unloving actions for the future. The power of memory and love in speech and tone. Importance of art. Religion and art. Knowledge and art.

PART EIGHT

LECTURE 15

BERLIN, 7 DECEMBER 1922

Human Experience of the Etheric Cosmos

The purpose of spiritual-scientific knowledge. Spiritual-scientific research. Understanding of the results of supersensible research. New awareness of one’s life’s work. The inward and outward gaze in earthly life and after death. Self-awareness after death through rhythmic alternation between an experience of the hierarchies and of oneself. Shaping the spirit germ for one’s next physical body. The influence of the planets as we descend to earth. The importance of life between death and rebirth in medicine. The spirit germ enters earthly existence in advance of the ether body. Spirit knowledge in earthly life creates light for existence after death.

PART NINE

LECTURE 16

STUTTGART, 9 DECEMBER 1922

The Human Being and Supersensible Worlds: Hearing, Speaking, Singing, Walking, Thinking

The form of the ear: metamorphosis of a whole person. Our extremities are potential ears in the embryo, then become subject to gravity. Movements of the legs become a world of tones after death: hearing the moral qualities of deeds. Development of memory, the power of love. Language development. The sense organs formed out of the spirit. Processes of hearing. The enduring nature of time. Importance of knowledge of spiritual realities for life after death. Understanding supersensible realities through ordinary powers of reason. Entering into morality through knowledge of the spirit: full human responsibility.

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

EDITOR’S PREFACE

The lectures comprising this volume, which Rudolf Steiner gave in Stuttgart, Dornach, The Hague and Berlin, were for members of the Anthroposophical Society, as were those given in London on 12, 16 and 19 November 1922. While in London, Rudolf Steiner also gave three ‘semi-public’ lectures at Steinway Hall (17, 18 and 19 November 1922) and on 20 November of the same year, by invitation of the ‘Educational Union for the Realization of Spiritual Values’, a public lecture entitled ‘The Art of Education Founded on Insights into the Human Being’ at Morley Hall.

INTRODUCTION

The word ‘religion’ has all kinds of connotation today and has become anathema to many, the source, apparently, of divisiveness and dire conflict. But its meaning, originally, is simply ‘to reconnect’. This begs the question, of course, what we might reconnect with. Steiner is always at pains, in these lectures and elsewhere, to value and give due regard to what is best in diverse human cultures and beliefs, but he is also clear-sighted about the loss of real vision of many orthodox belief systems, and their increasing reliance on tradition rather than immediacy of experience. One sense therefore in which he would understand reconnection is that of the quest to refresh real and vivid insights into the nature of the world, in his view inseparable from the divine realities continually creating and sustaining it.

It is an illusion to think, says Steiner, that we live only in our own separate skins. Far more than we are often aware of, we live in the whole world, which is at the same time a world order of active love and morality. Life cannot be understood only in physical terms; and while we probably know this subliminally, the great majority of us are still subservient intellectually to the idea of a random and amoral physical world of ‘waves’, ‘atoms’ and ‘forces’. Such a world seems to have no connection with our consequently rather quaint and impotent moral striving. The opposite of ‘religion’ therefore might be ‘fragmentation’—the fractures between humanity and the universe, between human beings themselves and, last but not least, within ourselves: a sundering of our intellect from feeling, or feeling from will. Reconnecting with the world, and overcoming all these fractures requires us, as Steiner describes here, to move lovingly beyond the narrower confines of ourselves and embrace a reality much greater than us, albeit one in which we are deeply embedded. One name for this reality is Christ, who, in striking contrast to the ways in which his name is used in vain, is the healer of all divisions both within and between us.

Once we begin to acknowledge this greater, redeeming reality, and feel increasingly one with the world and the rest of humanity, we can take the next step—first in felt knowledge then also active deed—of realizing that no individual betterment can happen at the expense of others, but that we are all intrinsically connected for better or worse. Reconnecting with each other, with other human beings of whatever race or creed, is therefore equally a meaning of ‘religion’. A fragmented humanity is joined in this greater self, just as the fragmented human soul can be healed by it.

In these lectures there is seemingly no end to the manifold reconnections that start to dawn: between, say, our past, present and future; between our physical actions and limb movements in one life and the forming or sculpting of our head in a future one; between the active, individualizing principle of the ‘I’ and the physical human body it works upon and shapes; and above all, between the moral actions and insights we develop while alive on earth and our developing ‘eye’ for spiritual reality in the life after death, with all that this can mean for the future of human evolution.

True religiosity, in Steiner’s view, far from being a source of divisiveness, is fundamental not just to moral but also to physical health since spirit and body are profoundly and intimately connected. It is a power in us that, in Steiner’s vivid picture, ‘strikes a match in our whole being’, uniting the fractured soul so that clear insight connects with a warm heart which in turn connects with right actions. In this vein the novelist E. M. Forster once wrote:

Only connect [...] Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.

One field of endeavour among many in which reconnection seems urgently needed, and which figures at several key places in these lectures, is that of education. Our view of the human being, and thus also of child development, will inevitably inform the way we shape educational provision and teaching. If we think children differ from adults only in being less cognitively advanced, we may speak only, or predominantly, to their powers of cognition, leaving their soul and sensibility, and capacity for purposeful action undeveloped. We may remain blind to essential qualities that can be nurtured differently in different phases of childhood only by recognizing the subtle yet powerful effect of the teacher and her relationship with each child.

Steiner refers to teaching as the ‘highest art’; and the best artists respect and continually learn afresh from their material by staying intuitively alive and responsive to it. Teachers or parents connected to a profoundly creative view of the human being, to their own sources of authenticity and inspiration, and therefore also to the children before them, will in turn give these children a sense of connection to the world as a place in which they can, ultimately, find their own self-engendering morality and meaning. Here again, as everywhere, Steiner’s vision of the world is a holistic one, where past and future connect in a creative present in which human potential can come to the fullest possible realization.

Matthew Barton, October 2014

LECTURE 1

STUTTGART, 9 OCTOBER 1922

WHEN people speak of the soul or psyche nowadays, they often use a particular phrase which acknowledges that, in exploring this realm, one must speak of powers that do not enter ordinary awareness. At the same time, though, they admit their powerlessness in trying to do so. The phrase used to point tentatively towards this realm is ‘the unconscious’. In speaking today of the intrinsic nature of human knowledge it is commonly suggested that we are initially obliged to seek this in the world around us through observation, experimentation and a synthesis created by our reasoning faculty. But then also, in turning their attention to their own consciousness, people speak of all kinds of inner content there—thoughts, feelings, impulses of will and so on. In doing so they become aware, furthermore, that things stir and surface in the psyche whose deeper nature cannot be fathomed either by using the usual methods of empirical science involving observation and combinative thinking, or through self-observation using the ordinary powers of awareness. Such attempts will not penetrate to the reality of these phenomena of soul life. For this reason they use the term ‘the unconscious’ and at the same time relinquish any possibility of penetrating this unconscious realm. In fact it is entirely justified to relinquish such efforts if one limits oneself to the faculties of knowledge generally acknowledged today. Such faculties will not fathom the psyche further than to ascertain that during waking life thoughts, feelings and will impulses rise up from our inner depths—expressions of human nature which can easily be seen as connected with our outward corporeal nature. Using ordinary observation, it will not be possible to find any irrefutable way of showing that these phenomena, which seem initially to be so strongly dependent on bodily states, could have any distinct existence above and beyond them.

Now you all know that this, specifically, is the point of departure of our anthroposophical outlook, which is fully cognizant of the fact that commonly accepted modes of knowledge cannot fathom the depths of the psyche. Anthroposophy acknowledges that these ordinary modes of understanding are compelled to refer to an ‘unconscious’ realm. Basically it is not even necessary to consider the two thresholds of physical life on earth, birth and death—though we will do this in the next lecture1—but only the ordinary state of sleep occurring in human beings day after day, and then we will inevitably find that soul experiences, as ordinary modes of knowledge observe them, seem to testify to the following: there appears to be such a great dependency of all ordinary, conscious thinking, feeling and will on bodily states that it is perfectly legitimate to say that soul experiences rise up from these bodily states as if from an unconscious realm, and that during sleep a merely organic life becomes rampant. Thus it does not appear that thoughts, feelings and will impulses have an intrinsic existence, and really there is no more to be said about it. At most, the way dreams play into our awareness makes it seem as if they arose from sleep and are simply recalled when we awake; and this fact might lead us to conclude that the psyche in some way continues to be active during sleep. But all these things are rather nebulous. Basically, a serious, unprejudiced observer drawing on the ordinary modes of knowledge will be able to say only that the soul reveals phenomena that seem very much dependent on bodily states.

It is precisely because anthroposophical enquiry takes these capacities—or incapacities—of ordinary modes of knowledge seriously that it seeks at the same time to find other means of knowledge. And as you know, and as has often been described here, these other faculties of enquiry are those of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. These special modes of knowledge that first have to be developed as capacities from ordinary soul life by real effort can serve our endeavour to gain insight into things that are unavailable to ordinary faculties.

And now, without going back over ground I have often covered relating to the nature of the knowledge gained through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, I simply wish to draw on these three stages of knowledge to describe a very important aspect of the human subconscious or unconscious—that is, the realm of soul experience between falling asleep and waking up again. It is true that I have often described this from various perspectives, but today I’d like to do so again from a specific angle. First of all therefore I want to describe what Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition perceive in the state of sleep. Ordinary consciousness of course knows only that the daily awareness we have while awake, with its diverse contents, is dulled and then extinguished when we fall asleep, giving rise to an unconscious state. In waking life, using only ordinary faculties, we cannot initially say what our psyche does while we are asleep. What occurs then, and in fact what occurs whenever the intrinsic nature of soul reality is experienced, does not enter ordinary consciousness. For ordinary awareness darkness spreads over what the soul experiences in sleep. But you see, sleep begins at the point when the faculty of Imagination starts to brighten: the darkness starts to transform into a luminosity; and with this faculty of Imagination one can already start to gain insight into what the soul experiences in the initial stages of sleep. Drawing further on the faculties of Inspiration and Intuition we can penetrate further into these experiences. You should not picture this as gazing into sleep as if into a peep-box show; rather, through faculties of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, we experience states of soul that resemble sleep inasmuch as, within these states, we have a similar relationship to our body as we do during sleep. The difference is that we no longer undergo this experience without awareness but become fully aware of it. By virtue of experiencing things in full awareness while awake, in a way that resembles what happens during sleep, we then become able also to perceive what occurs with the human soul during sleep; and it becomes possible to describe this.

It is a common experience of course that in falling asleep our consciousness, as it grows hazy and dim, can be filled with dreams. This dream world cannot initially offer us much help at all in perceiving the nature of soul life. You see, what we can know about dreams with our ordinary waking faculties remains something very superficial; nor do dreams themselves appear in a way that would allow us to conclude anything specific from them unless we have first gained insight into sleep by other means. Once we have gained real understanding of sleeping states we will see that dreams tend to be misleading rather than offering illuminating guidance. In sleep the soul experiences things unconsciously that, since I am now drawing on faculties of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, I will describe to you as if the soul were experiencing them consciously. I will describe to you what the soul experiences between falling asleep and waking up as if they were conscious experiences. They are not consciously experienced; but what I will describe is nevertheless experienced by the soul, albeit without awareness. It exists as reality, working into us not just while we are asleep, but also above all working into our physical organism and acting there primarily while we are awake. When we wake up in the morning, and until we fall asleep again, we bear within us the echoes of our experiences during the night. Whereas all that we accomplish in full awareness is very important for outward civilization, what occurs within us ourselves is scarcely dependent on our conscious awareness, but instead very much dependent on what we unconsciously experience while we are asleep.

Once sensory perceptions have gradually faded and our will impulses cease to be active, we first experience an undifferentiated state of soul. This is a generalized, nebulous experience, informed by a clear sense of time but almost wholly devoid of a sense of space. This kind of experience can truly be compared with a sort of swimming, a moving around in a generalized, nebulous universal substance. Really one would have to coin new words to express what the soul experiences here. You can say that the soul experiences itself as a wave in a great ocean, though a wave that feels itself to be inwardly organized and surrounded everywhere by the rest of the ocean, and feels the effects of this ocean upon it as, during the day, we feel colour or tone impressions or states of warmth in a particular, differentiated way and think about them. Unlike waking experience however, when we feel ourselves to be a person enclosed in our skin and occupying a particular place, just after falling asleep we feel—I’m describing this as if it were conscious; it’s a reality but we have no consciousness of it—like a wave in a general ocean, moving hither and thither with no defined sense of spatial conditions. A general sense of time does remain though. But this experience is connected with another, of forsakenness, as if we were sinking into an abyss. It is true in fact that without preparation, if we experienced this first stage of sleep consciously, we would be exposed to much that we would find quite unendurable: to lose our sense of space almost entirely and live only in a generalized feeling of time, and to feel ourselves very undefined and incorporated into the generalized substance of an ocean. If we were conscious of this, we really would feel we were floating above an abyss. And this in turn is connected with something that surfaces in the soul as a huge need for support from the spirit—a huge need to be connected with a spiritual element. In this general ocean in which we swim, we have, you can say, lost all feeling of safety with which the waking world of material things endows us. And for this reason we feel, or rather would do if we were aware of it, a deep longing for connection with divine spirit. Really we experience this generalized sense of moving in an undifferentiated universal substance as being encompassed by divine spirit. Please be aware of the way I have to express this: to repeat myself, I’m describing things as if the soul experienced them consciously. It does not do so; but you can understand that, as you experience things consciously in daily life, certain things are simultaneously occurring in your organism that are simply realities. Let’s say you experience joy. Yes, as this joy fills you, your blood pulses differently to how it does when you are sad. You experience the joy or sadness in your awareness but not the pulsing of your blood. And yet this pulse is still a reality. In the same way, what I am describing here as a generalized swimming in an undifferentiated universal substance on the one hand and as an accompanying need for God on the other corresponds to a reality in the life of the soul. And the faculty of Imagination does nothing other than to raise this reality into awareness, just as in ordinary waking life we can raise into our awareness the differentiated way in which our blood pulses in us in states of either joy or sadness. When we wake up in the morning, our organism has in fact been refreshed because our soul had the experience during the night that I have described. The after-effect of what occurs in the soul separated from the body during sleep is of great significance the following day for our waking life. We would not be able to use our body properly the next day if we had not lifted ourselves out of our connection with external, physical things, in order to immerse ourselves in this undefined experience that I described. And in waking life, the fact that something like an inner need arises to relate the differentiated world around us to something general and universal, to relate the sensory world to the divine, is an after-effect of this first stage of sleep. We might ask why human beings are not content, in waking life, to look upon the world’s separate and diverse phenomena—why they are not content simply to pass through the world and take plants, animals and so forth as they come. Why do we begin to philosophize—and all do so, the most untutored people as well as the philosophers and, in passing, let’s note that the untutored do this far better than the philosophers—about how everything is interrelated? Why do we relate the isolated phenomenon before us to something universal, asking how it is rooted in a universal context and cosmos? We would not do this if we did not immerse ourselves during sleep in this undefined existence; nor would we develop any sense of the divine in our waking life if we did not pass through this sense of the divine during the first stage of our sleep. For our inner human experience we really owe sleep something of great significance.

As sleep continues, we enter other stages that can no longer be perceived by the faculty of Imagination but for which we now need that of Inspiration. The reality of soul experience that arises here is reflected in inspired consciousness in the same way as, say, our pulse is reflected in joy and sorrow; and initially this reveals a certain fragmentation of the soul into a very great number of different aspects, separate entities. The psyche really does fragment its life into separate parts, and this fragmentation is connected with something which, if it shines up into our awareness, appears as anxiety. After the soul has undergone what we can call a hovering over the abyss or a swimming in generalized, universal substance, accompanied by a longing for divine spirit, it succumbs to a certain anxiety, or rather to something that would be anxiety if we experienced it consciously. This is primarily due to the fact that the soul now not only swims in a general world substance but is as it were immersed in separate soul-spiritual beings who have their own autonomous existence and with whom the soul now forms a kind of affinity. It is now therefore no longer a unity, really, but has become a multiplicity. This multiple state, though, is experienced as anxiety; and is something we have to emerge from in a certain way.

During the era of earth evolution prior to the Mystery of Golgotha, mystery centres where the most diverse religions were practised issued instructions for humanity. Receiving these, individual souls gained experiences and ideas of the divine as befitted the age they lived in, in addition to the feelings arising in them through the outer world of the senses. In these ancient times, human beings still retained some sense during the day of the spiritual world shining into their awareness. The further back we go in humanity’s earthly evolution, the more we come to see that people had a kind of clairvoyance in very ancient times and then, later, fading echoes of this clairvoyance. In those times they saw in inner vision that a human being dwelt as a being of soul and spirit in a pre-birth existence before he began his life on earth. This was not just a view they had developed, not something they merely believed in, but instead was something they retained from a pre-birth existence.

Here’s a trivial illustration of what I mean: when someone inherits a certain ability—or even just wealth—from his parents, he can recognize how this ability or wealth has a direct effect on his life; he knows that this gift is not something he had to acquire or develop but that it came down to him from his forefathers. In the same way, in an earlier time, people knew that certain experiences in their soul did not originate in what their eyes had seen but were a kind of inheritance from a pre-earthly existence. They recognized this from the very nature of these soul experiences. It is important to keep reiterating that humankind has evolved in a way that has freed it from such experiences of the soul: our modern era is one when ordinary consciousness has no experiences that can be explained as inheritance from a pre-birth existence. Thus people of those ancient times more easily accepted guidance from their spiritual leaders in the mystery centres as to what they should feel about their inner spiritual experiences. The strength that flowed to them as impulses emanating from the mystery centres was one that they carried out of ordinary waking life into their sleep at night, and this enabled them to remain steadfast in face of the anxiety I have described, and to overcome it. This anxiety rises up out of the depths of sleep life; and the strength needed to transform this anxiety so as to bring back to waking life not a general weariness of the organism but a sense of fresh vigour was one that had first to be gathered the previous day during waking life. Our days and nights are interrelated. At a certain stage of sleep the night brings us anxiety; and into this must pour the strength we have acquired from a religious or religious-type experience the day before. When these two things—the remainder of the day before and the night’s primordial experience—unite, then a refreshing power streams into our organism during our waking life the next day.

It is no longer tenable for a real science of the spirit to speak only in general, abstract phrases of a universal, divine element governing the world. It is not a viable way forward to describe the superficial appearance of things, and say that universal guidance governs our sensory existence in general terms. Instead, spiritual science has to detail the actual, tangible ways in which this divine governance acts. If we are to be equal to the tasks facing us as humanity evolves, we can no longer just say that we feel refreshed after a good night’s sleep, and receive this as a gift from God. We would have to despair of all science itself if we seek a rigorous scientific method in relation to the sensory world but are unable to extend the rigour of this science to the supersensible realm, instead tackling this latter domain with general phrases only, such as that divine powers govern the universe. We can delve ever further into definite realities, showing how the anxiety I have referred to appears at this second stage of sleep, in a sense mingled with the strength drawn from religious feeling cultivated the previous day, which works on into the night, and how from this in turn is drawn a power that refreshes and reinvigorates the physical organism the following day. By such means we increasingly gain insight into how real spirit lives within physical reality; and this is quite different from the modes of knowledge accepted today which have only a physical content and general turns of phrase about some kind of spirit indwelling or overlighting this physical content. Human culture will go on declining, though, if it does not extend the rigour practised in observation of the outer world to the world of spirit too. And now we can see, when we use the faculty of Inspiration to study sleep as it passes from the first to the second stage, that our inner soul experience becomes quite different from what it was during the day.

Now, orthodox science can also show us, as long as we practise it rigorously, how we dwell in a soul element in the breathing process, in blood circulation, and in the nutritional process working through blood circulation. We can feel something occurring when we exert ourselves in movement and so forth. We can feel the soul and spirit’s connection with physical processes; and if we describe respiration, say, or blood circulation, we know that this is informed by soul experience during our waking life. Soul experience does not dwell in sensory perception during sleep, but is also a very specific kind of inner life. And in the same way that our inner life during waking hours can be related to respiration and blood circulation, so this nightly inner life is connected, as it turns out, with the inner elaboration of powers comparable to the vigour we acquire from breathing and blood circulation. It is an elaboration of powers that reflect the planetary motions in our solar system. Please note that I am not saying we dwell within planetary motions during sleep or are connected directly with them, but rather that we dwell in a kind of reflection or replica—if you like, a miniature of our planetary cosmos or its movements. As our life of soul inhabits blood circulation during the day, so at night our soul life inhabits a replica of the planetary movements of our solar system. During the day, we can say, the white and red blood corpuscles circulate in us, and we gain vigour from the cycle of respiration through which we breathe in and out. At night by contrast, we have to say that in our life of soul a replica of the movements of Mercury, of Venus and Jupiter circulate in us.

Thus from the moment we fall asleep to when we wake up, our soul life is in a sense a small planetary cosmos. From our personal, human existence during the day we pass into a cosmic existence at night. And the faculty of Inspiration can discover that the powers that kept our blood pulsing during the day can, following our sense of tiredness in the evening, retain their vitality during the night through their own momentum and persistence; but that in order for us to embark on new soul life the following day, we need the impetus received by experiencing a reflection of the planetary cosmos during the night. On awakening, the after-effect of what we experienced in these reflections of planetary movement at night is implanted or instilled in us. And this is what connects the cosmos with our individual life. If this resonance of our nightly experiences was not present in us when we wake up in the morning, the powers we need could not stream into us in the right way to endow us with proper awareness.

From this you can see that it is mistaken of some people to complain about chronic insomnia. Usually, this is major self-deception. But I don’t want to discuss this at present, since those subject to this illusion won’t believe you. They think they really aren’t asleep whereas in fact their sleep is just abnormal; they believe their soul is not outside their body and fails to experience planetary existence. In fact they are in a condition which, while dulled, nevertheless enables them to experience the same as anyone else does who sleeps well. But as I said, I don’t want to discuss this right now.

In general it is true to say that we pass through a cosmic life during the second stage of sleep. As I said a moment ago, in ancient times prior to the Mystery of Golgotha, mystery centres disseminated impulses that endowed people with the strength to overcome their anxiety, to resist fragmentation and to undergo what was necessary in a healthy way. This strength was one enabling them to enter into an experience of the planets rather than to go on dwelling in that of fragmentation. Their anxiety originated in the passage through fragmentation; and their experience of being amongst the planets was vouchsafed to them by the strength they brought with them from their experience of the previous day. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, and by directing their attention to the events of this Mystery, people are now able to gain the power that was previously given them through the ancient mysteries. Anyone who experiences the Mystery of Golgotha with the necessary inwardness of soul will find a strong guide in Christ at the moment when his soul enters the realm of anxiety during sleep. Thus in the Christ experience modern humankind has what a more ancient humanity drew from the mysteries.

Passing on from this stage of sleep I have just described, we then enter another, which, since I have dwelled longer on the planetary experience, I will describe to you now in a simpler way, hoping you will not take this amiss. Following an experience of the planets we enter into an experience of the fixed stars. Having dwelt in a reflection of the planetary movements during the second stage of sleep we now live in the constellations of the fixed stars, primarily in a kind of copy of the constellations of the fixed stars in the zodiac. This experience of the fixed star constellations of the zodiac is a very real one during the third stage of sleep. Here we also begin to experience a distinction between the sun as a planet and as a fixed star. Nowadays people do not understand why the sun was regarded in ancient astronomy both as a planet and also as a fixed star. In the second stage of sleep, we really do experience the sun as possessing planetary attributes. Here we become aware of its very distinctive position in relation to human experience on earth. Then we also become aware of the sun as it relates to the other constellations, thus the zodiac. In other words, we immerse ourselves in the cosmos in a still more intensive way than was true of the previous stage of sleep. We have an experience of the fixed stars, and arising from this we gain still deeper, more important impulses for our experiences the following day than is possible from the planetary experience alone. The planetary experience, if I may put it like this, fires our respiratory and circulatory processes. But the after-effect of the fixed star experience is what then, during the day, fires substance processes, ones imbued with the substance they require, so that they become ongoing processes of nutrition for the organism. Nutrients are impelled through the organism at apparently the most material level, though in fact this is reliant on powers higher than the mere movements of blood circulation. As physical human beings our soul and spirit are dependent on the way in which different substances circulate in us, and this is connected, if I may put it like this, with the highest heavens, and with the fact that at this third stage of sleep we feel after-images of the fixed star constellations within our soul-spiritual nature—just as, when awake, we can feel our stomach or lungs within us. Just as, during the day, our body is an inwardly mobile one filled with respiratory movements and circulatory movements, so in the night our soul, the substance of our soul, is something that has inner after-images of the planetary movements. And in the same way that we have the stomach, lungs and heart in us during the day, so at night we have the fixed star constellations which become our interior. In this third stage of sleep, therefore, we really become cosmic beings. This third stage of sleep is the deepest; and from it we gradually return to waking life. Why do we return? We would not do so if powers did not inform our soul and lead us back into our physical organism.

I have described to you in many different ways how we can address these powers, and today I wish to do so from the cosmic perspective. Becoming aware of the fixed star experience through the faculty of Intuition, we also become aware that the powers leading us back into our physical organism are moon powers—that is, the spiritual quality corresponding to what appears to us as the physical image of the moon. Naturally this is irrespective of whether it happens to be full moon or some other quarter, for, in spiritual terms, the moon can also shine through the earth. It does have something to do with the moon’s visible metamorphoses, but this would lead us into far more subtle distinctions, beyond the scope of today’s considerations. Generally one can say that it is the moon’s powers that lead us back again. You see, just as our soul is imbued by the planetary forces during sleep, and by the forces manifesting in the constellations of the fixed stars—is imbued by these powers and remains so since these things go on working in our waking life—so we are also always imbued by the spiritual powers in the cosmos corresponding to the physical moon. These moon forces lead us back. In reality, the process involved is extremely complex. The following is one way to express it. If you stretch a piece of elastic, this can reach a certain point and must then contract again. Similarly, in a sense we stretch the moon powers to a certain point, at which we must return. This is accomplished in the third stage of sleep. The moon forces, which are in general intimately connected with leading the soul and spirit into the physical world, lead us back through the second stage to the first again.

You see, all the powers of initiative we posses in our thinking and feeling during waking life are the after-effect of the fixed star experience during sleep. All the powers of thinking and feeling we bear in us as powers of synthesis, as the powers of wisdom and intelligence, are an after-effect of the planetary experience. But what streams into daily life from our nightly experience of the cosmos has to pass through the body. The fixed star experience quivers into our waking life via the transformation of nutrients. The nutrients in our body would not reach the brain in a way that enabled us to develop powers of initiative if this whole process were not fired by our nightly experience of the fixed stars. And we would be unable to think rationally if our blood circulation and breathing during the day were not informed by the after-effects of our planetary experiences.

Such things are always only drawn in rough outline, and generally true; in the case of people who suffer from severe insomnia, seemingly contradicting what I have described, we have to study and explain the associated abnormalities. If we properly grasp these truths there is no contradiction here. But such general truths allow us to explain fully each individual instance. We can only understand the real nature of the human being if we become fully aware that we do not live only within the skin of our physical body but also in the whole world. It is just that our life within the whole world is hidden from ordinary awareness. In waking life, this is greatly dulled. At most, in our general sensitivity to light, we can experience something of our involvement in all the life of the cosmos; and perhaps in other, albeit very dim feelings, we can sense our rootedness in the cosmos during waking life. Yet all such intimations fall silent so that we can elaborate our individual consciousness during the day, and so that we are not disturbed by what plays into our experience from the cosmos. During the night this is reversed, and then we experience the cosmos, albeit an after-image of cosmic experience. But it is a faithful reflection of it, as I have described—a really cosmic experience. And because we must pass through this cosmic life at night, our waking consciousness is dulled and dimmed in consequence.

As humanity continues to evolve, human beings will increasingly live their way into the cosmos. A time will come when we feel ourselves to dwell in sun, moon and stars in the same way that at present we are aware of being on earth. And then we will look back to earth from the cosmos in the same way that we now look out into the cosmos from the earth during waking life. But the kind of perception we then have will be a very different one.

Anyone who honestly desires to grasp the full scope of evolution must be aware that human consciousness is itself involved in evolution, and that the bodily consciousness that we possess at our current stage of development is a transitionary stage towards another form of consciousness—which in fact is nothing other than the soul reflection of realities we already experience every night. We need these because our waking life can be truly sustained only by their after-effect. Our further evolution will consist in this: the unconscious at work in us today will become our possession as conscious awareness also during normal life. For this to happen, though, people will need to find their way into spiritual science; for just as we have to go in a certain direction when we swim, so our ordinary consciousness today needs a direction in which to go. We cannot simply let ourselves be carried, as is the case when we practise ordinary cognition. We need a direction, and this can only be given by anthroposophic spiritual science since it reveals, to the extent necessary today, things already living in human beings, of which they are as yet unaware. They need to receive this into their awareness, for otherwise they will have no real experience of progressing in the cosmos.

Today I have described part of what is today discarded from ordinary knowledge and relegated to the concept of the ‘unconscious’. In my next lecture, similarly progressing from unconscious states we pass through in sleep, I will try to describe the human experiences that underlie birth and death.

LECTURE 2

STUTTGART, 14 OCTOBER 1922

LAST time2 I spoke to you of a realm of unconscious experience—that is, of things that remain hidden to ordinary consciousness in the form it exists today. I spoke about sleep, trying to describe to you in some detail what the human soul experiences between falling asleep and waking up again. Since what the soul experiences at night involves experiences in the world of spirit, as you will have seen, it may have been apparent to you that these human soul experiences are clear manifestations of the soul’s eternal, unfading existence. You know of course that insight into such supersensible experiences can be gained by means I have often described to you verbally here, as well as in my books Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, Occult Science and so forth. And you also know that the kind of knowledge available to ordinary human consciousness can be developed into faculties of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. Unconscious experiences that the soul has during sleep are in a sense illumined by the power acquired by the perceiving human soul if it develops these faculties. The same path of development, however, also enables us, to some degree, to study an aspect of unconscious human experience of which sleep is only a reflection or image—that aspect of experience from which the human soul departs when it enters physical earth existence at birth or, let us say, at conception, and which it enters again when it removes itself from physical existence on earth at death. Today I will offer some intimations at least of what underlies the events of birth or conception, and death, as far as the life of the human spirit and soul is concerned.

When we develop the faculty of imaginative cognition—which I will not describe again here since I have often done this, and also shown how it can be developed—the first thing we encounter is our physical life on earth lying spread out before us in a single great tableau. In ordinary physical consciousness our earthly life only exists in our soul as memory. What is this memory? It consists of pictures, albeit ones which by their very nature point to experiences we have undergone since birth, or since a point in time somewhat after our birth. Yet our ordinary mode of knowledge today cannot regard these pictures as developing an existence independent of the body. Modern scientists are quite correct in saying that these memory pictures are dependent on the physical body’s constitution. They are right to suggest that such memory is not present in early infancy but gradually develops along with the physical organism, and fades again too when our human physical organism approaches the evening of its days. Likewise, in post-mortem examinations in the case of certain diseases, they can study how memory loss is caused by certain disorders of the physical organism. Science has no final answers in this field as yet; but if we study the relevant results of physically-based research, we can see that it will eventually be possible to demonstrate that ordinary memory pictures are bound to the physical human organism. These memories of our life however—separate memory pictures we can look back on as we stand within the current of our experience—are not what is meant when we speak of how the faculty of Imagination perceives the great tableau of our life spread out before us, in so far as this life is soul-spiritual in nature. What we perceive here by imaginative cognition is very far from the abstract memory pictures stored in ordinary memory. The faculty of Imagination experiences instead an active, organic life that is not passive like memory pictures but has an inner vigour like the forces of growth at work in our organism when, in assimilating external substances as food, we transform them in a wonderful way into what we need to constitute our organism. What lives and works in us creatively in this process is different from what exists in a more passive way in mere memory pictures. Consider thoughts, which illumine our awareness. Certainly, we owe an infinite amount to the thinking capacity we develop in earthly existence, and only become human, really, and fully aware of our human dignity by virtue of this. Yet these are only fleeting images, bound to our physical organism as the flame is to the candle wax. When, by contrast, we use imaginative cognition to perceive the soul-spiritual life underlying physical existence on earth and see a wondrous tableau unfolding before us, there is nothing passive about this but it is inwardly alive. Spreading before us as qualities of soul and spirit, our direct vision of soul shows it to be, nevertheless, as real as an object of the outer world which our eyes perceive as red. In imaginative cognition we can say that we now not only possess thoughts that flare up in our awareness, but in fact become conscious of the very powers at work within our organism.

I was taken to task severely for once writing what was thought an absurd notion in my little book The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind and Humanity. There I stated that all the adult’s wisdom accomplishes less than the wisdom of the small child, though this wisdom lives in him unconsciously. Simply look, with the most scholarly and educated human knowledge, at a human brain or the whole human organism in the first years of childhood, and discern how the infant first inwardly configures himself. Even the work of the most brilliant sculptor pales into insignificance compared to the vigorous sculptural activity accomplished by the child’s powers of soul and spirit as he shapes and forms his brain. If we reflect on this and understand it we gain real insight into the wisdom that holds sway here: a vigorous wisdom rather than one stored away in the human head for explaining the world—a wisdom that contains an organism of soul-spiritual powers which hour by hour, really, continue to penetrate the child’s outer organism so as to make him fully human. Just try for a moment to hold in your mind a fleeting picture of what is at work there (in such majestic wisdom that our reason and intellectual wisdom is left far behind), of what is at work here in the child and must work for long years out of the unconscious. Think, for instance, of the wondrous edifice of human language incorporated into the child. Try to form an image—albeit only an abstract one—of this active wisdom up to the point when we become sufficiently conscious of ourselves to make use of our reason and intellect; at which point, one can say, our reason creates an ephemeral wisdom in imitation of that greater wisdom which has first formed us out of inmost universal potencies. But we must also realize that at the same time as we develop human intellectual reason in what I would call the upper stratum of our being, what worked as a wonderful sculptor in us during childhood and elaborated our organism continues to hold sway in the lower strata of our human nature. And this founding system, this organism of powers, is what imaginative perception surveys in a whole, unified tableau. Our imaginative faculty therefore does not see abstract memory pictures before it, which cannot be said to remain once the organism decays into its constituents since they are bound to the organism, but instead it perceives the system of powers that built up this organism and are therefore not bound to it; they are bound to it as little as the creative brilliance of the sculptor is bound to the material he shapes. For the sculptor’s material to become what it does, it must first be shaped by his configuring energy. For us to form the physical organism we possess in earth existence, these extra-telluric, supersensible powers must underlie our physical life as soul-spiritual organization.

This is the first perception we acquire when we rise to imaginative cognition.