Universal Spirituality and Human Physicality E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

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

Beschreibung

'Our contemporaries – who wish to keep to a narrow-minded and superficial outlook, are annoyed to find that spiritual science continually seeks the whole picture – that it has to create a bridge between the body and the soul, and truly explores how the psyche becomes corporeal and the body becomes psychological.' How do the soul and the spirit live in human physical bodies? In our materialistic age, in which the very existence of the metaphysical is widely rejected, such questions are rarely posed let alone addressed. In this exceptional series of lectures, Rudolf Steiner speaks in scientific detail about the connection of the subtle aspects of human nature – our soul and spirit – to our physical constitution. At the heart of this course are the well-loved 'Bridge' lectures, which appear in English for the first time in their wider context. Steiner discusses the solid, fluid, air and warmth bodies, and how these are connected with the various ethers, the 'I' and human blood. He goes on to describe how ideals and ideas impact the various aspects of the human constitution – how morality is a source of 'world creativity'– with moral thinking imbuing life into substance and will. Moral ideas have a positive effect, he says, whereas theoretical ones have a negative impact. In the realm of the moral, a new natural world comes into being, and thus the moral order and the natural order are intertwined. This volume also features Steiner's classic lecture on the Isis legend and its renewal today as divine wisdom – Sophia. Other themes include the mystery of Christ as the connection between the spiritual and physical sun; the permeation of the life of thought with will (love) and permeation of the life of will with thoughts (wisdom); the path to freedom and love and their importance in the universe; the metamorphosis of head and limbs through successive lives on earth; the threefold nature of the human form (head, thorax, limbs), the threefold nature of the soul (thinking, feeling, will) and the threefold nature of the spirit (waking, dreaming, sleeping).

Leseprobe

UNIVERSAL SPIRITUALITY AND HUMAN PHYSICALITYBRIDGING THE DIVIDE

The Search for the New Isis and the Divine Sophia

UNIVERSAL SPIRITUALITY AND HUMAN PHYSICALITYBRIDGING THE DIVIDE

The Search for the New Isis and the Divine Sophia

Sixteen lectures held in Dornach, Bern and Basel between 26 November and 26 December 1920

TRANSLATED BY MATTHEW BARTON INTRODUCTION BY MATTHEW BARTON

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS CW 202

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 Die Brücke zwischen der Weltgeistigkeit und dem Physischen des Menschen (volume 202 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on shorthand transcripts not reviewed by the speaker, and edited by Robert Friedenthal, Johann Waeger (lectures 1-12) and Ernst Weidmann (lectures 13-16). This authorized translation is based on the latest available edition (1993)

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 1993

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 446 9

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

CONTENTS

Introduction by Matthew Barton

LECTURE 1

DORNACH, 26 NOVEMBER 1920

Creation of the human form from the interplay of cosmic and earthly forces—head organism, limb organism, rhythmic organism—beauty, wisdom, vigour—metamorphosis of head and limbs through successive lives on earth—spiritual science strives for a unity between religion, art and science.

LECTURE 2

DORNACH, 27 NOVEMBER 1920

The threefold human being of body, soul and spirit in relation to cosmic evolution and the life of society—threefold nature of the human form (head, thorax, limbs)—threefold nature of the soul (thinking, feeling, will)—threefold nature of the spirit (waking, dreaming, sleeping): these correspond to beauty, wisdom, vigour; to spiritual/cultural life, rights life, economic life; and to freedom, equality and fraternity.

LECTURE 3

DORNACH, 28 NOVEMBER 1920

The luciferization of pre-Christian culture, and the ahrimanization of contemporary civilization: the means to overcome this by developing Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition—the cosmos in beauty, the planet in vigour, and the balance in wisdom—ahrimanic contamination of the world since the mid-nineteenth century—development of mechanical power.

LECTURE 4

DORNACH, 4 DECEMBER 1920

Hegel and Schopenhauer—world thought and world will—the thought element points us back to previous times, the will element forward into the future—the West: materialization of the thought—the East: spiritualization of the will—Hegel: idealization of the thought—Schopenhauer: materialization of the will—contrast between Hegel and Schopenhauer as riddle of European civilization—dying away of cosmic thought and dawning of human thought—the human being as creative element in the cosmos.

LECTURE 5

DORNACH, 5 DECEMBER 1920

Hegel and Schopenhauer—thought as metamorphosis of limb activity in the previous life—thought element as light in Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition—dying away of a previous world in thoughts, gleaming beauty—clairvoyant experience of the will as substance, darkness—dawning of the future in darkness—warmth side of the light spectrum (red) connected with the past, chemical side (blue) with the future.

LECTURE 6

DORNACH, 10 DECEMBER 1920

Connection between the natural order and the realm of morality and soul—chasm between science and religion—spiritual science as the bridge between physical and moral world-views—light as dying world of thoughts—life in light and weight—moralizing the physical by spiritualizing concepts—the Curve of Cassini.

LECTURE 7

DORNACH, 11 DECEMBER 1920

The natural order and moral world order, and their metamorphosis in birth and death through love and freedom—relationship between human soul-spirit nature and physical corporeality—being free means being able to die, loving means being able to live—one-sided understanding of the soul and spirit in the East, and of the physical body in the West—Adam Smith: the human being as economic mechanism with economic freedom.

LECTURE 8

DORNACH, 12 DECEMBER 1920

Modern historical research modelled on science—migration of souls through cultures as they pass through reincarnations—only a few souls from early Christian centuries amongst the European population—many former Native American souls in the population of western Europe—many souls from early Christian centuries in Asia—oriental souls from pre-Christian times in America—anthroposophy should replace anthropology.

LECTURE 9

BERN, 14 DECEMBER 1920

The progress of souls through successive lives on earth—thinking capacity, will organization, rhythmic system—old and new methods of initiation—the ancient Orient: consciousness of the breathing process—today: resting in thoughts—the nationality principle (Wilson).

LECTURE 10

DORNACH, 17 DECEMBER 1920

How do the soul and spirit live in our physical body?—body of fluids, body of air, body of warmth—the diverse levels (bodies) of the human being and the ether types—thought and tone—I and blood circulation—Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition—lack of a connecting bridge in modern perspectives between the physical body and the human soul and spirit.

LECTURE 11

DORNACH, 18 DECEMBER 1920

Morality as source of world creativity—the positive effect of moral ideas, negative effect of theoretical ones—substance and energy die away, moral thinking enlivens materiality and will power—the Copernican system devoid of spirit—Kepler, Newton—the mystery of Christ is the connection between the spiritual sun and the physical sun.

LECTURE 12

DORNACH, 19 DECEMBER 1920

The human being as observing, acting, feeling entity—connection between thought and will—pure thinking: permeating the life of thought with will—love: permeating the life of will with thoughts—appearance, force, wisdom—the path to freedom and love and their importance in the universe.

LECTURE 13

BASEL, 23 DECEMBER 1920

The Christmas mystery—the Christmas tree as symbol of the tree of paradise— what developed from the piety of the shepherds and the primordial, sacred star wisdom of the magi.

LECTURE 14

DORNACH, 24 DECEMBER 1920

The connection between the sun mystery and the Christ mystery—the Isis legend and its renewal today—the divine wisdom Sophia.

LECTURE 15

DORNACH, 25 DECEMBER 1920

The secrets of the starry heavens and the human interior—transformation of ancient modes of perception into our modern science and mechanical and mathematical world-view—a new form of cognition and a new will must arise in all areas of life—the need for a threefold social organism.

LECTURE 16

DORNACH, 26 DECEMBER 1920

Knowledge of the shepherds and of the magi—mathematical and mechanical views must once more unfold to become Imagination, and scientific knowledge of nature must be broadened through Inspiration—the birth of fully engaged endeavour as Christmas mood.

Notes

Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Colour Plates

INTRODUCTION

In one of many striking sentences in this volume, Steiner says that, ‘Materialism stands in complete incomprehension before the psyche’—a situation which, since he made it, nearly a hundred years of psychology have probably scarcely altered. While huge and valuable efforts have been devoted to understanding the human brain and its different ‘operating centres’, the basically mechanical paradigm with which Steiner took issue so strongly—that we are more or less just higher biological mechanisms—still prevails. Failing for centuries to bridge the Cartesian divide between the body and mind, scientists have assumed the latter to be only a complex resonance of the former. But according to Steiner, in another radical statement, ‘ ... the human being cannot be found within the sensory world’ at all; and this fact, far from limiting the scope of human endeavour, affirms us as truly moral and spiritual beings.

In a putatively purely physical world, morality and religion would ultimately have no meaning. And this poses a huge problem—almost a schizophrenia, albeit mostly unconscious—for modern culture. Generally speaking we wish to act morally, and believe in human kindness and goodness, yet at the same time largely subscribe to a worldview in which morality, if we are rigorously honest, has no place. The bridge Steiner offers in these lectures, between an originating world in which we are rooted as spiritual beings and a physical world in which we dwell as physical beings, is therefore at the same time a vital attempt to heal the split both within the individual and in culture and society. Yet he does not just vaguely outline these two realms. In specific detail he seeks to show how they engage and interact with each other within us, right into the workings of a muscle that obeys an intention of the mind or soul. Steiner's profound insights into the reality and action of immaterial realms within the material world open up a moving vista of the human spirit as the arena of both love and freedom—words whose reality and vivid meaning come suddenly into focus here.

This bridge-building of Steiner's encompasses a broad array of issues in modern life, in the fields of science, art, religion and education. To place the human being back into a living context of meaning, as he does here, is not only consoling however. As so often it faces us with challenges and responsibilities. Our life is ‘not irrelevant to the cosmos’, but equally, our own moral or immoral conduct ‘creates new worlds’. Yet another bridge rises before us, therefore: that between our thoughts, feelings and actions as responsible co-creators, and all future existence. We cannot without grave consequences continue to inhabit split parallel universes. We have to heal ourselves and the world we ourselves are continually creating by knowing, at the very least, that every thought and feeling, every moral or immoral action, comes to fruition in ways we too often fail to imagine.

Matthew Barton, May 2014

LECTURE 1

DORNACH, 26 NOVEMBER 1920

I have often spoken of how the whole process of human life comes to expression in the human form.1 By properly understanding the human head, we can discern how its specific configuration and shape is the outcome of former lives which each person underwent before he descended again to his present existence on earth. And if we likewise consider the nature of our limb system, naturally also including here this system's further spatial connection with the position of various inner organs, then we find something which, after undergoing certain metamorphoses, certain transformations, will eventually become the foundation for the head's development in a future that lies beyond death. At the same time, however, this points us to the human being's connection with the cosmos. We can say that the head configuration of a person who stands before us is a metamorphosis of his former limb configuration, but also that we possess the head in this form due to what we underwent in cosmic realms before we embarked on life on earth. The form of our head is largely due to Saturn, Sun and Moon stages of evolution,* while our limb system is, in turn, a point of departure for Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan evolutionary stages. The only intrinsically earthly part of us is embodied in the nature of our present rhythmic system. We can therefore say the following. The human head we see directly before us has evolved from three embodiments of our planet which preceded the Earth stage; and what is at work in our present limbs is the point of departure for subsequent planetary embodiments of the earth. As we pass through the life between death and a new birth, in a sense we repeat spiritually what we underwent during Saturn, Sun and Moon stages. We return our earthly organism to states it possessed during Saturn, Sun and Moon. And in the same way, the limb system developed on earth will become further integrated and reorganized into physical reality during Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan embodiments of the earth.

These things thus have both a human, earthly aspect and a cosmic aspect. We can therefore also see human head formation in terms of the human being's relationship with the cosmos. Yet what occurred during Saturn and Sun evolution lies at a somewhat further remove from our human mode of reflection, and so these conditions are less accessible to earthly judgement. By contrast, we can certainly evaluate what occurred during Old Moon evolution, since this is repeated in a sense in the realities unfolding in the interplay between our present earth and moon. This allows us to study how the interaction between earth and moon relates to the human head, and by considering these realities we discover certain secrets of human form and development, as I will now try to explain.

In a schematic picture of the human being standing on the earth we see that he is not located at its very centre but is distant from this centre by the length of the earth's radius. Taking this to represent the human head [see following drawing] we can say that the moon not only orbits the earth but also the human head. This is of course just a schematic way of representing it, not in proportion—which would certainly pose some problems!

Now let's assume that the moon is here, and is full, and thus radiates to us what is always regarded as its reflected light. The sunlight is therefore working upon us. When I say ‘us’ I am now referring to our head. New moon would be on the opposite side, here; and no light reaches us then, so that at this phase we are in a sense left to our own devices. Fewer demands are made on us by the outer stimulus of light, and at this period we are therefore freer to attend to our inner development. Now if we draw the first quarter of the moon here, and here the last—waxing and waning moon—in both cases we experience less stimulus from the light shining upon us at either of these phases than we do at full moon, yet a greater degree of stimulus than at new moon. Besides this, of course, the moon also passes through the zodiac as it describes this path around the earth; and this determines and, if you like, differentiates the particular quality of light in each case. You see, moonlight is different in quality depending on whether it emanates from a place in the heavens behind which Aries stands or from a part of the sky where Virgo is located. Moonlight acquires a distinctive quality by virtue of the particular zodiac figure it is passing in front of [Plate 1].*

Now let us picture what I have sketched here acting at a particular moment of human development, when the spiritual nucleus of the human being—having passed through the development it undergoes between death and a new birth—is, through certain processes, attaching itself firmly as embryo within the mother's womb. During this period, the moon works upon the embryo. Here, through the action of the moon initially, though naturally in interplay with other planetary bodies, the human head is configured in the mother's womb by the influence of the cosmos. The human head is certainly configured by the moon.

You will say, and rightly, that we cannot assume either that the light of the full moon will shine directly upon the eyes or nose of the embryo nor that the occiput—whose inner development must be left to itself and not to external influences—will face precisely towards new moon. There is no need for that, certainly; but in general we can say the full moon will be active upon the countenance at some point, and likewise that the new moon will be at work somewhere or other upon the occiput. The child in the womb has a particular position and orientation towards the cosmos. As the moon shines more or less obliquely upon the part of the embryo that is to become the countenance, so the child will be endowed with particular inner capacities in so far as these depend upon the head. He will in fact be differently endowed—physically endowed—when the bright moonlight shines towards his mouth, for instance, than when it shines towards his eyes. This relates to human endowments in so far as these depend on the cosmos. But the thing of prime importance for us here is that formation of the human embryo, whose development proceeds from the head, is subject to influences that emanate largely from the moon, since the head is the first part of the human being to form. And this development proceeds from the moon, and thus from the vestiges on our earth remaining over from the movement and influence of Old Moon, and in general from preceding embodiments of our earth's evolution. Here you see the cosmic connection between the human head and the outer world—how, during embryonic development we are integrated into cosmic realms that are largely informed by the moon and its activity. But this happens by the moon itself making the movement—that is, really orbiting the head. During our embryogenesis, the moon circles round us ten times. Thus the moon first passes in front of us and forms the human countenance, then leaves this in peace to develop and fill out while it circles behind us. After facial development has rested in this way, the moon reappears and refreshes it. It does this ten times. And during these ten moon months the human head is rhythmically formed by the cosmos. In this way we have ten periods of 28 days during which we dwell in the womb under the influence of cosmic powers mediated by the moon.

What is really happening here? Well, as being of spirit and soul we first approach from the cosmos the individual whom we have chosen to be our mother. And now the moon takes on the role of forming our head. If we remained in the womb for twelve months, twelve moon months, an entirely self-enclosed sphere would develop. But we do not—we stay there only ten months. And therefore something remains open in our development, which, after birth, is the focus of activity of everything that works in from the cosmos. Prior to birth, ten-twelfths of the cosmic powers work upon the development of our head while the remaining two-twelfths are left over for our development outside the womb. But this post-birth development already begins during the embryonic period. Apart from the cosmic powers other forces also work upon us, emanating largely from the earth itself. These do not influence our head but our limbs. If you imagine the earth here and this as a schematic depiction of the limbs, then the forces which play into these limbs, or continue on into them, are largely earthly, telluric ones [Plate 2].

Earth forces play into arms and hands, and in legs and feet. They play in there, reverberating inwards to become metabolism. What becomes metabolism within us, you see, is an interaction of forces in the outer world. When you move your arms or legs, this movement is not so straightforward but is connected with the earth's forces. Whenever you move your legs when walking you have to overcome the earth's gravity, and what arises there results from the interplay between forces within us and the forces of gravity.

Whereas what works within us in metabolism interacts with the chemical properties of earthly substance, the activity in our arms and legs enters into interaction with the forces of the earth. What develops here is connected with temporal relationships that are different from those inside the womb. In the womb we find ten times 28 days at work, thus ten moons and a certain number of days: a daily cycle that occurs 280 times. Here we are largely concerned with the cycle of the day. In the case of limb development, on the other hand, we are concerned with what we can regard as the year's cycle. This is also why we find that in the first period of development the human limbs form very rapidly but then come ever more slowly to completion. In fact, we really need 28 years to fully develop our limbs outside of the womb, although the last seven of these no longer show this development so visibly as up to the age of 21. It does however already commence in the womb.

Just as our head is connected with the past, and its development can now occur because the moon's relationship to the earth repeats this past evolution of Saturn, Sun and Moon, so our limbs as such are connected with the earth yet at the same time also with the way Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan conditions are being prepared during this earth stage. This is why we cannot really develop our head directly upon the earth. The earth is powerless in relation to the development of the human head. The head can only arise as a metamorphosis of the previous incarnation's limbs by virtue of the powers we bring with us from before birth, before conception, which are then protected in the womb from the external earth environment while the moon continues to work upon the head. And the limbs, subject to the influence of the earth, cannot come to full completion through earthly development. They cannot reach the head's perfection. During our earthly evolution we cannot yet accomplish what we will be able to during Venus evolution. Then we will jettison our head in the same way as the deer casts his antlers, and will develop a different head out of the rest of our organism. This Venusian condition in fact will be an enviable one! Yet it is also true to say that we can gain spiritual vision already of this future state. From our narrow and constricted earthly view of things, reality can appear grotesque, yet such realities surpass what we can initially grasp with our limited earthly reason. We have to give serious credence to the fact that our merely earthly modes of observation contain only a small portion of reality— and that in fact we really know next to nothing about the human being if we consider only earthly conditions.

We therefore have a cosmic being within us, initially outwardly developed largely in the womb, and then an earthly being that develops under the influence of earthly conditions: is configured and differentiated as the sun—seemingly—circles the earth and at the same time passes before the constellations of the zodiac. Thus we have two opposing states within us: a cosmic condition, a cosmic being, and a being of earth. The cosmic entelechy really acts in such a way as would endow us from the cosmos with a completely round head. The face is formed only by virtue of sunlight gazing upon the head through the moon, and then the foundation for the occiput forms when this sunlight averts its gaze. The spherical nature of the cosmic influence becomes differentiated. If the good moon did not exist to configure the head, we would be born as a wholly undifferentiated sphere. And then, on the other hand, because the mother of the child in the womb is on the earth, the earth's influence acts too. We do not merely develop a head in the embryo, because the earth is already exerting its influence as the head is being formed. If we were exposed only to the earth's influence, and to no cosmic one, we would develop as a pillar. You can say that we are enclosed or embedded between the earth's radial, pillar-like action, and the spherical action of the cosmos. Our development is indeed founded on both circle and radius.

The fact that we are not born as a pillar, with conjoined feet and hands, is because an annual cycle exists—because winter and summer exert their spiritual influence and point us to diverse cosmic connections between the earth and its surroundings. The differentiation arising between winter and summer is similar to that between full moon and new moon. Just as the fluctuation between full and new moon determines the difference between countenance and occiput, so the cosmic powers that come to expression in winter, summer, spring and autumn govern the configuration of our limbs—and thus we have two legs rather than being a single pillar. We are not entirely cosmic in our head in other words, but rather what we might describe as ‘cosmic modified by earth’. The earth's seasonal cycle is after all governed by the cosmos. And so we have a cosmic entity influenced by the earth and an earthly entity influenced by the cosmos. If our cosmic aspect were subject to no earthly influence we would become a sphere; and if our limbs were not also subject to a cosmic influence, we would be a pillar.

This interplay of cosmic and earthly comes to expression therefore in our earthly form. We cannot understand this human form without seeing in it the interplay between the earth and the cosmos. It is wonderful that we are an expression of the whole universe—of the world of stars that expresses itself in our whole form—and that we are at the same time a reflection or image of the forces that stream from the earth and also govern us. Try to imagine for a moment what our earthly being would be like without any cosmic influence. We do not bear this earthly being in us as such, but it acts in us, is as it were what underlies us and rays out of the earth's centre. What appears in our human strength, acting also in this strength as will, was in ancient times called by a word that we could translate as ‘vigour’ or ‘strength’ [see Plate 2]. What forms us out of the cosmos on the other hand, which we must picture as a sphere and which principally is responsible for developing our head but does not come to full expression since it is modified or moderated by the earth, used always to be called ‘beauty’ in ancient times. And so if we take a broader view, we find at work in us things whose value surpasses and encompasses both the physical and moral realms. The strength emanating from the earth that acts as energy in us is, you see, simultaneously the power of morality and the physical strength of our muscles. And the beauty shining around us, upon which our head is founded, appears in our head as the beauty of thoughts both in a physical and in a moral and ethical sense.

Between what we are as earthly being, modified by the cosmos, and what we are as cosmic being, modified by the earth, our trunk is situated. And what is this? Basically it is our rhythmic nature, which continually allows the cosmic to swing down towards the earthly and the earthly to swing up towards the cosmic. Within us we have a continual circulation that leads what lies in our limbs into the head via breathing and, likewise via breathing, leads what is in our head into the limbs: a continual, back-and-forth swell or tide between head and limbs. Our rhythmic system, the system of lungs and heart at work in blood circulation, mediates this tide. How can we regard blood circulation therefore? As something harnessed between the radial and the spherical, and configured by the zodiac and the planets. At work here is something that, emanating from the head, lives in a power which continually seeks to govern our blood in a circular way, and from the limbs acts continually as a force that seeks to govern the blood radially. In the interplay of these forces—the whole blood circulation's tendency to circularity and the forces continually tending towards linearity—our blood circulation arises in us, stimulated by breathing. This rhythmic system mediates both cosmic and earthly within us, thus weaving together the beauty of the cosmos and the strength of the earth. Seen soul-spintually, this interwoven union in our trunk or thorax has since ancient times been named ‘wisdom’.

The beauty of the cosmos projected inwards into the human being is the wisdom that lives in his thoughts. At the same time, also, the moral strength that derives from the vigour of the earth passes through our sensibility to become moral wisdom. Within us, earthly and cosmic wisdom meet in the rhythmic system. The human being is an expression of the whole cosmos, and if we wish to we can understand how we are configured. We can in a sense gaze into the secrets of the universe in so far as we are shaped by them. We can even see this—and we have previously looked at this from another perspective—in a reality of earthly life itself. We can regard the cosmic beauty working into us via the head as the woman's contribution, and the earthly vigour that arises in us as that of the man; and then we can say that the cosmic and terrestrial unite in the act of impregnation. We cannot actually grasp our human task on earth if we do not differentiate what is at work in this distinctive configuration. You see, what forms as the head does so by virtue of the fact that earthly forces cannot initially act upon us as we bring our pre-birth nature into the earthly realm, and because extra-telluric powers work to shape us in the womb through the moon's mediation. From the earth, vigour or strength act to form our limbs. This vigour cannot perfect the limb system before death. The forces in our limbs have to spiritualize themselves, acquire soul nature; and then, between death and a new birth, they are transformed as soul and spirit qualities, initially, into head development. On earth something acted upon them that is not capable of perfecting them because the head will only emerge from our human limbs once we reach the stage of Jupiter and Venus development. Thus what acts upon earth does not affect us between birth and death. What previously acted on Saturn, Sun and Moon has now become spiritual and must be developed spiritually before a new birth; and what passes through death must in turn be spiritualized. Then the past can embrace the future so that the human limb organism can in turn become head. You can say therefore that we die in order to acquire the capacity in the world of spirit to bring to expression a form, partly modified by earth, which can be expressed by virtue of the fact that we passed through stages of Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution. Here on earth our limb system, as earthly nature, can only be experienced inasmuch as it is elaborated by our rhythmic system. But we are preparing the future in our limbs. They cannot come to completion: we have to die, and return to the head which is initially prefigured in pre-earthly existence. Therefore our human form is connected with our repeated lives on earth. We are born physically as a being formed from Saturn, Sun and Moon conditions, and from the world of spirit we acquire the potential to express, in spherical form, what we underwent in these three stages of evolution. It is due to this, therefore, that we acquire a head on earth—which continually kills us however, since it is not earthly by nature.

These things that come to expression in our repeated human lives on earth have an intimate connection with cosmic evolution. It is not true to say that human beings cannot gain insight into such things as we have touched on today and will elaborate tomorrow and the day after. We can certainly gain insight into them. They must be investigated through spiritual science. But everyone who activates a healthy grasp of ideas and interconnections can understand them. It is a common refrain that people cannot directly evaluate what spiritual science states. But to say that the spiritual researcher presents me with things I cannot evaluate myself is like saying I can’t do differential calculus after I’ve taken my maths A-levels. Everyone can learn what spiritual science presents just as all can learn, in principle, to solve differential equations. In fact the latter is harder than the former. It is untrue to say one cannot gain insight into these things because of a lack of clairvoyant capacities. That's an excuse. Just as we don’t need to be clairvoyant to solve differential equations, so we don’t need to be clairvoyant to grasp these connections between the cosmos and the external world. All you need do is apply some healthy thinking to the problem. Yet people frequently say exactly the opposite: that they cannot tell what is correct when one person has one view of the world and another a different one. If we are consistent, tracing things carefully and considering everything that has been said, all is unambiguously clear. Beauty, wisdom and strength are indisputably clear. It is clear that our head develops spherically while the rest of our organism reveals the radially organized element of strength. These things cannot be hedged about with caveats but bring us to specific findings. Yet here lies a difficulty in disseminating spiritual science today. There are associations where lectures are given on anthroposophy or the threefold social order—which is of course a social outcome of spiritual science. People listen, then move on to the next lecture on a different subject, and then to something different again. But they hold back from developing any real power of resolve. They simply take spiritual science as something in a series of other things—but this won’t do for the science of the spirit. The other world-views that emerge today can go along with this—one is perhaps a bit better, the other a bit worse. People listen to all these different approaches and take a nibble here and a nibble there. But this won’t do for spiritual science: it goes to the heart of things, and resolve is required; and you really have to exert your will-power in a way that leads to the kind of inner decisiveness that does not sit on the fence and contemplate a whole series of things, but which seeks to go to the very foundations. You can’t go to the very foundations of things if you just oscillate between one world-view and another, taking a nibble where you feel like it. The science of the spirit requires energetic engagement, and this is why it runs counter to the Zeitgeist, and has to make headway against all the laziness and weakness of these times. It demands a strength and acuity of mind which is unwelcome today since it disrupts people's comfortable outlook.

In ancient times, certainly, people had instinctive views of these things, and the ancient texts which our scholars study but fail to understand reveal a wisdom in which these connections between the human being and the cosmos were implicit. Then this wisdom was lost and human beings were cast back into chaos. People must rescue themselves from this chaos by their own powers of will, consciously rediscovering their connection with the cosmos. We can rediscover it. Today I began by saying that people completely fail to understand the head if they do not regard it as an outcome of the cosmos; and nor do they understand the limbs if they cannot regard them as an outcome of earthly development. Between these two lies the chest, the rhythmic organism, which continually seeks to make what is spherical straight, and straight what is spherical. If you consider the blood vessels you find a linear tendency, one also that seeks to reshape the sphere into the straight line. The way the blood vessels develop is connected with the movements of the stars and so forth. Their shape is connected with the constellations, and the blood movement with planetary movements, as I have mentioned in the past in other contexts.2 But what happens in our human sensibility by absorbing such insights? For someone who absorbs them they become as self-evident as mathematical truths. Certainly, mathematical truths are transparent and self-evident, though not for every 15-year-old. Yet these things are as clear as crystal.

At the same time they have a decisive effect on our feelings. This wisdom gives rise to a sense of the divine. Only superficial knowledge of things can remain irreligious, whereas one that plumbs the depths cannot be. If we look once more upon our connection with the cosmos, above all finding in the beauty of the starry heavens enfolding us a reflection of spiritual immanence, then we can in turn infuse art with this. If we do, there lives in art not just external nature as we perceive it with our senses but—as I said in our opening lecture3—a union of science, art and religion which we seek here at the Goetheanum,4 and which can be achieved through a science of the spirit that goes to the very core of things.

Let us recall something said by the individual whose name the Goetheanum celebrates:5

Possessing science and art

We also have religion;

Possessing neither

We need religion.

In other words, we need its outer form! But we possess it inwardly if we nurture the foundations of science and art. And that is Goethe's ethos.

Possessing science and art, we also have religion. And this is why those who strive to find a unity of religion, art and science are truly entitled to call the institution where they work the ‘Goetheanum’. But here too, insight into what I have described is no task for our era's superficial delectation, which looks askance at everything and takes but a nibble of this or that. Spiritual science requires resolve. Resolve is necessary because this spirit seeks to penetrate the world's depths. And therefore this also has to be grasped from the depths of the human heart.

*Translator's note: periods of ancient evolution are indicated by initial capitals. Where our present earth, sun or moon are referred to, a small letter will be used.

*See Plate Section at end of book.

LECTURE 2

DORNACH, 27 NOVEMBER 1920

YESTERDAY, from a particular angle, we took another look at our connection as human beings with both the past and the future, basing this on what manifests in our external human form and its threefold organism as we have often described this: the head organism, which relates back to the past, the limb organism relating forward into the future and then also the rhythmic organism of lungs and heart, which really belongs to the present. In order to be able to round off this whole complex of facts tomorrow, let us now first consider the other aspect of our human nature—the more inward qualities of soul life.

Just as we can distinguish three parts of the human body, the head, the activity based on the rhythmic system, and the limb organism, so we can discern three aspects of inner life as well. These are thinking or picturing, feeling and will. A threefold division exists in the psyche as it does in the physical body. Here again, in this life of soul, we can enquire into our whole position vis-à-vis the cosmos. Let us first consider thinking or picturing. This life of thinking and thoughts is without doubt the most defined and delineated activity within us. On the one hand it leads us out into the cosmos in a sense, and on the other it also leads us into our inner experience. In our life of thinking we acquaint ourselves with phenomena throughout the cosmos. We absorb all that must be regarded as the originating source from which our head emerges and develops, as we saw yesterday. On the other hand, however, we bring our thoughts and ideas back into ourselves and retain them within us as memories, developing our inner life in accordance with these thoughts. This life of thinking and thoughts is primarily connected with our head: the head is its organ. This can already tell us that the destiny of our thinking is in a sense connected with that of the head. Relating back to the past as it does, and given that we lead the germinal, soul-spiritual form of our head development into physical existence at birth, we can see that we likewise bring our thinking with us from pre-birth existence. But we can also discover other objective reasons for regarding our life of thinking in this way: as stated, it is the most clearly defined and fully rounded aspect of our inner life. And it contains elements that basically have nothing at all to do with our individual nature here in the physical world.

If you consider the mathematical truths or perhaps also the truth of logic that we can discover within us, it is clear that we cannot verify such truths by empirical observation. Instead, we have to elaborate mathematical or geometrical truth from within. In us lies the truth of the theorem of Pythagoras, or of the fact that the three angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. We can illustrate such truths for ourselves by drawing corresponding figures, yet their proof is not demonstrated on the blackboard. Rather, through inner contemplation, we elaborate a mathematical strand in our thinking. There are many other strands that interweave themselves with our thinking, and we only know about such mathematical truths due to the fact that we are human beings. Even if thousands or millions of people were to tell us that the theorem of Pythagoras is untrue, as an individual we could discover its truth through our own inner processes. What causes this? It is due simply to the fact that we do not first develop our life of thinking in the physical realm—as we do our life of feeling and will—but that we already bring it with us into physical existence at birth. This is something we can certainly discern in the nature of the human being if we observe him carefully, and for the spiritual researcher it comes to expression in the following way. Let us assume that a person progresses to what has been called ‘imaginative’ thinking. This imaginative life of the psyche involves us dwelling in inner pictures that are, however, not mediated to us by our senses. In ordinary, external life, we perceive the objects around us by means of our sense organs. These convey images to us, through eyes and ears, and our thinking gathers these images together and encompasses them. Imaginative thinking is different. Here, if we have undergone the right preparation, we have images that arise without outer perception. These arise within us, you can say, but we do not cease thinking when we raise ourselves to imaginative soul life in the right way. We now think in inner images in the same way that we normally think about the images conveyed to us by our perception of outer objects. And yet the present moment is not the first thing we experience when we develop our capacity for imaginative thinking, when we continue to think and infuse our whole soul with thinking, but at the same time experience images rising within us. The first thing, rather, is that images of our pre-birth or pre-conception life arise before us. Our present life only surfaces in images at a later stage, after long practice, and then does not do so with anything like the same clarity and definition as our pre-birth or pre-conception life. This fact demonstrates unequivocally that in turning away from a perception of outer objects [and thus coming to live and think in images6] this thinking can initially only present us with images from the past. In the pictures surfacing in us in this way we have a cosmic reality from our life before birth. This, along with various other things, tells us that our life of thinking is what we first bring with us from our life prior to birth.

If we observe ourselves with a sufficiently open mind, we find that our feeling life only gradually develops in physical existence. We are unable to inform our feeling with anything as clearly defined as mathematics, as thoughts. All our feelings have to be developed from childhood on, and only from then on, in the life commencing with birth. The more we experience from birth onwards, the richer our life of feeling will be. Someone who has experienced great suffering and grave strokes of destiny will have a different feeling life from another who sails easily through life and just skates over the surface of experience. The blows of destiny we encounter prepare and deepen our life of feeling. A mathematical concept penetrates our thinking very suddenly whereas a feeling is something that we cannot elaborate so fast. A feeling forms gradually, and is something that grows with us, participating in the whole process of our growth within physical life.

Likewise, our life of will does not connect us with the cosmos very much to begin with. It pulses up out of us from unknown depths of our soul. In our actions, though, we do bear will life into the cosmos. But consider the difference between the connection we have to the cosmos in thinking and the different kind of connection to it in our will. Our thinking connects us with the cosmos when, say, we go out on a bright, starry night and in a sense have the cosmos before us as picture, and encompass it in our thoughts. We can also feel it. How small by contrast are the few deeds we release from the element of our will and unite with the cosmos! This tells us that the will element is rooted in us in a quite different way from the element of thinking. Just compare the will element with the element of thinking, and that of feeling. Once we have awoken sufficiently to the element of thinking it connects us immediately with the whole cosmos. The element of feeling lives its way into the cosmos more gradually, doing so as slowly or as quickly as is governed by our destiny and unfolding life between birth and death. Yet, albeit less intensively and extensively than thinking, it does still connect us with the cosmos. To be connected with the cosmos in thinking is something really universally human. Imagine three people who go out into the bright, starry night. Standing at a particular place together, all three will have the same picture of the cosmos, will all see the same thing. And when they have learned to encompass this picture in thoughts, all three will also be able to have the same, immediate view of it in their minds.

Feeling is different. Let us imagine someone whose life passes in a fairly unthinking and superficial way, who has only rarely looked up at night to the starry sky. Let us compare what such a person feels when he goes out one night and sees the star-strewn heavens with the different quality of feeling in someone who, one evening, goes for a long walk with someone he hardly knew until then. Imagine that during this walk they come to speak of profound matters of life and destiny, that their discussion lasts many hours, all night until the stars begin to fade. Let us imagine that the friends become close at a moment when the starry heavens are shining with wonderful brilliance, and that after many years, after this friendship has passed through all kinds of stages and developments, this person again looks up to the star-strewn sky. Imagine the feelings that may rise up in him then as a lingering resonance from his experience of the friendship. In this way feelings do indeed find their way out into the cosmos, yet the extent to which they do so is governed by the kind of life a person has led since birth. Our thoughts go out into the cosmos in thinking simply because we are born as human beings and have brought soul and spirit with us into physical existence at birth. Our inner life of soul goes out into the cosmos through feeling, but the extent to which it does so is governed by what has occurred in this physical life itself.

If you try to think through to the end what I’ve been saying here, you will find that our life of thinking is introduced into physical existence at birth, that our feeling life is something we develop between birth and death, but that very few will impulses in our actions emanate from us into the cosmos. How little of what flows from our will impulses is actually incorporated into the cosmos! Here, therefore, we find something that appears primitive compared to our feelings, and still more so by contrast to our thinking faculties. The spiritual researcher can discover the reasons for this when he raises himself to Intuition, where he reaches the level of these will impulses. The moment he ascends through his inner development to Intuition, where all else in his soul life is extinguished, he finds something very remarkable before him, something other than his current life of actions and deeds. As the first experience at the level of Intuition, he discovers not his actions themselves but everything implicit in his actions in the form of destiny, germinal destiny for the future. What appears here to the faculty of Intuition as first impression is informed by the future: everything that we can become due to our having performed a sum of actions—a sum we cannot see ourselves but whose germinal forms appear before our soul. This shows us that our life of will is what we carry with us through death as a pointer towards the future. Schematically, therefore, we can say that in the physical domain of the body we have our head system, our rhythmic system of lungs and heart, and our limb system. Our head shows us what we bring with us from the past; our rhythmic system points us to the present, our current life between birth and death; our limb system points towards the future, and from it our head will again develop in a subsequent life. In the realm of the psyche, we have the faculty of thinking, pointing us back to the past, our feeling life, pointing us to the present, and our will life pointing us towards the future.

Yesterday we saw that the human head is connected with the periphery, with the whole cosmos, whereas our limb system is connected with the earth. The same is true of soul faculties. Our thinking is connected with the cosmos, our will with the earth, and our rhythmic life—the element of feeling that mediates between them—balances between the two, between the heavenly and the earthly. We have also suggested that in ancient times of primeval, instinctive wisdom, what emanates from the earth and works into the human limbs—only somewhat modified by the cosmos and its effect—was referred to as ‘vigour’; that what comes to expression in us as the head organism, by nature cosmic yet attenuated by the earthly, has been called ‘beauty’ since ancient times; and that the balancing element between both of these, living in our rhythmic system, was named ‘wisdom’. These same terms were used also in reference to soul faculties: thinking in ancient mystery wisdom was conceived as being permeated by the principle of beauty, feeling was regarded as being imbued with wisdom, and will life was thought to be penetrated by vigour.

Now we can turn to the human being's spiritual nature in the same way that we considered the two realms of physical body and soul. Here too we find a threefold spirit nature in us, though in this case we must speak of three ‘states’. We can first distinguish here between what the spirit reveals to us in, if you like, its full illumination, when we are fully awake, contrasted with the state of dreaming, halfway between waking and sleep, and then also with the state of deep, unconscious sleep when the spirit is quite unaware of earthly life. Here we have the threefold spirit: in waking, dreaming and sleeping.

Consider waking life. To unprejudiced observation it is perfectly clear that this waking life represents our most mature and developed state, and is what we bring with us into physical existence at birth. While this state does not appear immediately, it is nevertheless the most perfect condition, the most mature, and is given us by virtue of us being born as human beings. We can therefore say that waking life points us to the past. Dream life on the other hand—well, it may seem strange initially to say that dream life points to the present, and yet this is so. At a certain stage of life you can see very clearly how dream life relates to the present. The young child, the infant, is still wrapped in dream and has not yet developed a fully waking life. Waking life only begins for the child when the past starts to filter into him. But the present exists in dream life. Our dream life increasingly incorporates a waking state because our pre-birth nature, our past, finds it way into the present. The present as such only teaches us to dream. And sleep is the aspect of us that does not as yet belong to the present, and is related to our life of will—the least perfect part of us, which must still be perfected. It is the part within us that prefigures the future, that points towards the future. Thus our spirit belongs to all three, to past, present and future: to the past in waking life, to the present in dream life and to the future in deep sleep.

Past

Present

Future

Physical body

Head organism

Rhythmic organism

Limb organism

Soul

Thinking

Feeling

Will

Spirit

Waking life

Dream life

Sleep

Beauty

Wisdom

Vigour

So we can connect these three conditions, these three different levels of the human being, with the past, present and future of the cosmos. We did this yesterday already in relation to the physical body. We saw that the whole of our head development is connected with former conditions through which our earth passed during Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution. Our limb system shows us that something is developing in us that cannot yet come to full completion on the earth. You were amused when I spoke of Venus evolution during which the human being will come to be configured in a way quite different from our current condition on the earth. I said that on Venus the human being will lose his head midway through the course of his life, and that this will be replaced by another that grows from his limb organism. As I suggested, this might be very welcome for some people nowadays, but is sadly not yet possible. Today we have to make do with our head as it is, for although our limb organism has the tendency to become head it can only actually do so after life on earth, after passing between death and a new life. But this limb organism points us towards what we will physically become as a result of Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan evolution. And so our head points us back to Saturn, Sun and Moon, our limb organism points us forward into the future towards Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan, while our rhythmic system points us to our present condition during Earth evolution.