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In the present social movement there is a great deal of talk about social institutions, but very little talk about social and antisocial human beings. Very little regard is paid to the “social question” that arises when one considers that institutions in a community take their social or antisocial stamp from the people who run them. Socialist thinkers expect to see in the community's control of the means of production something that will satisfy the demands of a wide range of people. They take for granted that, under communal control of the economy, human relations will necessarily assume a social form as well. They have seen that the economic system along the lines of private capitalism has led to antisocial conditions. They believe that when this industrial system has disappeared, the antisocial tendencies at work within it will also necessarily come to an end. Undoubtedly, along with the modern private capitalist form of industrial economy there have arisen social evils — evils that embrace the widest range of social life; but is this in any way a proof that they are a necessary consequence of this industrial system? An industrial system can, in and of itself, do nothing beyond putting men into life situations that enable them to produce goods for themselves or for others in a more or less efficient manner. The modern industrial system has brought the means of production under the power of individual persons or groups. The achievements of technology were such that the best use could be made of them by a concentration of industrial and economic power. So long as this power is employed in the one field — the production of goods alone — its social effect is essentially different from what it is when this power oversteps its bounds and trespasses into the fields of law or culture. It is this trespassing into the other fields that, in the course of the last few centuries, has led to the social evils that the modern social movement is striving to abolish. He who possesses the means of production acquires economic power over others. This economic power has resulted in the capitalist allying himself with the powers of government, whereby he is able to procure other advantages in society, opposing those who were economically dependent on him — advantages which, even in a democratically constituted state, are in practice of a legal nature. This economic domination has led to a similar monopolization of the cultural life by those who held economic power. The simplest thing would seem to be to get rid of this economic predominance of individuals, and thereby do away with their dominance in the spheres of rights and spiritual culture as well. One arrives at this “simplicity” of social thought when one fails to remember that the combination of technological and economic activity afforded by modern life necessitates allowing the most fruitful possible development of individual initiative and personal talent within the business community. The form production must take under modern conditions makes this a necessity. The individual cannot bring his abilities to bear in business if in his work and decision-making he is tied down to the will of the community. However dazzling is the thought of the individual producing not for himself but collectively for society, its justice within certain bounds should not hinder one from also recognizing the other truth — collectively, society is incapable of giving birth to economic schemes that can be realized through individuals in the most desirable way. Really practical thought, therefore, will not look to find the cure for social ills in a reshaping of economic life that would substitute communal production for private management of the means of production. Rather, the endeavor should be to forestall evils that may spring up along with management by individual initiative and personal talent, without impairing this management itself. This is possible only if neither the legal relationship among those engaged in industry, nor that which the spiritual-cultural sphere must contribute, are influenced by the interests of industrial and economic life. It cannot be said that those who manage the business of economic life can, while occupied by economic interests, preserve sound judgment on legal affairs and that, because their experience and work have made them well acquainted with the requirements of economic life, they will therefore be best able to settle legal matters that may arise within the workings of the economy. To hold such an opinion is to overlook the fact that a sphere of life calls forth interests arising only within that sphere. Out of the economic sphere one can develop only economic interests. If one is called out of this sphere to produce legal judgements as well, then these will merely be economic interests in disguise. Genuine political interests can only grow upon the field of political life, where the only consideration will be what are the rights of a matter. And if people proceed from such considerations to frame legal regulations, then the law thus made will have an effect upon economic life. It will then be unnecessary to place restrictions on the individual in respect to acquiring economic power; for such economic power will only result in his rendering economic services proportionate to his abilities — not in his using it to obtain special rights and privileges in social life. An obvious objection is that political and legal questions do after all arise in people's dealing with one another in business, so it is quite impossible to conceive of them as something distinct from economic life. Theoretically this is right enough, but it does not necessarily follow that in practice economic interests should be paramount in determining these legal relations. The manager who directs a business must necessarily have a legal relationship to manual workers in the same business; but this does not mean that he, as a business manager, is to have a say in determining what that relationship is to be. Yet he will have a say in it, and he will throw his economic predominance into the scales if economic cooperation and legal administration are conjoined. Only when laws are made in a field where business considerations cannot in any way come into question, and where business cannot gain any power over this legal system, will the two be able to work together in such a way that our sense of justice will not be violated, nor business acumen be turned into a curse instead of a blessing for the whole community. When the economically powerful are in a position to use that power to wrest legal privileges for themselves, among the economically weak will grow a corresponding opposition to these privileges. As soon as it has become strong enough, such opposition will lead to revolutionary disturbances. If the existence of a separate political and legal province makes it impossible for such privileges to arise, then disturbances of this sort cannot occur. What this special legal province does is to give constant orderly scope to those forces which, in its absence, accumulate until at last they vent themselves violently. Whoever wants to avoid revolutions should learn to establish a social order that shall accomplish in the steady flow of time what will otherwise try to realize itself in one historical moment. It will be said that the immediate concern of the modern social movement is not legal relations, but rather the removal of economic inequalities. One must reply to such an objection that our conscious thoughts are not always the true expression of the real demands stirring within us. Our conscious thoughts are the outcome of immediate experience; but the demands themselves originate in far deeper strata that are not experienced immediately. And if one aims at bringing about conditions that can satisfy these demands, one must attempt to penetrate to these deeper strata. A consideration of the relations that have come about in modern times between industrial economy and law shows that the legal sphere has become dependent upon the economic. If one were to try superficially, by means of a one-sided alteration in the forms of economic life, to abolish those economic inequalities that the law's dependence on the economy has brought about, then in a very short while similar inequalities would inevitably result as long as the new economic order were again allowed to build up the system of rights out of itself. One will never really touch what is working its way up through the social movement to the surface of modern life until one brings about social conditions in which, alongside the claims and interests of the economic life, those of politics and law can be realized and satisfied upon their own independent basis. It is in a similar manner, again, that one must approach the question of the cultural life and its bearings on that of law and the economy. In the last few centuries the cultural life has been cultivated under conditions that allowed it to exercise only the smallest independent influence upon politics or the economy. One of the most important aspects of culture, education, was shaped by governmental interests. People were trained and taught according to the requirements of the state. And the power of the state was reinforced by economic power. If anyone were to develop his or her human capacities within the existing educational institutions, this depended directly on his or her economic station in life. Accordingly, the spiritual forces that were able to find scope within the political or economic spheres bore the stamp of these economic factors. Free cultural life had to forego any attempt to make itself useful within the political state. And it could influence the economic sphere only to the extent that economics had remained independent of state control. For a vibrant economy demands that competent people be given full scope; economic matters cannot be left to just anyone whom circumstances may have left in control. If, however, the typical socialist program were to be carried out, and economic life were to be administered on the model of politics and the law, the cultivation of the free spiritual life would be forced to withdraw from the public sector altogether. However, a cultural life that has to develop apart from civil and economic realities loses touch with real life. It is forced to draw its substance from sources not vitally linked to those realities. Over the course of time the cultural life makes of this substance a sort of animated abstraction that runs alongside real events without having any concrete effect upon them. In this way, two different currents arise within cultural life. One of them draws its waters from political rights and economics, and is occupied with their daily requirements, trying to devise systems to meet these requirements — without, however, penetrating to the needs of our spiritual nature. All it does is devise external systems and harness men into them, ignoring what their inner nature has to say about it. The other current of cultural life proceeds from the inner striving for knowledge and from ideals of the will. These it shapes to suit our inner nature. However, such knowledge is derived from contemplation: it is not the precipitate of practical experience. These ideals have arisen from concepts of what is true and good and beautiful, but they do not have the strength to shape the conduct of life. Consider what concepts, what religious ideals, what artistic interests, form the inner life of the shopkeeper, the manufacturer, or the government official, outside and apart from his daily practical life; and then consider what ideas are contained in those activities that find expression in his bookkeeping, or for which he is trained by the education that prepared him for his profession. A gulf lies between these two currents of cultural life. The gulf has grown all the wider in recent years because the kind of thinking that is quite justified in natural science has become the measure of our relationship to reality as a whole. This way of thinking seeks to understand the lawfulness of phenomena that lie beyond human activity and human influence, so that the human being is a mere spectator of what he comprehends in a scheme of natural law. And although he sets these laws of nature into motion in technology, he himself does no more than allow the forces that lie outside his own being and nature to be active. The knowledge he employs in this kind of activity has a character that is quite different from his own nature. It reveals to him nothing of what lies in cosmic processes with which human nature is interwoven. For such knowledge as this he needs a world view that unites both the human world and the world outside him. Anthroposophy strives for such knowledge. While fully recognizing all that scientific thinking means for the progress of modern humanity, anthroposophy sees that the scientific method framed for the study of nature is able to convey only that which comprehends the outer human being. It also recognizes the essential nature of the religious world views, but is aware that in the modern age these concepts of the world have become an internal concern of the soul, and not something applied in any way to the transformation of external life, which runs on separately alongside. In order to arrive at its insights, spiritual science makes demands to which people are still little inclined, because in the last few centuries they have become used to carrying on their outer and inner lives as two separate and distinct existences. Thus the incredulity that meets every endeavor to bring spiritual insight to bear upon social questions. People remember past attempts that were born of a spirit estranged from life. When there is any talk of such things, they recall St. Simon, Fourier and others. The opinion is justified insofar as such ideas stem not from living experience, but rather from an artificial thought-construct. Thus they conclude that spiritual thinking is generally unable to produce ideas that can be realized in practical life. From this general theory come the various views that in their modern form are all more or less attributable to Marx. Those who hold them have no use for ideas as active agents in bringing about satisfactory social conditions. Rather, they maintain that the evolution of economic realities is tending inevitably toward a goal from which such conditions will result. They are inclined to let practical life more or less take its own course because in actual practice ideas are powerless. They have lost faith in the strength of spiritual life. They do not believe that there can be any kind of spiritual life able to overcome the remoteness and unreality that has characterized it during the last few centuries. It is a kind of spiritual life such as this, nevertheless, that is the goal of anthroposophy. The sources it would draw from are the sources of reality itself. Those forces that hold sway in our innermost being are the same forces that are at work in external reality. Scientific thinking cannot penetrate down to these forces when it merely elaborates natural law intellectually out of external experience. Yet the world views that are founded on a more religious basis are no longer in touch with these forces either. They accept the traditions that have been handed down without penetrating to their fountainhead in the depths of human nature. The spiritual science of anthroposophy, however, seeks to penetrate to this fountainhead. It develops epistemological methods that lead down into those regions of our inner nature where the processes external to us find their continuation within human nature itself. The insights of spiritual science represent a reality actually experienced within our inmost self. These insights shape themselves into ideas that are not mere mental constructs, but rather something saturated with the forces of reality. Hence such ideas are able to carry within them the force of reality when they offer themselves as guides to social action. One can well understand that, at first, a spiritual science such as this should meet with mistrust. Such mistrust will not last when people come to recognize the essential difference that exists between this spiritual science and modern natural science, which is assumed today to be the only kind of science possible. If one can struggle through to a recognition of the difference, then one will cease to believe that one must avoid social ideas when one is intent upon the practical work of shaping social reality. One will begin to see, instead, that practical social ideas can be had only from a spiritual life that can find its way to the roots of human nature. One will see clearly that in modern times social events have fallen into disorder because people have tried to master them with thoughts from which reality constantly struggled free. Spiritual insight that penetrates to the essence of human-nature finds there motives for action that are immediately good in the ethical sense as well. The impulse toward evil arises in us only because in our thoughts and feelings we silence the depths of our own nature. Accordingly, social ideas that are arrived at through the sort of spiritual concepts indicated here must, by their very nature, he ethical ideas as well. Since they are drawn not from thought alone, but from life, they possess the strength to take hold of the will and to live on in action. In true spiritual insight, social thought and ethical thought become one. And the life that grows out of such spiritual insight is intimately linked with every form of activity in human life — even in our practical dealings with the most insignificant matters. Thus as a consequence of social awareness, ethical impulse and practical conduct become so closely interwoven that they form a unity. This kind of spirituality can thrive, however, only when its growth is completely independent of all authority except that derived directly from cultural life itself. Political and legal measures for the nurturance of the spirit sap the strength of cultural life, while a cultural life that is left entirely to its own inherent interests and impulses will strengthen every aspect of social life. It is frequently objected that humanity would need to be completely transformed before one could found social behavior upon ethical impulses. Such an objection does not take into account that human ethical impulses wither away if they are not allowed to arise within a free cultural life, but are instead forced to take the particular turn that the political-legal structure of society finds necessary for carrying on work in the spheres it has previously mapped out. A person brought up and educated within a free cultural life will certainly, through his very initiative, bring along into his calling much of the stamp of his or her own personality. Such a person will not allow himself to be fitted into the social works like a cog into a machine. In the end, however, what he brings into it will not disturb the harmony of the whole, but rather increase it. What goes on in each particular part of the communal life will be the outcome of what lives in the spirits of the people at work there. People whose souls breathe the atmosphere created by a spirit such as this will vitalize the institutions needed for practical economic purposes in such a way that social needs, too, will be satisfied. Institutions devised to satisfy these social needs will never work so long as people feel their inner nature to be out of harmony with their outward occupation. For institutions of themselves cannot work socially. To work socially requires socially attuned human beings working within an ordered legal system created by a living interest in this legal system, and with an economic life that produces in the most efficient fashion the goods required for actual needs. If the life of culture is a free one, evolved only from those impulses that reside within itself, then legal institutions will thrive to the degree that people are educated intelligently in the ordering of their legal relations and rights; the basis of this intelligence must be a living experience of the spirit. Then economic life will be fruitful as well to the degree that cultivation of the spirit has developed new capacities within us. Every institution that has arisen within communal life had its origin in the will that shaped it; the life of the spirit has contributed to its growth. Only when life becomes complicated, as it has under modern technical methods of production, does the will that dwells in thought lose touch with social reality. The latter then pursues its own course mechanically. We withdraw in spirit, and seek in some remote corner the spiritual substance needed to satisfy our souls. It is this mechanical course of events, over which the individual will had no control, that gave rise to conditions which the modern social movement aims at changing. It is because the spirit that is at work within the legal sphere and the economy is no longer one through which the individual spiritual life can flow, that the individual sees himself in a social order which gives him, as an individual, no legal or economic scope for self-development. People who do not see through this will always object to viewing the social organism as consisting of three systems, each requiring its own distinct basis — cultural life, political institutions, and the economy. They will protest that such a differentiation will destroy the necessary unity of communal life. To this one must reply that right now this unity is destroying itself in the effort to maintain itself intact. Legal institutions based upon economic power actually work to undermine that economic power, because it is felt by those economically inferior to be a foreign body within the social organism. And when the spirit that reigns within legal and economic life tries to regulate the activity of the organism as a whole, it condemns the living spirit (which works its way up from the depths of each individual soul) to powerlessness in the face of practical life. If, however, the legal system grows up on independent ground out of the consciousness of rights, and if the will of the individual dwelling in the spirit is developed in a free cultural life, then the legal system, strength of spirit and economic activity work together as a unity. They will be able to do so when they can develop, each according to its own proper nature, in distinct fields of life. It is just in separation that they will turn to unity; when an artificial unity is imposed, they become estranged. Many socialist thinkers will thus dismiss such a view: “It is impossible to bring about satisfactory conditions through this organic formation of society. It can be done only through a suitable economic organization.” They overlook the fact that those who work in their economic organization are endowed with wills. If one tells them this, they will smile, for they regard it as self-evident. Yet their thoughts are busy constructing a social edifice in which this “self-evident fact” is ignored. Their economic organization is to be controlled by a communal will. However, this must after all be the result of the individual wills of the people united in the organization. These individual wills can never take effect if the communal will is derived entirely from the idea of economic organization. Individual wills can expand unfettered if, alongside the economic sphere, there is a legal sphere where the standard is set, not by any economic point of view, but only by the consciousness of rights, and if, alongside both the economic and legal spheres, a free cultural life can find place, following only the impulses of the spirit. Then we shall not have a social order running like clockwork, in which individual wills could never find a lasting place. Then human beings will find it possible to give their wills a social bent and to bring them constantly to bear on the shaping of social circumstances. Under the free cultural life the individual will shall become social. When legal institutions are self-subsisting, these socially attuned individual wills shall yield a communal will that works justly. The individual wills, socially oriented and organized by the independent legal system, will exert themselves within the economic system, producing and distributing goods as social needs demand. Most people today still lack faith in the possibility of establishing a social order based on individual wills. They have no faith in it because such a faith cannot come from a cultural life that has developed in dependence on the state and the economy. The kind of spirit that does not develop in freedom out of the life of the spirit itself but rather out of an external organization simply does not know what are the spirit's potentials. It looks about for something to guide and manage it, not knowing how the spirit guides and manages itself if it can but draw its strength from its own sources. It would like to have a board of management for the spirit — a branch of the economic and legal organizations — totally disregarding the fact that the economy and the legal system can thrive only when permeated with the spirit that is self-subsistent. It is not good will that is needed in order to transform the social order; what is needed is a courage to oppose this lack of faith in the spirit's power. A truly spiritual view can inspire this courage, for such a spiritual view feels able to bring forth ideas that serve not only the inner needs of the soul, but also the needs of outer, practical life. The will to enter the depths of the spirit can become a will so strong as to suffuse every deed that one performs. When one speaks of a spiritual view having its roots in life itself, many people take one to mean the sum total of those instincts that become a refuge when one travels along the familiar paths of life and holds every intervention from, spiritual spheres to be a piece of eccentric idealism. The spiritual view intended here, however, must not be confused with that abstract spirituality incapable of extending its interests to practical life, nor with that spiritual tendency which actually denies the spirit flatly when it considers the guidelines of practical life. Both these views ignore the way in which the spirit rules in the facts of external life, and therefore feel no urgent need to penetrate to its foundations. Yet only such a sense of urgency brings forth that knowledge which sees the “social question” in its true light. The experiments now being made to resolve this issue yield such unsatisfactory results because many people have not yet become able to see the true nature of the question. They see this question arise in economic spheres, and they look to economic institutions to provide the answer. They think they will find the solution in economic transformation. They fail to recognize that these transformations can only come about through forces that are released from within human nature itself in the revival of independent cultural and legal life.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

Culture, Law and Economics

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_a03.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_a03

Various people 1 E.g. the English finance theorist Hartley Withers in his treatise on Money and Credit. have expressed the opinion that all questions concerning money are so complicated that they are almost impossible to grasp in clear, precise thought. A similar view can be taken regarding many questions of modern social life. At the same time, we should consider the consequences that must follow if we allow our social dealings to be guided by impulses rooted in imprecise thoughts, or at any rate in thoughts that are very hard to define. Such thoughts do not merely signify a lack of insight and a confusion in theory; they are potent forces in actual life. Their vagueness lives on in the institutions they inspire; these, in turn, result in impossible social conditions. The conditions under which we live in modern civilization arise from just such chaotic thinking. This will have to be acknowledged if a healthy insight into the social question is to be attained. We first become aware of the social question when our eyes are opened to the straits in which we find ourselves. But there is far too little inclination to follow objectively the path that leads from a mere perception of these troubles to the human thoughts that underlie them. It is too easy to dismiss as impractical idealism any attempt to proceed from bread-and-butter issues to ideas. People do not see how impractical their accustomed way of life is, how it is based on unviable thoughts. Such thoughts are deeply rooted within present-day social life. If we try to get at the root of the “social question,” we are bound to see that at present even the most material demands of life can be mastered only by proceeding to the thoughts that underlie the cooperation of people in a community. To be sure, many such thoughts have been pointed out within specific contexts. For example, people whose activity is closely connected with the land have indicated how, under the influence of modern economic forces, the buying and selling of land has reduced it to a mere commodity. They believe this is harmful to society. Yet opinions such as these do not lead to practical results, for because of their own interests, those in other spheres of life do not admit that these opinions are justified. It is from an unflinching perception of such facts that the impetus should come to guide and direct any attempt to solve “the social question.” For such a perception can show that one who opposes justified social demands because they require a way of thinking opposed to his own particular interests, is in the long run undermining the very foundations on which his own interests are built. Such an observation can be made when considering the social significance of land. First we must take into account how the purely capitalist tendency in economic life affects the valuation of land. As a result of this purely capitalist tendency, capital creates the laws of its own increase; and in certain spheres of life these laws are no longer consistent with the principles that determine the increase of capital along sound lines. This is especially evident in the case of land. Certain conditions may very well make it necessary for a district to be cultivated in a particular way. Such conditions may be of a moral nature; they may be founded on spiritual and cultural peculiarities. However, it is entirely possible that the fulfillment of these conditions would result in a smaller interest on capital than would investment in some other undertaking. As a consequence of the purely capitalist tendency, the land will then be exploited, not in accordance with these spiritual or cultural viewpoints (which are not purely capitalist in character), but in such a way that the resulting interest on capital will equal the interest resulting from other undertakings. Thus values that may be very necessary to a real civilization are left undeveloped. Under the influence of this purely capitalist orientation, the estimation of economic values becomes one-sided; it is no longer rooted in the living connection we must have with nature and with cultural life, if nature and spiritual life are to give us satisfaction in body and in soul. It is easy to jump to the conclusion that for this reason capitalism must be abandoned. The question is whether in so doing we would not also be abandoning the very foundations of modern civilization. Anyone who thinks the capitalist orientation a mere intruder into modern economic life will demand its removal. However, he who sees that division of labor and social function are the essence of modern life, will only consider how best to exclude from social life the disadvantages that arise as a byproduct of this capitalist tendency. He will clearly perceive that the capitalist method of production is a consequence of modern life, and that its disadvantages can make themselves felt only as long as increase of capital is made the sole criterion of economic value. The ideal is to work towards a social structure in which the criterion of capital increase will no longer be the only power to which production is subjected. In an appropriate social structure, increase of capital should rather serve as an indicator that the economic life, by taking into account all the requirements of our bodily and spiritual nature, is correctly formed and organized. Anyone who allows his thought to be determined by the one-sided point of view of capital increase or of a rise in wages will fail to gain clear and direct insight into the effects of the various specific branches of production in the economy. If the object is to gain an increase in capital or a rise in wages, it is immaterial through what branch of production the result is achieved. The natural and sensible relation of people to what they produce is thereby undermined. For the mere quantity of a capital sum, it is of no account whether it is used to acquire one kind of commodity or another. Nor does it matter if one considers only the amount of a wage whether it is earned through one kind of work or another. Now it is precisely insofar as they can be bought and sold for sums of capital in which their specific nature cannot find expression, that economic values become “commodities.” Their commodity-nature is suited, however, only to those goods or values meant for immediate human consumption; for the valuation of these, we have an immediate standard in our physical and spiritual needs. There is no such standard in the case of land or artificially created means of production. The valuation of these things depends on many factors that become apparent only when one takes into account the entire social structure of human life. If cultural interests demand that a certain district be put to economic uses that, from the viewpoint of capital, seem to yield a lower return than other industries, the lower return will not in the long run harm the community. In time the lower return of the one branch of production will affect other branches such that the prices of their products will also be lowered. Only a viewpoint that deals with momentary gain of the most narrow and egotistical kind can fail to see this connection. Where there is simply a market relationship — where supply and demand are the determining factors—only the egotistic type of value can be considered. The “market” relationship must be superseded by associations that regulate the exchange and production of goods through an intelligent consideration of human needs. Such associations can replace mere supply and demand by contracts and negotiations between groups of producers and consumers, and between different groups of producers. Excluding on principle one person's making himself a judge of another's legitimate needs, these negotiations will be based solely on the possibilities afforded by natural resources and by human abilities. Life on this basis is impossible so long as the economic cycle is governed by the consideration of capital and wages alone. As a result of this orientation, land, means of production and commodities for human use — things for which there is in reality no common standard of comparison— are exchanged for one another. Even human labor power and the use of our spiritual and intellectual faculties are made dependent on the abstract standard of capital and wages — a standard that eliminates, both in human judgment and in our practical activity, our natural, sensible relationship to our work. In modern life, there is no possibility of preserving the relationship to economic values that was still possible under the old system of barter, nor even the relationship still possible under a simpler monetary system. The division of labor and of social function that has become necessary in modern times separates the laborer from the recipient of the product of his work. There is no changing this fact without undermining the conditions of modern civilization; nor is there any way of escaping its consequence — the weakening of one's immediate interest in one's work. The loss of this interest must be accepted as a result of modern life. Yet we must not allow this interest to disappear without finding other kinds to take its place, for human beings cannot live and work indifferently in the community. It is from the cultural and the political spheres, as they are made independent, that the necessary new interests will arise. From these two independent spheres will come impulses involving viewpoints other than those of mere increase of capital or wages. A free spiritual-cultural life creates interests that dwell in the depths of the human being, and imbue one's work and all one's action with a living aim and meaning for social life. Developing and nurturing human faculties for the sake of their own inherent value, such a cultural life will call forth a consciousness that our talents and our place in life have real meaning. Molded by individuals whose faculties have been developed in this spirit, society will continually adapt itself to the free expression of human abilities. The legal life and economic life will take on a form in keeping with the human abilities that have been allowed to develop. The deep inner interests of individuals cannot unfold fully and freely within a cultural life that is regulated by politics, or that develops and uses human faculties merely according to their economic utility. This sort of cultural life may provide people with artistic and scientific movements as “idealistic” adjuncts to life, or it may offer them comfort and consolation in religion or philosophy. Yet all these things only lead out of the sphere of social realities into regions more or less remote from everyday affairs. Only a free cultural life can permeate the everyday affairs of the community, for it is only a free cultural life that can set its own stamp on them as they take shape. In my book, Toward Social Renewal , I tried to show how a free cultural life will, among other things, provide the motives and impulses for a healthy social administration of capital. The fruitful administration of a certain amount of capital is possible only through a person or a group that has the abilities to perform the particular work or social service for which the capital is used. Therefore, it is necessary for such a person or group to administer the capital only as long as they are able to carry on the work of management themselves by virtue of their own abilities. As soon as this ceases to be true, the capital must be transferred to others who have the requisite abilities. Since under a free cultural life faculties are developed purely out of the impulses of the cultural life itself, the administration of capital in the economic sphere will be a result of the unfolding of spiritual powers; the latter will carry into the economic life all those interests that are born within its own sphere. An independent legal life will create mutual relationships between people living in a community. Through these relationships, they will have an incentive to work for one another, even when the individual is unable to have an immediate, creative interest in the product of his work. This interest becomes transformed into the interest that he can have in working for the human community whose legal life he helps build. Thus the part one plays in the independent legal life can become the basis for a special impulse to live and work apart from economic and cultural interests. One can look away from one's work and the product of one's work to the human community, where one stands in relation to his fellows purely and simply as an adult human being, without regard to one's particular mental abilities, and without this relation being affected by one's particular station in economic life. When one considers how it serves the community with which one has this direct and intimate human relationship, the product of one's work will appear valuable, and this value will extend to the work itself. Nothing but an independent legal and political life can bring about this intimate human relationship because it is only in this sphere that each human being can meet every other with equal and undivided interest. All the other spheres of social life must, by their very nature, create distinctions and divisions according to individual talents or kinds of work. This sphere bridges all differences. Once the cultural life has been made self-subsistent, mere increase of capital will no longer be an immediate and driving motive. Increase of capital will result only as a natural consequence of other motives; these other motives will proceed from the proper connection of human faculties with the several spheres of economic activity. It is only from such viewpoints — viewpoints that lie outside the purely capitalist orientation — that society can be constructed in a way that will bring about a satisfactory balance between human work and its return. And so it is with other matters where modern life has alienated us from the natural basis of life. Through the independence of the cultural and legal-political spheres, the means of production, land and human labor power will be divested of their present commodity character. (The reader will find a more exact description of the way this will come about in my book, Toward Social Renewal .) The motives and impulses that shall determine the transference of land and of the means of production when these are no longer treated as marketable commodities shall be rooted in the independent spheres of rights and cultural life, as shall the motives that will inspire human labor. In this way, forms of social cooperation suited to the conditions of modern life will be created. It is only from these forms that the greatest possible satisfaction of human needs can come. In a community organized purely on a basis of capital and wages, the individual can apply his powers and talents only insofar as they find an equivalent in monetary gain. Consider, moreover, the confidence with which one individual will place his forces at the disposal of another in order to enable the latter to accomplish certain work. In a capitalist community, this confidence must be based on a purely capitalist point of view. Work done in confidence of the achievements of others is the social basis of credit. In older civilizations there was a transition from barter to the monetary system; similarly, as a result of the complications of modern life, a transformation has recently occurred from the simpler monetary system to working on a credit basis. In our age, life makes it necessary for one man to work with the means that are entrusted to him by another, or by a community, in confidence of his power to achieve a result. Under capitalism, however, the credit system involves a complete loss of any real and satisfying human relationship to the conditions of one's life and work. Credit is given when there is a prospect of an increase of capital that seems to justify it; one's work is constantly overshadowed by the need to justify it in capitalist terms. These are the motives underlying the giving and taking of credit. And what is the result of all this? Human beings are subjected to the power of a financial sphere remote from life. The moment people become fully conscious of this fact, they feel it to be unworthy of their human dignity. Take the case of credit on land. In a healthy social life, an individual or a group possessing the necessary abilities may be given credit on land, enabling them to develop it by establishing some kind of production. It must be a development that seems justified on that land in light of all the cultural conditions involved. If credit is given on land from the purely capitalist viewpoint, in the effort to give it a commodity value corresponding to the credit provided, use of the land which would otherwise be the most desirable is possibly prevented. A healthy system of giving credit presupposes a social structure that enables economic values to be estimated by their relation to the satisfaction of people's bodily and spiritual needs. Independent cultural and legal-political spheres will lead to a vital recognition of this relation and make it a guiding force. People's economic dealings will be shaped by it. Production will be considered from the viewpoint of human needs; it will no longer be governed by processes that obscure concrete needs through an abstract scale of capital and wages. The economic life in a threefold social order is built up by the cooperation of associations arising out of the needs of producers and the interests of consumers. These associations will have to decide on the giving and taking of credit. In their mutual dealings the impulses and perspectives that enter economic life from the cultural and legal spheres will play a decisive part. These associations will not be bound to a purely capitalist point of view. One association will deal directly with another; thus the one-sided interests of one branch of production will be regulated and balanced by those of the other. Responsibility for the giving and taking of credit will thus be left to the associations. This will not impair the scope and activity of individuals with special faculties; on the contrary, only this method will give individual faculties full scope. The individual is responsible to his or her association for achieving the best possible results. The association is responsible to other associations for making good use of these individual abilities. Such a division of responsibility will ensure that the whole activity of production is guided by complementary and mutually corrective points of view. The individual's desire for profit will no longer impose production on the life of the community; production will be regulated by the community's needs, which will make themselves felt in a real and objective way. The need one association establishes will be the occasion for the granting of credit by another. People who depend on their accustomed lines of thought will say, “These are very fine ideas, but how are we to make the transition from present conditions to the threefold system?” It is important to see that what has been proposed here can be put into practice without delay. One need only begin by forming such associations. Surely no one who has a healthy sense of reality can deny this is immediately possible. Associations based on the idea of the threefold social order can be formed just as readily as companies and consortia were formed along the old lines. Moreover, all kinds of dealings and transactions are possible between the new associations and the old forms of business. There is no question of the old having to be destroyed and replaced artificially by the new. The new simply takes its place beside the old; the new will then have to justify itself and prove its inherent power, while the old will gradually crumble away. The threefold idea is not a program or system for society as a whole, requiring the old system to cease suddenly and everything to be “set up” anew. The threefold idea can make a start with individual undertakings in society. The transformation of the whole will then follow through the ever-widening life of these individual institutions. Because it is able to work this way, the threefold idea is not utopian. It is a force adequate to the realities of modern life. The essential thing is that the idea of a threefold order shall stimulate a real social intelligence in the people of the community. The economic viewpoint shall be properly fructified by the impulses that come from the independent cultural and political spheres. The individual shall contribute in a very definite sense to the achievements of the community as a whole. Through the role the individual plays in the independent cultural life, through the interests that arise in the political and legal sphere, and through the mutual relations of the economic associations, his or her contribution shall be realized. Under the influence of the threefold idea, the operation of social life will in a certain sense be reversed. Presently, one must look to the increase of one's capital or wages as a sign that one is playing a satisfactory part in the life of the community. In the threefold social order, the greatest possible efficiency of common work will result because individual faculties work in harmony with the human relationships founded in the legal sphere, and with the production, circulation and consumption regulated by the economic associations. Increase of capital, and a proper adjustment of work and the return upon work, shall appear as a final consequence of these social institutions and their activities. The threefold idea would guide our transforming and constructive power from mere attempts at reform of social effects into the sphere of social causes. Whether one rejects this idea or makes it one's own will depend on summoning the will and energy to work one's way through to the realm of causes. If one does this, one will cease considering only external institutions; instead, one's attention will be guided to the human beings who make the institutions. Modern life has brought about a division of labor in many spheres, for outer methods and institutions demand it. The effects of division of labor must be balanced by vital mutual relations among people in the community. Division of labor separates people; the forces that come to them from the three spheres of social life, once these are made independent, will draw them together again. This division of society has reached its zenith. This is a fact of experience, and it gives our modern social life its stamp. Once we recognize it, we realize the imperative demand of the age: to find and follow the path that leads to reunion. This inevitable demand of the times is vividly illustrated by such concrete facts of economic life as the continued intensification of the credit system. The stronger the tendency toward a capitalist point of view, the more highly organized the financial system and the more intense the spirit of enterprise becomes the more the credit system develops. However, to a healthy way of thinking the growth of the credit system must drive home the urgent need to permeate it with a vital sense of the economic realities — the production of commodities and the people's needs for particular commodities. In the long run, credit cannot work in a healthy way unless the giver of credit feels himself responsible for all that is brought about thereby. The recipient of credit, through his connection with the whole economic sphere (that is, through the associations), must give grounds to justify his taking this responsibility. For a healthy national economy, it is important not merely that credit should further the spirit of enterprise as such, but that the right methods and institutions should exist to enable the spirit of enterprise to work in a socially useful way. Theoretically, no one will want to deny that a larger sense of responsibility is necessary in the present-day world of business and economic affairs. To this end, associations must be created that will work to confront individuals with the wider social effects of all their actions. Persons whose task it is to be farmers and who have experience in agriculture, very rightly declare that those administering land must not regard it as an ordinary commodity, and that land credit must be considered differently from commodity credit. Yet it is impossible for such insight to come into practical effect in the modern economy until the individual is backed up by the associations. Guided by the real connections between the several spheres of economic life, the associations will set a different stamp on agricultural economy and on the other branches of production. We can easily understand that some reply to these arguments: “What is the point of it all? When all is said and done, it is human need that rules over production, and no one can give or receive credit unless there is a demand somewhere or other to justify it.” Someone might even say, “After all, these social institutions and methods you have in mind amount to nothing more than a conscious arrangement of the very things that ‘supply and demand’ will surely regulate automatically.” It will be clear to one who looks more closely that this is not the point. The social thoughts that originate in the threefold idea do not aim at replacing the free business dealings governed by supply and demand with a command economy. Their aim is to realize the true relative values of commodities, with the underlying idea that the product of an individual's labor should be of a value equal to all the other commodities consumed in the time spent producing it. Under the capitalist system, demand may determine whether someone will undertake the production of a certain commodity. Yet demand alone can never determine whether it will be possible to produce it at a price corresponding to its value in the sense defined above. This can be determined only through methods and institutions whereby society, in all its aspects, will bring about a sensible valuation of the different commodities. Anyone who doubts that such methods and institutions are worth striving for lacks vision; he does not see that, under the exclusive rule of supply and demand, needs whose satisfaction would upgrade the life of the community are being starved. He has no feeling for the necessity of trying to include the satisfaction of such needs among the practical incentives of an organized community. The essential aim of the threefold social order is to create a just balance between human needs and the value of the products of human work.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

The Threefold Order and Social Trust: Capital and Credit

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_a04.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_a04

It is time to recognize that party programs, which have been passed down from the remote or more recent past, are inevitably bound to fail when confronted with the events that have arisen from the catastrophe of the Great War. The programs, whose representatives were allowed to share in the ordering of social conditions, should be regarded as sufficiently refuted by the catastrophe itself. Their proponents should recognize that such thoughts were inadequate to master the actual course of events. Events outpaced their thinking, wreaking confusion and havoc. The result of this realization should be a striving to find thoughts more adequate to the actual course of real events. “Pragmatism” was the name given to what was only narrow-minded routine. The so-called pragmatists had become used to one narrow sphere of life. They mastered the routine of this one sphere, but were neither inclined nor interested to see its connection with wider spheres around it. Within his own narrow sphere, each prided himself on being “practical.” Each did what the practice of his routine demanded, and allowed what he had done to mesh with the overall social mechanism. How it worked there was not a matter of concern. So at last everything became one great tangle; out of this tangled skein of events emerged the world catastrophe. People gave themselves over to routine without developing the thoughts to master it—such was the fate of the ruling circles. Now, faced with confusion, people cannot shake off old habits of thought. It has been their habit to regard one thing or another as “a practical necessity”; they have no eyes left to see that what they held to be a “practical necessity” had a crumbling foundation. The modern economic system has demonstrated graphically the inability of our thinking to keep pace with events. It was the socialist workers' movement that revealed the crumbling foundation of this edifice. A different kind of party program arose within the workers' movement — programs that sprang from immediate experience of this decay, and either called for a change of course or expected salvation from the “unfolding” of the events that had been unleashed. These programs arose theoretically, out of universal human needs, without dealing practically with the facts. This praxis, which was merely routine and which despised thinking, was opposed by socialist praxis, which is pure theory. And now, when events demand that we engage productive, living thoughts—thoughts that have their roots in the real world — these theoretical “thoughts without praxis” reveal themselves to be insufficient. And this insufficiency will become more and more apparent as we are called upon to untangle the knot of modern social life by engaging our thinking. Instead of mindless routine and theoretical programs without praxis, good will of a definite sort is necessary for those today who want to think with genuine practicality. The routinized pragmatists, who are actually so very impractical, should try to see that the old way of carrying on business — without plan and without thoughts — will lead not out of the catastrophe, but ever deeper into it. Even now people try to blind themselves to the insight that thoughtlessness, which they mistook for practicality, has led to confusion. They despised those who demanded thoughts as being impractical idealists; now they are unwilling to admit that in so doing they did the most impractical thing of all. Indeed, in so doing they showed themselves to be idealists in the very worst sense of the word. On the other side, where theoretical “demand-withoutpractice” rules, they struggle to obtain a human existence for the class that feels it has not yet enjoyed one. They do not see that they are struggling to obtain it without real insight into the vital needs of society. They believe that if they can grab the power necessary for their theoretically noble but impractical demands, then they will be able, again as if by a miracle, to bring about the things for which they are striving. And those who mean well for humanity within that class as well, and raise demands out of the desperation of the proletariat, and want to achieve their goal in the above mentioned way, must face the question: What will happen if one side insists on programs that are refuted by the actual course of events, while the other side seeks power to enforce demands while never asking what life itself requires of any possible social order? One may perhaps have good intentions toward the proletariat today, yet one is not dealing with them objectively and honestly if one does not make it clear to them that the programs to which their faith is pinned are leading them not to the welfare they desire but to the downfall of European civilization, which seals their own downfall. One is honest with the proletariat today only by awakening them to an understanding that what they are unconsciously striving for can never be achieved by the programs they have embraced. The proletariat labors under a terrible illusion. They saw how gradually over the last few centuries human interests have come to be totally absorbed by economics. They could not fail to observe that the legal institutions of society were determined by the forms assumed by economic power and economic requirements. They could see how the whole life of the spirit, particularly the educational system, had grown out of the conditions prescribed by the underlying economic basis and by a state dependent on industry. Thus a disastrous superstition took root among the proletariat: the superstition that all legal and spiritual life arises with the necessity of natural law from the forms of the economic system. Wide circles today outside the working classes are prey to the same superstitution. A feature characteristic of the last few centuries—the dependence of the spiritual and legal realms upon economic life — has come to be regarded as a law of nature. People fail to see the real truth: it is just this dependence of spiritual and legal life upon economics that drove humanity into the disaster — they yield to the superstition that one needs only a different variety of economic system, one that shall produce a different system of legal and spiritual life. They want simply to change the economic system, instead of recognizing that it is necessary to end the dependence of the spiritual and legal spheres upon economic forms. At this moment in historical evolution the aim cannot be to establish another way of making the legal and spiritual spheres dependent on the economic. The aim should be to create an economy in which only the production and circulation of commodities are managed, on strictly businesslike lines, and in which a person's position in the economic cycle does not affect his or her rights in relation to others or the possibility of fully developing his or her inborn talents through education. In the recent past, legal and spiritual culture have been “superstructures” erected upon economics. In the future, they must become independent organs within the social organism that exist apart from the economic cycle. Measures to be adopted within the latter must be the outcome of actual experience of economic life and of people's connection with different branches of industry. Associations must arise within the various professions and trades out of the mutual interests of producers and consumers; each is to be represented within a central economic administration. The same people who participate in this economic system also constitute a legal community that, regarding its administration and representation, works quite independently of the others, and where everything is settled that rightly concerns all those who have reached the age of majority. All those things that make every person the equal of every other will be arranged here, on a democratic basis. For instance, all labor regulations (the manner, amount and length of work) will fall within this community's jurisdiction. In this way such regulations are withdrawn from the economic process. The worker takes his place in economic life as a free contractor in respect to those with whom he has to carry on the common work of production. His economic contribution to some branch of production is a matter to be decided by expert knowledge in that industrial branch; but with regard to everything that affects the exploitation of his labor he, too, can decide as an adult on democratic legal grounds apart from the economic process. Just as the legal sphere (the administration of the state) is regulated within the autonomous legal system of the social organism independently from the economy, so shall the life of spirit (the educational system) guide itself in perfect freedom within its independent spiritual organ of the social community. For just as a healthy economic life in the social organism cannot be fused with its legal system (where everything must be based upon the decisions of all co-equal adults), it is impossible for the spiritual life to be administered according to laws, regulations and controls that proceed from the opinions of all people who have merely come of age. The spiritual life requires a self-administration guided only by the best educational insights available. Only under such self-administration is it possible for the individual abilities latent in a community of people to be nurtured truly for the benefit of social life. Anyone who examines impartially the real factors at work in present-day society can only conclude that the health of the organism requires its division into three independent systems: a spiritual, a legal and an economic. The unity of the organism will not thereby be endangered in any way, for this unity is securely grounded in reality by the fact that each human being has interests within all three parts of the system, and that (notwithstanding their mutual independence) the central authorities at the head of each will be able to harmonize their various measures. That international relations will form no obstacle, even though initially only one state were to organize as a threefold system, will be discussed in the next essay.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

The Threefold Division of the Social Organism: A Necessity of the Age

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c01.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c01

An objection often made to the idea of a threefold organization of society is that any state that organizes itself on the threefold system must necessarily disturb its international relations with other states. Whether this objection makes sense can only be determined by examining the actual character of present-day international relations. In looking at the situation, what strikes one most is that in recent years the actual economic facts have developed along lines that are no longer congruent with national boundaries. Historical circumstances that determined these national boundaries have very little to do with the interests of the economic life led by the people living in those states. As a result, the national governments determine international relations in areas where it would be more natural for the economic groups directly concerned to do so. An industrial concern that needs the raw materials of a foreign nation ought to be able to obtain them by negotiating directly with the owners; everything pertaining to this arrangement should remain entirely within the economic cycle. It is plain to see that recently economic life has assumed forms tending towards this kind of self-contained functioning, and in this self-contained cycle of economic life (which is gradually tending to become a worldwide unity) the intervention of national interests represents a disturbing element. What have the historical circumstances that gave England dominion over India to do with the economic circumstances that make a German manufacturer go to India for his goods? The catastrophe of World War I plainly shows that the life of modern humanity, as it strives toward the unity of worldwide economy, will not bear disturbance through national territorial interests. This disturbance lies at bottom of the conflicts Germany became involved in with Western nations. It also plays a part in the conflicts with Eastern countries. Economic interests required a railway running from the Austro-Hungarian territory toward the southeast. The national interests of Austria and of the Balkan countries asserted claims, and the question arose whether that which the economy required ran counter to these national interests. Capital, which is supposed to serve the economy, thus becomes involved with national interests. The states want the capitalists to be at their service; the capitalists want the concentrated power of the state to serve their economic interests. Thus the economy is imprisoned by national territories; while in the latest phase of its own development, it is striving to spread beyond all national borders into a unified economic life. This internationalism of the economy indicates that in the future the various regions of the world economy will need to enter into relations independent of the relations that various people may have through life interests outside the economic sphere. The states will need to leave the establishment of economic relations to those persons or groups engaged in economic activity. If the cultural relations of the civilized world are not to fall into total dependence on economic interests, these relations will need to develop an international life of their own that is subject to their own special conditions. It is certainly not intended here to dispute the fact that economic relations may also supply a basis for cultural intercourse. However, it must be recognized that the cultural intercourse brought about in this way can be fruitful only if, at the same time, other relations are formed between the various peoples that arise solely from the needs of cultural life itself. In each of the various peoples, the cultural life of individuals emancipates itself from the economic conditions on which it rests, and takes all manner of forms that have nothing to do with the forms of economic life. The forms it takes must be free to enter into relations with corresponding forms of cultural life among other peoples — relations growing out of cultural life itself. There is no denying that at the present moment of human evolution, the international structure which culture is striving to assume is opposed by the egotistical impulse of the various peoples to shut themselves within their own nationalities. People endeavor to construct political entities whose boundaries are those of their nationalities. And then this endeavor is carried further—namely, an attempt is made to turn the closed national state into a closed economic domain as well. The aforementioned tendency towards a world economy will in the future work against these national egotisms. If these countertendencies are not to give rise to incessant conflict, the spiritual and cultural interests arising within these peoples must administer themselves in accordance with their own cultural identity, independent of economic conditions. International contacts should then arise out of these independent administrations. This can be done only if a region, governed by a common cultural life, marks its own boundaries that will be relatively independent of the boundaries that arise from the given conditions of economic life. Now, of course, the question immediately presents itself: How is the cultural life to draw necessary support from the economic life if the administrative boundaries of their two spheres do not coincide? To find the answer, one need only reflect that a self-governing cultural life confronts the independent economic life as an economic corporation. As an economic corporation, it can enter into agreements for its economic support with the economic administrative bodies of its regions, regardless of any larger economic region to which these administrative regions may belong. Anyone whose concepts of what is possible in practice is limited to what he has already seen, will look upon these proposals as “gray theory.” He will think, too, that the necessary arrangements will prove too complicated to work. Whether the arrangements prove complicated or not will depend entirely on the skill of the particular people who arrange them. However, no one should oppose measures demanded by the present-day necessities of the world for fear of supposed complications. (Compare this to what is said on the subject in Chapter 4 of my book Toward Social Renewal .) The international life of humanity is struggling to shape the cultural relations of the various peoples and the economic relations of the various parts of the world independently of each other. The threefold organization of the social organism takes this necessity of human evolution into account. In this threefold order, the legal sphere, founded on a democratic basis, constitutes the link between economics (where international relations are directed by economic necessities) and the life of spirit, which shapes international relations out of its own forces. Habits of thought engrained by the prevailing political and social forms might lead one to believe that a transformation of these forms is “pragmatically impossible.” But historical evolution will march on, destroying everything — even new measures — that arises from these old habits of thought. The vital necessities of modern humanity dictate that any further amalgamation of the spiritual, legal and economic spheres is an impossibility. That it is impossible was shown by the catastrophe of World War I: economic and cultural conflicts became conflicts between states that were then obliged to resolve themselves in a way that is impossible when cultural life opposes only cultural life, and economic interest opposes only economic interest. That it is possible to put the threefold system into practice in any single nation without damaging international relations (even though this nation will at first stand alone in the attempt) may be shown as follows. Suppose a certain economic region wanted to fashion itself into a massive association within the framework of a national state. It would be unable to maintain profitable relations with foreign countries that remained capitalist. Institutions like those of a government and subject to central boards of economic control, do not give management the power to supply foreign countries with products that fulfill their needs. However a free hand may be given to the managers with respect to the taking of orders, they must adhere to the association's rules regarding procurement of raw materials. To be hemmed in between requirements from abroad and red tape at home would lead in practice to an impossible state of affairs. The same kind of difficulties would beset both the import and the export trades. Anyone who wants to prove that no fruitful economic intercourse is possible between a country that wishes to work on abstract socialist principles and capitalistic countries abroad, has only to point to such things. Every unprejudiced person will be obliged to admit that he is right. The idea of the threefold social order cannot be touched by such objections. It does not impose a state-like structure upon relations that are determined by economic interests themselves. According to the threefold idea, the managements of allied economic concerns will join together in associations; such associations will then link up with others that will distribute them according to the needs of consumers within that particular economic sphere. The management of an export business can act on its own perfectly free initiative in its foreign trade; and at home it will be in a position to make the most advantageous agreements with other associations for the procurement of requisite raw materials, and so on. The same will hold true for an import business. The only guiding rule in creating such an economic order will be that dealings with foreign countries should not lead to the producing or importing of goods whose production cost or selling price might injure the standard of living of the native population. Workers producing goods for export must receive what is required to maintain their standard of living as compensation for what they produce. Products that come from abroad must, generally speaking, be available at prices that allow the native worker who needs them to purchase them. It might happen (no doubt owing to the difference in economic conditions at home and abroad) that certain products, which must be obtained from abroad, may have too high a price. However, on careful examination one will find that situations such as these are taken into account in the ideas underlying the threefold social order. If the reader turns to Chapter 3 of my Toward Social Renewal he will find it said of a similar economic problem: “Moreover, an administration that occupies itself solely with economic processes will be able to bring about adjustments that show themselves within these economic processes to he necessary. Suppose, for instance, a business concern were not in a position to pay its investors the interest on the savings of their labor, then — if it is a business that is nevertheless recognized as meeting a need — it will be possible to arrange for other industrial concerns to make up the deficiency by the voluntary agreement of everyone concerned.” In the same way, the excessively high price of an imported product can be balanced by contributions from businesses that are able to yield returns higher than the requirements of those they employ. Anyone who strives for new ideas about the main aspects of economics will not — especially if these ideas are to be practical — be able to give indications for every special instance because in economic life, such special instances are innumerable. However, he will have to frame his thoughts such that anyone who applies them in the right way to a special case will find that they work in practice. One will find that the proposals put forward in my Toward Social Renewal work better the more one is mindful of their particular context of application. In particular, it will be found that the proposed form of an economic body belonging to the threefold social order permits unhampered economic intercourse with foreign countries, even though these countries do not have the threefold system. Only someone who failed to perceive that self-administration must be a necessary consequence of the inherent movement of economic life toward world unity could raise doubts as to the possibility of such commerce. In actual fact, a world economy that has been forced into the straight-jacket of separate political entities is striving of itself to break free. Any economic region that is the first to act in accordance with this striving cannot possibly be at a disadvantage compared to others that resist the universal trend of economic evolution. On the contrary, the only result will be that in the threefold social order the profits of foreign trade raise the standard of living of the entire population, while in the capitalist community the profits will benefit only a few. That the threefold social organism apportions it differently among the populace will not affect the balance of trade itself. Thus it may be seen that the threefold social order does not represent a reclusive utopia, but rather a number of practical impulses that one can begin to realize anywhere in life. That is what distinguishes this “idea” from the abstract “demands” of the various socialist parties. The socialists look for scapegoats for all the things that have become unbearable in social life. Having discovered a scapegoat, they declare it must be eliminated. The threefold social order speaks of the ways in which the existing order must be altered if that which is unbearable is to disappear. The threefold order is intent upon building up, in contrast to other ideas that can indeed criticize and destroy, but offer nothing constructive whatsoever. This becomes especially clear to any open-minded person who reflects on the foreign trade policy that would have to be implemented by any country adopting such destructive political principles alone. Besides destructive tendencies at home, disastrous foreign relations would result. There is no doubt that the economic conditions of any single country under the threefold social order cannot fail to act as a model for foreign countries. The circles concerned about a socially just distribution of wealth will strive to bring about the threefold system in their own country when they see how expediently it works for others. As the idea of the threefold commonwealth gains ground, the end that modern economic life strives for, through its own inherent tendencies, will be realized more and more. And although national interests unfavorable to these tendencies are still powerful in many parts of the world, the people in any field of economic life who have an understanding of the threefold social order need not for that reason be deterred from introducing it. The foregoing has shown that difficulties in international economic trade will not result from the threefold social order.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

International Aspects of the Threefold Social Order

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c02.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c02

It will be impossible to free ourselves from the snares of social confusion in which Europe is caught if particular social demands continue to be advocated with the lack of clarity that currently distorts them. Such a demand, one that exists in wide circles, is expressed by Friedrich Engels in his book The Evolution of Socialism from Utopia to Science : “The management of goods and control of the means of production takes the place of the governing of persons.” The view in which this sentence originates forms the creed of many leaders of the proletariat and the mass of the working classes themselves. From a certain perspective, this is correct. The human relationships that gave rise to the modern national state have formed administrative bodies that regulated not only things and modes of production, but also the human beings engaged in them. The management of things and modes of production constitutes economics. In modern times, the economic life has assumed forms such that it has become imperative that its administration no longer govern persons. Marx and Engels perceived this. They directed their attention to the way in which capital and labor power work within the economic cycle. They felt that modern humanity was striving to outgrow the form these workings had assumed, for it is a form in which capital has become a means of exerting power over human labor. Capital not only serves as a means for the management of things and the control of production; it lays down the guidelines for the governing of human beings. Thus Marx and Engels concluded that this governance of persons must be removed from the cycle of economic processes. They were right: modern life does not permit people to be regarded merely as appendages of things and processes of production, or to be managed as part of their management. However, Marx and Engels believed that the matter could be settled simply by eliminating governance of persons from the economic process and allowing the new, purified economic management, having disentangled itself from the state, to carry on. They did not see that in the old governing there resided something that regulated human relations — relations that cannot remain unregulated and that also do not regulate themselves when they no longer are regulated by the demands of economic life in the old fashion. Neither did they see that within capital was the source of the forces that managed goods and controlled branches of production. It is by way of capital that the human spirit directs economic life. Yet in managing goods and controlling branches of production one still does nothing to nurture the human spirit, which is created ever anew, and must continually bring new impulses to the economy if economic life is not to dry up and degenerate completely. What Marx and Engels saw was right — the control of the economy must contain nothing that implies rule over persons themselves, and that the capital that serves the economy must never rule the human spirit directing its course. However, the fatal flaw was that Marx and Engels believed both the human relations previously governed and the direction of the economy by the human spirit would still be able to go on of themselves when they no longer proceeded from the administration of the economy. The purification of economic life — its restriction to the management of goods and control of the processes of production — is possible only if there exists besides this economic life something that replaces the previous form of administratration and something else again that makes the human spirit the actual controller of the economy. This demand is met by the idea of the threefold social order. The administration of the spiritual and cultural life, placed on its own footing, will supply the economic life with the human spiritual impulses that can fructify it ever and again, so long as this administration keeps within its own province and controls only goods and lines of production. The sphere of rights, separated from the cultural and economic systems of the social organism, will govern human relations to the extent that democracy allows one mature human being to govern another, while the power that one man gets over another through force of greater individual abilities or through economic means will have no say whatever in this governance. Marx and Engels were right to demand a new economic order — right, but one-sided. They did not perceive that economic life can only become free when a free sphere of rights and free cultivation of the spirit are allowed to arise along-side it. The forms future economic life must assume can be seen only by those who are clear in their minds that the capitalist-economic orientation must give way to a distinctly spiritual one, and that the governance of human relations through economic power gives way to one that is distinctly human. The demand for an economic life that controls only goods and production can never be fulfilled if advocated only by itself. Anyone who persists in such advocacy is claiming to be able to create an economic life that has cast off what was until now a necessity of its existence, yet is nevertheless supposed to continue to exist. Living in quite different circumstances (but out of a profound experience of life) Goethe wrote two thoughts that are fully applicable to many modern social demands. The first is: “An inadequate truth works for some time; then, instead of complete enlightenment, suddenly a dazzling falsity steps in. The world is satisfied and centuries are duped.” The second is: “Generalizations and enormous arrogance are ever paving the way to horrible disasters.” Indeed, Marxism untutored by recent events is an “inadequate truth” that nevertheless works on in the proletarian world view. Since the catastrophe of the Great War, in the face of the true demands of the times, it has become a “dazzling falsity” that must be prevented from “duping centuries.” The attempt to prevent it will find favor with anyone who perceives what disaster the proletarian classes are rushing into with their “inadequate truth.” This “inadequate truth” has indeed yielded “generalizations” whose supporters show no small amount of arrogance in rejecting as utopian everything that attempts to replace their utopian generalizations with realities of life.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

Marxism and the Threefold Social Order

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c03.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c03

The public nurturance of spiritual and cultural life in education has in recent years become more and more a matter for the state. That the schools are the state's business is presently a notion so deeply rooted in people's minds that anyone who tries to dislodge it is regarded as an unworldly “ideologue.” Yet this is a sphere of life that presents matter for the most serious consideration. People who complain in this way of “unworldliness” have no idea of how far what they uphold is removed from the world. Our school system is marked especially by features that reflect the tendencies toward decline in modern cultural life. The social structures of modern governments have not followed the requirements of actual life. For instance, they have taken on a form that does not satisfy the economic demands of modern humanity. They have also set this same backward stamp upon the school system, which, having liberated it from the religious confessions, they have now brought into complete dependence on themselves. At every level, schools mold human beings into the form the state requires for doing what the state deems necessary. Arrangements in the schools reflect the government's requirements. There is much talk, certainly, of striving to achieve an all-around development of the person, and so on; but the modern person unconsciously feels so completely a part of the whole order of the state that he does not even notice, when talking about the all-around development of the human being, that what is meant is molding the human being into a useful servant of the state. In this regard, no good may be expected from the way of thinking of those today who hold socialist views. They are bent on transforming the old state into a huge economic organization. State schools are supposed to project themselves on into this economic organization. This would magnify all the faults of present-day schools in the most dubious way imaginable. Up until now, much that originated before the state took control of the educational system still has remained in the schools. One cannot, of course, wish a return to the old form of spirituality that has come down from those earlier times; rather, one should endeavor to bring the new spirit of evolving humanity into the schools. This spirit shall not be in the schools if the state is transformed into an economic organization and the schools are redesigned to turn out people meant to be the most serviceable labor machines for this economic organization. People today talk much about the comprehensive school [“Einheitsschule”]. It is beside the point that this imagined comprehensive school is in theory a very fine thing, for if they make it an organic part of an economic organization it cannot really be such a fine thing. The real need of the present is that the schools be totally grounded in a free spiritual and cultural life. What should be taught and cultivated in these schools must be drawn solely from a knowledge of the growing human being and of individual capacities. A genuine anthropology must form the basis of education and instruction. The question should not be: What does a human being need to know and be able to do for the social order that now exists?, but rather: What capacities are latent in this human being, and what lies within that can be developed? Then it will be possible to bring ever new forces into the social order from the rising generations. The life of the social order will be what is made of it by a succession of fully developed human beings who take their places in the social order. The rising generation should not be molded into what the existing social order chooses to make of it. A healthy relation exists between school and society only when society is kept constantly supplied with the new and individual potentials of persons whose educations have allowed them to develop unhampered. This can be realized only if the schools and the whole educational system are placed on a footing of self-administration within the social organism. The government and the economy must receive people educated by the independent spiritual-cultural life; they must not, however, have the power to prescribe according to their own wants how these human beings are to be educated. What a person ought to know and be able to do at any particular stage of life must be decided by human nature itself. Both the state and economic life will have to conform to the demands of human nature. It is neither for the state nor the economic life to say: We need someone of this sort for a particular post; therefore test the people that we need and pay heed above all that they know and can do what we want. Rather, the spiritual-cultural organ of the social organism should, following the dictates of its own independent administration, bring those who are suitably gifted to a certain level of cultivation, and the state and economic life should organize themselves in accordance with the results of work in the spiritual-cultural sphere. Since political and economic life are not something apart from human nature, but rather the outcome of human nature itself, there need never be any fear that a really free cultural life, placed on its own footing, will produce people who are unworldly. On the contrary, unworldliness results precisely when the existing governmental and economic institutions are allowed to shape educational matters according to their own dictates. For in the state and in economic life attitudes must necessarily be adopted in accordance with the existing order. The development of the growing human being requires entirely different kinds of thought and feeling as its guide. One can only do one's work as an educator when one stands in a free, individual relationship to the pupil one teaches. One must know that, for the guidelines of one's work, one is dependent only on knowledge of human nature, the principles of social life and such things; but not upon regulations or laws prescribed from outside. If one serously desires to transform the present order of society into one in which social attitudes prevail, then one must not be afraid to place the spiritual-cultural life (including the school and educational system) under its own independent control because from such a free, independent system within the social organism men and women will go forth with joy and zeal to take an active part in all its life. After all, only people who lack this joy and zeal can come out of schools ruled by the state and the economic system; these people feel as deadly blight the after-effects of a domination to which they should not have been subjected before they had become fully conscious citizens and co-workers in the state and the economic system. The growing human being should mature with the aid of educators and teachers independent of the state and the economic system, educators who can allow individual faculties to develop freely because their own have been given free rein. In my book, Toward Social Renewal , I have taken pains to show that the world view adopted by the leaders among party socialists is in all essentials simply a continuance (carried to a certain extreme) of the bourgeois world view of the last three or four centuries. The socialists cherish the illusion that their ideas represent a complete break with this world view. They do not represent a break, but rather only a peculiar coloring of the bourgeois world view with working-class feelings and sentiments. This is shown very markedly by the attitude these socialist leaders adopt toward cultural life and its place in the social organism. Owing to the predominance of economics in bourgeois society during the last few centuries, the spiritual and cultural life has fallen into great dependence on economic life. The consciousness of a self-sustaining spiritual-cultural life, in which the human soul partakes, has been lost. Industrialism and our view of nature have collaborated to bring about this loss. Linked to this loss is the particular way the schools were incorporated into the social organism in recent times. To make the human being serviceable for external life in state and industry — that became the main thing. That man is above all a being with a soul who therefore should be filled with the consciousness of his connection with a spiritual order of things, and that it is through his consciousness that he imparts sense to the state and economic system in which he lives — all this was considered less and less. Minds were directed ever less toward the spiritual order of the world, and ever more toward the conditions of economic production. In the middle class this became a manner of feeling, an instinctive psychological tendency. Working class leaders made it into a philosophy of life — or rather, into a dogma. This dogma would have disastrous consequences if it were to remain the foundation of the school system into the future. For in reality, since even at its best an economically-determined social organism cannot make suitable provision for any genuine cultural life (and, in particular, not for a productive educational system), this educational system would have to owe its existence first of all to a continuation of the old world of thought. The parties that claim to represent a new order would be obliged to leave the cultural life of the schools in the hands of the representatives of the old world views. However, since under such conditions there could be no question of any internal link between the newly rising generation and the old, artificially prolonged culture, cultural life would necessarily become more and more stagnant. The souls of this generaton would wither away after being sown on the rocky ground of a world view that can give them no inner source of strength. Men would grow up soulless beings within a social order arising out of industrialism. In order that this may not take place, the movement for the threefold social order strives for the complete disassociation of the educational system from government and industry. The place and function of educators within society should depend solely upon the authority of those engaged in this activity. The administration of the educational institutions, the organization of courses of instruction and their goals should be entirely in the hands of persons who themselves are simultaneously either teaching or otherwise productively engaged in cultural life. In each case, such persons would divide their time between actual teaching (or some other form of cultural productivity) and the administrative control of the educational system. It will be evident to anyone who can bring himself to an unbiased examination of cultural life that the peculiar vitality and energy of soul required for organizing and directing educational institutions will be called forth only in someone actively engaged in teaching or in some sort of cultural creativity. Today few will concede this fully — only those who are unbiased enough to see that a new source of cultural life must spring forth if our devastated social order is to be renewed. In the essay “Marxism and the Threefold Social Order,” I pointed out both the correctness and also the one-sidedness of Engels' notion: “The management of goods and control of the means of production takes the place of governing of people.” Correct though this is, it is nonetheless equally true that in the old order social life was possible only because along with the economic processes of production, people themselves were guided and governed. If this joint governance of people and economic processes ends, then people must receive their motivating impulses (which hitherto came from those governing them) from a free and independent cultural life. Moreover, there is something else: The life of the spirit prospers only when able to unfold as a unity. The same exercise of the soul's powers that leads to a humanly satisfying and sustaining world view must also supply the productive power that makes one a good co-worker in economic life. Men and women with a practical sense for outer life will emerge only from an educational system that is able to develop in a healthy way our innate longings for a loftier world view. A social order that only manages goods and controls processes of production must in the end go completely awry if it is not kept supplied with persons whose souls are healthily developed. If, then, there is to be any renewal of our social life, we must find the strength to introduce an independent, self-sustaining educational system. If men are no longer to “govern” their fellows in the old way, then it must be made possible for the free spirit in every human soul, with all the strength possible for the human individualities of any one age, to make itself the guide of life. This spirit will not allow itself to be suppressed. Institutions that tried to rule educational life from the point of view of the economic system alone would constitute an attempt at suppression. This would lead the free spirit to revolt constantly out of the depths of its own natural foundations. Incessant shocks to the whole social edifice would be the inevitable consequence of any system that tried to organize education in the same way it controlled the processes of production. For anyone who perceives these things clearly, one of the most urgent demands of the times shall be the founding of a human community that will strive with utmost energy to realize the freedom and self-determination of the educational system. Other necessary demands of the times cannot find satisfaction as long as what is proper for this sphere remains unrecognized. It really requires only an unbiased observation of our spiritual life in its present form — in its distraction and disunity, its lack of strength to sustain the human soul — in order to recognize that just this is proper.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

The Threefold Social Order and Educational Freedom

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c04.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c04

The sense for reality that lives in the idea of the threefold social organism will not be found by comparing it with that which traditional education and habits have taught people to think possible. The very reason for our present confusions in government and society is that these traditions have led to habits of thought and feeling that life itself has outgrown. Therefore anyone who objects that the idea of a threefold social order takes no account of the impulses that have formed until now the basis of all human institutions, are under the delusion that the overcoming of these old impulses is a sin against any possible social order. Rather, the threefold order is founded upon the recognition that a belief in the sustaining power of the old impulses is the worst obstacle to healthy and progressive steps which take into account our present stage of evolution. The impossibility of continuing to cultivate the old impulses should be clear from the fact that they have lost their power as an incentive to productive labor. The old econonomic motives of capital returns and wage earnings could maintain their power as incentives only as long as enough of the old treasured objects remained that could arouse people's inclination and love. These treasures have plainly become exhausted in the age that has just ended. Ever more numerous were the people who, as capitalists, no lon ger knew why they were amassing capital; ever more numerous, too, were wage earners who did not know why they were working. The exhaustion of the impulses that had kept together the nexus of the state was shown by the fact that in recent times many people have come almost as a matter of course to regard the state as an end in itself, and to forget that the state exists for the sake of human beings. To regard the state as an end in itself is possible only when one has so much lost the ability to assert one's inner, human individuality that one no longer expects from the state the kind of institutions this self-assertion would demand. Then one is indeed obliged to look for the essence of the state in all sorts of institutions that are quite contrary to its proper task. One will become determined to put more into the institutions of the state than is needed for the self-assertion of the human beings who compose it. However, every such more in the state evidences a less in the human beings who bear the burden of the state. In cultural life, the sterility of the old impulses is displayed in the mistrust with which people look on the spirit.What proceeds from life's unspiritual concerns arouses people's interest; they form views and concepts of it. What originates in spiritual productivity, people choose to regard as a private affair of the particular producer; they are inclined to hinder rather than help if it tries to find a place in public life. One of the most widespread characteristics of our contemporaries is that they remain closed to the individual spiritual achievements of their fellows. The present age needs to see clearly that it has exhausted its economic, political and cultural impulses. Such insight must kindle energetic will and social purpose. Until people recognize that our economic, political and cultural troubles are not due merely to external life circumstances, but also to the state of our souls, the necessary renewal has not yet been given its proper foundation. A split has come about in the constitution of the human soul. In the instinctive, unconscious impulses of human nature, something new is stirring. In conscious thought, the old ideas refuse to follow the instinctive stirrings. However, when the best instinctive promptings are not illuminated by corresponding thoughts, they became barbaric, animalistic. Modern humanity is rushing into a dangerous situation through this animalization of the instincts. Salvation can be found only in striving for new thoughts to meet a new world situation. Any cry for socialization that disregards this fact can lead to nothing salutary. Our disinclination to recognize ourselves as beings of soul and of spirit must be overcome. A one-sided transformation of the economic life, a one-sided reconstruction of political institutions without nurturing a socially healthy and productive state of soul, is more likely to lull humanity with deceptive dreams than to fill it with a sense for reality. It is because there are so few who can bring themselves to look on the problems of today and tomorrow as questions comprehending both external arrangements and inner renewal that we move so slowly along the road to a new social order. When many people say: Inner renewal takes a long time; it is a process that must not be hurried, behind such words lurks a fear of such renewal. For the right mood can only be this : to examine energetically everything that might lead to renewal, and then watch and see how slowly or quickly life's voyage proceeds. The events of recent years have cast a certain weariness about the souls of our contemporaries. For the sake of the coming generations, for the sake of the civilization of the near future, this weariness must be combatted. These are the feelings that have brought the idea of the threefold order before the public. Say that this idea is imperfect, say that it is all wrong; its supporters will understand if it is opposed from the standpoint of other new ideas. That it should so often be found to be “incomprehensible” because it contradicts the old and customary — this they cannot regard as a sign that such opponents can hear the present call of human evolution. One would think this call is sounding plainly enough for all to hear.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

What is Needed

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c05.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c05

Socialists tend to look upon the profit motive, which has functioned heretofore as the primary incentive to work, as something that must be eliminated if healthier conditions are to be brought about in society. For such people this becomes an urgent question: What will induce us to use our abilities with sufficient energy in the service of economic production, when egotism (which finds its satisfaction in profit) is no longer able to exert itself? This question cannot be said to receive adequate attention from those who are planning to institute socialism. The demand that in the future one shall not work for oneself but for the community, remains quite empty as long as one has no concrete idea how human souls can be induced to work as willingly “for the community” as they do for themselves. One may no doubt indulge in the notion that some central managing body will place each of us at his or her place of work, and that this organization of labor will also enable the central management to make a fair distribution of the products of the labor. Any such notion is, however, based on a delusion. While it takes into account that human beings have need of consumer goods, and that these needs must be satisfied, it does not take into account that mere awareness of the existence of these needs will not engender devotion to the work of production, if they are expected to produce not for themselves, but for the community. The mere awareness that one is working for society will not give any sensible satisfaction; accordingly it cannot provide an incentive to work. It should be obvious that a new incentive to work must he created the moment there is any thought of eliminating the old incentive of egotistical gain. An economic management that does not include this profit motive among the forces at work within the economy cannot of itself exert any effect whatever upon the human will to work. And precisely because it cannot do so, it meets a social demand that a large part of humanity has begun to raise in the present stage of development. This part of humanity no longer wants to be led to work by economic compulsion. They want to work from motives more befitting human dignity. Undoubtedly, for many of those who come to mind when this demand is raised, it is somewhat unconscious; but in social life such unconscious, instinctive impulses are of much more significance than the ideas people consciously express. Conscious ideas often owe their origin merely to the fact that people do not have the spiritual energy to see into what really goes on within them. If one deals with such ideas, one is moving within an insubstantial element. Therefore it is necessary to see through the deceptive ideas on the surface into the real demands (such as the one just mentioned), and to turn one's attention to these real demands. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that in times like the present, when social life tosses about like wild waves, that the lower human instincts, too, run riot. However, the above mentioned demand for a dignified human existence is justified ; one cannot dismiss it by arguing the turbulence of our lower instincts. If the economic system is to be organized in a way that can have no effect on our will to work, then our will to work must be stimulated in some other way. The threefold social order recognizes that at the present stage of human evolution, the economic sphere must limit itself exclusively to economic processes. The administration of such an economic order will be able, through its various organs, to determine the extent of consumers' needs, how the produce may best be brought to the consumers and the extent to which various articles should be produced. However, it will have no way of calling forth the will to produce; neither will it be in a position to cultivate the individual abilities that are the vital source of the entire economic process. Under the old economic system that still survives, people cultivated these abilities hoping they would bring personal profit. It would be a dire mistake to believe that the mere command of an administrative body overseeing only the economy could arouse a desire to develop men's individual abilities, or to believe that such a command would have power enough to induce them to put their will into their work. The threefold social order seeks to prevent people from making this mistake. It aims at establishing within an independent, self-sustaining cultural life a realm where one learns in a living way to understand this human society for which one is called upon to work; a realm where one learns to see what each single piece of work means for the combined fabric of the social order, to see it in such a light that one will learn to love it because of its value for the whole. It aims at creating in this free life of spirit the profounder principles that can replace the motive of personal gain. Only in a free spiritual life can a love for the human social order spring up that is comparable to the love an artist has for the creation of his works. If one is not prepared to consider fostering this kind of love within a free spiritual-cultural life, then one may as well renounce all striving for a new social order. Anyone who doubts that men and women are capable of being brought to this kind of love must also renounce all hope of eliminating personal profit from economic life. Anyone who fails to believe that a free spiritual life generates this kind of love is unaware that it is the dependence of spiritual and cultural life upon the state and the economy that creates desire for personal profit—this desire for profit is not a fundamental aspect of human nature. It is this mistake that makes people say constantly, “to realize the threefold order, human beings must be different than they are now.” No! Through the threefold order, people will be educated in such a way that they will grow up to be different than they were previously under the economic state. And just as the free spiritual life will create the impulses for developing individual ability, the democratically ordered life of the legal sphere will provide the impulses for the will to work. Real relationships will grow up between people united in a social organism where each adult has a voice in government and is co-equal with every other adult: it is relationships such as these that are able to enkindle the will to work “for the community.” One must reflect that a truly communal feeling can grow only from such relationships, and that from this feeling, the will to work can grow. For in actual practice the consequence of such a state founded on democratic rights will be that each human being will take his place with vitality and full consciousness in the common field of work. Each will know what he or she is working for; and each will want to work within the working community of which he knows himself a member through his will . It will be plain to anyone who understands the threefold social order that the vast syndicate with its state-like structure (such as the Marxist model) can supply impulses neither for the ability nor for the will to work. Anyone who understands will take care that the essence of human nature not be forgotten for the sake of the exigencies of outer life. For social thinking cannot reckon with external institutions alone; it must take into account what man is and what he may become .

The Renewal of the Social Organism

Ability to Work, Will to Work, and the Threefold Social Order

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c06.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c06

It appears that many people are kept from the idea of a threefold social order by the fear that it entails sundering things that in reality must work together as an undivided unity within society. Now it is true that a person engaged in economic activity is brought thereby into relationships with his fellow men that involve laws. It is also true that one's spiritual life is dependent on these legal relationships, and is also conditioned by one's economic position. In the human being, these three functions are united; in the course of life, one becomes involved in all three. Is this, however, a reason why these three life-functions should be governed from a single center? Does it necessitate all three being governed according to the same principles? In the human being and in his activities, many currents run together that have flowed from a great variety of sources. We are dependent on the qualities inherited from our fore-fathers. We think and act according to what our education has made of us, education we received from persons to whom we are not related. How strange it would be if anyone tried to assert that our unity were destroyed because we are influenced from different quarters by heredity and education. Should it not be said, rather, that we remain incomplete if heredity and education work from a single source to shape our lives? That such things from various sources must converge within us in order (through this very variety) to satisfy the many requirements of our nature — people can understand this, for to not understand it would be absurd. However, they will not see that the development of spiritual abilities, the regulation of legal affairs and the shaping of economic life afford us our proper place within the social order only when each is governed from its separate center and from its special viewpoint. An economy that governs the rights of human beings, and educates them according to its own interests, reduces the person to a mere cog in the economic machinery. It stunts the human spirit, which can develop freely only when it unfolds according to its own innate im-pulses. It stunts, too, those relations with our fellows that stem from the feelings, and refuse to be influenced by economic considerations — relations that are striving rather to be governed in accordance with the equality of all regarding what is purely human. When the political sphere or the sphere of rights controls the development of our individual abilities, it weighs on this development like a crushing burden. For the interests that arise out of these spheres must naturally produce a tendency to develop such abilities according to the government's needs and not according to their own proper nature, however good may be the original intentions to allow for individual characteristics. Such a legal or political sphere also imposes an alien character upon economic matters. Those subject to this kind of political system become through constant tutelage spiritually cramped and economically hampered in the pursuit of interests inappropriate to their own nature. A spiritual life that attempted to determine legal relations on its own terms would inevitably be led from the in-equality of human abilities to inequality in the law. It would be false to its own nature if it were to allow itself to be determined by economic interests. Under such a spiritual culture, people would never come to a true consciousness of what, in reality, the spirit may be for human life, for they would watch the spirit degrade itself through injustice and falsify itself through economic aims. What has brought humanity to the present state of affairs in the civilized world is that during the last few centuries these three spheres have in many respects grown together into a single, unified state. And the cause of the present unrest is that an enormous number of people are struggling (while unconscious of the real nature of their striving) toward a delimitation of these three spheres of life into separate systems of the social organism, so that the spiritual-cultural life may be free to shape itself according to its own spiritual impulses; that the sphere of rights may be built up democratically through the interaction (direct or representational) of people on equal terms; and that the economic life may extend solely to the production, circulation and consumption of commodities. Starting from any number of standpoints one can come to see the necessity of a threefold organization of society. One of these standpoints is an understanding of present-day human nature. From the standpoint of some particular social theory or party dogma, it may appear very unscientific or impractical to say that when arranging institutions for communal life, one should consult psychology to learn (so far as it can tell us) what is suited to human nature. Yet it would be a great misfortune if everyone who tried to give this “social psychology” its due in the shaping of social life were to be silenced. There are colorblind people who see the world as gray on gray; so, too, there are social reformers and social revolutionaries blind to psychology who would like to mold the social organism into an economic syndicate in which people would live and move like mechanical beings. These agitators have no idea of their blindness. They know only that there has always existed a legal and a spiritual life beside the economic life; and they imagine that if they fashion the economic life after their own ideas, all the rest will come “of itself.” It will not come; it will come to ruin. Thus it is very hard to arrive at any understanding with those blind to psychology; and thus it is, unfortunately, also necessary to take up against them — a battle begun not by those who can see, but by those who are blind.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

What Socialists Do Not See

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c07.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c07

Ideas which take account of the realities that gave rise to the demands now agitating humanity, and are in harmony with the conditions under which it is possible for men to live together culturally, politically and economically — such ideas are drowned out by the clamor of others that are remote from life in both regards. People who long for something other than the traditional forms of life, or who have in fact already been torn out of these older forms by events, are people who until now have stood at such a remove from the forces that brought these circumstances to the surface of history that they lack any insight whatever into how they act and what they signify. Within the mass of the working classes, there is a dull consciousness that demands a change in their form of life, which they see as a result of capitalist forces dominating the economy. Yet the manner of their participation in economic life hitherto has not made them aware of the way these forces operate. Thus they are unable to conceive any fruitful way of transforming these forces. The intellectual leaders and agitators of the proletarian masses are blinded by utopian ideas and theories which derive from a social science still based on the old economic concepts that so urgently need changing. These agitators have not even the faintest idea that their notions about politics, economics and cultural life are in no way different from the “bourgeois notions” they are fighting, and that at bot-tom all they are striving for is to see the old notions realized by a new group. However, nothing really new ever comes about when different people do the same old thing in a slightly different way. One of these “old ideas” is the attempt to control economics by political and legal means. It is an “old idea” because it has brought a large part of humanity into an untenable position, as the catastrophe of World War I has shown. The new idea that must replace this old one is to liberate the administration of the economy from any kind of interference by political or national power, and to conduct the management of the economy along lines that are based entirely on economic principles and economic interests. But surely it is impossible to imagine a form of economic life that is not managed by businessmen using political and legal means! Such is the objection raised by those who believe the proponents of the threefold social order have no insight into what is socially self-evident. But actually those who make this objection refuse to see what a far-reaching transformation it would bring about in economic life if the political and legal views and institutions at work within the economy were not ruled from within the economic system itself according to its interests, but rather guided by something external to the economy, and subject only to considerations that lie within the competence of every adult. Why do so many people, even those of a socialist turn of mind, refuse to see this? The reason is that through their participation in political life they have learned to think about the way a political state governs, but not about the peculiar nature of the forces inherent in economic life. Thus they are able to conceive an economic process managed according to the principles on which a political state is governed; but they are unable to conceive of one structured according to its own economic principles and needs, one that takes its legal regulations from a different quarter altogether. This is true for most of the agitators and leaders of the proletariat. If the mass of workers themselves, from the circumstances previously dis-cussed, have insufficient insight into ways that economic life might possibly be transformed, their leaders are no better off. They exclude themselves from all such insight by confining their thinking wholly within the political arena. A consequence of this one-sided confinement to politics are the attempts being made in various quarters to establish Workers' Councils [Betriebsräte]. The current attempt to create such institutions must be consistent with the afore-mentioned “new idea,” if all labor expended on it is not to be wasted. This “new idea” requires, however, that Workers' Councils should be the first institutions with which the state has no concern, but which are free to form according to the purely economic considerations of those engaged in economic life. It should be left to the emerging corporation to promote associations that will create through economic cooperation what has been brought about hitherto by the egotistical competition of individuals. It is a question of free social coordination between the various complexes of production and consumption, and not one of centralized control according to political policies. The point is to promote the economic initiatives of the workers through such an association, not to submit them to the tutelage of a bureaucratic hierarchy. Whether economic life has a political ad-ministration imposed on it by state law, or whether a “system of industrial council boards” [Rätesystem] is planned by people who are able to think and organize only along political lines, the outcome is the same. Among these people there may perhaps be some who, in theory, demand a certain independence of the economic life; in practice, however, their demands can only result in an economy straight-jacketed by a political system because their scheme is the result of political thinking. Before one can conceive such institutions in a way required by the actual conditions of present-day life, one must have a clear idea of the way in which both the governmental and legal system and the spiritual-cultural sphere of the threefold social order should develop in their own manner apart from the economic system. It is possible to form a clear picture of an independent economic life only when one sees other things in their proper place within the whole structure of the social organism—those things that should not fall within the orbit of the economy. If one does not see clearly the proper place for the unfolding of cultural and legal impulses, one will always be tempted to fuse them somehow with economics.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

Socialist Stumbling-Blocks

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c08.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c08

Judging from the fruitless discussions now going on in many circles over the Works Councils [Betriebsräte], it is plain to see how very little understanding there is of the demands that the historical evolution of humanity has created for the present age and the near future. That democracy and a social form of life represent two impulses struggling to realize themselves within present-day human nature is an insight that has escaped entirely the vast majority of participants in such discussions. Both impulses will continue to cause unrest and destruction in public life until institutions are provided within which they can unfold themselves; but the social impulse that must live in the economic process cannot, because of its essential nature, manifest itself democratically. The aim of this social impulse is that people engaged in economic production should pay attention to the legitimate needs of their fellows. The kind of management that this impulse demands is one that regulates the economic process on the basis of what individuals engaged in it actually do for one another. What they do, however, must be based upon contractual agreements that arise from the economic positions of the individuals concerned. If these contractual agreements are to have a social effect, two things are necessary. First, these agreements must originate as a free initiative of those concerned — an initiative that is based on insight. Second, these individuals must live in an economic body that enables one through such agreements to convey in the best possible way the services of each to the community. The first demand can be fulfilled only when there is no sort of political influence intervening between those working within the economy and their personal relationship to the sources and interests of economic life itself. The second demand will be satisfied when agreements are made not according to the demands of an unregulated market, but rather according to the conditions that result when branches of industry associate with each other and with associations of consumers as dictated by real needs, so that the circulation of goods is managed as these associations see fit. Such associations represent a model for determining how, in each particular case, economic activity should be governed contractually . There can be no politicking when the economy is run in this way. There is only the competence and skill of each person in some special branch of industry, and the structuring of these to the best possible social advantage. What is done in an economic body of this kind is decided not by counting votes, but by the voice of real needs: it will necessarily concern itself with finding those most competent to perform certain tasks, and then conveying products to the consumers deemed appropriate by the cooperating associations. However, just as in a natural organism one single organic system would destroy itself through its specific activity if there were no other systems to keep it in balance, so does one function of the social organism need to be kept in balance by another. Work within the economic sphere would, over time, inevitably lead to comparable damage, unless it were counteracted by the political system of laws — that must rest on a democratic basis, just as the economic life cannot . In the sphere of democratic law-making, politicking is appropriate. What is done there works within economic activity to counteract its innate tendency to cause damage. If one were to harness economic life to the administration of the state, one would deprive it of its efficiency and freedom of movement. Those engaged in economic work must receive the law from somewhere outside of economic life, and only apply it in the economic life itself. It is matters such as this that should be taken up by those who are busy planning Works Councils. Instead, there is a great deal of oration on viewpoints consistent with the old principle of shaping political legislation according to economic interests. That presently there happen to be different groups pursuing this same principle does not change the fact that a new spirit is still lacking today in places where it is already so urgently needed. Today's circumstances are such that there can be no return to health in public life until a sufficiently large number of people recognize the real social, political and spiritual demands of the times, and have the good will and energy to pass on this vital understanding to others. To the extent that this understanding is spread, the remaining obstacles to social health would disappear. For it is merely a political superstition that these obstacles have any objective existence beyond the reach of human insight; it is an assertion made only by people who can never understand the actual relationship between theory and praxis. They are the people who say, “These idealists have quite excellent, well-meant ideas. However, as matters now stand, these ideas cannot be put in practice.” This is not at all the case; the only obstacle to the practical realization of certain ideas at present are those who hold this belief and have the power to use it as an obstacle. And such power is possessed also by those who have gathered around them the masses of the people from former party groups; the masses obediently follow them, their “leaders.” Therefore, one of the fundamental conditions for a return to social health is the disbanding of these old party groupings, and a heightened understanding for the kinds of ideas that grow out of real practical insight in-dependent of any connection with old parties and groups. An immediate and burning question is how to find ways and means to replace the old party creeds with this independent judgement so that they can become a nucleus around which people of all party affiliations can gather — people who are able to see that the existing parties have had their day and that the present social conditions are sufficient proof that their day is over. It is understandable that those who need to recognize this do not find it easy. The rank and file do not find it easy because they do not have the time or the leisure (and very often not the training) this recognition requires. It is not easy for the leaders because both their prejudices and their power are bound up with all they have stood for until now. This situation obliges us all the more urgently to look beyond the party traditions of the day and seek the real progress of humanity outside, not within them. Today it is not enough merely to know what should take the place of existing institutions. What is necessary is to elaborate this new way of thinking in a way that will lead as quickly as possible to the disbanding of the old party system and will guide people's efforts toward new goals. Whoever lacks the courage to do this can contribute nothing toward a new and healthy social order. Whoever is deluded by the belief that such efforts are utopian, builds on sinking ground.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

What the “New Spirit” Demands

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c09.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c09

There are conflicting views on the profits made by economic entrepreneurs. Its defenders say that human nature is such that we will engage our talents for the good of the whole only when induced to do so by the expectation of profit. It is true, they say, that profit is the offspring of egotism; yet profit performs a service to the community — a service the community would have to do without were it to eliminate profit from the economic process. The opponents of this viewpoint say that production should not be pursued with a view to profit, but rather with a view to consumption. One must devise institutions that will motivate men to continue to employ their powers for the benefit of the community even when not enticed to do so by the expectation of profit. When there are such conflicting opinions in public life, usually people do not think them out to the end, but rather let power decide. If one is democratically-minded, one thinks it quite right that institutions should be established (or allowed to remain) that correspond to the interests and wishes of the majority. If one is single-mindedly convinced of the legitimacy of one's own interests, then one's aim is an authoritarian central power that shall develop institutions to conform to these particular wishes and interests. One then desires only to obtain sufficient influence over this central power to ensure its accomplishing what one wants. What is today called “the dictatorship of the proletariat” stems from this attitude. People who demand this “dictatorship” are motivated by their wishes and interests; they make no at-tempt to think correctly so as to discover whether their demand entails institutions that are in themselves really possible. Humanity is presently at a point in its evolution when it is no longer possible to conduct human affairs simply by insisting upon what is wished. Quite apart from what this or that person, this or that group may want, from now on in the sphere of public life only efforts proceeding from ideas that have been thought through to the end will promote social health. However strongly human passions may resist it, in the end people will be obliged to introduce into social life these thoroughly considered ideas demanded by the spirit of humanity, because people will see the pathological consequences that result from their opposite. The view that a threefold structuring of the social organism is a necessity is one such idea thought through to its logical conclusion. In light of this intent, it is certainly odd that many of its opponents think the idea an unclear one. The reason for this is that these opponents are interested not in clear thinking, but merely in agreement with their interests, wishes and prejudices. When faced with ideas that have been fully and concretely considered, they can see nothing in them but opposition to their preconceived opinions; they justify themselves unclearly in their own eyes, by saying that the opposition is unclear. In estimating the economic significance of profits, im-pertinent opinions often intrude. Certainly profit-making is an egotistical aim. However, it is unjustified to use this egotism as an argument for eliminating profit from economic activity. For there must be something in the economy that can serve to indicate whether there is a need for a manufactued article. In the modern form of economics, the only indicator of this need is the fact that the article yields profits. An article can be manufactured if it yields profits that, in the economic context, are sufficiently large. An article that yields no profits must not be produced because it will upset the price balance of articles in actual circulation. Profits may represent what they will in ethical terms; in conventional economic terms, they represent an indicator for the need to produce an article. The further evolution of economics does require the elimination of profits, but for the following reason: because they make the production of articles dependent on accidents of the market, which the spirit of the age demands be abolished. One clouds one's judgement if one argues against profit because of its egotistical nature. Real life demands that within any field one must mount arguments appropriate to the particular situation. Arguments drawn from another field of life may be perfectly true in themselves, but they cannot guide one's judgement toward the real facts. What is necessary for economic life is that profits as indicators should be replaced by groups tasked with establishing a rational correspondence between production and consumption that will abolish accidents of the market. The change from profits-indicator to a rational coordination of production and consumption, if correctly understood, will result in the elimination of the motives that have hitherto clouded judgment on this issue by removing them to the legal and cultural spheres. Only when people recognize that the idea of the threefold social order has been shaped by an effort to create sound bases for realistic and practical conduct in each of life's different spheres, will they begin to do this idea justice and to have a proper estimation of its practical value. So long as motives proper to the legal and spiritual-cultural spheres are expected to proceed indiscriminately from the administration of economic life (which can be practical only when ruled solely by businesslike considerations and transactions) — so long will social life remain unhealthy. Today's party groupings are still quite removed from what the spirit of the age is shown here to demand. Thus it is inevitable that the idea of the threefold social order should meet with much prejudice stemming from opinions prevalent in these party groupings. However, it is time to put an end to the belief that any change can be effected in today's unsound social conditions through further activity along the old party lines. The very first thing to be considered is rather a change in these party opinions themselves. The way to do this, however, is not by splitting off sections of existing par-ties and establishing ourselves as representatives of “true” party opinion, while reproaching others for deserting “the true party views.” This only leads from fighting over ideology to a much worse struggle for the power of specific groups of people. What is needed now is not this, but rather an unprejudiced insight into the demands of the “spirit of the age.”

The Renewal of the Social Organism

Economic Profit and the Spirit of the Age

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c10.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c10

Many people today speak of “socialization” as though it could imply a number of external institutions in the state or in the social community, through which certain requirements of modern humanity might be satisfied. To them, the right institutions do not yet exist; that is why there is general social discontent and confusion. Once these institutions are in existence, orderly social life and social cooperation among men must follow. That so many people harbor this belief more or less consciously is the reason for the development of so many harmful notions about “the social question.” There is no form one can give to external institutions by which these institutions can, of themselves, enable us to lead a socially satisfying life. Such institutions will be good in a technical sense if they enable commodities to be produced and conveyed to human use in the most efficient manner possible. However, they will be good in a social sense only if socially-minded people administer the commodities produced in the service of the community. No matter what the institutions may be, there is always some conceivable way human individuals or groups can operate them antisocially. One should not give oneself over to the illusion that any kind of satisfying social life can be created without “socially-minded” human beings; such illusions are a hindrance to really practical social ideas. The idea of the threefold social order aims at complete freedom from such illusions; therefore it is not surprising that it is vehemently opposed by everyone still living within these illusory mists. The first of the three spheres of the threefold social order aims at a form of cooperation among men to be based entirely on free intercourse and free association between individuals. Here human individuality will not be forced into an institutional mold. How one person assists another, how one helps another advance will simply arise from what one, through his own abilities and accomplishments, is able to be for the other. It is no great wonder that presently many people are still able to imagine nothing but a state of anarchy as a result of such free human relations in the spiritual-cultural branch. Those who think so simply do not know what powers of our inmost nature are stunted when we are forced to develop according to patterns imposed by the state and the economic system. Such powers, deep within human nature, cannot be developed by institutions, but only through what one being calls forth in perfect freedom from another being. The effect of what arises in this way is not antisocial, but rather deeply social. The socially active inner person is stunted only when instincts originating in the prerogatives of the state or in economic advantage are engrained or handed down. Through its cultural branch, the threefold social order will uncover perpetual springs of social initiative. These springs will imbue the legal relations that are regulated by the democratic state with a social spirit, and they will spread the same spirit into the conduct of economic life. Within the economy, the forms of modern life afford no means of counteracting the antisocial tendency. For the whole community is best served when the individual is left unchecked to apply his abilities to the common good. To do this, however, it is necessary that individuals should accumulate capital, and be free to combine with others in utilizing it. The socialists have been deluded in thinking that these masses of ever-accumulating capital could in the end simply be transferred from their private owners to the cornmunity, and that thereby a socialist society would necessarily be realized. In reality, the economic productivity of capital would inevitably be lost in such a transference, for this productivity rests upon the private abilities of the individual. One must admit to oneself quite frankly that the economy will have the greatest vitality not when it is deprived of the antisocial element within its own domain, but instead when it is kept supplied from another domain — the cultural branch of the social order — with forces that will constantly correct antisocial tendencies as they arise and convert them back into social ones. In my Toward Social Renewal I have tried to show that a truly social way of thinking will not aim at a transference of capital from the control of private persons (or groups) to the community as a whole; on the contrary, it is essential that the private individual should have means, by the use of capital, of placing his abilities, unopposed, at the service of the community. When this individual is no longer willing or able to direct his abilities to the use of capital, this use must be transferred to another person of similar abilities. It will not be transferred by state prerogative or by economic power, but by finding out, on strength of the training acquired under the free spiritual life, which person will make the most suitable successor from the social point of view. Whoever speaks in this manner about the remedy for our social malaise sees in his mind's eye the scorn of all those today who consider themselves experts in the practicalities of life. For the moment he must endure this scorn, knowing well that the other's way of thinking is what brought about the dreadful human catastrophe of recent years. The scorn may continue awhile; then, however, even the most obstinate of such people will no longer be able to resist the hard lessons of social realities. The phrase: “Schemes such as the threefold order may be all very fine, but the people to carry them out aren't there,” will be silenced. The coiners of this phrase are certainly not “the people to do so.” Therefore, it is to be hoped they will retire and will not, with their brute force, block the way of those who are doing fruitful work and who would gladly provide a free spiritual life for the development of social impulses in men.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

Cultivation of the Spirit and Economic Life

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c11.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c11

Among the various objections that can be made to the threefold social order is one that can be phrased somewhat as follows: The efforts of political thinkers in recent years have been directed in part towards creating legal provisions appropriate to the existing conditions of economic production. It might be said that the idea of the threefold order totally disregards all the work done in this direction and wants merely to detach the legal sphere from the economic altogether. Those who raise this objection imagine that thereby they can dismiss the idea of the threefold order as something that throws practical experience to the winds and claims a role in the reconstruction of society without this experience. How-ever, the reverse is true. The opponents of the threefold social order say: “One should reflect on the difficulties that have attended every attempt to arrive at a legal system adapted to modern conditions of production. One should consider the obstacles met by all who have made such at-tempts.” However, the adherents of the threefold order must answer: These very difficulties are proof that people were taking the wrong road. They persisted in trying to contrive a social form in which certain demands of modern times were to be satisfied through a single combined economic and legal sytem. They ought, however, to recognize that economic life, when conducted expediently, promotes conditions that necessarily tend to counter the sense of right and justice, unless this tendency is deliberately counteracted from outside the economy. It is to the advantage of economic life that individuals or groups who have special qualifications for a particular business of production are able to accumulate capital for their business. Presently, the best services can be rendered to the community as a whole only by qualified persons through the control of large sums of capital. However, the nature of economics dictates that such services can only consist of the most efficient production of the goods that the community needs. A certain amount of economic power flows into the hands of the people who pro-duce such goods. It cannot be otherwise , and the threefold social order recognizes this. Accordingly, it aims to bring about a society in which this economic power will still arise, but out of which no social evils can grow. The threefold idea does not propose to hinder the accumulation of large sums of capital in individual hands; it recognizes that to do so would be to lose the possibility of employing socially the abilities of these private individuals in the service of the general public. It proposes, however, that the moment an individual can no longer attend to the management of the means of production within his sphere of power, these means of production should be transferred to another capable person. The latter will not be able to obtain these means of production through any economic power he may possess, but solely because he is the most capable person. In practice, however, this can only be realized when the transfer is directed according to principles that have nothing to do with the means of economic power; such principles become possible only when the people themselves, with their interests, are engaged in spheres of life other than the economic. If men are joined together on a legal foundation which produces interests other than economic ones, these other interests will then be able to assert themselves. If the human being is absorbed by economic interests alone , those other interests never develop. If the person who possesses the means of production is to have any feeling whatever that the best and most efficient person in any economic position is one who obtains it by ability and not by economic power, such a feeling must grow in a sphere established apart from the economic. In and of itself, the economic life can call forth a sense for economic power but not, simultaneously, a sense for social justice. Therefore, all attempts to conjure out of economic thought itself a code of social justice were bound to fail. Such matters are based upon the actual realities of life; these are the things taken into account by the idea of the threefold social order. It is guided by the practical experiences met by those who attempted to create legal structures for the modern economic forms; but it will not be led by these experiences to add a new attempt that resembles the many that have already failed. Its aim is not to try to produce social laws in a field of life where they cannot grow, but to bring about that life itself from which such laws can grow. In modern times this life has been absorbed into the economy; the first step is to restore its independence. To perceive clearly the idea of the threefold order, one must be willing to understand that the economic life needs to have its own forces continually corrected from outside, if it is not to call forth out of itself obstacles to its own growth. This necessary corrective will be supplied when there is an independent cultural life and corresponding independent legal sphere to make provision for it. The unity of social life is not thereby destroyed; in reality, it arises thereby for the first time in its true sense. This unity cannot be brought about by the ordinances of a central authority; it must be allowed to arise out of the interaction of those forces that each need to exist separately in order to live as a whole. Experiences met with in attempting to create for modern economic life legal relations that are drawn from the economy itself, should not therefore be regarded as arguments against the threefold social order. On the contrary, these experiences should be seen to lead directly to the recognition that the threefold organism is the idea modern life demands.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

Law and Economics

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c12.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c12

In discussing the causes of the modern social movement, people commonly refer to the fact that neither the owner of the means of production nor the worker is in a position to give the product anything based on a direct personal interest in it. The owner has goods produced because they bring him profits; the worker produces them because he is obliged to earn a living. A personal satisfaction in the finished product itself is felt by neither. In fact, one touches a very essential part of the social question when pointing to the lack of any personal relationship between the producers and the goods produced in the modern industrial system. However, one must also be clear that this lack of a personal relation-ship is a necessary consequence of modern technology and the attendant mechanization of labor. It cannot be removed from the economic life itself. Goods produced by extensive division of labor in large industries cannot possibly be as closely associated with the producer as were the products of the medieval craftsman. One will have to accept the fact that, regarding a large part of human labor, the kind of interest that previously existed is past and gone. However, one should also be clear that without interest, a man cannot work; if life compels him to do so, he feels his whole existence to be dreary and unsatisfying. Whoever is honestly disposed toward the social movement must think of finding some other interest to replace the one that is gone. He will not be in a position to do so, however, if he insists on making the economic process the single main substance of the social organism, and on making the legal system and the cultural life a sort of appendage of the economy. An enormous economic conglomerate regulated according to the Marxist plan with the political and cultural orders as “ideological superstructure,” would make human life a torment because of the ensuing lack of interest in any sort of work. Those who want to introduce an enormous conglomerate of this kind do not reflect on the fact that, while one can arouse a certain amount of enthusiasm for such an aim through the excitement of the struggle to attain it, the excitement ends as soon as this aim is realized, and people thus fitted into the wheels of an impersonal social machine are inevitably drained of everything resembling a will to live. That such an aim is able to arouse enthusiasm in wide masses of the populace is merely a result of the waning interest in the products of labor that has not been replaced by the growth of any other interest. To arouse such an interest should be the special business of those who presently, through their inherited share in spiritual culture, remain in a position to think beyond merely economic interests to those things that constitute the social good. These people must teach themselves to see that there are two spheres of interest that must take the place of the old interest in the actual work. In a social order based on division of labor, the work one performs, while affording no satisfaction for its own sake, may nevertheless satisfy through the interest one takes in those for whom one per-forms it. Such an interest must, however, be developed in living community. A legal system in which every individual stands as an equal among equals arouses one's interest in one's fellows. One works in such a system for the others because one gives to this relationship between oneself and others a Iiving foundation. From the economic order one learns only what others demand of one. Within a vital legal and political life, the value one man has for the other springs from the depths of human nature itself, and goes beyond our merely needing each other in order to produce commodities meeting various needs. This is one sphere of interest that arises from a legal system independent of economic life. To this must be added a second. A human existence that must derive the substance of its cultural life from the economic system will prove unsatisfying when there is insufficient interest in the products of the work — even though people's interest in one another is suitably fostered within the sphere of rights. For in the end it must dawn upon people that they commerce with one another only for the sake of commerce. Commerce acquires a meaning only when it is seen to serve something in human life that extends beyond economics, something quite independent of all commerce. Work that gives no intrinsic satisfaction will acquire worth if performed by one of whom it can be said, when viewed from a higher spiritual standpoint, that he is striving toward ends of which his economic activity is only the means. This view of life from a spiritual stand-point can be acquired only within a self-subsistent spiritual-cultural branch of the social organism. A spiritual-cultural life that is a “superstructure” erected upon the economy, manifests itself merely as a means to economic ends. The complicated form of modern industry, with its mechanization of human labor, requires a free, self-subsistent spiritual-cultural life as a necessary counterbalance. Earlier epochs in human history could bear the fusion of economic interests and cultural impulses because industry had not yet fallen prey to mechanization. If human nature is not to succumb to this mechanization, whenever human beings stand within the mechanized system of labor, their souls must always be able to rise freely into communion with the higher worlds into which they feel themselves transported by a free spiritual-cultural life. It would be short-sighted to reply to the proposal of a free spiritual-cultural life and the independent sphere of rights demanded by human equality that neither would over-come economic inequalities, which are the most oppressive of all. For the modern economic system has led to these in-equalities because it has never, as yet, allowed to develop apart from it the legal system and the cultivation of the spirit that it requires. The Marxist mind believes that each form of economic production prepares the way for the next and higher one, and that when this preparatory process is concluded, then through “evolution” the higher form must necessarily replace the lower one. Actually, the modern form of production did not evolve from old economic methods, but rather from the legal forms and the cultural perspectives of an earlier age. However, while giving a new form to economic life, these latter have themselves grown old and need to be rejuvenated. Of all forms of superstition the worst is to declare that rights and culture can be conjured out of the forms of economic production. Such a superstition darkens not only the human mind, but life itself. It diverts our spirit from its own source by offering an illusory source in the nonspiritual. We are all too ready to be deluded by those who tell us that spirit arises of itself out of nonspirit; for we fancy by this delusion to save ourselves the exertions we must acknowledge to be necessary when we perceive that the spirit is only to he won by toil of spirit.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

Social Spirit and Socialist Superstition

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c13.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c13

The aims Emil Molt is trying to realize through the Waldorf School are connected with quite definite views on the social tasks of the present day and the near future. The spirit in which the school should be conducted must proceed from these views. It is a school attached to an industrial undertaking. The peculiar place modern industry has taken in the evolution of social life in actual practice sets its stamp upon the modern social movement. Parents who entrust their children to this school are bound to expect that the children shall be educated and prepared for the practical work of life in a way that takes due account of this movement. This makes it necessary, in founding the school, to begin from educational principles that have their roots in the requirements of modern life. Children must be educated and instructed in such a way that their lives fulfill demands everyone can support, no matter from which of the inherited social classes one might come. What is demanded of people by the actualities of modern life must find its reflection in the organization of this school. What is to be the ruling spirit in this life must be aroused in the children by education and instruction. It would be fatal if the educational views upon which the Waldorf School is founded were dominated by a spirit out of touch with life. Today, such a spirit may all too easily arise because people have come to feel the full part played in the recent destruction of civilization by our absorption in a materialistic mode of life and thought during the last few decades. This feeling makes them desire to introduce an idealistic way of thinking into the management of public affairs. Anyone who turns his attention to developing educational life and the system of instruction will desire to see such a way of thinking realized there especially. It is an attitude of mind that reveals much good will. It goes without saying that this good will should be fully appreciated. If used properly, it can provide valuable service when gathering manpower for a social undertaking requiring new foundations. Yet it is necessary in this case to point out how the best intentions must fail if they set to work without fully regarding those first conditions that are based on practical insight. This, then, is one of the requirements to be considered when the founding of any institution- such as the Waldorf School is intended. Idealism must work in the spirit of its curriculum and methodology; but it must be an idealism that has the power to awaken in young, growing human beings the forces and faculties they will need in later life to be equipped for work in modern society and to obtain for themselves an adequate living. The pedagogy and instructional methodology will he able to fulfill this requirement only through a genuine knowledge of the developing human being. Insightful people are today calling for some form of education and instruction directed not merely to the cultivation of one-sided knowledge, but also to abilities; education directed not merely to the cultivation of intellectual faculties, but also to the strengthening of the will. The soundness of this idea is unquestionable; but it is impossible to develop the will (and that healthiness of feeling on which it rests) unless one develops the insights that awaken the energetic impulses of will and feeling. A mistake often made presently in this respect is not that people instill too many concepts into young minds, but that the kind of concepts they cultivate are devoid of all driving life force. Anyone who believes one can cultivate the will without cultivating the concepts that give it life is suffering from a delusion. It is the business of contemporary educators to see this point clearly; but this clear vision can only proceed from a living understanding of the whole human being. It is now planned that the Waldorf School will be a primary school in which the educational goals and curriculum are founded upon each teacher's living insight into the nature of the whole human being, so far as this is possible under present conditions. Children will, of course, have to be advanced far enough in the different school grades to satisfy the standards imposed by the current views. Within this framework, however, the pedagogical ideals and curriculum will assume a form that arises out of this knowledge of the human being and of actual life. The primary school is entrusted with the child at a period of its life when the soul is undergoing a very important transformation. From birth to about the sixth or seventh year, the human being naturally gives himself up to everything immediately surrounding him in the human environment, and thus, through the imitative instinct, gives form to his own nascent powers. From this period on, the child's soul becomes open to take in consciously what the educator and teacher gives, which affects the child as a result of the teacher's natural authority. The authority is taken for granted by the child from a dim feeling that in the teacher there is something that should exist in himself, too. One cannot be an educator or teacher unless one adopts out of full insight a stance toward the child that takes account in the most comprehensive sense of this metamorphosis of the urge to imitate into an ability to assimilate upon the basis of a natural relationship of authority. The modern world view, based as it is upon natural law, does not approach these fact of human development in full consciousness. To observe them with the necessary attention, one must have a sense of life's subtlest manifestations in the human being. This kind of sense must run through the whole art of education; it must shape the curriculum; it must live in the spirit uniting teacher and pupil. In educating, what the teacher does can depend only slightly on anything he gets from a general, abstract pedagogy: it must rather be newly born every moment from a live understanding of the young human being he or she is teaching. One may, of course, object that this lively kind of education and instruction breaks down in large classes. This objection is no doubt justified in a limited sense. Taken beyond those limits, however, the objection merely shows that the person who makes it proceeds from abstract educational norms, for a really living art of education based on a genuine knowledge of the human being carries with it a power that rouses the interest of every single pupil so that there is no need for direct “individual” work in order to keep his attention on the subject. One can put forth the essence of one's teaching in such a form that each pupil assimilates it in his own individual way. This requires simply that whatever the teacher does should be sufficiently alive. If anyone has a genuine sense for human nature, the developing human being becomes for him such an intense, living riddle that the very attempt to solve it awakens the pupil's living interest empathetically. Such empathy is more valuable than individual work, which may all too easily cripple the child's own initiative. It might indeed be asserted — again, within limitations — that large classes led by teachers who are imbued with the life that comes from genuine knowledge of the human being, will achieve better results than small classes led by teachers who proceed from standard educational theories and have no chance to put this life into their work. Not so outwardly marked as the transformation the soul undergoes in the sixth or seventh year, but no less important for the art of educating, is a change that a penetrating study of the human being shows to take place around the end of the ninth year. At this time, the sense of self assumes a form that awakens in the child a relationship to nature and to the world about him such that one can now talk to him more about the connections between things and processes themselves, whereas previously he was interested almost exclusively in things and processes only in relationship to man. Facts of this kind in a human being's development ought to be most carefully observed by the educator. For if one introduces into the child's world of concepts and feelings what coincides just at that period of life with the direction taken by his own developing powers, one then gives such added vigor to the growth of the whole person that it remains a source of strength throughout life. If in any period of life one works against the grain of these developing powers, one weakens the individual. Knowledge of the special needs of each life period provides a basis for drawing up a suitable curriculum. This knowledge also can be a basis for dealing with instructional subjects in successive periods. By the end of the ninth year, one must have brought the child to a certain level in all that has come into human life through the growth of civilization. Thus while the first school years are properly spent on teaching the child to write and read, the teaching must be done in a manner that permits the essential character of this phase of development to be served. If one teaches things in a way that makes a one-sided claim on the child's intellect and the merely abstract acquisition of skills, then the development of the native will and sensibilities is checked; while if the child learns in a manner that calls upon its whole being, he or she develops all around. Drawing in a childish fashion, or even a primitive kind of painting, brings out the whole human being's interest in what he is doing. Therefore one should let writing grow out of drawing. One can begin with figures in which the pupil's own childish artistic sense comes into play; from these evolve the letters of the alphabet. Beginning with an activity that, being artistic, draws out the whole human being, one should develop writing, which tends toward the intellectual. And one must let reading, which concentrates the attention strongly within the realm of the intellect, arise out of writing. When people recognize how much is to be gained for the intellect from this early artistic education of the child, they will be willing to allow art its proper place in the primary school education. The arts of music, painting and sculpting will be given a proper place in the scheme of instruction. This artistic element and physical exercise will be brought into a suitable combination. Gymnastics and action games will be developed as expressions of sentiments called forth by something in the nature of music or recitation. Eurythmic movement—movement with a meaning — will replace those motions based merely on the anatomy and physiology of the physical body. People will discover how great a power resides in an artistic manner of instruction for the development of will and feeling. However, to teach or instruct in this way and obtain valuable results can be done only by teachers who have an insight into the human being sufficiently keen to perceive clearly the connection between the methods they are employing and the developmental forces that manifest themselves in any particular period of life. The real teacher, the real educator, is not one who has studied educational theory as a science of the management of children, but one in whom the pedagogue has been awakened by awareness of human nature. Of prime importance for the cultivation of the child's feeling-life is that the child develops its relationship to the world in a way such as that which develops when we incline toward fantasy. If the educator is not himself a fantast, then the child is not in danger of becoming one when the teacher conjures forth the realms of plants and animals, of the sky and the stars in the soul of the child in fairy-tale fashion. Visual aids are undoubtedly justified within certain limits; but when a materialistic conviction leads people to try to extend this form of teaching to every conceivable thing, they forget there are other powers in the human being which must be developed, and which cannot be addressed through the medium of visual observation. For instance, there is the acquisition of certain things purely through memory that is connected to the developmental forces at work between the sixth or seventh and the fourteenth year of life. It is this property of human nature upon which the teaching of arithmetic should be based. Indeed, arithmetic can be used to cultivate the faculty of memory. If one dis-regards this fact, one may perhaps be tempted (especially when teaching arithmetic) to commit the educational blunder of teaching with visual aids what should be taught as a memory exercise. One may fall into the same mistake by trying all too anxiously to make the child understand everything one tells him. The will that prompts one to do so is undoubtedly good, but does not duly estimate what it means when, later in life, we revive within our soul something that we acquired simply through memory when younger and now find, in our mature years, that we have come to understand it on our own. Here, no doubt, any fear of the pupil's not taking an active interest in a lesson learned by memory alone will have to be relieved by the teacher's lively way of giving it. If the teacher engages his or her whole being in teaching, then he may safely bring the child things for which the full under-standing will come when joyfully remembered in later life. There is something that constantly refreshes and strengthens the inner substance of life in this recollection. If the teacher assists such a strengthening, he will give the child a priceless treasure to take along on life's road. In this way, too, the teacher will avoid the visual aid's degenerating into the banality that occurs when a lesson is overly adapted to the child's understanding. Banalities may be calculated to arouse the child's own activity, but such fruits lose their flavor with the end of childhood. The flame enkindled in the child from the living fire of the teacher in matters that still lie, in a way, beyond his “understanding,” remains an active, awakening force throughout the child's life. If, at the end of the ninth year, one begins to choose descriptions of natural history from the plant and animal world, treating them in a way that the natural forms and processes lead to an understanding of the human form and the phenomena of human life, then one can help release the forces that at this age are struggling to be born out of the depths of human nature. It is consistent with the character of the child's sense of self at this age to see the qualities that nature divides among manifold species of the plant and animal kingdoms as united into one harmonious whole at the summit of the natural world in the human being. Around the twelfth year, another turning point in the child's development occurs. He becomes ripe for the development of the faculties that lead him in a wholesome way to the comprehension of things that must be considered without any reference to the human being: the mineral kingdom, the physical world, meteorological phenomena, and so on. The best way to lead then from such exercises, which are based entirely on the natural human instinct of activity without reference to practical ends, to others that shall be a sort of education for actual work, will follow from knowledge of the character of the successive periods of life. What has been said here with reference to particular parts of the curriculum may be extended to everything that should be taught to the pupil up to his fifteenth year. There need be no fear of the elementary schools releasing pupils in a state of soul and body unfit for practical life if their principles of education and instructions are allowed to proceed, as described, from the inner development of the human being. For human life itself is shaped by this inner development; and one can enter upon life in no better way than when, through the development of our own inner capacities, we can join with what others before us, from similar inner human capacities, have embodied in the evolution of the civilized world. It is true that to bring the two into harmony — the development of the pupil and the development of the civilized world — will require a body of teachers who do not shut themselves up in an educational routine with strictly professional interests, but rather take an active interest in the whole range of life. Such a body of teachers will discover how to awaken in the upcoming generation a sense of the inner, spiritual substance of life and also an understanding of life's practicalities. If instruction is carried on this way, the young human being at the age of fourteen or fifteen will not lack comprehension of important things in agriculture and industry, commerce and travel, which help to make up the collective life of mankind. He will have acquired a knowledge of things and a practical skill that will enable him to feel at home in the life which receives him into its stream. If the Waldorf School is to achieve the aims its founder has in view, it must be built on educational principles and methods of the kind here described. It will then be able to give the kind of education that allows the pupil's body to develop healthily and according to its needs, because the soul (of which this body is the expression) is allowed to grow in a way consistent with the forces of its development. Before its opening, some preparatory work was attempted with the teachers so that the school might be able to work toward the proposed aim. Those concerned with the management of the school believe that in pursuing this aim they bring something into educational life in accordance with modern social thinking. They feel the responsibility inevitably connected with any such attempt; but they think that, in contemporary social demands, it is a duty to under-take this when the opportunity is afforded.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

The Pedagogical Basis of the Waldorf School

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c14.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c14

An idea such as the threefold social organism is constantly met with the following objection: “What the social movement is striving for is the elimination of economic inequalities. How will this end be attained through changes in the cultural life and the legal system when these are governed quite independently of the economic process?” This kind of objection is made by people who can see the existence of the economic inequalities, but do not see that these inequalities are produced by the human beings living together in the social body. They see that society's economic order finds expression in people's life conditions. They aim at making it possible for large numbers of people to enjoy what seems to them to be better life conditions. They believe that when the changes in the social order that they have in mind come about, this possibility will exist. For anyone who looks more deeply into the state of human affairs, the principal cause of today's social evils is seen in the very fact that such a way of thinking has become the prevalent one. In the eyes of many people, the economic system lies too far removed from any of their concepts of the cultural and the legal spheres for them possibly to perceive how the one can be connected with the others in the whole chain of human existence. People's economic conditions are an outcome of the positions they assume toward each other through their spiritual faculties and through the legal code that prevails among them. Anyone who perceives this will not imagine he could devise any system of economics that could, of itself, place people living under it in life conditions that will seem suitable to them. In any economic system, whether one's own services meet with the reciprocal services needed for a suitable life situation will depend on how the people in this economic system are spiritually attuned in their minds, and on how their sense of right and justice leads them to regulate their mutual affairs. During the last three or four centuries, the civilized portion of humanity has owed its evolution to impulses that make it exceedingly difficult for them to have any perception of the real relation existing between economics and culture. We have become entwined in a complex network of interrelationships; the achievements of industrial technology have made a mark upon it that no longer corresponds to the cultural and legal concepts we have developed historically. People have become accustomed to viewing the cultural progress of recent years with unalloyed appreciation; but in doing so they overlook one thing: this cultural progress has been achieved mainly in fields directly connected with industry. Science undoubtedly has tremendous achievements to record; but its achievements are greatest where they have been called forth in the economic field by the demands of industrial life. Under the influence of this particular kind of cultural progress the leading circles have developed a mental habit of basing their opinions in all life's affairs upon economic grounds. In most cases, they are not aware of forming their opinions this way. They employ this mode of judgement unconsciously. They believe that they act out of all sorts of ethical and aesthetic motives; but, unconsciously, they act upon opinions originating within the technical-industrial economy. They think in economic terms, but believe that their principles are ethical, religious, and aesthetic. This mental habit of the ruling classes has been made into a dogma in recent years by the socialists. They believe that all life is conditioned by economics because those from whom their notions are inherited had acquired, more or less unconsciously, this economic way of thinking. Thus these socialist thinkers want to change the system of economics according to the same viewpoint that led to what they believe so urgently needs changing. They fail to notice that they would call forth even more strongly the very thing they do not want if their actions were guided by ideas that have led to the very thing they wish to change. The reason for this is that men cling much more tenaciously to their ideas and their habits of mind than they do to external institutions. Today, however, a point has been reached in human evolution when the very character of this evolution demands progress not only in our institutions, but also in our thoughts and habits of mind. This is a demand of human history; and the fate of the social movement depends on whether this demand is heeded. Strange as it still may sound to many people, it is nevertheless true that modern life has assumed a shape which can no longer be mastered by the old kinds of ideas. Many say, correctly, that the social problem must be approached in a way different from that, for example, of St. Simon or Owen or Fourier; that spiritual impulses like theirs are of no use in effecting a change in economic life. Thus they conclude that spiritual impulses are entirely incapable of exerting a transforming effect on social life. The truth of the matter is that these thinkers drew their mental concepts from a form of spiritual life that, of its very nature, was no longer adequate to the economic life of modern times. Instead of then coming to the sound conclusion, “In that case, what is needed is a new form of spiritual and legal life,” people form the opinion that desired social conditions to rise up of themselves out of the economic sphere. But economic chaos will result unless the further progress of evolution is effected by a step forward in the spiritual-cultural and legal spheres such as the new age demands. All that must come about in the social sphere now and in the near future, depends on the courage to take this step forward in the cultivation of the spirit and the establishment of law. Whatever does not spring from this courage may be very well meant, but will not lead to a sustainable state of affairs. Therefore the greatest social need is to arouse far and wide a clear perception that the only basis upon which humanity can evolve in a healthy way is the cultivation of a new spiritual life. The fruits of this cultivation will be borne in the structuring of the economy. If economic life tries of itself to evolve a new form, it will only propagate — and intensify— its old evils. As long as economic life is expected to make of us what we may become, new evils will be added to the old. Not until humanity comes to understand that the human being — out of his own spirit — must give to the economic life what it needs, will men be able to pursue as a conscious aim what they are demanding unconsciously.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

The Fundamental Fallacy in Social Thought

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c15.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c15

In my book Toward Social Renewal , the comparison between the social organism and the natural human organism is used as an analogy; at the same time it is pointed out how misleading it is to suppose that concepts acquired from the one can simply be transferred to the other. Anyone who forms a picture of the function of the cells or of an organ of the human body, as natural science represents them, and who then proceeds to look for the social cell or the social organs in order to learn the construction and conditions of life in the social body will very soon fall into an empty game of analogies. It is a different matter to point out, as in Toward Social Renewal , that by an intelligent study of the human organism one can train oneself in the kind of thinking required for a real understanding of the working of social life. Through such a training, one acquires the ability to judge social facts not according to preconceived opinions, but to judge them according to their own laws of existence. This above all is necessary in our present times. People today are tied up tightly in their party opinions regarding social judgment; and party opinions are not formed on grounds that lie in the conditions of life and organic requirements of the entire social organism, but by the blind feelings of particular people or of particular groups. If the methods of judgment employed in party programs were transferred to the study of the human body, it would soon be seen that instead of assisting an understanding of it, these methods are only a hindrance. In an organic body, the air that is inhaled must constantly be converted into an unusable substance; oxygen must be converted into carbon dioxide. Accordingly, there must be arrangements by which the changed and no longer usable substance is replaced by a usable one. Anyone who now brings to bear a judgment schooled by study of the human organism, and applies it with common sense and without preconceptions to the study of the social organism, will find that there is one system within this social organism, the economic system, which, if functioning properly, is constantly bound to produce conditions that must be counteracted by other functions. Just as the organ system in the human body that is designed to consume inhaled oxygen cannot be expected to make the oxygen usable again, it should not be supposed that the economic circulation itself can give rise to the functions needed for making good what it is the business of this system to convert, out of life, into a life-restricting product. The necessary counteraction can be supplied only by the separate working of two other systems alongside the economy: a body of laws that determines its own form out of its own proper nature, and a spiritual-cultural life growing freely from its own roots, completely independent of the economic system and the legal system. Only a superficial critic will say, “What, then! Is the cultural life not to be bound in its pursuits by existing legal relations?” Certainly it must be bound by them. However, it is one matter if the people, who pursue the cultural life, are dependent on the legal life; and quite another matter if the pursuit of the cultural life rises on its own from the institutions of this legal sphere. The idea of the threefold social order will be found to be one that makes it very easy for objections that abide by preconceived notions; but also that these objections fall to pieces when one thinks them through to the end. The life of the economy has a lawfulness of its own. In following this lawfulness, it creates conditions that destroy the social organism, if only this law is at work. If, however, one tries to abolish these conditions by means of economic measures, one then destroys the economic process itself. In the modern economic process, evils have arisen through control of the means of production by private capital. If one tries to exterminate these evils by an economic measure, such as the communal control of the means of production, one undermines modern industry. One can, however, work against these evils, by creating alongside the economy an independent legal system and a free life of the spirit. In this way, the evils that result — and result continually — from the economic life will be removed as they arise. It will not be a case of the evils arising first and people having to suffer under them before they disappear; rather, the other organic systems that exist alongside the economic institutions will, in each instance, turn aside the mischief. The party opinions of recent times have distracted men's judgment from the laws of life in the social organism and have diverted it into the currents of sectarian passion. It is urgently necessary that these party opinions should undergo correction from a quarter in which one can learn to be impartial. One can learn this through the study of conditions which of their own nature elicit impartial judgment, and in which thinking therefore becomes its own corrective. The human organism affords such conditions. Of course, if only the conventional scientific concepts are applied as correctives, they will not go far. In many respects, these concepts lack the kind of force necessary to strike deep into the facts of nature. Yet if one tries to keep to nature herself, and not merely to these concepts of nature, one will be in a better position to learn impartiality than one would be amid party views. Despite the good will of many natural scientists, who have endeavored to overcome materialist convictions, the usual concepts of natural science are today still strongly imbued with materialism. A spiritual contemplation of nature will shed this materialism; and spiritual contemplation of nature will provide means for the kind of training in thought which, among other things, makes it possible to comprehend the social organisms. The idea of the threefold social order does not simply borrow facts from natural science and transplant them into the field of social life. It uses the study of nature only as a way of gaining the ability to observe social facts impartially. This should be kept in mind by those who learn about the idea in a superficial fashion — the threefold idea talks of a threefold division of social life in much the same way as one might talk of a threefold division of the natural human organism. Anyone who studies seriously the characteristics of the human organism will be made aware that the one can-not be simply transferred to the other. However, the method of study one is obliged to use on the human organism will awaken the kind of thinking that will enable one to find his way among the social facts. Such a method will be thought to remove all social ideas to the far-off region of “gray theory.” It may perhaps be said that such an opinion can only be maintained as long as one regards this “removal” from outside. Then, certainly, everything that is seen indistinctly at a distance seems gray. On the other hand, those things that are born of more immediate passions will have color. Yet go nearer what seems gray and one will find that something begins to stir which is not unlike a sort of passion — but it speaks to all that is truly human, that of which one loses sight when looking from the standpoint of parties and group opinions. There is today a burning need to draw nearer to what is truly human. The polemical postures of rival camps have done enough. It is time that one comes to see that the damage cannot be undone with new rival camps, but rather only by observing what history itself demands at this present moment of humanity's evolution. It is easy to see evils and demand programs for their abolition, but what is necessary is to penetrate to the roots of social life. By healing these roots, healthy blossoms and fruits can be brought forth as well.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

The Roots of Social Life

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c16.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c16

The essence of the threefold social order is that it looks at social relations without party or class prejudice and poses the question: what must be done at this juncture of human evolution in order to create viable social forms? Anyone who strives earnestly and honestly to answer this question shall confront one fact he or she cannot possibly disregard: namely, that in modern times the economic and political spheres have come into devastating conflict with one another. The class strata that are the basis of contemporary social life arose out of economic circumstances. In the course of economic evolution ( and as a result of that evolution ) one person became a worker and another an industrialist, while a third became engaged in some cultural activity. Socialist thinkers never tire of putting this fact in the forefront of their programs, thinking it will lend them an aura of necessity. However, they do not realize that the important point is to see why economics was able to exert such a tremendous influence upon the stratification of society. They do not see that this stratification came about because the industrial system was not opposed by a political and legal system that could have counteracted its influence. Each person was swept by the forces of the economy to a point where he stood alone. It was possible to live only within the conditions that economic life afforded. One person ceased to understand the other; he could only hope to outvote or overpower him with the help of those who stood upon the same ground. There has yet to arise from the depths of human evolution a political or legal form capable of bringing together the isolated groups of humanity. People did not see that the old currents of politics and law run counter to the new economic forces. One cannot carry on economic life in the way made necessary by the circumstances of the last two centuries, and at the same time put people into social positions evolved from political theories belonging to bygone times. Nor should one hope that the class structure, which arose apart from any new political aspirations, can represent a point of departure for the reconstruction of the social organism. Obviously, the classes who feel themselves oppressed will not acknowledge the justice of this statement. They say, “We have had new political aspirations for more than half a century.” In my Toward Social Renewal , I demonstrated that this is not the case as a first premise for all further consideration of social renewal. Karl Marx and his adherents have certainly summoned one class to battle; yet they have merely set forth the same thoughts learned from the adherents of those classes they are to oppose. Therefore, even if the battle could bring about what many desire, nothing new would come of it. It would lead to the same old end; there would merely be a different group at the helm. This realization does not, of course, lead directly to the idea of the threefold order; but it is a necessary step in that direction. Until this realization has dawned upon a sufficiently large number of people, they will go on trying to extract from old ideas of politics and law the impulses that are supposed to be equal to present economic conditions. Until they see this, they will be afraid of a threefold articulation of the social organism because it clashes with their accustomed thinking. It is understandable that, in times that have brought so many disasters, people should shrink from any call for original thinking — thinking born of the depths of human life. Many feel themselves crushed by the weight of the times, and despair of the power of ideas as creative forces. They are “waiting” until “circumstances” produce a more favorable state of affairs. However, circumstances will never produce anything but what has been implanted in them by human ideas. “Yet, after all,” many say, “the very best ideas are powerless in actual practice if the circumstances of life reject them!” This is precisely the point of the threefold social order. The threefold idea begins with a recognition that neither praxis without theory nor impractical ideas can ever lead to a viable social organism. Accordingly, it does not promote an old-fashioned program. There are enough of such programs to teach one that they may be very “excellent” or “high-minded” or “inspiring” in the abstract, but that reality rejects them. In the field of economics, the threefold idea works with the natural and social realities of modern life; it works with the sense of right and justice that has evolved over the last few centuries; it works with a cultural life that provides the social organism with men and women who understand its organic laws and promote them to the benefit of society. It believes that, within a threefold order of the social organism, human beings will find it possible to work together in such a way that out of this cooperation , they shall create what cannot be brought about by any programmatic theory. Anyone who is unwilling to see the distinction in principle between the threefold idea and the usual programs will refuse to be convinced that it could bear fruit. The idea is one attuned to reality; it does not try to tyrannize life with a program, but aims at creating a basis that allows the life from which social impulses spring to develop freely. The questions of the present and the near future are not of the kind that can be solved by the intellect; they must be solved in a life-process, and that life-process must first be created. Modern humanity has only a first inkling of the real nature of the social question. It will assume its real form when the structure of the social organism is such that the three life forces underlying all human existence can rise in their true form from a vague instinct into conscious thought. Much that is said today about the social question, when measured against a real understanding of life, gives the impression of immaturity. It is said that people are too immature to shape their lives by ideas. That is not the case: people will be mature enough for answers as soon as they are presented with questions that are divested of ancient prejudices. Such is the present situation perceived by one who, out of a living experience of the full reality, has struggled through to the idea of the threefold order. He would like to see this perception translated into action . However, words enough will have been exchanged only when deeds are born of them.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

The Basis of the Threefold Social Order

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c17.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c17

An ever-increasing number of people are beginning to declare that no way out of the social chaos of our time will be found unless our minds and hearts take a new turn toward the spirit. It is a confession to which many are led by disappointment with the results of a political economy that tried to base its ideas merely on the production and distribution of material wealth. It is also quite clear how few are the fruits of this profession of the spirit in our times. If expected to produce ideas for political economy, this profession is a failure; more is wanted than mere reference to the spirit. This does no more than give expression to a need; when it comes to the satisfaction of the need, it is helpless. One should recognize in this fact one of the problems of the present day and ask oneself, “How is it that even those who today regard this turning toward the spirit as necessary for social life do not get beyond talking about the necessity of it? Why do they never quite manage actually to suffuse our political-economic thought with spirituality?” The answer to this question will be found by observing the form the evolution of thought has taken in modern times among the civilized portion of humanity. Those representatives of modern civilization who have found their way to a world-conception, consider it a mark of their superior “cultivation” to speak of “the unknowable” behind all things. It has gradually become a widespread belief that only a very unenlightened person still talks about the inherent “essence of things” or “the invisible causes of the visible.” Now this thinking can be maintained for a time regarding the study of nature. The phenomena of nature lie before our eyes, and even those who will not hear of inquiring into their causes can describe them, and so arrive at a certain substantiality of thought. In matters of political economy, however, such a mode of thinking is bound to break down. For here the phenomena proceed ultimately from human beings; demands arise from human wants and preferences. Within us there lives as substance that to which people shut their eyes when they accustom themselves to talk about “the unknowable” (as do many disciples of the newer schools of thought). So it has come about that the age just passed has continued to evolve its habits of thought into the present — habits of thought which break down completely in matters of political economy. One can observe the freezing of water or the development of the embryo, and talk in a very “distinguished” manner of “the unknowable” in the world, cautioning one's contemporaries not to be led into fantastic speculations about this unknowable realm. But one cannot master economic matters with a way of thinking based on such a disposition, for economic affairs require that one should enter into the fullness of human life. Here one finds spirit and soul at work, even though they are revealed only in the demand for the satisfaction of material needs. We shall not develop the science of political economy that modern times require until people cease to be content with merely “referring” to the spirit and the soul, and cease to stigmatize all endeavors to arrive at an actual knowledge of the spirit as “unscientific” and unworthy of any enlightened person. The human soul will remain beyond their understanding until they recognize its connection with what they desire to avoid in their study of nature. If one speaks today from one's own perception of the supersensible, and argues that the only way to overcome the prevailing materialism is through research into the supersensible, one is met with the reply that materialism has been overcome “scientifically.” There have, it is claimed, been ample discussions on the subject which prove, on “genuinely” scientific grounds, that materialism is insufficient to explain the processes of nature. To this assertion it must be replied that such discussions may be very interesting theoretically, but they cannot overcome materialism. Materialism will be overcome only when it is not merely proven theoretically that there are more facts in the world than are perceived by our senses, but when living spirit inspires our study of the world and its processes. Only this spirit, directing human vision, can survey the many mingling currents at work in the material life of human communities. One can go on forever proving that “life” is not merely a chemical process; materialism will in no way suffer. One will combat materialism effectively only when one has the courage not only to say, “Our views of the world must be suffused with spirit,” but really to make this spirit the focus of their consciousness. The idea of the threefold social order addresses itself to people who have this courage. Courage of this kind does not stop short at the externalities of life, but seeks to penetrate its inner being. It grasps the necessity of the cultivation of a free, independent spiritual-cultural life because it perceives that a spiritual-cultural life in bondage can, at most, “refer” to the spirit, but it cannot live in the spirit. It also grasps the necessity of a self-subsistent legal life, because it has learned that our sense of right and justice has its roots in regions of the human soul that must remain independent of both the spiritual-cultural and the economic spheres. One perceives this only by recognizing the human soul. World-views inculcated by the theory of the unknowable (this is the line of much modern thought) will always tend to the fallacy that one can devise a social framework determined solely by the material facts of economic life. This courage will not be daunted by the theory that men are not mature enough for such a radical change of thought and feeling. Their “immaturity” will last only as long as science expounds to them that recognition of the spirit is an unwarranted assumption. Immaturity is not causing the present chaos; the chaos is caused by the belief that recognition of the spirit is a mark of unenlightenment. All attempts at shaping social life that proceed from this spiritless enlightenment are doomed to failure because they exclude the spirit. The moment one banishes the spirit from one's conscious mind, it asserts its claims in the unconscious regions. The spiritual forces can further human aims only when we do not work against the spirit. Only those who take the spirit into their conscious mind work with the spirit. There must he an overcoming of the false enlightenment that has arisen from a mistaken view of nature, and has become a sort of lay-gospel among widespread masses of people. Only then will the ground be prepared for a genuine social science that can have a fruitful influence upon real life.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

Real Enlightenment as the Basis of Social Thought

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c18.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c18

“Well meant thoughts don't make bread.” Such is the wisdom heard today the moment one speaks of ideas like those underlying the threefold social order. In view of the gravity of the times, this piece of wisdom may rank with another frequently heard today: “The social question will look different only when people return to work.” Whoever does not hear these two truths constantly repeated has no ears for the language of public discourse in widespread circles. And even if they are not expressly spoken, one hears these words behind much that is said publicly. It is hard for the ideas that the age requires to compete against such founts of wisdom because these objections are so incomparably “insightful.” A person need only say, “Show that they are wrong!” for the keenest thinker to recognize his powerlessness. Of course they cannot be refuted; they are obviously perfectly true. Is this all that is important in life — to say something that is perfectly true? Is not the all-important task to find thoughts that can set the facts of the matter into motion? It is a feature of modern public life (and one which does it great harm) that people will not combine their thinking with a sense of reality . It is only this lack of a sense of reality that stands in the way when one tries to bring fruitful ideas to bear upon modern social troubles. People have long been accustomed to such deficient thinking; however, now it is truly time for a radical change of habits, especially in this aspect of human life. First, one must perceive how people came to slip into this kind of thinking. One must look at the kind of thought valued by our age. One such cherished train of social thought goes back to the life and customs of primitive times. People burrow into “primeval ages” to find communistic customs and such things, and draw from this certain conclusions about what should be done today. This train of thought has become very fashionable in pamphlets on the social question, and has thus spread throughout large circles. It may be found today in a great many ideas about “the social question,” especially among the masses. People might actually have arrived at this particular train of thought with far less effort than has been devoted to it in many quarters. They might have compared human social life with the lives and habits of various wild animals. They would have found that the animals have instinctive functions which lead them to satisfy their needs, and that these instinctive functions are adapted to acquiring in the best way the things nature provides. The essential point is that in the human being this instinctive functioning must be replaced by conscious, intentional thought. We must build upon the foundation of nature, just like every other creature that must eat to survive. The “bread question” touches the natural foundation of our very existence. But this question exists for every creature that needs food; one cannot possibly talk of “social thinking” in this regard. Social thinking begins only when the human being works upon nature by means of his intellect. Through thinking he makes himself master of the forces of nature; through thinking he brings himself into association with other human beings in a labor process through which the “bread” won from nature becomes a part of general social life. For this life, the “bread question” is an intellectual one. It can mean only, “Which are the fruitful thoughts that can, when realized, guide human labor to the satisfaction of our needs?” One can readily agree with anyone who, after hearing such an argument, replies, “Really, that is a very primitive piece of wisdom! What is the use of expounding anything that is so self-evident?” Indeed, one would very gladly stop expounding it, if only those who believe it is so superfluous were not the very people who cast it to the winds and destroy all sound social thinking with these words of wisdom: “Bread is not made by thoughts.” It is the same with that other wise saying, through which people seek to evade the gravity of the social question: “First of all, people should get back to work.” We work when a thought stirs in our soul and sets us working. If one is to work as a member of society as a whole, and at the same time feel one's existence to be one worthy of a human being, social life must be shaped by thoughts that reveal our contribution in the light of human dignity. Certain circles, it is true (socialist ones, moreover), would like to replace this incentive to work with compulsory labor. That is their particular way of avoiding recognition of the need for fruitful social ideas. The world has been brought to its present pass by those who make it impossible for ideas to effect anything because they run away from them. Salvation is possible only if a strong body of people, who are still able to rouse themselves to sufficient consciousness of the true state of affairs, join together. These people must not grow faint-hearted at this critical time, for they will be buffeted with the scornful words: “Impractical idealist! Utopian dreamer!” These people will do their duty and build, while the scoffers tear down. For everything that the others, with their “magnificent accomplishments,” have built or still wish to build, will fall into ruin because with their dread of ideas and their “practical life” they have built upon a quagmire of false “realities.” Such people are merely weaving delusions around their own routines, and procuring themselves a cheap complacency by scoffing at life's real work. To the open-minded, it is as clear as day; to look at such things clearly is the urgent duty of all who are unafraid to change their way of thinking. The age longs for creative thoughts. This longing will not be silenced, however noisily the foes of thinking may try to drown it out by thoughtlessness and grandiose gestures.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

Longing for New Thoughts

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c19.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c19

A complex of ideas such as that of the threefold social order is often accused of having no “practical recommendations” on this or that specific issue. “Now there is the collapse of the currency! What does the proponent of the threefold order suggest as a remedy?” The only reply he can give is, “The whole recent course of world economy has been one that meant competition between the different nations, and thus it led to the depreciation of money in one particular case. Improvement can begin only when, instead of instituting specific measures with a view to remedying this or that, the whole course of economic life is transformed by means of the threefold system. Specific measures may of course improve particular aspects for a while; but so long as the character of economic methods remains essentially the same, isolated ‘improvements’ can do no good. In fact, an ‘improvement’ in one quarter is bound to make matters worse in another.” The only really practical means to rebuild what has been destroyed is the threefold social order itself. For example, if people would make comprehensive changes consistent with the threefold order within a part of the economy suffering under depreciation, the actual course of events would remedy the evil. Only someone who is for one reason or another afraid of practical work in the sense of the threefold social order could ask the question mentioned above. Such a person wants the proponents of the threefold idea to tell him how to cure particular symptoms without applying the three-fold cure to the disease itself. In this point lies the variance between the representatives of the threefold idea and all those who fancy it possible to retain the old form of social life with its unified state, and to succeed in building up a new structure within it. The whole idea of the threefold social organism rests on a perception that the old social orientation of the unified state is what has brought the world into its present catastrophic situation; and that one must therefore decide to rebuild from the ground up in keeping with the threefold idea. Until the courage for such a thoroughgoing measure is aroused in a sufficiently large number of people, our diseased social life will never be restored to health. Without this thoroughgoing change, the only thing that can possibly take place is a hoarding of economic and political power by the victorious nations and the oppression of the vanquished. The victors can, for a while , continue with the old system; the evils that result from it at home can be balanced through their domination of the vanquished. However, the vanquished are at this very moment in a plight that necessitates the instant, thoroughgoing action proposed here. It would, of course, be better if the victors, too, acquired insight. The conditions they are bringing about at home must, as time goes on, lead to a recognition of the intolerable situation in the vanquished country — and thus to new catastrophes. The vanquished, however, cannot afford to wait, for each delay makes their life situation more and more impossible. The threefold idea is certainly one that runs counter to the habits of thought and feeling of those who favor a unified national state. To admit to themselves candidly that the evils they now see around them are the result of this idea is, for many today, like being asked to stand with no ground beneath their feet. The ground these people want to stand on is the unified state. They want to take it as given, and build upon it institutions they hope will lead to an improved state of affairs. However, what is necessary is to create new ground; for this, the courage is lacking. The main thing that is necessary in order for the three-fold idea to take effect is to see that as many people as possible realize nothing but a radical change can do any good. Far too many people have already allowed the narrowest range of life to shape their judgment in public affairs. This is especially true of the very people who are active in the large industrial concerns. They credit themselves with an all-embracing faculty of judgment in large affairs; actually, they are capable only of what their own narrow range of life has taught them. What must be done is to promote a clear understanding (of which there is so little today) of the circumstances of public life. The more people there are who know how the forces of public life have operated until now, and how they have inevitably led to the present catastrophe, the fewer will be the obstacles to the threefold social order. Everything that can help to spread such clear perceptions prepares the soil on which the threefold idea can take practical effect. Accordingly, one must not expect much to come of discussions with members of one or another party; for in the end, as long as they choose to remain within their party, they will still tend to interpret every thought put forward by supporters of the threefold idea according to the party's convenience. Once one has recognized the value of this impulse, one should make it understood far and wide. One can do nothing with people who do not want the threefold social organism, but only with those who are filled with the idea. Only with these people is it possible to discuss the details of public affairs. One really ought to see that one simply cannot speak with Mr. Erzberger about public affairs as long as Mr. Erzberger is Mr. Erzberger! I write this because I see that, in this respect, not all those who have embarked upon the threefold idea are sailing on the right tack. The threefold social order is an idea one must serve unreservedly if one wants to serve it at all. It affords a basis for mutual discussions with each and every one ; but the idea must lose nothing of its radicality in discussion. People will take this course of action once they perceive the real causes of the downfall. Such a perception will give the needed courage for thoroughgoing measures. For the prevailing helplessness is, after all, simply the consequence of a lack of insight.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

Wanted: Insight!

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_c20.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_c20

Germany believed herself secure for time without end in her empire, which was founded half a century ago. In August 1914 she thought the war she was faced with would prove her invincible. Today all she can do is look upon its ruins. Such an experience calls for self-reflection. For such an experience proved that an opinion held for fifty years, and especially the ideas that had prevailed during the war, had been a tragic error. Where can the reasons for this fateful error be found? This question must now call forth a process of self-evaluation within the soul of every German. Will there be enough strength left for such introspection? Germany's very existence depends upon it. Germany's future also hinges upon the sincerity of the questioning mind — how did we fall prey to such fatal misconceptions? If reflection upon this inquiry starts immediately, then it will come in a flash of understanding: yes, we did found an empire half a century ago, but we neglected to give it a task springing from within the very essence of its national spirit. The empire was founded. During the first years of its existence care was taken to shape its inner possibilities according to demands posed, year after year, by old traditions and new endeavors. Later, progress was made to safeguard and enlarge the outer positions of power that were based on material resources. Linked to it were policies regulating the social demands of the new era, policies that did take into ac-count the requirements of the day, to some extent, but lacked a greater vision. A goal could have been defined had there been enough sensitivity to the growing needs of the new generation. Thus the empire found itself in the larger world arena without an essential direction or goal to justify its existence. The debacle of the war revealed this truth in an unfortunate way. Until the war, other nations saw nothing to suggest that Germany had a historic world mission that ought not to be swept away. Her failure to manifest such a mission, according to those with real insight, was the underlying cause of Germany's ultimate breakdown. Immeasurably much depends now on the ability of the German people to assess this state of affairs objectively. Dis-aster should call forth an insight that never appeared during the previous fifty years. Instead of petty thoughts about the immediate concerns of the day, the grand sweep of an en-lightened philosophy of life should surge through the present, endeavoring to recognize the evolutionary forces within the new generation, and dedicating itself to them with a courageous will. There really must be an end to all the petty attempts to dismiss as impractical idealists everyone who has his eye on these evolutionary forces. A stop must be put to the arrogance and presumption of those who consider themselves to be practical, yet who are the very ones whose narrow-mindedness, masked as practicality, has led to disaster. Consideration must be given to the evolutionary demands of the new age as enunciated by those who, although labeled impractical idealists, are actually the real practical thinkers. For a long time, “pragmatists” of all kinds have fore-seen the emergence of new human needs. However, they wanted to meet them with traditional modes of thought and institutions. The economic life of modern times gave rise to these needs. It seemed impossible to satisfy them following avenues of private initiative. It seemed imperative to one class that, in a few areas, private labor should be changed over into social labor; and where this class's own philosophy deemed it profitable, the change became effective. Another class wanted radically to turn all individual labor into social labor. This group, influenced by recent economic developments, had no interest in the preservation of private goals. All efforts regarding humanity's new demands hereto-fore have one thing in common: they all aim at the socialization of the private sector in the expectation that it will be taken over by communal bodies (the state or commune); however, these have their origins in preconceptions that have nothing to do with these new demands. Nor is any consideration given to the fact that the newer cooperatives, which are also expected to play a role in the takeover, have not been formed fully in accordance with the new requirements, but are still imbued with old thought patterns and habits. The truth is that none of the communal institutions influenced in any way by these old patterns can be a proper vehicle for the new ideas. The forces at work in modern times urge recognition of a social structure for all humanity that comprehends something entirely different from prevailing views. Heretofore, social communities have been largely shaped by human social instincts. The task of the times must be to permeate these forces with full consciousness. The social organism is articulated like a natural organism. Just as the natural organism must take care of the process of thinking through its head and not through its lungs, so the social organism must be organized into systems. No one system can assume the work of the other; each must work harmoniously with the others while preserving its own integrity. Economic life can prosper only if it develops according to its own laws and energies as an independent system within the social organism, and if it does not let confusion upset its structure by permitting another part of the social order—that which is at work in politics — to invade it. On the contrary, the political system must function independently alongside the economic system, just as in the natural organism breathing and thinking function side by side. Their wholesome collaboration can be attained only if each member has its own vitally interacting regulations and ad-ministration. However, beneficial interaction falters if both members have one and the same administrative and regulatory organ. If it is allowed to take over, the political system is bound to destroy the economy, and the economic system loses its vitality if it becomes political. These two spheres of the social organism must now be joined by a third that is shaped quite independently, from within its own life-possibilities — the cultural sphere, with its own legitimate order and administration. The cultural portions of the other two spheres belong in this sphere and must be submitted to it; yet the cultural sphere has no administrative power over the other two spheres and can influence them only as the organ systems coexisting within a complete natural organism influence each other. Today it is already possible to elaborate at length upon the necessity of the social organism and to establish a scientific basis for it in every detail. Here, however, only guidelines can be offered for those who want to pursue the important task. The foundation of the German Empire came at a time when the younger generation was already confronted with these necessities. However, its administration did not understand how to give the Empire a mission with a view to these needs. Understanding it would not only have helped provide the right inner structure; it would have guided Ger-many in a justified direction in world politics. Given such an impetus, the German people could have lived together with other nations. Disaster ought to give rise now to introspection. The will to make the social organism possible must be strengthened. A new spirit—not the Germany of the past—should now confront the external world. A new Germany with cultural, economic and political systems, each with its own administrations, should now begin the work of rebuilding relation-ships with the victor. Germany failed to recognize in time that, unlike other nations, she needed to become strong through the threefold articulation of the social order; there-fore, she must do so now. One can imagine the so-called pragmatists saying how these new concepts are too complicated, and how uncomfortable they are merely thinking about a collaboration of three spheres. Shying away from the real demands of life, they want to pursue complacently their own habits of thought. They must awaken to the fact: either one must deign to sub-mit one's thinking to the demands of reality, or nothing will have been learned from the debacle, and this self-inflicted misery will be endlessly perpetuated and compounded.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

An Appeal to the German Nation and to the Civilized World

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_appendix.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_appendix

In the year 1858, Hermann Grimm wrote an essay entitled “Schiller and Goethe.” It begins with these words: “The true history of Germany is the history of the spiritual movements among her people. Only when enthusiasm for some great thought has inspired the nation and set its frozen forces flowing, do deeds of great and shining fame occur.” And further on we read: “... the names of the German emperors and kings are not milestones of the nation's progress.” Only a revival of the attitude underlying such words can shed light upon the troubled time that has come upon the German people. That something else from this attitude may yet awaken amid the commotion and labor of present times is the one hope to be cherished by he who holds it necessary above all for the German people to turn for help to the saving power of thoughts. Those who say today that one must first wait to see what shall come of the general situation and what relations with the people of the West and East shall result from new world conditions, have no concept of the age's necessities. This view has led to everything said in these pages about the idea of the threefold social order. I believe that in the previous essays I have sufficiently answered the constant objection that our first thought must be the outcome of our relations with foreign nations before we can turn our attention to social ideas, like that of the threefold system. This objection rests on a fallacy that may prove bitterly fatal to the German people. Germany has come out of the world catastrophe in such a way that she must first create a basis for future relations with the nations around her. Her economic life (if its development were detached from the political life of laws and from the cultural field) would take on a form that could give it a place in the whole system of world economy. As I have tried to show in these essays, it would be in the interest of other nations to give an economic life of this kind its place in the system of world economy. An independent cultural life can be regarded by no other nation as a ground for hostility; a political-legal life among the German people based on the equality of all adults could not be viewed as a hostile element by non-Germans without their deriding themselves. However, an idea like the threefold order must come before the world with the driving force of a definite will in public affairs. The moment this idea is observed on the way toward becoming fact , it can become such a revelation of the innermost German being as will give the rest of the world something firm with which to reckon. Facing modern circumstances, facing the lack of faith in the practical efficacy of living ideas, one might well ask what has become of the German spirit. In ideas such as those written by Hermann Grimm sixty years ago, the voice of the greatest spirits of their own history speaks to the German people. In such ideas, these great spirits intended to utter the deepest will and purpose of their people. Shall the descendants of these spirits be deaf to them? These descendants are in a situation where truly it is not enough merely to remember the ideas of their forefathers, but where they must carry forward these ideas in a new form suited to modern times. Would the German deny his own being through lack of faith in ideas, and thus lose his very self? Surely the best part of the German spirit lies in this faith in the potency of ideas. And a revelation of the German spirit, once displayed in its genuine truth, would be one with which the world must reckon. A large enough number of Germans who share the heritage of faith in the intellectual world, and bring to it all the forces of their souls, must be the saving of their people. No negotiations with the world abroad will be of any good to the German people if carried on with indications of disbelief in ideas and their practical utility, for in all such negotiations the very core of the German spirit is absent. All objections stemming from the view that now is not the time to indulge in ideas should be silenced. There can be no question of any time that will bear in it the seeds of any real possibility of life for the German people, until the power of ideas has been recognized by a sufficiently large number of people. Not a faith that trims its ideas according to outer events, but a faith in ideas—that shall be the force that moves the German nation. What results may be confidently awaited in the same faith; to thrust it aside and to wait idly in a round of false activity while destiny pursues its course — this, for every German, is a sin against his own being, a sin against the spirit of this world hour, a sin against the demand of true self-awareness. Is not the influence of this sin plain enough to see? Are not the grievous effects of this sin already with us? Do not distress and want proclaim the sin in language comprehensible enough? Have the German people lost the power to recognize the sin they have committed against their own true spirit? These are questions that may well tear at the souls of all who study the public life of the German people. The pain should rightly lead to an awakening. Were the great spirits of the German past, with their faith in ideas, mere dreamers? Such questions find answers only in real life. What kind of solution can be found? Yes, they were dreamers if their descendants dream away their ideas; but they were radiant spirits of reality if these descendants receive their ideas as a force for living, awakened will and purpose.

The Renewal of the Social Organism

The Way to Save the German Nation

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA024/English/AP1985/GA024_appendix2.html

Dornach

1919

GA024_appendix2

The following books and pamphlets were intended by Dr. Steiner to form a series of meditation processes describing the basic experiences of Spiritual Science.

Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy

Foreword

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA025/English/RPC1943/GA025_foreword.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA025_foreword

It is a great pleasure to me to be able to give this series of lectures in the Goetheanum, which was founded to promote Spiritual Science. What is here called ‘Spiritual Science’ must not be confused with those things which, more than ever at the moment, appear as Occultism, Mysticism, etc. These schools of thought either refer to ancient spiritual traditions which are no longer properly understood, and which give in a dilettante manner all kinds of imagined knowledge of supersensible worlds, or they ape outwardly the scientific methods which we have to-day without realizing that methods of research which are ideal for the study of the natural world can never lead to supernatural worlds. And what makes its appearance as Mysticism is also either mere renewal of ancient psychic experiences, or muddled, very often fantastic, and deceptive introspection. As opposed to this, the attitude of the Goetheanum is one which, in the fullest sense, falls in with the present-day view of natural scientific research, and recognizes what is justified in it. On the other hand, it seeks to gain objective and accurate results on the subject of the supersensible world by means of the strictly controlled training of pure psychic vision. It counts only such results as are obtained through this vision of the soul, by which the psychic-spiritual organization is just as accurately defined as a mathematical problem. The point is that at first this organization is presented in scientifically indisputable vision. If we call it ‘the spiritual eye’, we then say: as the mathematician has his problems before him, so has the researcher into the spirit his ‘spiritual eye’. The scientific method is employed for him on that preparation which is in his ‘spiritual organs’. If his ‘science’ has its being in these organs, he can make use of them, and the supersensible world lies before him. The student of the world of the senses directs his science to outward things, to results; but the student of the spirit pursues science as a preparation of vision. And when vision begins, science must already have fulfilled its mission. If you like to call your vision ‘clairvoyance’ it is at any rate, an ‘exact clairvoyance’. The science of the spirit begins where that? of the senses ends. Above all, the research student of the spirit must have based his whole method of thought for the newer Science on the one he applied to the world of the senses. Thus it comes about that the Sciences studied to-day merge into that realm which opens up Spiritual Science in the modern sense. It happens not only in the separate realms of Natural Science and History, but also e.g., in Medicine; and in all provinces of practical life, in Art, in Morals, and in Social life. It happens also in religious experiences. In these lectures three of these provinces are to be dealt with, and it is to be shown how they merge into the modern spiritual view. The three are Philosophy, Cosmology and Religion. At one time Philosophy was the intermediary for all human knowledge. In its logos man acquired knowledge of the distinct provinces of world-reality. The different Sciences are born of its substance. But what has remained of Philosophy itself? A number of more or less abstract ideas which have to justify their existence in face of the other sciences, whose justification is found in observation through the senses and in experiment. To what do the ideas of Philosophy refer? That has to-day become an important question. We find in these ideas no longer a direct reality, and so we try to find a theoretical basis for this reality. And more: Philosophy, and in its very name, love of wisdom shows that it is not merely an affair of the intellect, but of the entire human soul. What one can ‘love’ is such a thing, and there was a time when wisdom was considered something real, which is not the case with ‘ideas’ which engage only Reason and Intellect. Philosophy, from being a matter for all mankind which once was felt in the warmth of the soul, has become dry, cold knowledge: and we no longer feel ourselves in the midst of Reality when we occupy ourselves with philosophizing. In mankind itself that has been lost which once made Philosophy a real experience. Natural Science (of the outer world) is conducted by means of the senses, and what Reason thinks concerning the observations made by the senses is a putting-together of the content derived through the senses. This thought has no content of its own; and while man lives in such knowledge he knows himself only as a physical body. But Philosophy was originally a soul-content which was not experienced by the physical body, but by a human organism which cannot be appreciated by the senses. This is the etheric body, forming the basis of the physical body, and this contains the supersensible powers which give shape and life to the physical body. Man can use the organization of this etheric body just as he can that of the physical. This etheric body draws ideas from the supersensible world, just as the physical body does, through the senses, from the sense world. The ancient philosophers developed their ideas through this etheric body, and as the spiritual life of man has lost this etheric body and its knowledge, Philosophy has simultaneously lost its character of reality. We must first of all recover the knowledge of etheric man, and then Philosophy will be able to regain its character of reality. This must mark the first of the steps to be taken by Anthroposophy. Cosmology once upon a time showed man how he is a member of the universe. To this end it was necessary that not only his body but also his soul and spirit could be regarded as members of the Cosmos; and this was the case because in the Cosmos things of the soul and things of the spirit were visible. In later times, however, Cosmology has become only a superstructure of Natural Science gained by Mathematics, Observation and Experiment. The results of research in these lines are put together to make a picture of cosmic development, and from this picture one can no doubt understand the human physical body. But the etheric body remains unintelligible, and in a still higher sense that part of man which has to do with the Soul and the Spirit. The etheric body can only be recognized as a member of the Cosmos, if the etheric essence of the Cosmos is clearly perceived. But this etheric part of the Cosmos can, after all, give man no more than an etheric organization, whereas in the Soul is internal life; so we have to take into consideration also the internal life of the Cosmos. This is just what the old Cosmology did, and it was because of this view of it that the soul-essence of man which transcends the etheric was made a part of the Cosmos. Modern spiritual life fails, however, to see the reality of the inner life of the Soul. In modern experience, this contains no guarantee that it has an existence beyond birth and death. All one knows to-day of the soul-life can have its origin in and with the physical body through the life of the embryo and the subsequent unfolding in childhood and can end with death. There was something in the older human wisdom for the soul of man of which modern knowledge is only a reflection; and this was looked upon as the astral being in man. It was not what the soul experiences in its activities of thinking, feeling and volition, but rather something which is reflected in thinking, feeling and volition. One ‘cannot imagine thinking, feeling and volition as having a part in the Cosmos, for these live only in the physical nature of man. On the other hand the astral nature can be comprehended as a member of the Cosmos, for this enters the physical nature at birth and leaves it at death. That element which, during life between birth and death, is concealed behind thought, feeling and volition — namely the astral body — is the cosmic element of man. Because modern knowledge has lost this astral element of man, it has also lost a Cosmology which could comprise the whole of man. There remains only a physical Cosmology, and even this contains no more than the origins of physical man. It is necessary once more to found a knowledge of astral man, and then we shall also again have a Cosmology which includes the whole human being. So the second step of Anthroposophy is marked out. Religion in its original meaning is based on that experience whereby man feels himself independent not only of his physical and etheric nature, the cause of his existence between birth and death, but also of the Cosmos, in so far as this has an influence on such an existence. The content of this experience constitutes the real spirit-men, that being at which our word ‘Ego’ now only hints. This ‘Ego’ once connoted for man something which knew itself to be independent of all corporeality, and independent of the astral nature. Through such an experience man felt himself to be in a world of which the one which gives him body and soul is but an image; he felt a connection with a divine world. Now knowledge of this world remains hidden to observation according to the senses. Knowledge of etheric and astral man leads gradually to a vision of it. In the use of his senses man must feel himself separated from the divine world, to which belongs his inmost being: but through supersensible cognition he puts himself once more in touch with this world. So supersensible cognition merges into Religion. In order that this may be the case, we must be able to see the real nature of the ‘Ego’, and this power has been lost to modern knowledge. Even philosophers see in the ‘Ego’ only the synthesis of soul experiences. But the idea which they have thereby of the ‘Ego’, the spiritual man, is contradicted by every sleep; for in sleep the content of this ‘Ego’ is extinguished. A consciousness which knows only such an ‘Ego’ cannot merge into Religion on the strength of its knowledge, for it has nothing to resist the extinction of sleep. However, knowledge of the true ‘Ego’ has been lost to modern spiritual life, and with it the possibility to attain to Religion through knowledge. The religion that was once available is now something taken from tradition, to which human knowledge has no longer any approach. Religion in this way becomes the content of a Faith which is to be gained outside the sphere of scientific experience. Knowledge and Faith become two separate kinds of experience of something which once was a unity. We must first re-establish a clear cognition and knowledge of the true ‘Ego’, if Religion is to have its proper place in the life of mankind. In modern Science man is understood as a true reality only in respect of his physical nature. He must be recognized further as etheric, astral and spiritual or ‘Ego’ man and then Science will become the basis of religious life. So is the third step of Anthroposophy worked out. It will now be the task of the subsequent lectures to show the possibility of acquiring knowledge of the etheric part of man, that is to say, of clothing Philosophy with reality; it will be my further business to point out the way to the knowledge of the astral part of man, that is to say, to demonstrate that a Cosmology is possible which embraces humanity; and finally will come the task to lead you to the knowledge of the ‘true Ego’, in order to establish the possibility of a religious life, which rests on the basis of knowledge or cognition.

Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy

The Three Steps of Anthroposophy

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA025/English/RPC1943/GA025_c01.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA025_c01

Philosophy did not arise in the same way in which it is continued in modern times. In these days it is a connection of ideas which are not experienced in one's inner being, in the soul, in such a manner that a man, conscious of self, feels himself in these ideas as in a reality. Therefore we seek after all possible theoretical means to prove that the philosophic content does refer to a reality. But this way leads only to different philosophic systems, and of these one can say they are right to a certain extent; for mostly the grounds on which they are refuted are of as much value as those on which it is sought to prove them. Now with Anthroposophy it is a question not of attaining the reality of the philosophic content by theoretic thought, but by the cultivation of a method which on the one hand is similar to that by which in ancient times Philosophy was won, and on the other, is as consciously exact as the mathematical and natural scientific method of more recent times. The ancient method was semi-conscious. Compared with the condition of full consciousness of the modern scientific thinker it had something almost dreamy. It existed not in such dreams as concealed indirectly by their very nature their real content, but in waking dreams, which pointed to reality precisely by means of this content. Nor had such a soul-content the abstract character of the modern presentation, but rather that of picture-making. Such a soul-content must be regained, but in full consciousness, according to the modern stage of human evolution; exactly in the same sense of consciousness as we find in scientific thought. Anthroposophical research seeks to attain this in a first stage of supersensible knowledge in the condition of ‘imaginative consciousness’. It is reached through a process of meditation in the soul. This leads the entire force of the soul-life to presentations which are easily visualized and held fast in a state of rest. By this means we finally realize, if such a process is constantly repeated over a sufficient period of time, how the soul in its experience becomes free from the body. We see clearly that the thought of ordinary consciousness is a reflection of a spiritual activity which remains unconscious as such, after having become so by the incorporation of the human physical organism in its course. All ordinary thinking is dependent on the supersensible spiritual activity which is reproduced in the physical organism. But at the same time we are conscious only of what the physical organism allows us to be conscious of. The spiritual activity can be separated from the physical organism by meditation, and the soul then experiences the supersensible in a super-sensible way; no longer the physical but the etheric organism is the background of the soul's experience. We have a presentation before our soul's consciousness with the character of a picture. We have before us in this kind of presentation pictures of the powers which, coming from the supersensible are the basis of the organism as its powers of growth, and also as the very powers which function in the regulation of the processes of nourishment. We gain in these pictures a real vision of the life-forces. This is the stage of ‘ imaginative cognition’. This is life in the etheric human organism, and with our own etheric organism we live in the etheric Cosmos. There is between the etheric organism and the etheric Cosmos no such sharp distinction relating to subjective and objective as there is in physical thought about the things of the world. This ‘imaginative knowledge’ is the means whereby we can recall the very substantial reality of ancient Philosophy, but we can also conceive a new Philosophy, and a real conception of Philosophy can only come into being by means of this imaginative knowledge. And when this Philosophy is once there it can be grasped and understood by the ordinary consciousness; for it speaks out of ‘imaginative’ experience in a form which springs from spiritual (etheric) reality, and whose reality-content can, through the ordinary consciousness, be recalled in experience. A higher activity of knowledge which is forthcoming when meditation is extended, is required for Cosmology. Not only is intensive quietness cultivated on a soul-content or subject matter but also a fully conscious stationary condition of the quiet, content-less soul. This is after the meditative soul-content or subject matter has been banished from the consciousness. The stage ‘is reached where the spiritual content of the Cosmos flows into the empty soul — the stage of ‘ inspired cognition’. We have in part of us a spiritual Cosmos, just as we have a physical Cosmos before the senses. We succeed in seeing, in the powers of the spiritual Cosmos, what takes place spiritually between man and the Cosmos in the process of breathing. In this and the other rhythmic processes of man we find the physical reproduction of what exists in the spiritual sphere in human astral organization. We attain to the vision of how this astral organism has its place in the spiritual Cosmos outside the life on earth, and how it takes on the cloak of the physical organism through embryonic life and birth, to lay it down again in death. By means of this knowledge we can distinguish between heredity, which is an earthly phenomenon, and that which man brings with him from the spiritual world. In this way, through ‘inspired knowledge’, we attain to a Cosmology which can embrace man in respect of his psychic and spiritual existence. Inspired knowledge is cultivated in the astral organism because we experience an existence outside our bodies in the Cosmos of the Spirit. But the same thing happens in the etheric organism; and we can translate this knowledge into human speech in the images which present themselves in this sphere, and we can harmonize it with the content of Philosophy. So we get a Cosmic Philosophy. For Religious Cognition a third thing is necessary. We must dive down into those existences which reveal themselves in picture form as the content of ‘inspired knowledge’; and this is attained when we add ‘Soul-exercises of the Will’ to the kind of meditation which we have till now been describing. For instance, we attempt to present to ourselves events which in the physical world have a definite course, but in reverse order, from the end to the beginning. Doing this we separate the soul-life, through a process of will which is not used in ordinary consciousness from the cosmic externals, and let the soul sink into those Beings which manifest themselves by inspiration. We attain true intuition, a union with beings of a spiritual world. These experiences of intuition are reflected in etheric and also in physical man, and produce in this reflection the subject matter of religious consciousness. Through this ‘ intuitive cognition ’ we gain a vision of the true nature of the Ego, which in reality is sunk into the spiritual world. The Ego which we know in ordinary consciousness is only a quite faint reflection of its true proportions. Intuition provides the possibility of feeling the connection of this faint reflection with the divine primal universe, to which in its true shape it belongs. Moreover, we are enabled to see how spiritual man,, the true Ego, has his place in the spiritual world, when he is sunk in sleep. In this condition the physical and etheric organisms require the rhythmic processes for their own regeneration. In a waking condition the Ego lives in this rhythm and in the metabolic processes that are a part of it; in the condition of sleep, the rhythm and the metabolic processes of man have a life of their own as physical and etheric organisms; and the astral organisms and the Ego then take their place in the spirit world. The translation of man into this world by inspired and intuitive knowledge is conscious; he lives in a spiritual Cosmos, just as by his senses he lives in a physical Cosmos. He can speak of the content of the religious consciousness from knowledge, and he can do this because what he experiences in the spiritual sphere is reflected in the physical and etheric man. Moreover, the reflected pictures can be expressed in speech, and in this form have a meaning which throws religious light on the human disposition of ordinary consciousness. Thus we reach the heart of Philosophy by imaginative cognition, of Cosmology by inspiration, and of the religious life through intuition. Besides that already described, the following soul-exercise helps towards attaining intuition. One tries so to grasp the life, which otherwise unconsciously unfolds itself from one human age to another, that one consciously contracts habits which one did not have before, or consciously changes such as one had. The greater the effort that such a change necessitates, the better it is for gaining intuitive knowledge; for these changes bring about a loosening of the will-power from the physical and etheric organism. We bind the will to the astral organism and to the true form of the Ego and consciously immerse both of them into the spirit world. What we may call ‘abstract thought’ has been perfected only in the modern spiritual development of mankind. In earlier periods of evolution this kind of thought was unknown to man, though it is necessary to the development of human spiritual activity, because it frees the power of thought from the picture-form. We achieve the possibility of thinking through the physical organism, though such thinking is not rooted in a real world; only in an apparent world where the processes of Nature can be copied without man himself contributing anything to these pictures. We attain a copy of Nature, which, qua copy, can be genuine, because the life in the thought-copy is not in itself reality, but only apparent reality. But the moral impulses can also be taken up into this pseudo-thought, so that they exercise no compulsion on man. The moral impulses are themselves real because they come from the spirit world; the manner in which man experiences them in his apparent world enables him to adapt himself in accordance with them, or not. They themselves exercise no compulsion on him either through his body or his soul. So man strides on; thought which was in ancient times completely bound to the unconsciously imagined, inspired and intuitive knowledge, thought in which the subject matter was laid as open as Imagination and Inspiration and Intuition themselves, becomes abstract thought conducted through the physical organism. In this thought, which has a pseudo-life, because it is spirit substance translated into the physical world, man has the possibility of developing an objective nature-knowledge and his own moral freedom. More details on this subject you will find in my Philosophy of Spirit Activity, my Knowledge of Higher Worlds and how to attain it, Theosophy, Occult Science, etc. What is necessary in order to return to a Philosophy, a Cosmology and a Religion that embrace all man, is to enter upon the province of an exact clairvoyance in Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition; and this consciously — that is in contradistinction to the old dreamlike clairvoyance. Man attains to his full consciousness in the province of a life of abstract presentations. It remains to him, in the further advance of humanity, to bring this full consciousness of the spiritual world to bear on his daily life.

Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy

Exercises of Thought, Feeling and Volition

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA025/English/RPC1943/GA025_c02.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA025_c02

The inner life of man assumes another form from that of ordinary consciousness when it enters upon imaginative knowledge. His relationship to the world is also changed. This change is brought about by the concentration of all the powers of the soul on a presentation-complex which can easily be seen in its entirety. This last condition is necessary to avoid any kind of unconscious process playing a part in the meditation; for in this everything must come to pass only within the psychic and spiritual spheres. The man who thinks out a mathematical problem can be fairly certain that he is employing only psychic-spiritual forces. Unconscious memories, influenced by feeling or will, will not enter into it. It must be the same with Meditation. If we take for it a thought which is brought up out of memory, we cannot know how much at the same time we introduce into the consciousness from the physical, or instinctive, or unconsciously psychical, and cause it to react in the soul on the presentation during meditation. It is, therefore, best to choose for a subject of meditation something which one knows for certain to be quite new to the soul. If we seek advice on this point from an experienced spiritual investigator, he will lay particular stress on this. He will recommend a subject which is perfectly simple and which quite certainly cannot have occurred to us before. It is of no importance that the subject should even correspond with some known fact taken from the world of the senses. We can take as an idea something pictorial, but not necessarily representing a picture of the outer world, e.g., ‘In Light lives streaming Wisdom’. It depends on the power of reposeful meditation with such an image-presentation. The spiritual and psychic powers are strengthened by such a calm meditation just as the muscles are strengthened by performing a piece of work. The meditation can be short at a time, but it must be repeated over a long period to be successful. With one person success can be attained after a few weeks, with another only after years, according to natural predisposition. The man who wishes to be a true Spiritual Investigator must do such exercises systematically and intensively. The first result of meditation in the way here indicated is that the man who practises it has through his inner life a greater control over the statements of a Spiritual Investigator than the man of ordinary healthy intellect, though the latter, if sufficiently unfettered and unprejudiced, is also quite capable of such control. Meditation must call to its aid the exercise in character strengthening, inner truthfulness, calmness of soul, self-possession and deliberation. For only then, when it is thoroughly imbued with these qualities, will the soul gradually imprint on the whole human organization what in meditation appears as a process. When success is reached by means of such exercises, we find ourselves in the etheric organism. The thought-experience receives a new form. We experience the thoughts not only in the abstract form as before, but in such a way that one feels the power in them. Thoughts of former experience can only be thoughts, they have no power to stimulate action. Whereas the thoughts we now have, have as much power as the powers of growth which accompany man from childhood to maturity, and just for this reason it is necessary to carry out meditation in the right way. For if unconscious forces intervene in it, if it is not an act of complete and deliberate thoughtfulness, and done in self-possession taking a purely psychic and spiritual course, impulses are developed which step in as do the natural powers of growth in our own human organism. This must in no wise occur. Our own physical and etheric organism must remain completely untouched by meditation. The right kind of meditation enables us to live with the newly-developed power of thought-content quite outside our own physical and etheric organism. We have the etheric experience; and our organism itself attains to a personal experience of a relationship with a relative objectivity. We look at it (our organism) and in the form of thought it radiates back what we experience in the ether. This experience is healthy if we arrive at the condition in which we can with complete freedom of choice alternate between an existence in the ether and one in our physical body. The condition is not right if there is something which forces us into the etheric existence. We must be able to be in ourselves and outside ourselves in accordance with perfectly free orientation. The first experience which we can win through such an inner labour is a review of the course of our own past life on earth. We see it as it has progressed by means of the powers of growth from childhood upwards. We see it in thought-pictures which are condensed into powers of growth. They are not simply remembered scenes of our own life which we have before us. They are pictures of an etheric course of events, which have happened in our own existence, without having been taken into the ordinary consciousness. That which the consciousness and memory hold is only the abstract accompanying appearance of the real course. It is, as it were, a surface wave which is in its shape the result of something deeper. In the process of viewing this progress the working of the etheric Cosmos on man is brought out. We can experience this work as the subject-matter of Philosophy. It is wisdom, not in the abstract form of the conception, but rather in the form of the working of the etheric in the Cosmos. In ordinary consciousness it is only the young child who has not yet learnt to speak who is in the same relationship to the Cosmos as the man who uses his imagination correctly. The child has not yet separated the powers of thought from the general (etheric) powers of growth. This happens only when he learns to speak. Then the powers of abstract thought are separated from the universal powers of growth which alone were previously present. In the course of his later life man has these powers of abstract thought, but they are part of his physical organism, and are not taken up into his etheric being. He cannot, therefore, bring his relationship to the etheric world into his consciousness. He can learn to do this , through Imagination. A quite small child is an unconscious philosopher; the ‘imaginative philosopher’ is again a small child, but wakened to full consciousness. Through the exercise of ‘Inspiration’ a new capacity is added to those already developed, namely, the capacity to obliterate from the consciousness pictures which have been dwelt upon in meditation. It must be clearly emphasized that here the capacity must be developed again to obliterate when one likes pictures which have previously been taken up in meditation by one's freewill. It is not enough to obliterate presentations which have not been implanted in the consciousness by free choice. It requires a greater psychic effort to abolish pictures which have been created in meditation than to extinguish those which have entered into the consciousness in another way. And we need this greater effort to advance in supersensible knowledge. On such lines we achieve a wakeful, but quite empty soul-life; we remain in conscious wakefulness. If this condition is experienced in full thoughtfulness the soul becomes filled with spiritual facts, as through the senses it is filled with physical. And this is the condition of ‘Inspiration’. We live an inner life in the Cosmos just as we live an inner life in the physical organism. But we are aware that we are experiencing the cosmic life, that the spiritual things and processes of the Cosmos are being revealed to us as our own inner soul-life. Now the possibility must have remained of always momentarily exchanging this inner experience of the Cosmos with the condition of ordinary consciousness. For then we can always relate what we experience in Inspiration to something we experience in ordinary consciousness. We see in the Cosmos that is perceived by the senses a reproduction of what we have spiritually experienced. The process may be compared with that by which one compares a new experience in life with a memory-picture which rises in the consciousness. The spiritual outlook which we have won is like the new experience, and the physical view of the Cosmos like the memory-picture. This spiritual outlook, thus attained, differs from the imaginative. In the latter we have general pictures of an etheric occurrence; in the former, pictures appear of spiritual beings who live and move in this etheric occurrence. What we know in the physical world as Sun and Moon, Planets and Fixed Stars, these we find again as Cosmic beings; and our own psychic-spiritual experience appears enclosed in the orbit of these cosmic essences. The physical organism of man now becomes intelligible for the first time, for not only all that his senses take in Contributes to its shape and life, but also the beings who work creatively in the affairs of the sense-world. Everything which is thus experienced through inspiration remains completely shut out from the ordinary consciousness. Man would only be conscious of it if he experienced the process of breathing in the same way as he experienced the process of observation. The cosmic disposition between man and world remains hidden for ordinary consciousness. The Yoga-philosophy seeks the road to a Cosmology whereby the process of breathing is transformed into a process of observation. Modern western man should not imitate that. In the course of human evolution he has entered upon an organization which for him excludes such Yoga-exercises. He would never through them get quite away from his organism, and so would not satisfy the requirement to leave untouched his physical and etheric organism. Such practices corresponded with a period of evolution which has gone by. But what was attained by them had to be gained in the same way as has just been described for inspired knowledge; the method, that is, of experiencing in a state of full consciousness what in past times man had to experience in waking dreams. If the Philosopher is a child with fully-developed consciousness, the Cosmologist must become in a fully conscious way a man of past ages, in which the Spirit of the Cosmos could still be seen by means of natural faculties. In ‘Intuition’ man is completely translated — through the exercises of the Will described last time — together with his consciousness into the objective world of the cosmic, spiritual beings. He attains a condition of experience which alone on earth the first men had. They were in as close a connection with the inwardness of their cosmic surroundings as they were with the processes of their own bodies. And these processes were not completely unconscious as with modern man. They were reflected in the soul. Man felt in the soul his growth, and the chemical changes of his body, as in waking dream-pictures. And this experience enabled him to feel also the processes of his cosmic circumstances with their spiritual inwardness as in a dream. He had dreamlike intuition of which we find to-day only an echo in some people specially inclined to it. The world around him was, in the consciousness of primitive man, both material and spiritual; and what he experienced then in a semi-dream state was for him religious revelation, a direct continuation of the other aspects of his life. These experiences in the spirit world, of which primitive man was only half conscious, remain completely unknown to modern man. The man with supersensible, intuitive knowledge brings them into his full consciousness, and so in a new way he is transported back to the condition of primitive man, who still derived the religious content from his world-consciousness. As the Philosopher resembles the fully-conscious child, and the Cosmologist the fully-conscious man of a past middle human period, so the man with religious cognition in a modern sense resembles primitive man, except that he experiences the spiritual world in his soul, not as in a dream, but with full consciousness.

Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy

Methods of Imaginative, Inspired and Intuitive Knowledge or Cognition

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA025/English/RPC1943/GA025_c03.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA025_c03

We said that for the development of ‘inspired cognition’ one of the basic exercises is to banish from the consciousness pictures which have arisen in it in meditation or in the sequel to the process of meditation. But this exercise is really only a preliminary one to another. By the banishing we get to the point of visualizing the course of our life in the way our last survey demonstrated. We attain also to a view of the spiritual Cosmos in so far as this can express itself in etheric life. We receive a picture of the living etheric Cosmos projected on to the human being. We see how everything which we can call heredity passes on in a continuous process from the physical organisms of the ancestors to the physical organisms of posterity. But we see also how a repeatedly new effect of the etheric cosmos occurs for the facts of the etheric organism. This fresh effect from the etheric cosmos works in opposition to heredity. It is of a kind which affects only the individual man. It is specially important for the teacher to have an insight into these things. To progress in supernatural knowledge it is necessary to perfect the exercise of banishing the imaginative pictures more and more. Through it the energy of the soul for this banishing is continually strengthened. For at first we attain only to a review of the course of our life since birth. What we have there before us is indeed something psychic and spiritual, but at the same time it is not something which can be said to have an existence beyond the physical life of man. In continuing these exercises of inspiration it becomes clear that the power of obliterating the imaginative pictures grows ever greater, and later becomes so great that the whole picture of one's life's course can be banished from the consciousness. We then have a consciousness that is freed also from the content of our own physical and etheric human nature. Into this in a higher sense empty consciousness there then enters through a higher inspiration a picture of the psychic-spiritual nature as it was before man left the psychic-spiritual world for the physical, and there formed union with the body which exists through conception and the development of the embryo. We get a vision of how the astral and Ego-organization covers itself with an etheric organization which comes from the etheric Cosmos, and with a physical one which arises from the sequence of heredity. Only in this way do we acquire knowledge of the eternal inner being of man, which during his life on earth exists in the reflection of the soul's imagination, feeling, and Will. But we acquire also through it the idea of the true nature of this imaginative presentation; for in point of fact this is not present in its true shape within the limits of the earth-life. Look at a human corpse. It has the shape and the limbs of a man, but life has gone out of it. If we understand the nature of the corpse, we do not regard it as an end in itself, but as the remains of a living physical man. The external forces of Nature, to which the corpse is surrendered, can destroy it well enough; but they cannot construct it. In the same Way, from a higher stage of vision, one recognizes earthly human thought to be the dead remains of that living thought which belonged to man before he was transplanted from his existence in the spiritual, psychic world into his life on earth. The nature of earthly thought is as little comprehensible from itself as the form of the human organism is from the forces which work in the corpse. We must recognize earthly thought as dead thought, if we want to recognize it rightly. If we are on the way to such a recognition, we can then also completely see the nature of earthly will. This is recognized in a certain sense as a more recent part of the soul. That which is hidden behind the will stands to thought in the same relationship as, in the physical organism, the baby does to the old man on his deathbed. Only with the soul, babyhood and old age do not develop in sequence after one another, but exist side by side. We see, however, from what has been explained, certain results for a Philosophy which intends to form its ideas only on the experience of life on earth. It receives as contents only dead, or at least, expiring ideas. Its duty therefore can be only to recognize the dead character of the thought-world and to draw conclusions from what is dead on the basis of something which was once living. Just so far as one keeps to the method of intelligible proof, one can have no other aim. This purely ‘intellectual’ Philosophy therefore, can lead to the true nature of the soul only indirectly. It can examine the nature of human thought and recognize its transitoriness, and so it can indirectly show that something dead points to something living, as the corpse points to a living man. Only ‘inspired cognition’ can arrive at a real vision of what is the true soul. The corpse of thought is again animated in a certain sense through exercises for this inspiration. We are not, it is true, transferred back completely into the condition that existed before life on earth began; but we bring to life in us a true picture of this condition, from the nature of which we can realize that it is projected out of a pre-terrestrial existence into a terrestrial one. By means of developing intuition by exercises of the Will it comes about that the pre-terrestrial existence which had in thought died out during the earth-life is brought to life again in the subconscious mind. Through these exercises man is brought into a condition by means of which he enters upon the world of the spiritual, apart from his physical and etheric organism. He experiences what existence is after the dissolution from the body; he is given a pre-vision of what really happens after death. He can speak of the continuity of the spiritual part of the soul after going through the gates of death. Again the purely intellectual conceptual Philosophy can attain to the recognition of the immortality of the soul only by an indirect way. As it recognizes in thought something that can be compared with a dead body, so in the will it can establish something comparable with a seed. Something that has life in itself, which points beyond the dissolution of the body, because its nature shows itself, even during life on earth, independent of it. So, since we do not stand still at thought, but use all soul-life as experience of self, we can reach an indirect realization of the everlasting nucleus of the human being. Further we must not limit our contemplation to thought, but subject the interchange of thought with the other forces of the soul to philosophical methods of proof. But still with all this we come only to experience the everlasting human nucleus as it is in the earth-life, and not to a vision of the condition of the human spirit and the human soul before and after it. This is the case, for instance, with Bergson's Philosophy, which rests on a comprehensive self-experience of what is evident in the earth-life, but which refuses to step into the region of real supersensible knowledge. Every Philosophy which remains within the sphere of the ordinary consciousness can reach only an indirect knowledge of the true nature of the human soul. Cosmology if it is to be of a kind that the total human being is influenced through it, can be acquired only through the imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. Within ordinary consciousness it has only the testimony for the human soul-life that dies out and re-awakens like seed. From this fact it can formulate ideas based on unprejudiced observations which point to something Cosmic, and lay it open. Still, these ideas are only that which pours into the inner being of man from the spiritual Cosmos, and moreover reveals itself in a changed form within him. Philosophy indeed had in former times a branch called Cosmology. But the real subject matter of this Cosmology were ideas which had become very abstract, which had by tradition subsisted from old forms of Cosmology. Humanity had developed these ideas at a time when an old dream-like Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition still existed. They were taken out of their tradition and woven into the material of pure intellectual, logical or dialectic demonstration. Men were often quite unconscious of the fact that these ideas were borrowed; they were considered new and original. Gradually it was found that in the inner life of the spirit no real inner connection with these ideas existed. Therefore this ‘rational Cosmology’ fell almost completely into discredit. It had to give place to the physical Cosmology, built up on the nature-knowledge of the physical senses, which, however, to the unprejudiced eye, no longer embraced man in its scope. A true Cosmology can arise again only when imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge are allowed their place, and their results applied to the knowledge of the universe. What has had to be said concerning Cosmology applies still more to knowledge of a religious kind. Here we have to build up knowledge which has its origins in the experience of the spiritual world. To draw conclusions concerning such experience from the subject-matter of ordinary consciousness is impossible. In intellectual concepts the religious content cannot be opened out but only clarified. When one began to seek for proofs of God's existence, the very search was a proof that one had already lost the living connection with the divine world. For this reason also no intellectualistic proof of God's existence can be given in any satisfactory way. Any theory formed from the ordinary consciousness alone is obliged to work into an individual system ideas borrowed from tradition. Formerly, philosophers tried to get also a ‘rational Theology’ from this ordinary consciousness. But this compared with the Theology based on traditional ideas suffered the same fate as ‘rational Cosmology’, only still more so. Whatever came to light as a direct ‘God-experience’ remains in the world of feeling or will, and in fact prevents the transition to any method of conceptual proof. Philosophy itself has fallen into the error of seeing in a purely historical religion religious forms which have existed and still exist. It does this from an incapacity to attain through the ordinary consciousness to ideas on a subject which can be experienced only outside the physical and etheric organism. A new basis for the knowledge of the religious life can be won only by a recognition of the imaginative, inspired and intuitive methods, and by the application of their results to this life.

Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy

Exercises of Cognition and Will

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA025/English/RPC1943/GA025_c04.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA025_c04

WE speak to-day of the ‘Unconscious’ of ‘Subconscious’, when we wish to signify that the soul-experiences of ordinary consciousness — observation, representation, realization, volition — are dependent on a state which is not included in this consciousness. That knowledge which would base itself only on these experiences can no doubt, by logical sequence of argument, point to such a ‘subconscious’; but that is all it can do. It can bring no contribution to a definition of the unconscious. The imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge which has been described in the foregoing considerations, can give such a definition. Now we shall try to do the same for the soul-experiences of man during sleep. The sleep-experiences of the soul do not enter upon ordinary consciousness, for this rests on the basis of the physical organization; and during sleep the experience of the soul is outside the body. When in waking the soul begins, with the help of the body, to imagine, to feel, and to will, it joins up in its memory with those experiences which took place before sleep on the basis of the physical organization. The experiences of sleep reveal themselves only to Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. They do not appear in the guise of memory, but as if in a psychic review of it. I shall now have to describe what is revealed in this review. Because it is hid from ordinary consciousness, such a description of this review must, when the consciousness is faced with it unprepared, naturally appear grotesque. But the foregoing explanations have shown that such a description is possible, and how it is to be taken. Although it may even be laughed at from some quarter or another, I shall give it as it emerges from the states of consciousness already described. At first, in falling asleep, a man finds himself in an inwardly vague, undifferentiated state of being. He sees there no difference between his own being and that of the universe; nor any between separate objects or people. His state of existence is universal and vague. Taken up into the imaginative consciousness, this experience becomes an ‘Ego-feeling’, in which the ‘universe-feeling’ is included. He has left the sphere of the senses, and has not yet clearly entered upon another world. We shall now have to use expressions such as ‘Feeling’, ‘longing’, etc., which also in ordinary life refer to something known; and yet we shall have to use them to denote processes which remain unknown to the ordinary soul-life. But the soul experiences them as facts during sleep. Think, for instance, how in daily life joy is experienced consciously. Physically an enlargement of the small blood vessels takes place, and other things, and this enlargement is a fact; when it takes place, joy is consciously felt. Similarly, the soul goes through real experiences in sleep; and this will be described in terms which refer to corresponding experience of the imaginative, inspired and intuitive consciousness. If, for example, we speak of ‘longing’ we shall mean an actual soul-process which is imaginatively revealed as longing. Thus the unconscious states and experiences of the soul will be described as if they were conscious. Simultaneously with the feeling of vagueness arid the absence of differentiation, there arises in the soul a longing for rest in what is spiritual and divine. The human soul evolves this longing as a counterbalance to the feeling of being lost in infinity. Having lost the sphere of the senses, it craves for a state out of the spiritual world that will support it. Dreams interweave themselves into the state of soul just described. They traverse the unconscious with half-conscious experiences. The real form of sleep experiences is not made clearer through ordinary dreams, but still less clear. This lack of clearness applies also to the imaginative consciousness if this latter is clouded by dreams arising spontaneously. One perceives the truth on the further side of life both awake and in dream by means of that conception of the soul which is attained by free will through the exercises previously explained. The next state through which the soul lives then is like a division or partition of itself into inner happenings which are differentiated from each other. During this period of sleep, the soul feels itself to be not a unity but an inner plurality, and this state is one suffused with anxiety. Were it felt consciously, it would be soul-fear. But the human soul experiences the real counterpart of this anxiety every night, though remaining unconscious of it. In the case of modern man there appears at this moment of sleep the soul-saving effect which corresponds in the waking condition to his self surrender to Christ. It was different, of course, before the events of Golgotha. Then men, when awake, received from their religious beliefs the antidote which carried over into the condition of sleep and was the medicine for this fear. For the man who lives after the events of Golgotha are substituted the religious experiences which he has in the contemplation of the life and death and being of Christ. He overcomes his fears through the working of this into his sleep. This fear prevents, as long as it is present, the inner vision of that which should be experienced by the soul in sleep, as the body prevents it in the waking state. The leadership of Christ overcomes the inner division and transforms the plurality into a unity. And the soul comes now to the point of having an inner life different from that of the waking condition. The physical and etheric organisms belong now to its outer world. On the other hand in its present inner self it experiences a reflection of the planetary movements. The soul experiences something cosmic in place of the individual, conditioned by the physical and etheric organisms. The soul lives outside the body; and its inner life is an inner reflection of the planetary motions. This being so, the inspired consciousness is aware of the corresponding inner processes in the manner which has been described in our previous studies. This consciousness perceives also how that which the soul receives through its contact with the planets continues to have an after-effect in the consciousness after waking. This planetary influence continues in awakeness as a stimulant in the rhythm of breathing and blood-circulation. During sleep the physical and etheric organisms are subjected to the effect of the planet-stimulation, which by day influence them, as described, as the after-effect of the previous night. There are other experiences side by side with these. In this phase of its sleep-existence, the soul experiences its relation to all human souls with which it had come into contact in earthly life. Considered intuitively this leads to certainty on the subject of repeated earth life; for these earth-lives reveal themselves in their relation to the soul. And the connection with other spirit-beings, which live in the world without ever assuming a human body, is also one of the soul's experiences. But in this condition of sleep the soul experiences also what point to good and evil tendencies, and good and evil events in the predestined course of earthly life. In fact, what older philosophers have termed ‘Karma’ is now presented to the soul. In daily life all these happenings of the soul have so much effect that they help to cause the feelings, the general mood of the soul, of happiness or unhappiness. In the further course of sleep another state of the soul is added to the one just described. It goes through a copy or imitation of state of the Twin Stars. As the bodily organs are sensed in waking, so a reconstructing of the fixed constellations is now attempted. The cosmic experience of the soul is widening. It is now a spirit amongst spirits. ‘Intuition’ sees the sun and the other fixed stars as physical projections of spirits, in the manner just described. These adventures of the soul reverberate during daily life as its religious leanings, its religious feeling and willing. It can be said indeed that the religious longing, stirring in the depth of the soul, is in awake life the aftermath of the stellar experience during the state of sleep. But it is significant above all that in this state the soul is faced with the facts of life and death. It sees itself as a spirit-being, entering into a physical body through conception and the life of the cell, and unconsciously it sees the event of death as a passing over into a purely spiritual world. That the soul in its waking state cannot believe in the reality of what outwardly represents itself to the senses as the events of birth and death is therefore not only the imaginative picturing of a longing but a vaguely-felt reliving through things presented to the soul in sleep. If man could recall to his consciousness everything he lives through unconsciously from falling asleep to waking up, he would have a consciousness-content giving the experiences of truth to his philosophical ideas in the first occurrence in which sense-phenomena merge Into a universal inner cosmic life, and in which a kind of pantheistic knowledge of God occurs. If he was conscious of this planet and fixed-star life of sleep he would indeed have a cosmology full of content. And the conclusion could be formed from the experience of star-life, that a human being has a life as spirit among spirits. From falling asleep, through further states of sleep, man actually becomes an unconscious philosopher, cosmologist, and God-filled being. From the depths of experiences otherwise only possible in sleep, ‘Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition’ lift up that which shows what kind of being man himself really is; how he is part of the Cosmos and how he becomes one with God. This last happens to man in the deepest stage of sleep. From there the soul begins to return to the world of the senses. In the impulse leading to this return the intuitive consciousness recognizes the activity of those spirit beings which have their physical counterpart in the moon. The spiritual moon-activities are the ones recalling men in their sleep back to their presence on earth. Naturally these same lunar activities are also present in the New Moon. But the transformation of whatever changes visibly in the moon has its significance concerning the part lunar activities play in man's holding on to his earthly life from birth or conception to death. After the deepest state of sleep man returns to his waking state through the same intermediate states. Before awakening he goes once more through experiencing the universal world state, and the longing for God, in which dreams can play their part.

Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy

Experiences of the Soul in Sleep

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA025/English/RPC1943/GA025_c05.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA025_c05

IN the previous studies it was shown how a view of the eternal psycho-spiritual inner being of man can be attained through inspired and intuitive approach. Attention was drawn to the fact that the inner life of man was filled by reflections of cosmic happenings. In the last survey it was shown how man lives through such cosmic reconstructions during sleep. Man's inner world becomes the external world and vice versa: the spiritual part of the external world becomes an inner world. During the state of sleep the physical and etheric organisms of man form an outer world for his psycho-spiritual nature. They remain there in the same way in which, in waking, they can become again the instrument of the psycho-spiritual man. Man carries the longing for these two organisms over into the sleeping state. As shown in the last review, this longing is connected with those spiritual activities of the Cosmos which are reflected physically in the appearances of the moon. Man is only subjected to these lunar activities through his being part of this earth. The contemplation of that state in which man finds himself in the purely spiritual world for a certain time before his turning towards earthly life makes it clear that then he is not subjected to the influences of these lunar activities. In this state he does not recognize a physical and etheric human organism as belonging to him, as he does in sleep. But he recognizes them in other ways. He sees them as having their foundations in cosmic worlds, as growing out of the spiritual Cosmos. He contemplates a spiritual Cosmos which is the spiritual part of the cell of the physical organism, which at some future time he will put on. When we talk of a cell in this connection we designate something which in one sense is opposed to what we usually term cell. By ‘Cell’ we usually mean the small physical beginning of a growing organism. The spiritual organism on the other hand which man sees in connection with himself in his pre-earthly spiritual state, is large and contracts continually, as it were, to merge finally with the physical part of the cell. In order to represent these relationships clearly we have to make use of expressions ‘Large’ and ‘Small’. But we must remember all the time that the happenings of the spiritual world are spiritual and that for them space, in which physical happenings move, is non-existent. The expressions used therefore are only similes for something spiritual, entirely non-spatial, purely qualitative. During his pre-earthly existence man lives in the cosmic creation which is the spiritual germ of his future physical organism, and this spiritual stage is regarded as in unity with the whole of the spiritual cosmos and reveals itself at the same time as the cosmic body of the individual human being. Man feels the spiritual cosmos as his own innate powers. His whole existence consists in his experiencing himself in this cosmos. But he does not experience only himself in it. For this cosmic existence does not separate him from the other life of the cosmos, as does later his physical organism. Over against this existence he is in a kind of Intuition. The existence of other spiritual beings is at the same time his own existence. Man has his pre-earthly existence in the active recognition of the spirit-cell of his future physical organism. He himself prepares for this organism by working in the spirit world on the spirit-cell together with other spirits in the world of spirits. As during his existence on earth he perceives through his senses a physical world round him in which he is active, so in his pre-earthly existence he perceives his physical organism being built in spirit; and his activity consists in helping its construction, just as his activity in the physical world consists in helping to shape the physical things of the outer world. In the spirit-cell of the physical human body which the psycho-spiritual man experiences in his pre-earthly existence, a whole universe is present, no less manifold than the physical outer world of the senses. Indeed intuitive knowledge may well say that man, incorporated in his physical body, though unknown to himself, carries a universe of such magnificence that the physical world cannot be remotely compared with it. This universe it is which man experiences in a spiritual manner in his pre-earthly state, and in which he is active. He experiences it in its growth, its mobility, but filled with spiritual beings. He has a consciousness within this world; with the Powers active in the growth of this Universe his own are bound up. His consciousness is filled with the collaboration of these spiritual cosmic powers with his own power. The state of sleep is in a sense a reconstruction of his activity. But in its course of sleep the physical organism exists as an exclusive form, or system apart from and independent of the psycho-spiritual man. Here contemplation lacks the active powers representing the content of consciousness in the pre-earthly state. Therefore the state remains unconscious. In the further course of pre-earthly existence the conscious recognition of the growth of the future earth-organism becomes fainter. It never disappears completely from view, but it fades by degrees. It is as if man felt his own cosmic world get further and further away, as if he was growing out of it. What is at first a complete fusion with the spiritual beings of the cosmos now becomes only a revelation of these beings. One might say that while at one time man had a true ‘intuition’ of the spiritual world, it is now changed into a real ‘inspiration’, in which his nature acts upon man, revealing itself from the outside. But with this a new phase begins within the psycho-spiritual man which might be identified with the ‘missing’ and the beginning of the ‘longing for the lost’. Expressions like these are used only to describe conditions of the supernatural world in terms of the natural world. In such a state of ‘missing’ and ‘longing’ the soul of man passes a later period of its pre-earthly existence. It no longer has consciousness of the full reality of experience of a spiritual world, but only of a revealed reflection thereof, with, as it were, less intensity of being. The human soul is now getting ready to experience the spiritual lunar activities, which up to now were beyond its sphere. It thus obtains a being through which it makes itself independent of the other spirit-beings with whom it lived before. One might say that at first its experience was permeated by spirit, and by God, and that later it feels itself as an independent spiritual being; the cosmos is now felt as an outer world, even though the experiencing of this revelation of the Cosmos is still a very intense one during the first phases, and only develops into a fainter one by degrees. In this experience man therefore leaves the existence permeated by spirit, and felt as reality, in order to enter one in which he is faced by a revealed spirit-cosmos. The first phase of this experience is the reality of that which later on appears as religious learning to one's perception. The second is the reality of what, if described, will result in a true Cosmology. For here the physical human organism is viewed also in its cosmic cell-form without which it cannot be comprehended. In the later phases man loses the capacity of viewing the spirit cosmos, which becomes less clear to the ‘spiritual eye’. On the other hand the experience of the inner soul which is connected with the spiritual lunar activities grows ever more intense. The human soul gets ready to receive from outside that which before she experienced within herself. The spiritual activity that has furthered the growth of the physical organism which man at first experienced consciously, is dropped by the organs of his soul, but it is transferred into the physical activity which reaches its climax in the reproductive development within the existence on earth. The previous experience of the human soul is transferred into this development as its directing force. Now for some time the human soul has its place in the spiritual world, for she no longer takes part in the shaping of the physical human organism. In this phase she becomes ripe to satisfy with the etheric cosmos that which in her is ‘missing’ something or ‘longing’ for it. She attracts the cosmic ether. And according to the faculties remaining to her, from her collaboration in the human Universe she forms her etheric organism. Thus man gets used to his etheric organism before his physical organism receives him on earth. The events belonging to earthly existence and following an accomplished conception, and separated from the course of the last phases of the pre-earthly life of the soul, have brought the growth of the physical organism to physical cell-formation. With this the human soul which meanwhile has taken over her etheric organism, can unite. She can unite with it through the power of continued ‘longing’ and man thus begins his earthly career. The experience of the human soul in taking unto itself the etheric organism, the increase in growth, as it were, of this organism out of the world-ether, is an experience foreign to earth, for it is passed through without the physical organism. It has it, however, as its ‘longed-for’ object. That which happens in the experience of the little child is an unconscious memory of this experience. But it is an active memory, an unconscious working of the physical organism which was once the inner world of the soul and now is the outer case of it. The formative creative work which man unconsciously applies to his own organism during its growth is the visible sign of this active memory. What philosophy is searching for, and what she can only achieve as an inner reality by fully conscious imaginative treatment of the child's earliest experience, lies in this active unconscious memory. This explains in some measure the nature of philosophy which sometimes seems nearer and sometimes further away from the world.

Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy

Transference from the Psycho-Spiritual to the Physical Sense-Life in Man's Development

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA025/English/RPC1943/GA025_c06.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA025_c06

I attempted to show in my last observations how, in the realm of human evolution, the psycho-spiritual existence is transferred to that of the physical senses. Now it depends on the understanding which man can bring to bear on this transference whether he can gain a relationship, in accordance with modern consciousness, to the event of Golgotha and its reference to man's development on earth. If one does not realize in one's own physical nature how something psycho-spiritual has so changed itself from a spiritual form of experience as to become manifest in the physical world of the senses, one will also never know how the Christ spirit coming from spirit worlds was made manifest in the man Jesus on earth. But it must be once more emphasized that it is not a case of individual knowledge derived from observation, but rather of understanding with one's whole nature and being what observation has brought to light. Only a few men achieve the former, but the latter is possible to all. The man who realizes the worlds through which the human soul has passed in its pre-earthly existence, learns also to look up to Him who before the event of the mystery of Golgotha had lived as Christ only in those worlds, and who through this mystery and since its occurrence had united His life with mortal humanity. Our earthly souls have attained the condition in which they now live only through a gradual development. Ordinary consciousness takes the condition of the soul as it is to-day and constructs a ‘history’, in which things are represented as if man in the grey dawn of time had thought and willed and felt practically as he does now. But that is not so. There have been times in which the soul condition was quite different — times when there was no such sharp distinction between sleeping and waking. Dreams now are the only bridge between the two; and their content has something deceptive and questionable about them. Primitive man knew a stage between full wakefulness and unconscious sleep, which was pictorial and remote from the senses, but revealing something really spiritual, just as the sense-observation reveals something of the actually physical. In this life of pictures, and not of thoughts, early man had a dream-like experience of his pre-earthly existence. He felt his pre-earthly soul-nature as an echo of what he had gone through. On the other hand he had not that sense of self which present-day man has. He did not find himself in the same degree as to-day as an ‘Ego’. This feeling has arisen only in the course of human spiritual evolution, and the decisive epoch of this development is that in which occurred also the event of Golgotha. At this time in the ordinary consciousness the psychic experience of an echo from pre-earthly existence grew ever fainter. Man's knowledge of himself became more and more limited to what his physical sense-life on earth told him, Moreover from, this moment the perception of death took on a new meaning. Previously man knew, as I have described, of the central point of his being. He knew it through the contemplation of this echo in such case that he was convinced this echo could not be affected by death. At the moment of historical time when the view became limited to the physical nature of man, death became a disturbing problem for the soul. The further development of purely inner faculties of knowledge did not suffice to solve this problem. It was solved by the events of Golgotha occurring in the evolution of the earth. The Christ came down to earthly existence from those worlds in which man had passed his pre-earthly life. By combining the experience of the ordinary awake consciousness with the contemplation of the acts of Christ, man can find, since Golgotha, what he formerly found through a natural function of his consciousness. The ‘Initiates’ of the ancient Mysteries spoke to their followers in such a way that they saw in their considerations of pre-earthly life a gift of grace from that spiritual Sun-Being which has its counterpart in the physical sun. The Initiates who at the time of the mystery of Golgotha still continued the ancient initiation-methods, told those who had ears to hear how the Being who had before given to man the echo from spiritual worlds of pre-earthly existence that he could carry into the earthly life, had descended as the Christ upon the physical earth and taken flesh in the person of the man Jesus. Those who knew the truth about the mystery of Golgotha always, as in the early days of Christianity, spoke of the Christ-Being as one who had descended from spiritual worlds to an earthly one. The teachers of mankind of that time stressed particularly this aspect of the Christ coming from a higher world down to the earth. This view was conditioned by the fact that one still knew enough, from the ancient initiation, about the supernatural worlds, to see in Christ a Being of the spiritual world before his descent to earth. The remnants of this knowledge lasted into the Fourth Century, and then faded in man's consciousness. The event of Golgotha thus became an event which was known only through the construction of political history. The principles of initiation of the old world were lost to the outer world, and took root only in almost unknown places. Only now in the last third of the nineteenth Century has a stage in human evolution been reached again in which the new Initiation, as has been described leads to an aspect of Christ's nature within the spiritual world. It was necessary for the complete unfolding of the ego-consciousness, which was to come into being in the development of humanity, that initiate knowledge should disappear for a few centuries, and that man should turn his attention to the outer world of the senses in which the ego-consciousness could be freely cultivated. Thus it was only possible for the Christian community to direct the attention of believers to the historical tradition concerning the mystery of Golgotha and to clothe what was once known by spiritual knowledge in ‘ Dogmas of Belief’ for the Earth. The content of these Dogmas does not concern us here, but only the manner in which they affect the soul, whether through faith, belief or through knowledge. It is again possible to-day to have a direct knowledge of the Christ. The figure of Jesus stood for centuries in front of the ordinary consciousness, and the Christ who lived in him, had become an object of faith. But more and more the inclination to dogmatic faith grew less, precisely among the spiritual leaders of mankind; Jesus was seen more and more only as history made him appear to the ordinary consciousness. The sense of Christ was gradually lost; and so there grew up a modern branch of Theology which concerns itself really only with the man Jesus, and which lacks a living sense of the Christ. But a mere Jesus-Faith is really -no longer Christianity. In the consciousness which early man had of his pre-earthly existence, he had also an anchorage for a proper relationship to his existence, after death on earth. In later times his union with the Christ was to give him in another way what had thus been given him in primæval time by nature, through the sense of his own life-experience concerning the problem of death. The Christ was so to permeate him, in the words of St. Paul, ‘Not I, but the Christ in me’, that He might be his guide through the gate of death. Man now had indeed something in the ordinary consciousness which could develop the complete Ego-sense, but nothing which could give the soul the strength to approach the gates of Death with certain knowledge of its living passage through them. For ordinary consciousness is a result of the physical body, and therefore can give the soul only such strength as must be regarded as extinguished in death. To those who could learn all this from their old initiation, the human physical organism appeared out of order, for they had to assume that it could not develop the power to give the soul such a comprehensive consciousness as to enable it to live its full life. Christ appeared as the soul-doctor of the world, as the Healer, the Saviour, and as such in His fundamental relationship to humanity He must be recognized. The event of death and its relationship to the Christ is to be the subject of my next study. Through the taking-up of the Christ-experience a Philosophy has grown out of what the ancient consciousness, deepened by the saying of the Initiates, had given to man as an experience of eternity, and a philosophy which can include the divine Father principle. The Father in Spirit can be regarded again as the all-pervading Being. Cosmology gains its Christian character through the knowledge of the Christ who, as a Being from outside the earth, assumed mortal shape in the person of Jesus. In the events of human evolution the Christ is recognized as the Being to whose lot has fallen a decisive part in this evolution. And through the re-awakening of the half-forgotten knowledge of the ‘Eternal Man’, the human mind is led out of the purely sense-world in which the ego-consciousness develops, to the spirit, which can be experienced with full understanding by the soul in conjunction with God the Father and the Christ in a renewed perceptive knowledge of Religion.

Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy

The Relationship of Christ with Humanity

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA025/English/RPC1943/GA025_c07.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA025_c07

IN the state of sleep, sense-experience ceases for the ordinary consciousness as does also the psychic activity of thinking, feeling and willing. Thus man loses what he terms as ‘himself’. Through the psychic exercises of the soul which have been described in the previous studies, thinking is the first to be seized by the higher consciousness. Without being lost first however, thinking cannot be thus seized. In successful meditation one experiences this loss of thinking. One does actually feel oneself as an independent inner being; there is actually some kind of an inner experience. But one cannot at once experience one's own entity so strongly as to comprehend it through active thought. This only becomes possible by degrees. The inner activity grows and the power of thinking is kindled from a quarter other than ordinary consciousness. In this ordinary consciousness can one only experience oneself in a momentary glimpse. But by the rekindling of thought through the psychic exercises, after passing through not-thinking and arriving at imagining, one experiences the content of the whole cycle of life from birth to the present moment as one's own proper Ego. The memories of ordinary consciousness are also experiences of the moment, images realized in the present which point to the past only through their content. Such memories are at first lost when image-making begins. The past is then seen as if it was something present. As in sense-perception the senses are led to the things which are side by side in space, so the kindled activity of the soul is led to the different events of one's own life in image-making. The course of events in time is presented as happening at the same time. A process of growth becomes something present at the moment. But in higher consciousness there is something else than just the memories of the ordinary consciousness. There you have the activity of the etheric organism previously unknown to this consciousness. The memories of the ordinary consciousness are only images of man's experience through his physical organism of the outer world, whereas the ‘imaginative’ consciousness knows the activity which the etheric organism has effected in the physical organism. The rising-up of this experience happens in such a way that one has the feeling of something rising from the depths of the soul which before had indeed lain hidden in one's own nature, but had not surged up into the consciousness. All this must be experienced in full consciousness; and that is the case if the ordinary consciousness continues to be kept side by side with the ‘imaginative’. The experiences gained in the active exchange between etheric and physical organism must always be capable of being brought into relationship with the corresponding memory-life of the ordinary consciousness. Whoever is not able to do this is not dealing with imagination but with an experience of a visionary kind. In visionary experience consciousness is not adding a new content to the old, as in imagination, but it is changed; the old content cannot be recalled at the same time as the new. The man who has ‘imagination’ has his ordinary self next to him, as it were; the visionary has been turned into quite a different being. Anybody criticizing Anthroposophy from the outside should take note of this. Imaginative knowledge has often been considered as leading to something visionary. This view has to be strictly rejected by the true researcher into the spirit. He does by no means replace the ordinary consciousness by a visionary one, but he incorporates an imaginative one into it. Ordinary thinking fully controls imaginative experience at every moment. The visionary picturing is a stronger entering of the ego into the physical organism than is the case in the ordinary consciousness. Imagining on the other hand is an actual ‘stepping-out’ from the physical organism, and the ordinary constitution of the soul remains by its side consciously held in the physical organism. We grow conscious in a part of the soul which before was unconscious, but that part which before was conscious in the physical organism remains in the same psychic condition. The interchange between the experience of imagination and that of ordinary consciousness is just as real a happening to the soul as is the guiding to and fro of soul-activity from one thought to another in the course of ordinary consciousness. If this is kept in mind one cannot mistake imaginative knowledge for something of a visionary nature. It tends, on the contrary, to drive out all inclination to what is visionary. But he who uses ‘imaginative cognition’ is also in a position to realize that visions are not independent of the body but dependent on it in a far higher degree than sense-experiences. For he can compare the character of visions with that of imagination which is really independent of the body. The Visionary is more deeply immersed in his physical functions than the man who perceives the outer world by means of his senses in the ordinary way. When Imagination takes place ordinary thinking is recognized as something having no substantial content. Only what is introduced into consciousness by imagination is found to be the substantial content of this ordinary thinking. Ordinary thinking may indeed be compared to a mirrored picture. But while the mirrored picture rises in the ordinary consciousness the imagined picture is alive unconsciously. We imagine also in our ordinary psychic life, but unconsciously. If we did not imagine we should not think. The conscious thoughts of ordinary psychic life are the reflections of unconscious imagining mirrored by the physical organism. And the substantial part of this imagining is the etheric organism which is manifest in the development of man's earthly life. A new element enters the consciousness with inspiration. In order to attain inspiration the individual human life must be abstracted, as has been described in the previous studies. But the power of activity which the soul has won for itself by imagining still remains. Possessing this power the soul can attain pictures of that which in the universe underlies the etheric organism just as this underlies the physical. And thus the soul is faced with its own eternal nature. In the ordinary consciousness it happens that the soul can only give its activity a conceptual form by grasping the physical organism. It dives into it and there finds the pictured reflections of that which it experiences with its etheric organism. This latter, however, the soul does not experience in its activity. This etheric organism is itself experienced in imaginative consciousness. But this happens through the soul having gone further back with its experience to the astral organism. As long as the soul merely ‘imagines’ it lives unconsciously in the astral organism, and both the physical and etheric organisms are contemplated; as soon as the soul attains ‘inspired’ knowledge the astral organism is also brought into contemplation; for the soul now lives in the eternal centre of its being, and can contemplate this by means of the continuation of ‘intuitive’ cognition. Through this it lives in the spiritual world, as in ordinary existence it lives in its physical organism. The soul learns in this way how the physical, etheric and astral organisms grow out of the spiritual world. But it can also observe the continued activity of the spiritual in the organization of the earthly being — man. It sees how the spiritual centre of man's nature sinks into the physical, etheric and astral organism. This sinking is not really a merging of something spiritual into something physical, so that the former dwells in the latter. But it is a transformation of part of the human soul into the physical and etheric organization. This part of the soul disappears during earthly life by being transformed into the physical and etheric organism. It is this part of the soul which is experienced through thought by the ordinary consciousness in its reflection. But the soul emerges again elsewhere. This is the case with that part of it which in earthly existence is experienced as volition, which has a different character from thought. Volition even during wakefulness contains a section which is asleep. The soul receives a thought clearly. Actually man when he thinks is fully awake, which is not the case with volition. The will is stimulated by thought. Consciousness extends as far as thought. But then the act of volition sinks into the human organism. If I deliberately raise my hand I have the causal thought in my ordinary consciousness to start with, and the sight of my raised hand with all the accompanying sensations is the result of my act of will. What is between remains unconscious. What happens in the depths of the organism when a man puts his will into action escapes the ordinary consciousness just as do the events of sleep. Man has always a part of himself asleep even when he is awake. This is the part in which continues to live during earthly existence as much of the Spirit-Soul as had not been transformed into the physical organism. One perceives this when true intuition has been achieved by the exercises of the will previously described. Then we recognize behind the will the eternal part of the human soul, which is transformed into the head-organization; and disappears in its form-life during earthly existence, rises again on the other side to pass through death and to become ready once more to help in a future physical body and earthly life. This brings this study to the event of death which is to be further touched upon in the next. For by the views I have put before you to-day we are led only to the continuity of the Will and to a knowledge of that part of the soul from the past, which is transformed into human head-organization. We have not reached the destiny of the ego-consciousness, which can only be treated in conjunction with the Christ-problem. Therefore that study will again lead us back to a consideration of the mysteries of Christianity. The customary Philosophy of Ideas consists of thoughts; but they have no life, no substance. The substance comes by leaving behind the physical organism in ‘Imagination’. As I have shown, formerly the ideas of Philosophy were only mirrored pictures. If these are built up into a Philosophy, and if one studies them without prejudice, one must feel their unreality. One feels vaguely the moment here described as the one in which all remembered thought entirely disappears. Augustine and Descartes have felt this, but have inefficiently explained it to themselves as ‘doubt’. But Philosophy acquires life when the unity of life is substantiated in the soul. Bergson perceived this, and has expressed it in his idea of ‘Duration’. But he did not proceed beyond this point. Starting with this as a basis, we shall proceed to consider its bearing upon Cosmology and Religious cognition.

Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy

The Event of Death and Its Relationship with the Christ

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA025/English/RPC1943/GA025_c08.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA025_c08

THE life of the soul in its earthly existence is passed in the facts of thinking, feeling and willing. In thinking we have a mirrored picture of the experience of the astral organism and the ego-being within the physical sense-world. These higher parts of the human nature were also experienced during the state of sleep. But this experience remains unconscious during the stay on earth. The soul is then too weak in its inner being to present its own content to its consciousness. As soon as the consciousness perceives this content, it takes it for a purely psycho-spiritual one. In awaking the astral organism and the ego enter into the etheric and physical organisms. Through thinking the sense-perceptions are experienced by the etheric organisms. But in this experience it is not the world surrounding man, which is active, but a copy of this world. In this copy the sum-total of the formative powers underlying the earthly course of man manifests itself. And a copy of the outer world is present in man at every instant. Man does not directly experience this thinking, but its reflection is presented to ordinary consciousness by the physical organism. Ordinary consciousness cannot perceive what is happening behind the reflective activity of thinking in the physical organism, it can only perceive the result, namely the reflected images, presented as thoughts. These unperceived happenings in the physical organism are activities of the etheric and astral organism and of the ego. In his thoughts man perceives what he himself is enacting in his physical organism as a psycho-spiritual being. There is in the etheric organism a copy of the outer world as inner activity, filling the physical organism. In the astral organism there exists a copy of the pre-earthly existence; in the ego exists the eternal central being of man. In the etheric organism the outer world is active in man. In the astral organism continues to be active whatever man has experienced in the pre-earthly existence. This activity has not changed in kind during its earthly existence from what it was in its pre-earthly existence. It was of a kind which occurred in a spiritually changed physical organism. In the waking state it is similar. The inner head-organization of man strives continually to be changed from a physical state into a spiritual one. But this change can only remain a tendency during earthly existence. The physical organization resists it. Precisely at the moment at which the astral organism in its changing activity arrives at a point at which the inner physical head-organization would have to cease as a physical one, the state of sleep intervenes. It replenishes the inner head-organization with strength from the rest of the physical organization by means of which it can continue in the physical world. This strength lies in the etheric organism, which grows less and less differentiated inside the head-organization during the waking state. During sleep however it is differentiated internally into definite formations. In those formations are manifest the forces which during existence on earth act in rebuilding the physical organism. In the head-organization a two-fold activity is thus enacted during the waking state; one building up through the etheric organism and one tearing down, that is, one which destroys the physical organism. This destruction takes place through the astral organism. Through this astral activity man carries death in him continually during his existence on earth. Only this death is vanquished day by day by forces opposing it. But we owe to these constantly acting death tendencies the ordinary consciousness. For in the dying life of the head-organization is found that which is capable of reflecting the soul activity as thought-experience. An organically-growing activity urging towards life cannot produce a tissue of thought. For that a tendency towards death is required. The organically-growing activity reduces the machinery of thought to stupor or unconsciousness. What finally happens to the whole human organism in physical death accompanies human life during existence on earth as a tendency, as an always recurring beginning of death. And to this continued dying within him man owes his ordinary consciousness. Before this consciousness stand the etheric and the physical organism as non-transparent things; man does not see them but the thought-reflections mirrored by them and experienced by him in his soul. The physical and etheric organizations hide for him the astral organization and the Ego; and just because the consciousness of soul is filled by the reflections of the physical organism during existence on earth man is prevented from seeing his etheric and astral organization and his Ego. In death the physical organism separates from the etheric and astral one and from the Ego. Now man carries his etheric and astral organism and his ego in himself. Through the casting off of the physical organism the obstacle to man's perceiving the etheric organism has been removed. The picture of his life on earth just passed through stands before man's soul. For this picture is only the expression of the formative powers, which in their sum represent the etheric body. What is present in the etheric body has been woven into man from the etheric part of the Cosmos. He can never be entirely free of the Cosmos. The Cosmic-etheric act continues inside the human organization and this continuation inside man is the etheric organism. Thus it is when after death man becomes conscious of his etheric organism this consciousness begins already to change into a cosmic one. Man feels the world ether as well as his etheric organism as part of himself. This actually means that the etheric body dissolves after a very short while in the world ether. Man keeps that part which was bound to the physical and etheric organism during existence on earth, namely, his astral organism and his ego. The astral being is never wholly incorporated into the physical organism. The head-organization represents a total transformation of this astral organism and the Ego. But in everything that can be called the rhythmical organization of man, in the processes of breathing, blood-circulation, etc. the astral organization and the Ego continue to live with a certain independence, for their activities are not reflected by these processes as they are by the head-organization. The astral organization and the Ego can blend with the rhythmical processes. This union brings about a Being, of spirit and of body known to the ordinary consciousness as the ‘Feeling’ life. In man's Feeling life the astral organism and the Ego are united with man's experiences. We must look at this union in its details. Let us assume that man has created something within the world of the senses. For his psychic life things do not remain there. He judges his own act. But this judgment is not only happening in the life of thought, the impulse towards it is derived from the astral organism, which in conjunction with the rhythmical processes also manifests itself in physical life. To thought-life which is passed in reflex pictures is added a reflection of moral judgment, which appears within the reflected thought-world as itself only bearing the character of the reflected thought-thing. But in the astral-rhythmical organism it lives in reality. This reality does not enter into the ordinary consciousness during existence on earth. Its entry is prevented because the physical rhythmical processes are felt more strongly than the spiritual processes accompanying them. When the physical organism is discarded in death and the physical rhythmical processes are no longer there, then the importance of the death of man to the spiritual-cosmic world is realized by the cosmic consciousness. This cosmic consciousness is formed after the separation from the etheric organism. In this state a man looks upon himself as a moral being as in earthly life he looked upon himself as a physical being. He now has an inner life formed by the moral quality of his activity on earth. He looks upon his astral organism. But the spiritual-cosmic world breaks in upon this astral organism. Whatever judgment this world pronounces on man's earthly activities is presented as facts to his soul. In death a man enters a form of experiences of another rhythm than during existence on earth. This rhythm appears as a cosmic imitation of his activity on earth. And into this imitative experience the spirit-cosmos enters continually as does the air into the lungs in breathing during existence on earth. In conscious cosmic experience we have a rhythm of which the physical one is a copy. Through the cosmic rhythm the activities of man on earth as a world of moral qualities are united to an amoral world. And man experiences after his death this moral kernel of a future cosmos, ripening within the cosmos, which will not only exist in a purely natural order like the present, but in a moral-natural one. The chief feeling passing through the soul during this experience in a cosmic world in the making is expressed by the question: Shall I be worthy to form part of a moral-natural order of things in a future existence? In my book Theosophy I have called the world of experience through which man passes after his death, the ‘Soul-world’. It is the consciousness of this world through ‘Inspiration’ which gives us material for a real Cosmology. Just as an ‘Imaginative cognition’ of the actual course of human life gives us material for a true philosophy. Man's soul cannot gain sufficient impulses out of that cosmic consciousness into which the cosmic after-effect of man's activities on earth have been reaching, to prepare spiritually for the future physical organism. This organism would be spoilt if the soul remained in a soul-world. It must enter into a world of experience in which the non-human, spiritual impulses of the cosmos are active. I have called this world the ‘Spirit-Land’ in the same book. The ancient Initiates were able to say to their followers out of the knowledge gained by initiation: That Spiritual Being, who, in the physical world, shows his reflected glory in the Sun, will meet you after death in the spiritual world. He will lead you out of the soul world into the Spirit Land; under His guidance you will be purified, so that you will be able to prepare a physical organism for the next world during your stay in the Spirit land. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and during the first Christian centuries the Initiates had to tell their followers: The degree of Ego consciousness to which you will attain during existence on earth will by its own nature on earth be so light that its antithesis which will begin after death will be so dark that you will not be able to see the spiritual sun-guide. Therefore the sun-being has descended on earth as Christ and has consummated the Mystery of Golgotha. If therefore during your existence on earth you already let yourself be permeated by a lively feeling of your connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, then its significance will become part of life on earth and will continue to be active in man after death. You can then recognize the Christ-guide through this result. After the Fourth Century this old initiated knowledge was lost in the course of human development. A renewed Christian Religious knowledge should introduce once more from inspiration into cosmological science Christ's deed for humanity even into experiences after death. To expound how the events of human existence on earth, hidden by Will, have their effects even after death, will be the task of the next study.

Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy

The Destination of the Ego-consciousness in Conjunction with the Christ-problem

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA025/English/RPC1943/GA025_c09.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA025_c09

WHEN the ordinary consciousness sets Will in action there is a part of the astral organism at work which is more loosely connected with the physical organism than the part which corresponds with feeling. And already this part of the astral organism corresponding with feeling is more loosely connected with the physical organism than is the part corresponding with thinking. At the same time we have in the astral organism of the will the true nature of the Ego. While something psychic-spiritual which is continually active in the rhythmical part of the physical organism corresponds with feeling, the will-part of the soul continually permeates the metabolic organism and the organization of the limbs. But it is only actively connected with these parts of the human body while in the act of volition. The connection between the thinking part of the soul and the head-organization is a surrender of the psychic-spiritual to the physical. The connection between the feeling soul with the rhythmical organization is an alternate surrender and drawing-back. But the connection of the will-part to the physical is at first felt to be something unconsciously psychic. It is an unconscious longing for the physical and etheric event. This will-part is by its own nature prevented from being resolved into physical activity. It stands back from it and remains psycho-spiritually alive. Only when the thinking part of the soul extends its activity into the metabolic and limb-organization, the will-part is stimulated to surrender itself to the physical and etheric organization and to be active in it. The thinking part of the soul is founded on a destructive activity of the physical organism. During the making of thoughts this destruction extends only to the head-organization. When the will ordains something the destructive activity of metabolism and of the limb-organization takes charge. The thought-activity flows into the organization of trunk and limbs, where a corresponding destructive activity of the physical organism takes place. This stimulates the will-part of the soul to oppose this destruction with a re-building and the dissolving organic activity with a constructive one. Thus life and death are warring together in the human being. In thought is manifest an ever dying activity while will stands for something life-awakening, life-giving. Those exercises of the soul which are undertaken as exercises of the will, aiming at supernatural vision, are successful only when they become an experience of pain. The man who succeeds in raising his will to a higher level of energy will feel sorrow. In former epochs of the development of mankind this pain was directly occasioned by ascetic practices. They reduced the body to a state which made it difficult for the soul to absorb herself in it. This caused the will-part of the soul to break away from the body and to be stimulated to independent experiences of the spiritual world. This kind of practice is no longer suitable to the human organization which has reached the present moment of earthly development. The human organism is now so constituted that the presentation of the ego-development in it would be disturbed if we went back to the old ascetic practices. At present we must do the opposite. The soul exercises now wanted to set free the will-part of the soul from the body have been characterized in the previous studies. They do not achieve the strengthening of this soul part from the direction of the body, but from the direction of the soul. They strengthen the soul and spiritual part of man and leave the physical part untouched. Our ordinary consciousness makes us realize already how the experience of sorrow is connected with the development of psychic experience. Whoever has gained any kind of supernatural knowledge will say: The happy, joy-giving events of my life I owe to fate; but my really true knowledge of life I owe to my bitter and sorrowful experiences. If the will-part of the soul has to be strengthened as is necessary for the attainment of ‘Intuitive cognition’ we must first strengthen the desire which in ordinary human life is satisfied through the physical organism. This is done by the exercises described. If this desire becomes so strong that the physical organism in its earthly form cannot be a foundation for it, then the experience of the will-part of the soul enters into the spiritual world and intuitive vision is attained. And then in this vision the spiritual-eternal part of the soul grows conscious of itself. Just as the consciousness living inside the body realizes the body in itself, so spiritual consciousness realizes the content of a spiritual world. In the alternating processes of destruction and construction of the human organization, as they are manifested in the thinking, feeling and willing organization of mankind, we must recognize the more or less normal course of human life on earth. It differs in childhood from that of the grown-up man. The task of the true pedagogue is a perception of the effect of the destructive and constructive activities in childhood and of the influence of education and tuition upon them. A true educational science can only arise from the supernaturally-derived knowledge of the human nature complete in its physical, psychic and spiritual being. A knowledge keeping solely within the limits of what is attainable to natural science cannot be called a foundation of a true educational science. In illness the more or less normal course of the inter-relation between the constructive and destructive elements is disturbed throughout the whole organization — or in separate organs. We get there an overbalancing either of construction in a prolific life or of destruction in shifting forms of single organs or processes. What exactly happens in this case can only be seen in the whole by someone who has complete knowledge of the human organization, according to its physical, etheric and astral organism, as well as to the nature of the ego; and the cure can be found only by means of such knowledge. For in the realms of the outer world are to be found mineral and herbal things in which constructive knowledge recognizes forces which counteract certain kinds of too strongly stimulating. or too actively lowering forces in the organism. In the same way such a counteraction can be found in certain functions of the organism itself, which in a state of health are not applied or stimulated. A genuine medical knowledge, a real Pathology and Therapy can be built up only on a knowledge of the human being which embraces spirit, soul and body, a knowledge, moreover, which knows how to value the products of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. The demand for such a medical science is to-day called childish, because we view everything from the ground of a physical science. From this point of view this is quite intelligible, because according to it one has not the least idea how much more is a complete knowledge of the human being than mere knowledge of the human body. We can genuinely say that Anthroposophy is aware of the objections of its opponents and knows how to appreciate them. But just for this reason we also know how difficult it is to convince these opponents. The will part of the soul experiences also what passes in the feeling parts, unconsciously as far as the ordinary life of the soul is concerned; but in the depths of man's organization it occurs as a combination of facts. The evaluation of human earth-activity completed through feeling and will is there transformed into an effort to contrast in further experiences a more worthy deed with a less worthy one. The whole moral quality of the man is unconsciously experienced; and from this experience is formed a kind of spiritual-psychic being which during life on earth grows up in the unconscious region of the human being. This spiritual-psychic being represents whatever earthly life produces as a desirable objective, unattainable however by man in earthly life, because his physical and etheric organism with their forms predestined from former earth life, make it impossible. Therefore man strives through this spiritual-psychic being or nature to form another physical and etheric organism, through which the moral results of the earth-life can be transformed in the subsequent existence. This new form can be achieved only if man carries with him this spiritual-psychic nature through the gates of death into the supernatural world. Immediately after death the psychic-spiritual man retains for a short time the etheric organism. In his consciousness at this point he has no more than an indication of the moral value which has unconsciously arisen during earth-life in the spiritual and psychic part of him. For man is there completely pre-occupied with the vision of the etheric cosmos. In the following longer state of experience (which I have called the Soul-world in my Theosophy) a clear consciousness of this moral valuation is actually present, but not yet the strength to begin working at the construction of the spirit-cell which is to be a future physical earth-organism. Man then still has a tendency to look back at his earthly life because of his moral qualities acquired there. After a certain time man can find the transition to a state of experience in which the tendency is no longer there. (In my Theosophy I have called the region here traversed by man the real domain of the spirit.) From the point of view of the supernatural thought-content to which man attains — after death — in the cosmic consciousness — we might say: For a short while after death man lives turned towards the earth and is permeated with those spiritual activities which have their outward reflection in the physical phenomena of the moon. Outwardly he has been separated from the earth, but he is indirectly connected with it through a spiritual-psychic content. Everything of world-spiritual value that man during his presence on earth has developed into a real value in his astral organism (or as expressed above: in the unconscious region of his soul-life according to feeling and willing), all this is permeated by the spiritual moon-activities already described. This moral being with its spiritual quality is related by content with the spiritual moon-activities, and it is they which hold man bound to earth. But for the development of the spirit-cell for the future physical organism he must also sever himself psycho-spiritually from the earth. This he can only do by cutting himself loose at the same time from the region of the moon-activities. There he must leave behind that moral quality-being with which he is related. For the working for the future physical organism in conjunction with the spiritual beings of the supernatural world must take place unhampered by that quality-being. Man cannot obtain this severance from the region of the spiritual moon-activities through his own psycho-spiritual powers. But it has to be done nevertheless. Before the mystery of Golgotha the science of initiation could speak to man as follows: At a certain period of existence after death, human experience has to be withdrawn from the lunar sphere which keeps man within the region of planetary life. Man cannot himself bring about this withdrawal. Here it is that the being, whose physical reflection is the sun, comes to man's aid, and guides him into the sphere of pure spirit in which he, himself and not the spiritual moon beings are active. Man then experiences a stellar existence in such a way as to view the spiritual patterns of the fixed star constellations from the farther side, as it were; from the periphery of the cosmos. This vision is non-spatial even though the stars are made visible to him. With the powers now permeating man his ability to form the spirit-cell of physical organism out of the cosmos grows. The divine in him brings forth the divine. Once the spirit-cell has ripened, its descent to earth begins. Man enters once more into the lunar sphere and finds there the being of moral-spiritual quality which he left behind at his entry into the pure stellar existence; he adds it to his psychic-spiritual being to make it the foundation of his destined future life on earth. The Initiation-science of Christianity finds something else. In the absorption of the strength accruing to the soul through the contemplative and active sympathy with the earthly life of Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha, man gains, already while still on earth and not aided only by the solar-being after death, the faculty of withdrawing from the lunar activities at a certain point after his earthly existence, and of entering into the pure stellar sphere. This faculty is the spiritual counterpart, experienced after death, of the freedom brought about in earthly life by the ego-consciousness. Man then takes over in the period between death and re-birth his moral-spiritual quality-being, left behind in the lunar sphere, as the designer of his fate which he can thus experience in freedom in his new existence on earth. He also carries within him in freedom the earthly after-effect of his god-filled existence between death and rebirth as religious consciousness. A modern science of Initiation can recognize this and can see the activity of the Christ in human existence. It adds to a living Philosophy and to a Cosmology which recognizes also the spirit cosmos, a religious knowledge which recognizes the Christ as the mediator of a renewed religious consciousness and as the leader of the world in freedom. In these studies I have not been able to do more than sketch a possible beginning of a Philosophy, a Cosmology and a Religious Cognition. Much more would have to be said if the sketch were to be converted into a coloured picture with all its colours.

Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy

On Experiencing the Will-part of the Soul

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA025/English/RPC1943/GA025_c10.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA025_c10

This volume contains translations of the so-called ‘Leading Thoughts,’ brief paragraphs dealing with Anthroposophy as a Path of Knowledge. They were written by Rudolf Steiner for Members of the Anthroposophical Society and at a later stage were accompanied by communications known as the ‘Letters’ connected with sets of ‘Leading Thoughts.’ Articles with contents of a quite different kind, dealing with the character, aims and problems of the Society, are published separately, in two volumes entitled The Life, Nature and Cultivation of Anthroposophy and The Constitution of the School of Spiritual Science . The ‘Leading Thoughts’ are printed here in the order in which they first appeared in German and are numbered consecutively from 1 to 185, to facilitate reference. The translations of the Leading Thoughts and of accompanying ‘Letters’ are those that were printed in the periodical Anthroposophical Movement during 1924 and the early months of 1925 until publication came to an end with Rudolf Steiner's death. The later Letters and Leading Thoughts (from No 79 to the end) formed a continuous series and until now have been available as a separate volume, the last edition of which was entitled The Michael Mystery , translated by Mrs. E. Bowen Wedgwood. As, however, the original translations of all the Leading Thoughts and of nearly all the Letters accompanying them were the work of George and Mary Adams, they have been used throughout the present volume for the sake of uniformity of language and literary style.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

Introduction

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_intro.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_intro

In future there will be found in these columns something in the nature of anthroposophical ‘Leading Thoughts’ or principles. These may be taken to contain advice on the direction which members can give to the lectures and discussions in the several Groups. It is but a stimulus and suggestion which the Goetheanum would like to give to the whole Society. The independence of individual leading members in their work is in no way to be interfered with. We shall develop healthily if the Society gives free play to what leading members have to offer in all the different Groups. This will enrich and make manifold the life of the Society. But it should also be possible for a unity of consciousness to arise in the whole Society — which will happen if the initiative and ideas that emerge at different places become known everywhere. Thus in these columns we shall sum up in short paragraphs the descriptions and lines of thought given by me in my lectures to the Society at the Goetheanum. I imagine that those who lecture or conduct the discussions in the Groups will be able to take what is here given as guiding lines, with which they may freely connect what they have to say. This will contribute to the unity and organic wholeness of the work of the Society without there being any question of constraint. The plan will become fruitful for the whole Society if it meets with a true response — if the leading members will inform the Executive at the Goetheanum too of the content and nature of their own lectures and suggestions. Then only shall we grow, from a chaos of separate Groups, into a Society with a real spiritual content. The Leading Thoughts here given are meant to open up subjects for study and discussion. Points of contact with them will be found in countless places in the anthroposophical books and lecture-courses, so that the subjects thus opened up can be enlarged upon and the discussions in the Groups centred around them. When new ideas emerge among leading members in the several Groups, these too can be brought into connection with the suggestions we shall send out from the Goetheanum. We would thus provide an open framework for all the spiritual activity in the Society. Spiritual activity can of course only thrive by free unfoldment on the part of the active individuals — and we must never sin against this truth. But there is no need to do so when one group or member within the Society acts in proper harmony with the other. If such co-operation were impossible, the attachment of individuals or groups to the Society would always remain a purely external thing — where it should in fact be felt as an inner reality. It cannot be allowed that the existence of the Anthroposophical Society is merely made use of by this or that individual as an opportunity to say what he personally wishes to say with this or that intention. The Society must rather be the place where true Anthroposophy is cultivated. Anything that is not Anthroposophy can, after all, be pursued outside it. The Society is not there for extraneous objects. It has not helped us that in the last few years individual members have brought into the Society their own personal wishes simply because they thought that as it increased it would become a suitable sphere of action for them. It may be said, Why was this not met and counteracted with the proper firmness? If that had been done, we should now be hearing it said on all sides, ‘Oh, if only the initiative that arose in this or that quarter had been followed up at the time, how much farther we should be today!’ Well, many things were followed up, which ended in sad disaster and only resulted in throwing us back. But now it is enough. The demonstrations which individual experimenters in the Society wished to provide are done with. Such things need not be repeated endlessly. In the Executive at the Goetheanum we have a body which intends to cultivate Anthroposophy itself; and the Society should be an association of human beings who have the same object and are ready to enter into a living understanding with the Executive in the pursuit of it. We must not think that our ideal in the Society can be attained from one day to the next. Time will be needed, and patience too. If we imagined that what lay in the intentions of the Christmas meeting could be brought into existence in a few weeks' time, this again would be harmful. 1. Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe. It arises in man as a need of the heart, of the life of feeling; and it can be justified only inasmuch as it can satisfy this inner need. He alone can acknowledge Anthroposophy, who finds in it what he himself in his own inner life feels impelled to seek. Hence only they can be anthroposophists who feel certain questions on the nature of man and the universe as an elemental need of life, just as one feels hunger and thirst. 2. Anthroposophy communicates knowledge that is gained in a spiritual way. Yet it only does so because everyday life, and the science founded on sense-perception and intellectual activity, lead to a barrier along life's way — a limit where the life of the soul in man would die if it could go no farther. Everyday life and science do not lead to this limit in such a way as to compel man to stop short at it. For at the very frontier where the knowledge derived from sense perception ceases, there is opened through the human soul itself the further outlook into the spiritual world. 3. There are those who believe that with the limits of knowledge derived from sense perception the limits of all insight are given. Yet if they would carefully observe how they become conscious of these limits, they would find in the very consciousness of the limits the faculties to transcend them. The fish swims up to the limits of the water; it must return because it lacks the physical organs to live outside this element. Man reaches the limits of knowledge attainable by sense perception; but he can recognise that on the way to this point powers of soul have arisen in him — powers whereby the soul can live in an element that goes beyond the horizon of the senses. 5. For peace in his inner life, man needs Self-knowledge in the Spirit. He finds himself in his Thinking, Feeling and Willing. He sees how Thinking, Feeling and Willing are dependent on the natural man. In all their developments, they must follow the health and sickness, the strengthening and weakening of the body. Every sleep blots them out. Thus the experience of everyday life shows the spiritual consciousness of man in the greatest imaginable dependence on his bodily existence. Man suddenly becomes aware that in this realm of ordinary experience Self-knowledge may be utterly lost — the search for it a vain quest. Then first the anxious question arises: Can there be a Self-knowledge transcending the ordinary experiences of life? Can we have any certainty at all, as to a true Self of man? Anthroposophy would fain answer this question on a firm basis of spiritual experience. In so doing it takes its stand, not on any opinion or belief, but on a conscious experience in the Spirit — an experience in its own nature no less certain than the conscious experience in the body. 7. We find man with his transcendent being of soul and spirit placed into this world of the earthly and the extra earthly. Inasmuch as he is placed into the earthly connection which contains all lifeless things, he bears with him his physical body. Inasmuch as he unfolds within him the forces which the living world draws into this earthly sphere from cosmic space, he has an etheric or life-body. The trend of science in modern times has taken no account of this essential contrast of the earthly and the ethereal. For this very reason, science has given birth to the most impossible conceptions of the ether. For fear of losing their way in fanciful and nebulous ideas, scientists have refrained from dwelling on the real contrast. But unless we do so, we can attain no true insight into the Universe and Man. 8. We may consider the nature of man in so far as it results from his physical and his etheric body. We shall find that all the phenomena of man's life which proceed from this side of his nature remain in the unconscious, nor do they ever lead to consciousness. Consciousness is not lighted up but darkened when the activity of the physical and the etheric body is enhanced. Conditions of faintness and the like can be recognised as the result of such enhancement. Following up this line of thought, we recognise that something is at work in man — and in the animal — which is not of the same nature as the physical and the etheric. It takes effect, not when the forces of the physical and the etheric are active in their own way, but when they cease to be thus active. In this way we arrive at the conception of the astral body. 9. The reality of this astral body is discovered when we rise in meditation from the Thinking that is stimulated by the outer senses to an inner act of Vision. To this end, the Thinking that is stimulated from without must be taken hold of inwardly, and experienced as such, intensely in the soul, apart from its relation to the outer world. Through the strength of soul thus engendered, we become aware that there are inner organs of perception, which see a spiritual reality working in the animal and man at the very point where the physical and the etheric body are held in check in order that consciousness may arise. 10. Consciousness, therefore, does not arise by a further enhancement of activities which proceed from the physical and etheric bodies. On the contrary, these two bodies, with their activities, must be reduced to zero — nay even below zero — to ‘make room’ for the working of consciousness. They do not generate consciousness, they only furnish the ground on which the Spirit must stand in order to bring forth consciousness within the earthly life. As man on Earth needs the ground on which to stand, so does the Spiritual, within the earthly realm, need a material foundation on which it may unfold itself. And as a planet in the cosmic spaces does not require any ground beneath it in order to assert its place, so too the Spirit, when it looks — not through the senses into material — but through its own power into spiritual things, needs no material foundation to call its conscious activity to life. 11. The Self-consciousness which is summed up in the ‘I’ or ‘Ego’ emerges out of the sea of consciousness. Consciousness arises when the forces of the physical and etheric bodies disintegrate these bodies, and thus make way for the Spiritual to enter into man. For through this disintegration is provided the ground on which the life of consciousness can develop. If, however, the organism is not to be destroyed, the disintegration must be followed by a reconstruction. Thus, when for an experience in consciousness a process of disintegration has taken place, that which has been demolished will be built up again exactly. The experience of Self-consciousness lies in the perception of this upbuilding process. The same process can be observed with inner vision. We then feel how the Conscious is led over into the Self-conscious by man's creating out of himself an after-image of the merely Conscious. The latter has its image in the emptiness, as it were, produced within the organism by the disintegration. It has passed into Self-consciousness when the emptiness has been filled up again from within. The Being, capable of this ‘fulfilment,’ is experienced as ‘I.’ 12. The reality of the ‘I’ is found when the inner vision whereby the astral body is known and taken hold of, is carried a stage further. The Thinking which has become alive in meditation must now be permeated by the Will. To begin with we simply gave ourselves up to this new Thinking, without active Will. We thereby enabled spiritual realities to enter into this thinking life, even as in outer sense perception colour enters the eye or sound the ear. What we have thus called to life in our consciousness by a more passive devotion, must now be reproduced by ourselves, by an act of Will. When we do so, there enters into this act of Will the perception of our own ‘I’ or Ego. 13. On the path of meditation we discover, beside the form in which the ‘I’ occurs in ordinary consciousness, three further forms: (1) In the consciousness which takes hold of the etheric body, the ‘I’ appears in picture-form; yet the picture is at the same time active Being, and as such it gives man form and figure, growth, and the plastic forces that create his body. (2) In the consciousness which takes hold of the astral body, the ‘I’ is manifested as a member of a spiritual world whence it receives its forces. (3) In the consciousness just indicated, as the last to be achieved, the ‘I’ reveals itself as a self-contained spiritual Being — relatively independent of the surrounding spiritual world. 14. The second form of the ‘I’ — first of the three forms that were indicated in the last section — appears as a ‘picture’ of the I. When we become aware of this picture-character, a light is also thrown on the quality of thought in which the ‘I’ appears before the ordinary consciousness. With all manner of reflections, men have sought within this consciousness for the ‘true I.’ Yet an earnest insight into the experiences of the ordinary consciousness will suffice to show that the ‘true I’ cannot be found therein. Only a shadow-in-thought is able to appear there — a shadowy reflection, even less than a picture. The truth of this seizes us all the more when we progress to the ‘I’ as a picture, which lives in the etheric body. Only now are we rightly kindled to search for the ‘I’, for the true being of man. 15. Insight into the form in which the ‘I’ lives in the astral body leads to a right feeling of the relation of man to the spiritual world. For ordinary consciousness this form of the ‘I’ is buried in the dark depths of the unconscious, where man enters into connection with the spiritual being of the Universe through Inspiration. Ordinary consciousness experiences only a faint echo-in-feeling of this Inspiration from the wide expanse of the spiritual world, which holds sway in depths of the soul. 16. It is the third form of the ‘I’ which gives us insight into the independent Being of man within a spiritual world. It makes us feel how, with his earthly-sensible nature, man stands before himself as a mere manifestation of what he really is. Here lies the starting-point of true Self-knowledge. For the Self which fashions man in his true nature is revealed to him in Knowledge only when he progresses from the thought of the ‘I’ to its picture, from the picture to the creative forces of the picture, and from the creative forces to the spiritual Beings who sustain them. 17. Man is a being who unfolds his life in the midst, between two regions of the world. With his bodily development he is a member of a ‘lower world’; with his soul-nature he himself constitutes a ‘middle world’; and with his faculties of Spirit he is ever striving towards an ‘upper world.’ He owes his bodily development to all that Nature has given him; he bears the being of his soul within him as his own portion; and he discovers in himself the forces of the Spirit, as the gifts that lead him out beyond himself to participate in a Divine World. 18. The Spirit is creative in these three regions of the World. Nature is not void of Spirit. We lose even Nature from our knowledge if we do not become aware of the Spirit within her. Nevertheless, in Nature's existence we find the Spirit as it were asleep. Yet just as sleep has its task in human life — as the ‘I’ must be asleep at one time in order to be the more awake at another — so must the World-Spirit be asleep where Nature is, in order to be the more awake elsewhere. 19. In relation to the World, the soul of man is like a dreamer if it does not pay heed to the Spirit at work within it. The Spirit awakens the dreams of the soul from their ceaseless weaving in the inner life, to active participation in the World where man's true Being has its origin. As the dreamer shuts himself off from the surrounding physical world and entwines himself into himself, so would the soul lose connection with the Spirit of the World in whom it has its source, if it turned a deaf ear to the awakening calls of the Spirit within it. 20. For a right development of the life of the human soul, it is essential for man to become fully conscious of working actively from out of spiritual sources in his being. Many adherents of the modern scientific world-conception are victims of a strong prejudice in this respect. They say that a universal causality is dominant in all phenomena of the world; and that if man believes that he himself, out of his own resources, can be the cause of anything, it is a mere illusion on his part. Modern Natural Science wishes to follow observation and experience faithfully in all things, but in its prejudice about the hidden causality of man's inner sources of action it sins against its own principle. For the free and active working, straight from the inner resources of the human being, is a perfectly elementary experience of self-observation. It cannot be argued away; rather must we harmonise it with our insight into the universal causation of things within the order of Nature. 21. Non-recognition of this impulse out of the Spirit working in the inner life of man, is the greatest hindrance to the attainment of an insight into the spiritual world. For to consider our own being as a mere part of the order of Nature is in reality to divert the soul's attention from our own being. Nor can we penetrate into the spiritual world unless we first take hold of the Spirit where it is immediately given to us, namely in clear and open-minded self-observation. 22. Self-observation is the first beginning in the observation of the Spirit. It can indeed be the right beginning, for if it is true, man cannot possibly stop short at it, but is bound to progress to the further spiritual content of the World. As the human body pines away when bereft of physical nourishment, so will the man who rightly observes himself feel that his Self is becoming stunted if he does not see working into it the forces from a creative spiritual World outside him. 23. Passing through the gate of death, man goes out into the spiritual world, in that he feels falling away from him all the impressions and contents of soul which he received during earthly life through the bodily senses and the brain. His consciousness then has before it in an all-embracing picture-tableau the whole content of life which, during his earthly wanderings, entered as pictureless thoughts into his memory, or which — remaining unnoticed by the earthly consciousness — nevertheless made a subconscious impression on his soul. After a very few days these pictures grow faint and fade away. When they have altogether vanished, he knows that he has laid aside his etheric body too; for in the etheric body he can recognise the bearer of these pictures. 24. Having laid aside the etheric body, man has the astral body and the Ego as the members of his being still remaining to him. The astral body, so long as it is with him, brings to his consciousness all that during earthly life was the unconscious content of the soul when at rest in sleep. This content includes the judgements instilled into the astral body by Spirit-beings of a higher World during the periods of sleep — judgements which remain concealed from earthly consciousness. Man now lives through his earthly life a second time, yet so, that the content of his soul is now the judgement of his thought and action from the standpoint of the Spirit-world. He lives it through in backward order: first the last night, then the last but one, and so on. 25. This judgement of his life, which man experiences in the astral body after passing through the gate of death, lasts as long as the sum-total of the times he spent during his earthly life in sleep. 26. Only when the astral body has been laid aside — when the judgement of his life is over — man enters the spiritual world. There he stands in like relation to Beings of purely spiritual character as on Earth to the beings and processes of the Nature-kingdoms. In spiritual experience, everything that was his outer world on Earth now becomes his inner world. He no longer merely perceives it, but experiences it in its spiritual being which was hid from him on Earth, as his own world. 27. In the Spirit-realm, man as he is on Earth becomes an outer world. We gaze upon him, even as on Earth we gaze upon the stars and clouds, the mountains and rivers. Nor is this ‘outer world’ any less rich in content than the glory of the Cosmos as it appears to us in earthly life. 28. The forces begotten by the human Spirit in the Spirit-realm work on in the fashioning of earthly Man, even as the deeds we accomplish in the Physical work on as a content of the soul in the life after death. 29. In the evolved Imaginative Knowledge there works what lives as soul and spirit in the inner life of man, fashioning the physical body in its life, and unfolding man's existence in the physical world on this bodily foundation. Over against the physical body, whose substances are renewed again and again in the process of metabolism, we here come to the inner nature of man, unfolding itself continuously from birth (or conception) until death. Over against the physical Space-body, we come to a Time-body. 30. In the Inspired Knowledge there lives, in picture-form, what man experiences in a spiritual environment in the time between death and a new birth. What Man is in his own Being and in relation to cosmic worlds — without the physical and etheric bodies by means of which he undergoes his earthly life — is here made visible. 31. In the Intuitive Knowledge there comes to consciousness the working-over of former earthly lives into the present. In the further course of evolution these former lives have been divested of their erstwhile connections with the physical world. They have become the purely spiritual kernel of man's being, and, as such, are working in his present life. In this way, they too are an object of Knowledge — of that Knowledge which results with the further unfolding of the Imaginative and Inspired. 32. In the head of man, the physical Organisation is a copy, an impress of the spiritual individuality. The physical and the etheric part of the head stand out as complete and self-contained pictures of the Spiritual; beside them, in independent soul-spiritual existence, there stand the astral and the Ego-part. Thus in the head of man we have to do with a development, side by side, of the physical and etheric, relatively independent on the one hand, and of the astral and Ego-organisation on the other. 33. In the limbs and metabolic part of man the four members of the human being are intimately bound up with one another. The Ego-organisation and astral body are not there beside the physical and etheric part. They are within them, vitalising them, working in their growth, their faculty of movement and so forth. Through this very fact, the limbs and metabolic part of man is like a germinating seed, striving for ever to unfold; striving continually to become a ‘head,’ and — during the earthly life of man — no less continually prevented. 34. The rhythmic Organisation stands in the midst. Here the Ego-organisation and astral body alternately unite with the physical and etheric part, and loose themselves again. The breathing and the circulation of the blood are the physical impress of this alternate union and loosening. The inbreathing process portrays the union; the outbreathing the loosening. The processes in the arterial blood represent the union; those in the venous blood the loosening. 35. We understand the physical nature of man only if we regard it as a picture of the soul and spirit. Taken by itself, the physical corporality of man is unintelligible. But it is a picture of the soul and spirit in different ways in its several members. The head is the most perfect and complete symbolic picture of the soul and spirit. All that pertains to the system of the metabolism and the limbs is like a picture that has not yet assumed its finished forms, but is still being worked upon. Lastly, in all that belongs to the rhythmic Organisation of man, the relation of the soul and spirit to the body is intermediate between these opposites. 36. If we contemplate the human head from this spiritual point of view, we shall find in it a help to the understanding of spiritual Imaginations. For in the forms of the head, Imaginative forms are as it were coagulated to the point of physical density. 37. Similarly, if we contemplate the rhythmic part of man's Organisation it will help us to understand Inspirations. The physical appearance of the rhythms of life bears even in the sense-perceptible picture the character of Inspiration. Lastly, in the system of the metabolism and the limbs — if we observe it in full action, in the exercise of its necessary or possible functions — we have a picture, supersensible yet sensible, of pure supersensible Intuitions.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_a01.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_a01

Supplementary to the last set of Leading Thoughts It is most important that it should be understood through Anthroposophy that the ideas which a man gains by looking at outer Nature are inadequate for the observation of Man. The ideas which have taken possession of men's minds during the spiritual development of the last few centuries fail to realise this fact. Through them men have grown accustomed to thinking out natural laws, and to explaining by means of them the phenomena which are perceived by the senses. They then turn their attention to the human organism, and think that that too can be explained through bringing the laws of Nature to bear upon it. Now this is just as though, in considering a picture which a painter had created, we only took into account the substance of the colours, their power of adhering to the canvas, the way in which these colours were applied, and similar things. But such a way of regarding the picture does not reveal what is contained in it. Quite other laws are active in the revelation contained in the picture than those which can be perceived by considering such points as these. It is a question of realising that in the human being too something is revealed which cannot be grasped from the standpoint of natural law. If anyone has once thoroughly made this conception his own, then he will be able to understand man as a picture . A mineral is not a picture in this sense. It reveals only what is directly evident to the senses. To a certain extent when regarding a picture we look through what the senses perceive to its spiritual content. And so is it also in the observation of the human being. If we truly understand the human being in the light of natural law, we do not feel that these laws bring us into contact with the real man, but only with that through which he reveals himself We must experience spiritually that when we regard a man only from the point of view of natural law, it is as if we stood before a picture seeing only ‘blue’ and ‘red,’ and quite unable through an inner activity of the soul to relate the blue and red to that which reveals itself through these colours. When viewing things from the standpoint of natural law we must perceive the mineral in one way, the human being in another. In the case of the mineral it is, for the spiritual understanding, as if we were in immediate touch with what is perceived; but in the case of man it is as though we could only come as near to him through natural laws as to a picture which we do not see clearly with the eye of the soul but only touch and feel. When once we have gained the perception that man is a ‘picture’ of something, we shall be in the right mood of soul to progress to that which manifests in this picture. The pictorial nature of man does not manifest in one way only. An organ of sense is in its nature least of all a picture, and mostly a kind of manifestation of itself like the mineral. The human organs of sense approach nearest to natural laws. Let us but contemplate the wonderful arrangement of the eye, which by natural laws we are able to comprehend. It is the same with the other organs, though not often so clearly evident. It is because the sense organs, in their formation, show a certain compactness. They are arranged in the organism as complete formations, and as such assist in the perception of the outer world. But it is otherwise with the rhythmic actions in the organism. They are not complete, but evanescent, the organism in them continually forming and then declining. If the sense organs were like the rhythmic system, we should perceive the outer world in a perpetual growth. The sense organs are like a picture on the wall. The rhythmic system is like the scene that unfolds itself if canvas and painter are imaged by us at the conception of the picture. The picture is not yet there, but it comes more and more into being. In studying the rhythmic system, we have to do with a perpetual process of becoming. A thing that has already come into existence remains in existence, for a time at any rate. But when we study the human rhythmic system we find the process of becoming, the upbuilding process, followed directly and without a gap by the passing out of existence, the destructive process. In the rhythmic system there manifests itself a picture, coming into existence, but never finished nor complete. The activity which the soul discharges in conscious devotion to what is brought before it as the finished picture, may be styled Imagination . On the other hand Inspiration is the experience that must be unfolded in order to comprehend a growing picture. But this is different again in the contemplation of the metabolic and limb system. Here it is as if one was before a bare canvas and unused paints, and an artist not even painting. To get a perception of the metabolic and limb system, one must get a perception that has as little connection with the senses, as have the bare canvas and unused paints with that which is afterwards the artist's picture. And the activity that is developed by the soul in pure spirituality out of the metabolic and limb system is as when, upon seeing the painter and an empty canvas and unused paints, one experiences the picture to be painted later. In order to understand the metabolic and limb system the soul must exercise the power of Intuition . It is necessary that the active members of the Anthroposophical Society should concentrate in this way on the essential and fundamental nature of anthroposophical study. For it is not only the knowledge one gains by study but the experience achieved thereby that matters. From what has here been explained our study will lead us to the following Leading Thoughts. 38. We have shown how man is to be regarded in his picture-nature and in the spirituality which thereby reveals itself. Once this perception is attained, then, in the spiritual world where we see man living and moving as a Spirit-being, we are also on the point of seeing the reality of the moral laws of the soul. For the moral world-order is then revealed as the earthly image of an order belonging to the spiritual world. The physical world-order and the moral are welded together now, in undivided unity. 39. From out of man, there works the human Will. This Will confronts the ‘Laws of Nature’ which we derive from the external world, as something altogether foreign to their essence. The nature of the sense-organs can still be scientifically understood by virtue of their likeness to the objects of external Nature. In the activity of these organs, the Will, however, is not yet able to unfold itself. The nature that manifests itself in the human rhythmic system is already far less like any external thing. Into this system the Will can already work to some extent. But the rhythmic system is in constant process of coming-into-being and passing-away, and in these processes the Will is not yet free. 40. In the system of metabolism and the limbs we have a nature which manifests itself in material substances and in the processes they undergo; yet are the substances and processes in reality no nearer to this nature than are the artist and his materials to the finished picture. Here, therefore, the Will is able to enter in and work directly. Behind the human Organisation living in ‘Natural Laws,’ we must grasp that inner human nature which lives and moves and has its being in the Spiritual. Here is the realm in which we can become aware of the real working of the Will. For the realm of sense, the human Will remains a mere word, empty of all content, and the scientist or thinker who claims to take hold of it within this realm, leaves the real nature of the Will behind him and replaces it in theory by something else. 41. In the third of the last Leading Thoughts, we pointed to the nature of the human Will. Only when this is realised, do we enter with understanding into a sphere of the world where Destiny or Karma works. So long as we perceive only that system of law which holds sway in the relations of the things and facts of Nature, our understanding is entirely remote from the laws that work in Destiny. 42. When the law in Destiny is thus perceived, it is revealed at the same time that Destiny cannot come into existence in the course of a single physical life on Earth. So long as he inhabits the same physical body, man can realise only the moral content of his Will in the way that this particular physical body, within the physical world, allows. Only when he has passed through the gate of death into the sphere of the Spirit, can the Spirit-nature of the Will come to full effect. Then will the Good and the Evil be severally realised — a spiritual realisation to begin with — in their corresponding outcome. 43. In this spiritual realisation man fashions and forms himself between death and a new birth. He becomes in being an image of what he did during his earthly life; and out of this his being, on his subsequent return to Earth, he forms his physical life. The Spiritual that works and weaves in Destiny can only find realisation in the Physical if its corresponding cause withdrew, before this realisation, into the spiritual realm. For all that emerges in our life by way of Destiny proceeds out of the Spiritual ; nor does it ever take shape within the sequence of physical phenomena. 44. We should pass on to a spiritual-scientific treatment of the question of Destiny by taking examples from the life and experience of individual men and women, showing how the forces of Destiny work themselves out, and the significance they have for the whole course of human life. We may show, for instance, how an experience which a man undergoes in his youth, which he can certainly not have brought upon himself entirely of his own free will, may none the less to a large extent give shape to the whole of his later life. 45. We should describe the significance of the fact that in the physical course of life between birth and death the good may become unhappy in their outer life, and the wicked at any rate apparently happy. In expounding these things, pictures of individual cases carry more weight than theoretical explanations; they are a far better preparation for the spiritual-scientific treatment of the subject. 46. Events of Destiny which come into the life of man in such a way that their determining conditions cannot possibly be found in his present life, should be cited. Faced with such happenings, a purely reasonable view of life already points in the direction of former lives on Earth. It must of course be made clear by the very way in which these things are described that no dogmatic or binding statement is implied. The purpose of such examples is simply to direct one's thoughts towards a spiritual-scientific treatment of the question of Destiny. 47. Of all that is latent in the forming of man's Destiny, only the very smallest part enters the everyday consciousness. Yet the unveiling of our Destiny teaches us most of all, how the Unconscious can indeed be brought to consciousness. They in effect are wrong, who speak of what is, for the time being, the Unconscious, as though it must remain absolutely in the realm of the unknown, thus constituting a barrier of knowledge. With every fragment of his Destiny that is unveiled to him, man lifts into the realm of consciousness something that was hitherto unconscious. 48. In so doing man becomes aware that the things of Destiny are not woven within the life between birth and death. Thus the question of Destiny impels him most of all to the contemplation of the life between death and a new birth. 49. Conscious human experience is thus impelled by the question of Destiny to look beyond itself. Moreover, as we dwell upon this fact, we shall develop a true feeling for the relation of the Natural and the Spiritual. He who beholds the living sway of Destiny in the human being, stands already in the midst of spiritual things. For the inner connections of Destiny have nothing of the character of outer Nature. 50. It is most important to point out, how the study of the historic life of mankind is called to life when we show that it is the souls of men themselves, passing from epoch to epoch in their repeated lives on Earth, who carry over the results of one historic age into another. 51. It may easily be objected that such a line of thought robs history of its naive and elemental force. But this objection is untrue. On the contrary, our vision of historic life is deepened when we can trace it thus into man's inmost being. History becomes more real and more abundant, not poorer and more abstract. In describing these things we must, however, unfold true sympathy and insight into the living soul of man, for we gaze deep into the soul along these lines of thought. 52. The epochs in the life between death and a new birth should be treated in relation to the forming of Karma. Further Leading Thoughts will indicate the way in which this can be done. 53. The unfolding of man's life between death and a new birth takes place in successive stages. For a few days after passing through the gate of Death the whole of the past earthly life is seen in living pictures . This experience reveals at the same time the gradual severance of the vehicle of the past life from the human soul-and-spirit. 54. In a time that comprises about a third of the past earthly life, the soul discovers in spiritual experiences the effect which this life must have in accordance with an ethically just World-order. During this experience the purpose is begotten in the soul to shape the next earthly life in a corresponding way, and thus to compensate for the past. 55. There follows a purely spiritual epoch of existence. During this epoch, which is of long duration, the soul of man — along with other human souls karmically connected with him, and with the Beings of the Hierarchies above — fashions the next life on Earth in the sense of Karma. 56. The epoch of existence between death and a new birth, when the Karma of man is fashioned, can be described only by the results of spiritual research. But it must always be borne in mind that such description appeals to our intelligence. We need only consider with open mind the realities of the world of the senses, and we become aware that it points to a spiritual reality — as the form of a corpse points to the life that in-dwelt it. 57. The results of Spiritual Science show that between death and birth man belongs to Spirit-kingdoms, even as he belongs between birth and death to the three kingdoms of Nature: the mineral, the plant and the animal. 58. The mineral kingdom is recognisable in the form of the human being at any given moment; the plant kingdom, as the etheric body, is the basis of his growth, his becoming; the animal kingdom, as the astral body, is the impulse for his unfolding of sensation and volition. The crowning of the conscious life of sensation and volition in the self-conscious spiritual life makes the connection of man with the spiritual world straightway apparent. 59. Open-minded contemplation of Thinking shows that the thoughts of the ordinary consciousness have no existence of their own, but arise only as the reflected images of something. Man, however, feels himself to be alive in his thoughts. The thoughts are not alive, but he himself is living in them. This life has its source in Spirit-beings, whom we may describe (in the sense of my book, Occult Science ) as the Beings of the Third Hierarchy — a kingdom of the Spirit. 60. Extended to the life of Feeling, the same open-minded contemplation shows that the feelings, though they arise out of the body, cannot have been created by it. For their life bears in it a character independent of the bodily organism. With his bodily nature man can feel himself to be within the world of Nature. Yet just in realising this with true self-understanding, he will feel that with his world of Feeling he is in a spiritual kingdom. This is the kingdom of the Second Hierarchy. 61. As a being of Will, man's attention is directed not to his own bodily nature, but to the outer world. When he desires to walk he does not ask, ‘What do I feel in my feet?’ but ‘What is the goal out there, which I desire to reach?’ In willing, man forgets his body. In his Will he belongs, not to his own nature, but to the Spirit-kingdom of the First Hierarchy.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

On the Picture-Nature of Man

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_a02.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_a02

This week something will be given in the communications addressed to members in these columns, which may serve to bring us to a further understanding of the weekly ‘Leading Thoughts.’ The understanding of anthroposophical truth can be furthered if the relation which exists between man and the world is constantly brought before the human soul. When man turns his attention to the world into which he is born and out of which he dies, he is surrounded in the first place by the fullness of his sense-impressions. He forms thoughts about these sense-impressions. In bringing the following to his consciousness: ‘I am forming thoughts about what my senses reveal to me as the world,’ he has already come to the point where he can contemplate himself. He can say to himself: In my thoughts ‘I’ live. The world gives me the opportunity of experiencing myself in thoughts. I find myself in my thoughts when I contemplate the world. And continuing to reflect in this way, he ceases to be conscious of the world; he becomes conscious of the ‘I’. He ceases to have the world before him; he begins to experience the self. If the experience be reversed, and the attention directed to the inner life in which the world is mirrored, then those events emerge into consciousness which belong to our life's destiny, and in which our human self has flowed along from the point of time to which our memory goes back. In following up the events of his destiny, a man experiences his own existence. In bringing this to his consciousness: ‘I with my own self have experienced something that destiny brought to me,’ a man has already come to the point where he will contemplate the world. He can say to himself: I was not alone in my fate; the world played a part in my experience. I willed this or that; the world streamed into my will. I find the world in my will when I experience this will in self-contemplation. Continuing thus to enter into his own being, man ceases to be conscious of the self, he becomes conscious of the world; he ceases to experience himself, he becomes feelingly aware of the world. ‘I send my thoughts out into the World, there I find myself; I sink into myself, there I find the World.’ If a man experiences this strongly enough he is confronted with the great riddles of the World and Man. For to have the feeling: I have taken endless pains to understand the world through thinking, and after all there is but myself in this thinking — this gives rise to the first great riddle. And to feel that one's own self is formed through destiny, yet to perceive in this process the onward flow of world-happenings — this presents the second riddle. In the experience of this problem of Man and the World germinates the frame of mind in which man can so confront Anthroposophy that he receives from it in his inner being an impression which rouses his attention. For Anthroposophy asserts that there is a spiritual experience which does not lose the world when thinking. One can also live in thought. Anthroposophy tells of an inward experience in which one does not lose the sense-world when thinking, but gains the Spirit-world. Instead of penetrating into the ego in which the sense-world is felt to disappear, one penetrates into the Spirit-world in which the ego feels established. Anthroposophy shows, further, that there is an experience of destiny in which one does not lose the self. In fate, too, one can still feel oneself to be active. Anthroposophy points out, in the impartial, unegoistic observation of human destiny, an experience in which one learns to love the world and not only one's own existence. Instead of staring into the world which carries the ego on the waves of fortune and misfortune, one finds the ego which shapes its own fate voluntarily. Instead of striking against the world on which the ego is dashed to pieces, one penetrates into the self, which feels itself united with the course of events in the world. Man's destiny comes to him from the world that is revealed to him by his senses. If then he finds his own activity in the working of his destiny, his real self rises up before him not only out of his inner being but out of the sense-world too. If a person is able to feel, however faintly, how the spiritual part of the world appears in the self, and how the self proves to be working in the outer world of sense, he has already learned to understand Anthroposophy correctly. For he will then realise that in Anthroposophy it is possible to describe the Spirit-world which the self can comprehend. And this will enable him to understand that in the sense-world the self can also be found — in a different way than by diving within. Anthroposophy finds the self by showing how the sense-world reveals to man not only sense-perceptions but also the after-effects of his life before birth and his former earthly lives. Man can now gaze on the world perceptible to his senses and say: It contains not only colour, sound, warmth; in it are active the experiences passed through by souls before their present earthly life. And he can look into himself and say: I find there not only my ego but, in addition, a spiritual world is revealed. In an understanding of this kind, a person who really feels — who is not unmoved by — the great riddles of Man and the World, can meet on a common ground with the Initiate who in accordance with his insight is obliged to speak of the outer world of the senses as manifesting not only sense-perceptions but also the impressions of what human souls have done in their life before birth and in past earthly lives, and who has to say of the world of the inner self that it reveals spiritual events which produce impressions and are as effective as the perceptions of the sense-world. The would-be active members should consciously make themselves mediators between what the questioning human soul feels as the problems of Man and the Universe, and what the knowledge of the Initiates has to recount, when it draws forth a past world out of the destiny of human beings, and when by strengthening the soul it opens up the perception of a spiritual world. In this way, through the work of the would-be active members, the Anthroposophical Society may become a true preparatory school for the school of Initiates. It was the intention of the Christmas Meeting to indicate this very forcibly; and one who truly understands what that Meeting meant will continue to point this out until sufficient understanding of it can bring the Society fresh tasks and possibilities again. May the Leading Thoughts to be given in this number proceed, therefore, out of this spirit. 62. In our sense-perceptions, the world of the senses bears on to the surface only a portion of the being that lies concealed in the depths of its waves beneath. Penetrative spiritual observation reveals within these depths the after-effects of what was done by souls of men in ages long gone by. 63. To ordinary self-observation the inner world of man reveals only a portion of that, in the midst of which it stands. Intensified experience in consciousness shows it to be contained within a living spiritual Reality. 64. The destiny of man reveals the workings, not only of an external world, but of the man's own Self. 65. The experiences of the human soul reveal not only a Self but a world of the Spirit, which the Self can know by deeper spiritual knowledge as a world united with its own being. 66. The Beings of the Third Hierarchy reveal themselves in the life which is unfolded as a spiritual background in human Thinking. In the human activity of thought this life is concealed. If it worked on in its own essence in human thought, man could not attain to Freedom. Where cosmic Thought activity ceases, human Thought-activity begins. 67. The Beings of the Second Hierarchy manifest themselves in a world-of-soul beyond humanity — a world of cosmic soul-activities, hidden from human Feeling. This cosmic world-of-soul is ever creative in the background of human Feeling. Out of the being of man it first creates the organism of Feeling; only then can it bring Feeling itself to life therein. 68. The Beings of the First Hierarchy manifest themselves in spiritual creation beyond humanity — a cosmic world of spiritual Being which indwells the human Willing. This world of cosmic Spirit experiences itself in creative action when man wills. It first creates the connection of man's being with the Universe beyond humanity; only then does man himself become, through his organism of Will, a freely willing being.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

Understanding of the Spirit; Conscious Experience of Destiny

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_a03.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_a03

Through the Leading Thoughts which have been sent out from the Goetheanum during the past weeks to the members of the Anthroposophical Society, the soul has been directed to the Beings of the spiritual kingdoms with whom man is connected from above, just as, from below, he is connected with the kingdoms of Nature. True self-knowledge may become the guide through which man finds his way into these spiritual kingdoms. And when such self-knowledge is striven after in the right way, then the understanding will be awakened for what Anthroposophy is able to make known through its insight into the life of the spiritual world. But self-knowledge must be practised in the true sense, not as a mere rigid gazing into one's inner being. By means of such a true self-knowledge one arrives in the first place at what lives in memory . In thought-pictures, the shadow of what was a direct and living experience in the past is called up into consciousness. Anyone seeing a shadow will, out of an inner impulse of thought, be guided to the object which threw the shadow. He who bears a memory within him cannot in this direct way turn the eye of his soul to the experience which lives on in the memory. But when he truly reflects on his own nature he will be obliged to say to himself: that he himself, in his soul-being, is what his experiences have made of him — those experiences which throw their shadows into the memory. The memory-shadows appear in the consciousness; in the soul there shines what in the memory is shadow . Dead shadow lives in the memory; living being lives in the soul in which the memory is active. It is only necessary that this relationship of the memory to the actual soul-life should be made clear; and in this striving for clearness in self-knowledge a man will then perceive that he is on the path to the spiritual world. Through memory, man is looking at the spiritual in his own soul. But in the ordinary consciousness he does not arrive at a real grasp of what he thus looks upon. He looks in the direction on something; but his look meets with no reality. Anthroposophy, out of Imaginative Knowledge, shows the way to this reality. Through it we are referred from the shadow to that which gleams and shines. Anthroposophy does this, in that it speaks of the etheric body of man. It shows how the physical body is active in the thought-shadow pictures; but how in the gleaming and shining the etheric body lives . With the physical body man is in the sense-world; with the etheric body he is in the etheric world. In the sense-world he has his environment; in the etheric world also. And Anthroposophy speaks of this latter environment as the first of the hidden worlds in which man is living. It is the kingdom of the Third Hierarchy. Let us now approach speech in the same way that we have considered memory. It issues from within man just as does the memory. It connects him with a certain state of being, as memory unites him with his own experiences. In words, too, there is an element of shadow. This is deeper than the shadow of the thoughts of memory. When man inwardly casts the shadow of his experiences as his memories, his own hidden self is active in the whole process. He is there when the light casts the shadow. In speech there is also a process of shadow-casting. The words are the shadows. What is it in this case that shines? Something stronger shines, because words are stronger shadows than are the thoughts of memory. The element in the human self which in the course of an earthly life can produce memories, cannot create words. Man must learn these in connection with other human beings. Something which lies deeper in him than that which casts the shadow of memory must take part in this process. In this case Anthroposophy speaks from Inspired Knowledge of the astral body, as in the case of memory it speaks of the etheric body. The astral body is added to the physical and etheric bodies as a third part of the human being. This third part, too, has a cosmic environment about it. This is made up of the Second Hierarchy. In human language we have a phantom of this Second Hierarchy. As to his astral body, man lives within the province of this Hierarchy. We may go still further. In speech a portion of man's being is engaged. When he speaks he brings his inner being into motion. That which surrounds this inner being remains at rest. The movement of speech wrings itself loose from the human being while he remains at rest, but the whole man comes into motion when he brings into activity all that belongs to his limbs. In such movement man is no less full of expression than in memory and speech. Memory expresses his experiences. The nature of language consists in its being the expression of something. In the same way the man whose whole being is in motion expresses something. Anthroposophy points out that this ‘something’ is another part of the human being. From Intuitive Knowledge it speaks of the ‘real Self’ or ‘I.’ This too, it finds, has a cosmic environment, namely the First Hierarchy. When man approaches the thoughts in his memory he meets with the first supersensible element — his own etheric being. Anthroposophy points out to him the cosmic environment corresponding to it. When man considers himself as one who makes use of language he finds his astral being. This is no longer comprehended in that which only acts inwardly, like memory. It is seen by Inspiration as that which in the act of speaking shapes a physical process out of the Spiritual. Speech is a physical process. At its foundation lies an activity which proceeds from the sphere of the Second Hierarchy. When the whole man is in motion there is a more intense physical action than in speech. Not merely a part of man is moulded, the whole man is given shape; and in the physical being which lives and moves in form, the First Hierarchy is active. In this way, then, true self-knowledge can be cultivated. But in doing this man does not grasp his own Self alone. Step by step he comprehends the parts of his body: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the Self. And by comprehending these he also reaches up, step by step, to higher worlds which like the three kingdoms of Nature, the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms, belong, as the three spiritual kingdoms, to the whole Universe in which his being is unfolding. 69. The Third Hierarchy reveals itself as pure soul and spirit. It lives and moves in all that man experiences in the soul, in his inner life. Neither in the etheric nor in the physical could any processes arise if this Hierarchy alone were active. Soul-life alone could exist. 70. The Second Hierarchy reveals itself as soul and spirit that works in the etheric. All that is etheric is a manifestation of the Second Hierarchy. This Hierarchy, however, does not reveal itself directly in the physical; its power extends only to etheric processes. Only etheric and soul-life could exist if the Third and the Second Hierarchy alone were active. 71. The First and strongest Hierarchy reveals itself as the spiritually active principle within the physical. It makes the physical world into a Cosmos. The Third and the Second Hierarchy are the Beings who minister to it in this activity. 72. As soon as we approach the higher members of man's being — the etheric, the astral body and the Ego-organisation — we are obliged to seek for man's relation to the beings of the spiritual kingdoms. It is only the physical body's organisation which we can illumine by reference to the three physical kingdoms of Nature. 73. In the etheric body the Intelligence of the Cosmos becomes embodied in the human being. That this can happen, requires the activity of cosmic Beings, who, in their combined working, shape the etheric body of man, even as the physical forces shape the physical. 74. In the astral body the spiritual world implants the moral impulses into the human being. That these can show forth their life in man's Organisation, depends on the activity of Beings who are able not only to think the Spiritual, but to shape it in its reality. 75. In the Ego-organisation man experiences himself, even in the physical body, as a Spirit. That this can happen, requires the activity of Beings who themselves, as spiritual Beings, live in the physical world.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

Spiritual Kingdoms and Human Self-Knowledge

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_a04.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_a04

Those who want to take an active part in the Movement may find in the Leading Thoughts that are given out from the Goetheanum, an impulse and stimulus that shall enable them to bring unity and wholeness into all anthroposophical activity. They will find in them, as they receive them week by week, guidance for deepening their understanding of the material that is already at hand in the Lecture-Courses and for putting it forward in the Group meetings with a certain order and harmony. It would without doubt be more desirable for the lectures given in Dornach to be carried at once in all directions to the individual Groups. But one has to remember what complicated technical arrangements such a course would necessitate. The Executive at the Goetheanum are making every possible effort in this direction, and still more will be done in the future. But we must reckon with the possibilities that exist. The aims that found expression at the Christmas Meeting will be realised. But we need time. For the present those Groups that have members who visit the Goetheanum, hear the lectures there and can bring back the substance of them into the Group meetings, have an advantage. And Groups should recognise that the sending of members to the Goetheanum in this way is a very good thing to do. On the other hand, however, the work that has already been achieved within the Anthroposophical Society and that is embodied in the printed Courses and Lectures, should not be undervalued. If you take up these Courses and call to mind from the titles what is contained in this one and in that, and then turn to the Leading Thoughts, you will find that you meet with one thing in one Course, another in another, that explains the Leading Thoughts more fully. By reading together passages that are found separated in different Courses, you will discover the right points of view for expounding and elaborating the Leading Thoughts. We in the Anthroposophical Society are wasting opportunities all the time if we leave the printed Courses quite untouched and only want always to hear ‘the latest’ from the Goetheanum. And it will readily be understood that all possibility of printing the Courses would gradually cease if they were not widely made use of. Another point of view also comes into consideration. In spreading the contents of Anthroposophy, a strong sense of responsibility is necessary in the first place. What is said about the spiritual world must be brought into a form such that the pictures of spiritual facts and beings which are given are not exposed to misunderstanding. Anyone who hears a lecture at the Goetheanum will receive an immediate and direct impression. If he repeats the contents of what he heard, this impression can echo from him; and he is able so to formulate them that they can be rightly understood. But if they are repeated at second or third hand, the possibility of inaccuracies creeping in becomes greater and greater. All these things should be borne in mind. The following point of view is, however, probably the most important. The point is not that Anthroposophy should be simply listened to or read, but that it should be received into the living soul. It is essential that what has been received should be worked upon in thought and carried into the feelings; and the Leading Thoughts are really intended to suggest this with regard to the Courses already printed and in circulation. If this point of view is not sufficiently considered, then the nature of Anthroposophy will be constantly hindered from manifesting itself through the Anthroposophical Society. People say, though only with apparent justice: ‘What use is it to me to hear all these things about the spiritual worlds if I cannot look into those worlds for myself?’ One who speaks thus does not realise that such vision is promoted when the working out of anthroposophical ideas is thought of in the manner indicated above. The lectures at the Goetheanum are so given that their contents can live on and work freely in the minds of the hearers. The same applies also to the contents of the Courses. These do not contain dead material to be imparted externally, but material which, when viewed from different aspects, stimulates the vision for spiritual worlds. It should not be thought that one hears the contents of the lectures and that the knowledge of the spiritual world is acquired separately by means of meditation. In that way one will never make real progress. Both must act together in the soul. And to think out anthroposophical ideas and allow them to live on in the feelings is also an exercise of the soul. A person grows into the spiritual world with open eyes if he uses Anthroposophy in the manner we have described. Far too little attention is paid in the Anthroposophical Society to the fact that Anthroposophy should not be abstract theory but real life. Real life, that is its nature; and if it is made into abstract theory this is often not at all a better but a worse theory than others. But it becomes theory only when it is made such — i.e. when one kills it. It is still not sufficiently realised that Anthroposophy is not only a conception of the world, different from others, but that it must also be received differently . Its nature is recognised and experienced only when one receives it in this different way. The Goetheanum should be looked upon as the necessary centre of anthroposophical work and activity, but one ought not to lose sight of the fact that the anthroposophical material which has been worked out should also be made use of in the Groups. What is worked out at the Goetheanum can be obtained gradually by the whole Anthroposophical Society in a full and living sense, when as many members as possible come from the Groups to the Goetheanum itself and participate as much as possible in its activities. But all this must be worked out with heart and mind; the mere imparting of the contents of the lectures each week is useless. The Executive at the Goetheanum will need time and will have to meet with sympathetic understanding on the part of the members. It will then be able to work in accordance with the intention of the Christmas Meeting. 76. To call forth an idea of the First Hierarchy (Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones) we must try to create pictures in which the Spiritual — i.e. that which can be beheld only in the Supersensible — reveals its working, in forms that come to manifestation in the world of sense. Spiritual being, portrayed in sense-perceptible imagery: such must be the content of our thoughts about the First Hierarchy. 77. To call forth an idea of the Second Hierarchy (Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai) we must try to create pictures in which the Spiritual reveals itself — not in sense-perceptible forms — but in a purely spiritual way. Spiritual being, portrayed not in sense-perceptible but in purely spiritual imagery: such must be the content of our thoughts about the Second Hierarchy. 78. To call forth an idea of the Third Hierarchy (Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi) we must try to create pictures in which the Spiritual reveals itself not in sense-perceptible forms, nor yet in a purely spiritual way, but in the way in which Thinking, Feeling and Willing come to expression in the human soul. Spiritual being, portrayed in the imagery of a life of soul: such must be the content of our thoughts about the Third Hierarchy.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

How the Leading Thoughts are to be Used

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_a05.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_a05

Before and until the ninth century after the Mystery of Golgotha, the human being stood in a different relation to his thoughts from that which he has had in later times. He did not have the feeling that he himself brought forth the thoughts that lived in his soul. He regarded them as inspirations from a spiritual world. And when he had thoughts about what he perceived with his senses, even these thoughts were to him revelations of the Divine that spoke to him from the things of the senses. Whoever has spiritual vision will understand this experience. For when something that is real in the spiritual sense communicates itself to the soul, one never has the feeling: ‘There is the spiritual perception, and I myself am developing the thought with which to understand it.’ But one sees the thought which the perception contains, and which is given with it, no less objectively than the perception itself. (When dates are given in this connection, they are to be taken only as a rough indication of the period; the transition takes place quite gradually.) Speaking, in this sense, we may say that the ninth century saw the lighting-up, in the souls of men, of the individual personal intelligence. Man began to have the feeling: ‘I myself form my thoughts.’ And this forming of thoughts came to be the thing of first importance in the soul's life, so that man saw in the intellectual experience the very essence and being of his soul. In earlier times men had had an imaginative conception of the soul. To them the essential thing about the soul was not that it formed thoughts, but that it partook of the spiritual content of the Universe. It was the supersensible, spiritual Beings whom they conceived to be thinking, and — extending their influence into the human being — thinking into him as well. That which lives in the human being of the supersensible, spiritual world — this they felt as the soul. As soon as we penetrate with higher vision into the spiritual world, we meet with real and concrete spiritual Beings, spiritual Powers. In old teachings the Power from whom the thoughts in things proceed was designated by the name Michael . This name we may still apply, for it is true that human beings, once upon a time, received the thoughts of Michael. Michael held sway over the Cosmic Intelligence. But from the ninth century onwards men no longer felt that Michael was inspiring the thoughts into them. The thoughts had fallen away from his dominion — fallen out of the spiritual world into the individualised souls of men. Henceforth it was within mankind that the life of thought was evolved. To begin with, men were uncertain as to what it was they had in their thoughts. This uncertainty found very real expression in the scholastic teachings. The Schoolmen were divided into Nominalists and Realists. The Realists, led by St. Thomas Aquinas and those who stood near to him, still felt the old closeness and kinship between thought and thing. Hence they saw in the thoughts a reality living in the things. They regarded the thoughts of man as reality which flows over from the things into the human soul. The Nominalists felt very strongly the fact that the soul forms its thoughts. They felt that the thoughts were merely something that existed subjectively in the soul and had nothing to do with the objects. They were of the opinion that thoughts are only names man forms for things. (They did not speak of ‘thoughts’ but of ‘universals,’ but that does not come into consideration for the principle of the theory, as thoughts always contain something universal as compared with the individual objects.) We may say that the Realists wished to remain faithful to Michael; even though the thoughts had fallen from his sphere into that of man, they wished, as thinkers, to serve Michael as the Ruler of the intelligence of the Cosmos. The Nominalists deserted Michael, with respect to the unconscious part of their soul. They did not consider Michael as the owner of the thoughts, but man. Nominalism spread abroad and increased in influence up to the last third of the nineteenth century. Then at this period those persons who were able to perceive the spiritual events in the Universe felt that Michael had followed the stream of intellectual life. He is seeking a new metamorphosis of his cosmic task. Formerly he allowed the thoughts to stream from the spiritual outer world into the souls of men; since the last third of the nineteenth century he wishes to live in the human souls in which the thoughts are formed. In earlier times the human beings related to Michael saw him develop his activity in the spiritual sphere; they now know that they ought to let Michael dwell in their hearts; they now dedicate to him their spiritual life which is based upon thought; they now, in their free and individual life of thought, allow themselves to be instructed by Michael as to which are the right paths of the soul. When those who in their former Earth-life received their thoughts by inspiration, i.e., who were servants of Michael, had returned to earthly life at the close of the nineteenth century, they felt urged towards a voluntary Michael community of this description. They now looked upon the one who had formerly inspired them with thoughts as their guide in forming higher thoughts. One who understands how to observe such things knows what a great change took place in the last third of the nineteenth century with respect to the life of human thought. Before that time man could only feel how thoughts formed themselves in his own being; from the time indicated he is able to raise himself above his own being; he can turn his mind to the Spiritual; he there meets Michael, who proves his ancient kinship with everything connected with thought. He liberates thought from the sphere of the head; he clears the way for it to the heart; he enkindles enthusiasm in the feelings, so that the human mind can be filled with devotion for all that can be experienced in the light of thought . The Age of Michael has dawned. Hearts are beginning to have thoughts; spiritual fervour is now proceeding, not merely from mystical obscurity, but from souls clarified by thought. To understand this means to receive Michael into the heart. Thoughts which at the present time strive to grasp the Spiritual must originate in hearts which beat for Michael as the fiery Prince of Thought in the Universe. 79. Spiritually, we can approach the Third Hierarchy (Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi) by learning to know Thinking, Feeling and Willing, so as to perceive in them the Spiritual that works in the soul. Thinking, to begin with, places not an effective reality, but only pictures into the world. Feeling lives and moves in this realm of pictures; bears witness to the presence of a reality in man, but cannot live it or express it outwardly. Willing unfolds a reality which presupposes the existence of the body but does not consciously assist in its formation. The spiritual reality that lives in our Thinking, to make the body the foundation of this Thinking; the spiritual reality that lives in our Feeling, to make the body share in the experience of a reality; the spiritual reality that lives in our Willing, consciously to assist in fashioning the body — all this is alive in the Third Hierarchy. 80. Spiritually, we can approach the Second Hierarchy (Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes) by awakening to see the facts of Nature as the manifestations of spiritual being that indwells them. The Second Hierarchy then has Nature for its dwelling-place, there to work upon the souls. 81. Spiritually, we can approach the First Hierarchy (Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones) by awakening to see the facts that confront us in the kingdom of Nature and of Man as the deeds (creations) of spiritual being that is working in them. The First Hierarchy then has the kingdom of Nature and of Man as the outcome of its work, wherein it unfolds its Being. 82. Man looks upward to the worlds of stars; what is there presented to his senses is but the outer manifestation of those Spirit-beings — and their deeds — of whom we have spoken as the Beings of the spiritual kingdoms or Hierarchies. 83. The Earth is the scene of action of the three Nature kingdoms and of the human kingdom, inasmuch as these make manifest the outward and sensible glory of the activity of spiritual Beings. 84. The forces, working from spiritual Beings into the earthly kingdoms of Nature and into the kingdom of Man, are revealed to the human Spirit in the true — that is, the spiritual — knowledge of the starry worlds.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

At the Dawn of the Michael Age

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c01.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c01

Today I will take the opportunity of giving some further thoughts in line with my article ‘At the Dawn of the Michael Age’. The Michael Age has taken its rise in the evolution of mankind at a time that follows on the one hand the predominance of the intellectual ‘forming of thoughts,’ and on the other hand the turning of human perception and vision to the outer world of the senses, to the physical world. Thought-forming is in its nature not essentially an evolution in the direction of materialism. That which in bygone times came to the human being as something inspired into him, namely, the world of ideas, became, in the time that preceded the Michael epoch, the property of the human soul. The soul no longer receives the ideas ‘from above’ out of the spiritual content of the Cosmos: it draws them itself actively forth out of the human being's own spiritual nature. Man has thereby become ripe for reflection upon his own spiritual being. Hitherto he did not penetrate to these depths of his own nature. He saw in himself as it were a drop out of the sea of cosmic spirituality, a drop that has separated itself off for the time of this earthly life, only to unite itself again when the earthly life is over. The thought-forming that goes on in the human being marks an advance in human self-knowledge. Viewed from the supersensible, it appears thus. The spiritual Powers that we may designate with the Michael-name held rule over the ideas in the spiritual Cosmos. The human being experienced these ideas by partaking with his soul in the life of the Michael-world. This experience has now become his own, and a temporary separation of the human being from the Michael-world has therewith come about. With the inspired thoughts of earlier times man received at the same time the content of the spiritual world. Since this inspiration has ceased and man now forms his thoughts from his own activity, he is referred to the perception of the senses to find a content for these thoughts. Thus was man obliged to fill with material content the spirituality that he had won. He fell into the materialistic outlook in the very epoch of time that brought his own spiritual being a stage higher in development. This is easily liable to misunderstanding. We may observe only the ‘fall’ into materialism and lament over it. Whilst, however, the perception and vision of this age had to be limited to the external physical world, there was unfolding within the soul, as actual experience, a purified and self-subsisting spiritually of the human being. And now in the Michael Age this spirituality must no longer remain as unconscious experience , it must become conscious of its own proper nature. This signifies the entry of the Michael Being into the human soul. For a certain length of time man has filled his own spirit with the material side of Nature; he is to fill it again with cosmic content consisting of a spirituality that is his very own. Thought-forming was lost for a time in the Matter of the Cosmos; it must be found again in the cosmic Spirit. Into the cold, abstract world of thought can enter warmth, can enter a spirit-reality that is filled with being. That represents the dawn of the Michael Age. The consciousness of freedom could develop only in the depths of the human soul through this separation from the thought-being of the world. What came from the heights had to be found again in the depths. For this reason the development of the consciousness of freedom was connected first of all with a knowledge of Nature that was directed only to the external. While man was unconsciously developing his mind in the formation of clear ideas, his senses were directed outward solely to what is material, but this did not in any way disturb the tender seed that was beginning to germinate in the soul. But the experience of the Spiritual, and together with it the vision of the Spiritual, can re-enter the vision of the outward material world in a new way. The knowledge of Nature acquired during the age of materialism can be comprehended in the soul's inner life in a spiritual way. Michael, who has spoken ‘from above,’ can be heard ‘from within,’ where he will begin to dwell. Speaking more imaginatively this may be expressed as follows: The Sun-nature which for long periods man received only from the Cosmos, will begin to shine within his soul. He will learn to speak of an ‘inner Sun.’ This will not prevent him from knowing himself to be an earthly being during his life between birth and death; but he will recognise that this his earthly being is led by the Sun . He will learn to feel as a truth, that a being places him, in his inner nature, into a light which shines indeed upon earthly existence but which is not enkindled within it. In the dawn of the Michael Age it may still seem as if all this were very far remote from humanity; but ‘in the spirit’ it is near; it only needs to be ‘seen.’ A very great deal depends upon this fact, that the ideas of man do not merely remain ‘thinking,’ but in thought develop sight . 85. It is in the waking day-consciousness that man experiences himself to begin with, during the present cosmic age. This experience conceals from him the fact that in this waking state the Third Hierarchy is present in his experience. 86. In the dream-consciousness man experiences, in a chaotic way, his own being unharmoniously united with the Spirit-being of the world. When the Imaginative Consciousness is realised as the other pole of the dream-consciousness, man becomes aware that the Second Hierarchy is present in his experience. 87. In dreamless sleep-consciousness man experiences, all unconsciously, his own being united with the Spirit-being of the World. When the Inspired Consciousness is realised as the other pole of the sleep-consciousness, man becomes aware that the First Hierarchy is present in his experience.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

The Condition of the Human Soul Before the Dawn of the Michael Age

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c02.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c02

In the present stage of its evolution the human consciousness unfolds three forms, the waking, the dreaming, and the dreamless sleeping consciousness. The waking consciousness experiences the outer world through the senses, forms ideas about it, and out of those ideas can create such as portray a purely spiritual world. The dreaming consciousness develops pictures in which the outer world is transformed, as, for instance, when the sun shining on the bed is experienced in dream as a conflagration in all its details. Or a man's own inner world may appear before him in symbolic pictures, as, for instance, the throbbing heart in the picture of an over-heated oven. Memories also re-appear transformed in the dream consciousness. What these memory pictures contain is not borrowed from the world of the senses, but from the spiritual world. However, it is not possible through the memory pictures to penetrate with understanding into the spiritual world, because they are just too dim to rise into the waking consciousness, and because what little may be perceived cannot be really understood. But it is possible in the moment of waking to grasp so much of the dream world as to become aware that it is the imperfect copy of a spiritual experience which has happened in sleep, but which for the most part evades the waking consciousness. In order to comprehend this, it is only necessary to shape the moment of waking in such a way that the outer world is not conjured all at once before the soul, but that the soul, without as yet regarding the outer world, feels itself surrendered to what has been experienced within. In the dreamless sleep consciousness the soul passes through experiences which mean nothing more for the memory than an indifferent period of time between falling asleep and waking. These experiences may be spoken of as non-existent, until the way into them has been opened up through spiritual scientific investigation. But if this takes place, if the Imaginative and Inspired consciousness described in anthroposophical literature be developed, then out of the darkness of sleep the pictures and inspirations belonging to the experience of previous lives on Earth make their appearance. It then becomes possible to survey also the content of the dream consciousness. This cannot be grasped by the waking consciousness; it has to do with the world in which man dwells as a disembodied soul between two earthly lives. If one learns to know what is hidden behind the dream- and sleep-consciousness in the present age, then the way is clear to the understanding of the forms of human consciousness in past ages. One cannot, however, arrive at this by means of outer investigation; for evidence received from the outer world shows only the after-effects of the experiences of human consciousness in prehistoric times. Anthroposophical literature gives information as to how, by means of spiritual investigation, one may attain to the vision of such experiences. It is found by means of spiritual research that in ancient Egyptian times man possessed a dream-consciousness which was much more like the waking consciousness than it is at the present day. The memory of the dream experiences passed into the waking consciousness, and the latter provided not only the sense impressions that can be grasped in clearly outlined thoughts, but in addition to these the Spiritual that is at work in the world of the senses. Man's consciousness thereby lived instinctively in the world he had left when he incarnated on the Earth — the world he will re-enter when he passes through the gate of death. Inscribed monuments and other records preserved from ancient times give to those who penetrate them with an impartial mind, clear evidence of a consciousness of this kind, belonging to an age of which no outer relics exist. In ancient Egyptian times the sleep-consciousness contained dreams of the spiritual world, just as the sleep consciousness of the present day contains dreams originating from the physical world. But among other peoples we find in addition another kind of consciousness. The experiences undergone during sleep passed over into the waking consciousness in such a way that there was an instinctive vision of repeated earthly lives. The traditions regarding the knowledge of repeated earthly lives possessed by ancient humanity originate from these forms of consciousness. In the developed Imaginative consciousness we find again the dream-consciousness which in ancient times was dim and instinctive, only in the Imaginative consciousness it is fully conscious, like our waking life. And through the Inspired knowledge we become aware of the pre-historic instinctive insight which still saw something of the repeated earthly lives. Modern writers of works on the history of humanity make no note of this transformation in the forms of human consciousness. They would like to believe that on the whole the present forms of consciousness have existed as long as humanity has been on the Earth. And what, in spite of this, does point to other forms of consciousness, viz., the myths and fairy-tales, they would prefer to look upon as the result of the poetic fantasy of primitive man. 88. In the waking day-consciousness man experiences himself, during the present cosmic age, standing in the midst of the physical world. This experience conceals from him the presence, within his being, of the effects of a life between death and birth. 89. In dream-consciousness man experiences, in a chaotic way, his own being unharmoniously united with the spiritual being of the world. The waking consciousness cannot seize the real content of the dream-consciousness. To the Imaginative and Inspired Consciousness it is revealed how the Spirit-world through which man lives between death and birth is helping to build up his inner being. 90. In dreamless sleep-consciousness man experiences, all unconsciously, his own being permeated with the results of past earthly lives. The Inspired and Intuitive Consciousness penetrates to a clear vision of these results, and sees the working of former earthly lives in the destined course — the Karma — of the present. 91. The Will enters the ordinary consciousness, in the present cosmic age, only through Thought. Now in this consciousness we always have to take our start from something sense-perceptible. Thus, even of our own Will, we apprehend only what passes from it into the world of sense-perceptions. In the ordinary consciousness it is only by observation of himself in thought that man is aware of his Will-impulses, just as it is only by observation that he is aware of the outer world. 92. The Karma that works in the Will is a property belonging to it from former lives on Earth. This constituent of the Will cannot therefore be apprehended with the ideas of our ordinary sense-existence, which are directed only to the present earthly life. 93. Because they are unable to take hold of Karma, these ideas refer what is unintelligible to them in man's impulses of Will to the mystic darkness of the bodily constitution, whereas in reality it is the working of past earthly lives. 94. With the ordinary life in ideas transmitted through the senses, man is in the physical world. For this world to enter his consciousness, Karma must be silent in his thinking life. In his life of ideation, man as it were forgets his Karma . 95. In the manifestations of the Will, Karma works itself out. But its working remains in the unconscious. By lifting to conscious Imagination what works unconsciously in the Will, Karma is apprehended. Man feels his destiny within him. 96. When Inspiration and Intuition enter the Imagination, then, beside the impulses of the present, the outcome of former earthly lives becomes perceptible in the working of the Will. The past life is revealed, working itself out in the present. 97. For a cruder description it is permissible to say: Thinking, Feeling and Willing live in the soul of man. For greater refinement we must add: Thinking always contains a substratum of Feeling and Willing; Feeling a substratum of Thinking and Willing; Willing a substratum of Thinking and Feeling. In the life of thought, however, Thinking predominates; in the life of feeling, Feeling predominates; and in the life of will, Willing predominates over the other contents of the soul. 98. The Feeling and Willing of the life of Thought contain the karmic outcome of past lives on Earth. The Thinking and Willing of the life of Feeling karmically determine the man's character. The Thinking and Feeling of the life of Will tear the present earthly life away from Karmic connections. 99. In the Feeling and Willing of Thinking man lives out his Karma of the past; in the Thinking and Feeling of Willing he prepares his Karma of the future. 100. The thoughts of man have their true seat in the etheric body. There, however, they are forces of real life and being. They imprint themselves upon the physical body, and as such ‘imprinted thoughts’ they have the shadowy character in which the everyday consciousness knows them. 101. The Feeling that lives in the Thoughts comes from the astral body, and the Willing from the Ego. In sleep the human etheric body is certainly irradiated with the world of his Thoughts, but man himself does not partake in it. For he has withdrawn, with the astral body the Feeling of the Thoughts, and with the Ego their Willing, out of the etheric and the physical. 102. The moment the astral body and Ego loose their connection during sleep with the Thoughts of the etheric body, they enter into connection with ‘Karma’ — with the beholding of the events through repeated lives on Earth. To the everyday consciousness this vision is denied, but a supersensible consciousness can enter into it.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

Aphorisms from a Lecture to Members Given in London on August 24th, 1924.

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c02a.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c02a

It is not possible to perceive in the right light how the Michael Impulse breaks into human evolution, if one shares the conception which is universally accepted today, as to the relation of the new world of ideas to Nature. It is thought: There outside us is Nature with all that she accomplishes and is; within us are the ideas. These ideas are thoughts about the things of Nature, or about the so-called Laws of Nature. The thinkers of today are concerned first of all to show how to form such ideas as shall stand in a true relation to Nature, or in which the true Natural Laws shall be contained. It is of little importance to them how these ideas are related to the man himself, who has them. But in truth there can be no real insight until this question is raised: What does Man experience through the natural-scientific ideas of modern times? The answer can be arrived at in the following way. Man feels today that the ideas are formed within him through the activity of his soul. He has the feeling that he himself forms his ideas, while only the sense-perceptions come to him from without. Man did not always feel in this way. In times past he did not realise the content of his ideas as something he had made himself, but as something received through inspiration from the supersensible world. There were various stages of this feeling. And these stages depended on that part of a man's being in which he experienced what today he calls his ideas. Today, in the period of the development of the Spiritual Soul or Consciousness Soul, what is contained in the ‘Leading Thoughts’ of the last number is wholly true: — Thoughts have their true seat in the human etheric body. There, however, they are real, living forces. They imprint themselves in the physical body, as such “imprinted thoughts” they possess the shadowy character known to ordinary consciousness. Now one can go back to times in which the thoughts were directly experienced in the ‘Ego.’ But in those times they were not shadowy as they are today, nor were they merely living; they were full of soul and spirit. But this means that the man did not only think his thoughts; he had as an experience the perception of concrete spiritual beings. Everywhere amongst the peoples of antiquity one finds the consciousness that looked up to a world of spiritual beings. The historical remains of this are described today as a consciousness that expressed itself in myths and mythologies, which are not considered of much importance for an understanding of the real world. And yet with this consciousness man stands in his own world — in the world of his true origin — whereas with his present consciousness he is lifted out of his own world. Man is a spirit; and his world is the world of spiritual beings. The next stage was one in which the element of thought was no longer experienced by the Ego but by the astral body. The soul here loses the direct vision of the Spiritual. Thought appears as an element which is ensouled and alive. At the first stage, that of the vision of concrete spiritual beings, man does not feel at all strongly the necessity of connecting what he sees with that which he perceives through his senses. The phenomena perceptible to the senses are seen to be the deeds of what he observes supersensibly, but he does not feel impelled to develop a special science of that which is directly seen by spiritual vision. Moreover, the world of spirit-beings which he sees is so rich that his attention is directed to it above all things. It is different at the second stage of consciousness. Here the concrete spiritual beings are hidden; their reflection appears in the form of an ensouled life. Man begins to relate the ‘life of Nature’ to this ‘life of souls.’ In the beings and processes of Nature he seeks the active spirit-beings and their deeds. The result of this stage of consciousness may be seen historically in that which appeared later as the quest of the alchemists. When at the first stage of consciousness man ‘thought’ the spirit-beings, he lived entirely in his own being; and at the second stage, too, he is still quite near to his origin. But at both stages it is quite impossible for man to develop, in the true sense of the word, his own inner impulses of action. A spirituality which is of like nature with himself acts in him. What he seems to do is the manifestation of processes which come about through spirit-beings. What man does is the sensibly physical manifestation of a real spiritual and divine event which stands behind. A third epoch in the development of consciousness brings thought to consciousness in the etheric body, but as living thought. The Greeks lived in this consciousness when Greek civilisation was at its prime. The ancient Greek did not form thoughts for himself and then look out upon the world with them as with his own creations, but when he thought he felt that a life was being kindled within him — a life which also pulsated in the objects and events outside him. Then for the first time there arose in man the longing for the freedom of his own actions — not yet true freedom, but the longing for it. Man, who felt the life and activity of Nature asserting itself in him, could develop the longing to detach his own activity from the activity which he perceived outside him and around him. But after all, this outer activity was still perceived as the final result of the active spirit-world, which is of like nature with man himself. Only when the thoughts were imprinted in the physical body and when the consciousness extended only to this imprint — then only did the possibility of freedom arise. This condition came with the fifteenth century AD. For the evolution of the world the important point is not, ‘What is the significance of the ideas of modern natural science with regard to Nature?’ For in effect these ideas have assumed their forms, not in order to provide man with a certain picture of Nature, but in order to bring him forward to a certain stage in his evolution. When thoughts laid hold of the physical body, spirit, soul and life had been excluded from their immediate contents, and the abstract shadow attaching to the physical body alone remained. Thoughts such as these can make only what is physical and material into the object of their knowledge, for they themselves are only real in the physical and material body of man. Materialism did not originate because material beings and processes alone can be perceived in external Nature, but because man had to pass through a stage in his development which led him to a consciousness at first only capable of seeing material manifestations. The one-sided development of this necessity in human evolution resulted in the modern view of Nature. It is Michael's mission to bring into human etheric bodies the forces through which the thought-shadows may regain life ; then the souls and spirits in the supersensible worlds will incline towards the enlivened thoughts, and the liberated human being will be able to live with them, just as formerly the human being who was only the physical image of their activity lived with them. 103. In the evolution of mankind consciousness descends on the ladder of unfolding Thought. There was an earliest stage in consciousness when man experienced the Thoughts in the Ego — experienced them as real Beings, imbued with Spirit, soul and life. At a second stage he experienced the Thoughts in the astral body; henceforth they appeared only as the images of Spirit-beings — images, however, still imbued with soul and life. At a third stage he experienced the Thoughts in the etheric body; here they manifest only an inner stirring, like an echo of the quality of soul. At the fourth, which is the present stage, man experiences the Thoughts in the physical body, where they appear as the dead shadows of the Spiritual. 104. In like measure as the quality of Spirit, soul and life in human Thought recedes, man's own Will comes to life. True freedom becomes possible. 105. It is the task of Michael to lead man back again, on paths of Will, whence he came down when with his earthly consciousness he descended on the paths of Thought from the living experience of the Supersensible to the experience of the world of sense.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

The Way of Michael, and What Preceded It

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c03.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c03

When man looks back on his evolution, and calls up before his inner eye the special characteristics which his spiritual life has assumed for the last five hundred years, he cannot help recognising, even within the ordinary consciousness and if but faintly, that since this period the whole earthly evolution of man stands at a significant and critical point. In the last study I referred from one point of view to this significant turning-point. One looks up from this point into the distant past of evolution; one sees how the soul-force in man which today is active as the force of intelligence, has changed in the course of time. In the present period, thoughts — dead abstract thoughts — make their appearance in the field of human consciousness. These thoughts are bound up with the physical body of man; man is obliged to recognise that they are of his own generating. In primitive times, when man turned his soul in the direction in which today his thoughts are revealed to him, he saw Divine-Spiritual Beings. He knew himself bound to these Beings in his whole nature, even down to the physical body; he was obliged to recognise himself as their offspring. But he not only owed his being to them, he also owed them what he accomplished . Man had no will of his own. What he did was a manifestation of Divine Will. By degrees, as described in the last study, man attained to a will of his own, at a period which dawned about five hundred years ago. But this stage was far more different from all those which preceded it than any of them from one another. When the thoughts pass over into the physical body, they lose their livingness. They are dead forms, spiritually dead. Previously, though belonging to man, they were at the same time organs of the Divine-Spiritual Beings to whom man belonged. They were actual will in man. And through them the man felt himself in living union with the spiritual world. With his dead thoughts he felt himself cut off from the spiritual world. He felt himself entirely removed to the physical world. But this means also that he is now in the sphere of the Ahrimanic spirituality. The Ahrimanic spirituality had no great power in the regions in which the Beings of the higher Hierarchies retained man as in their own sphere — when as in primitive ages the higher Beings themselves acted directly in man, or when, as in later times, they worked in him through their ensouled or living reflection. As long as this working of supersensible Beings within the doings of man continued — that is until about the fifteenth century — the Ahrimanic powers had, within the evolution of mankind , only a faintly echoing power, if one may express it so. The description of Ahriman's activity given in the Persian religion is not in contradiction with this statement. For that religion refers to Ahriman's activity, not within the human soul, but in a world bordering directly upon the world of the human soul. Ahriman's action, as there described, does indeed affect the world of the human soul from a neighbouring spirit-world, but it does not directly interfere. This direct interference has only become possible in the space of time which began about five hundred years ago. Thus man is at the close of a stream of evolution within which his nature has developed out of a divine spirituality which finally dies to itself in the abstract intelligence of man. Man has not remained in the divine-spiritual spheres in which he originated. What began five hundred years ago for the consciousness of man had already taken place for a wider sphere of his whole being at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place on the Earth. It was then that, imperceptibly to the consciousness of the majority of human beings at that time, human evolution gradually glided out of a world in which Ahriman has little power, into one in which his power is great. This gliding into a different stratum of the world was completed in the fifteenth century. Ahriman's influence upon man in this stratum of the world is possible and can act so destructively because the activity of the Gods related to man has died in this sphere. But man could not develop free-will in any other way than by entering a sphere in which the Divine-Spiritual Beings connected with him from the very beginning were not alive. Considered cosmically, the Mystery of the Sun is contained in the nature of this evolution of humanity. The Divine-Spiritual Beings connected with his origin were united with that which — up to that important turning-point in his evolution — man was able to perceive in the Sun. These Divine-Spiritual Beings have separated from the Sun and have left there only the part of them that has died, so that the bodily nature of man can now receive through the Sun only the power of dead thoughts. But these Beings have sent Christ from the Sun to the Earth, For the welfare of humanity Christ has united His being with the dead part of divine-spiritual existence in Ahriman's kingdom. Thus two things are possible for man, and through this possibility his freedom is guaranteed: — to turn to Christ consciously in the spiritual frame of mind which he possessed subconsciously during the descent from the vision of supersensible spirit-existence to the use of intellect; or to wish to feel his severance from spirit-existence and thus fall in the direction taken by the Ahrimanic powers. Humanity has been in this situation since the beginning of the fifteenth century. It was prepared — for everything takes place gradually in evolution — after the Mystery of Golgotha, which, as it is the greatest event that has happened on the Earth, is destined to rescue man from the destruction to which he must be exposed because he is to become a free being. Now we may say that what has hitherto been done by humanity itself within this situation has taken place half unconsciously. It has led to what is good in the modern Nature-conception which lives in abstract thought, and it has led to many practical principles of life, equally good. But the age in which man could unfold his life thus unconsciously in the dangerous sphere of Ahriman has come to an end. It is the duty of the investigator into the spiritual world to draw the attention of humanity to the spiritual fact that Michael has taken over the spiritual guidance of human affairs. Michael does what he has to do in such a way that he does not thereby wield an influence over human beings; but they may follow him in freedom, in order with the Christ power to find the way out of that sphere of Ahriman which they were obliged to enter. One who honestly, out of the deepest being of his soul, can feel himself one with Anthroposophy, understands this phenomenon of Michael truly. And Anthroposophy would like to be the message of this mission of Michael. 106. Michael goes upward again along the paths by which mankind descended, stage by stage in the evolution of the Spirit, down to the exercise of the Intelligence. Michael, however, will lead the Will upward, retracing the paths by which the Wisdom descended to the final stage of Intelligence. 107. From this moment onward in world-evolution, Michael merely shows his way, so that man may follow it in perfect freedom. This distinguishes the present guidance by Michael from all preceding guidances of the Archangels, including even those of Michael himself. For the former guidances did not only reveal their working. They worked themselves out in man. Hence in the working of his own life man could not be free. 108. To see and understand that this is so: this is the present task of man. For then he will find, with all the forces of his soul, his spiritual path within the Age of Michael.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

Michaels Task in the Sphere of Ahriman

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c04.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c04

It is possible to follow the progress of mankind from the point of view of man himself, from the stage of consciousness in which he felt himself as a member of the Divine-Spiritual order, up to the present time, when he is conscious of himself as an individual, freed from the Divine-Spiritual, and able to think for himself. In our last study this point of view was taken. But it is also possible, through supersensible vision, to make a picture of what Michael and those who belong to him experience during this evolutionary process — i.e. to describe the facts of it as they appear to Michael himself. This shall now be attempted. There is an earliest epoch in evolution, where it is only possible to speak of what takes place among Divine-Spiritual Beings. Here one has to deal with the actions of the Gods alone. Gods fulfil what the impulses of their natures inspire, and are satisfied in this their activity. What they themselves experience in all this is alone important. But in one corner of this field of the Gods' activity, something resembling mankind is to be observed, as forming a part of their divine activity. The spiritual Being who from the beginning directed his gaze towards mankind is Michael. He so orders the divine activities that in one part of the Cosmos mankind may exist. And his own activity is of the same nature as that which is revealed later in man as intellect; but this intellect is active as a force that streams through the Cosmos, ordering ideas and giving rise to actual realities. In this force Michael works. His office is to rule the cosmic intellectuality. And he wills the further progress in his domain, which consists in this: — that that which works as intelligence throughout the whole Cosmos should later become concentrated within the human individuality. As a result the following takes place: — there comes a time in the evolution of the world when the Cosmos subsists no longer on its own present intelligence, but on the cosmic intelligence belonging to the past. For the present intelligence must then be sought in the stream of human evolution. What Michael desires is to keep the intelligence, which is developing within humanity, permanently in connection with the Divine-Spiritual Beings. But in this he is meeting with opposition. What the Gods accomplish in their evolution, in that they release the cosmic intellectuality so that it may become a part of human nature, stands revealed as a fact within the world. If there are beings with power to perceive this fact, then they can take advantage of it. And such beings do indeed exist. They are the Ahrimanic beings. It is their nature to absorb into themselves all that comes forth from the Gods as intelligence. They have the capacity to unite with their own being the sum-total of all intellectuality, and thus they become the greatest, the most comprehensive and penetrating intelligences in the Cosmos. Michael foresees how man, in progressing more and more towards his own individual use of intelligence, must meet with these Ahrimanic beings, and how by uniting with them he may then succumb to them. For this reason Michael brings the Ahrimanic Powers under his feet; he continually thrusts them into a deeper region than the one in which man is evolving. Michael, thrusting the dragon at his feet into the abyss: that is the mighty picture which lives in human consciousness of the supersensible facts here described. Evolution progresses. The intellectuality which was at first entirely in the sphere of divine spirituality, detaches itself so far that it becomes the element which ensouls the Cosmos. That which previously had only radiated from the Gods themselves now shines as the manifestation of the Divine from the world of the stars. Formerly the world had been guided by the Divine Being himself: it is now guided by the Divine manifestation which has become objective, and behind this manifestation the Divine Being passes through the next stage of his own development. Michael is again the ruler of the cosmic intelligence, in so far as this streams through the manifestations of the Cosmos in the order of ideas. The third phase of evolution is a further separation of the cosmic intelligence from its origin. In the worlds of the stars the present order of ideas no longer holds sway as the Divine manifestation; the stars move and are regulated according to the order of ideas implanted in them in the past. Michael sees how the cosmic intellectuality, which he has hitherto ruled in the Cosmos, proceeds on its way to earthly humanity. But Michael also sees how the danger of humanity succumbing to the Ahrimanic Powers grows greater and greater. He knows that as regards himself he will always have Ahriman under his feet; but will it also be the case with man? Michael sees the greatest event in the Earth's history taking place. From the kingdom served by Michael himself Christ descends to the sphere of the Earth, so as to be there when the intelligence is wholly with the human individuality. For man will then feel most strongly the impulse to devote himself to the power which has made itself fully and completely into the vehicle of intellectuality. But Christ will be there; through His great sacrifice He will live in the same sphere in which Ahriman also lives. Man will be able to choose between Christ and Ahriman. The world will be able to find the Christ-way in the evolution of humanity. That is Michael's cosmic experience with that which he has to govern in the Cosmos. In order to remain with that which he has to govern, he enters upon the path that leads from the Cosmos to humanity. He has been on this path since the eighth century AD. but he really only took up his earthly office, into which his cosmic office has been changed, in the last third of the nineteenth century. Michael cannot force human beings to do anything. For it is just through intelligence having come entirely into the sphere of the human individuality that compulsion has ceased. But in the supersensible world first bordering on this visible world, Michael can unfold as a majestic, exemplary action that which he wishes to display. He can show himself there with an aura of light, with the gesture of a Spirit Being, in which all the splendour and glory of the past intelligence of the Gods is revealed. He can there show how the action of this intelligence of the past is more true, more beautiful and more virtuous in the present than all that is contained in the immediate intelligence of the present day, which streams to us from Ahriman in deceptive, misleading splendour. He can point out how for him Ahriman will always be the lower spirit, under his feet. Those persons who can see the supersensible world bordering next upon the visible world, perceive Michael and those belonging to him in the manner here described, engaged in what they would like to do for humanity. Such persons see how — through the picture of Michael in Ahriman's sphere — man is to be led in freedom away from Ahriman to Christ. When through their vision such persons also succeed in opening the hearts and minds of others, so that there is a circle of people who know how Michael is now living among men, humanity will then begin to celebrate Festivals of Michael which will possess the right contents, and at which souls will allow the power of Michael to revive in them. Michael will then work as a real power among men. Man will be free and yet proceed along his spiritual path of life through the Cosmos in intimate companionship with Christ. 109. To become truly conscious of the working of Michael in the spiritual order of the World, is to solve the riddle of human freedom in relation to the Cosmos, in so far as the solution is necessary for man on Earth. 110. For ‘Freedom’ as a fact is directly given to every human being who understands himself in the present period of mankind's evolution. No one can say, ‘Freedom is not,’ unless he wishes to deny a patent fact. But we can find a certain contradiction between this fact of our experience and the processes of the Cosmos. In contemplating the mission of Michael within the Cosmos this contradiction is dissolved. 111. In my Philosophy of Freedom (Philosophy of Spiritual Activity) the ‘Freedom’ of the human being in the present world-epoch is proved as an essential element of consciousness. In the descriptions here given of the Mission of Michael, the cosmic foundations of the ‘coming-into-being’ of this Freedom are disclosed.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

The Experiences of Michael in the Course of His Cosmic Mission

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c05.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c05

Man is surrounded today by a world which was once of a wholly divine-spiritual nature — divine-spiritual being of which he also was a member. Thus at that time the world belonging to man was a world of divine-spiritual being. But this was no longer so in a later stage of evolution. The world had then become a cosmic manifestation of the Divine Spiritual; the Divine Being hovered behind the manifestation. Nevertheless, the Divine-Spiritual lived and moved in all that was thus manifested. A world of stars was already there, in the light and movement of which the Divine-Spiritual lived and moved and manifested itself. One may say that at that time, in the position or movement of a star, the activity of the Divine and Spiritual was directly evident. And in all this — in the working of the Divine Spirit in the Cosmos, and in the life of man resulting from this divine activity — Michael was as yet in his own element — unhindered, unresisted. The adjustment of the relation between the Divine and the Human was in his hands. But other ages dawned. The world of the stars ceased to be a direct and present manifestation of Divine-Spiritual activity. The constellations lived and moved, maintaining what the Divine activity had been in them in the past. The Divine-Spiritual dwelt in the Cosmos in manifestation no longer, but in the manner of its working only. There was now a certain distinct separation between the Divine Spiritual and the cosmic World. Michael, by virtue of his own nature, adhered to the Divine-Spiritual, and endeavoured to keep mankind as closely as possible in touch with it. This he continued to do, more and more. His will was to preserve man from living too intensely in a world which represents only the Working of the Divine and Spiritual — which is not the real Being, nor its Manifestation. It is a deep source of satisfaction to Michael that through man himself he has succeeded in keeping the world of the stars in direct union with the Divine and Spiritual. For when man, having fulfilled his life between death and a new birth, enters on the way to a new Earth-life, in his descent he seeks to establish a harmony between the course of the stars and his coming life on Earth. In olden times this harmony existed as a matter of course, because the Divine-Spiritual was active in the stars, where human life too had its source. But today, when ‘the course of the stars is only a continuing of the manner in which the Divine-Spiritual worked in the past, this harmony could not exist unless man sought it. Man brings his divine-spiritual portion — which he has preserved from the past — into relation with the stars, which now only bear their divine-spiritual nature within them as an after-working from an earlier time. In this way there comes into man's relation to the world something of the Divine, which corresponds to former ages and yet appears in these later times. That this is so, is the deed of Michael . And this deed gives him such deep satisfaction that in it he finds a portion of his very life, a portion of his sun-like, living energy. But at the present time, when Michael directs his spiritual eyes to the Earth, he sees another fact as well — very different from the above. During his physical life between birth and death man has a world around him in which even the Working of the Divine-Spiritual no longer appears directly, but only something which has remained over as its result; — we may describe it by saying it is only the accomplished Work of the Divine-Spiritual. This accomplished Work, in all its forms, is essentially of a Divine and Spiritual kind. To human vision the Divine is manifested in the forms and in the processes of Nature; but it is no longer indwelling as a living principle. Nature is this divinely accomplished work of God; Nature everywhere around us is an image of the Divine Working. In this world of sun-like Divine glory, but no longer livingly Divine, man dwells. Yet as a result of Michael's working upon him man has maintained his connection with the essential Being of the Divine and Spiritual. He lives as a being permeated by God in a world that is no longer permeated by God. Into this world that has become empty of God, man will carry what is in him — what his being has become in this present age. Humanity will evolve into a new world-evolution. The Divine and Spiritual from which man originates can become the cosmically expanding Human Being, radiating with a new light through the Cosmos which now exists only as an image of the Divine and Spiritual. The Divine Being which will thus shine forth through Humanity will no longer be the same Divine Being which was once the Cosmos. In its passage through Humanity the Divine-Spiritual will come to a realisation of Being which it could not manifest before. The Ahrimanic Powers try to prevent evolution from taking the course here described. It is not their will that the original Divine-Spiritual Powers should illumine the Universe in its further course. They want the cosmic intellectuality which they themselves have absorbed to radiate through the whole of the new Cosmos, and in this intellectualised and Ahrimanised Cosmos they want man to live on. Were he to live such a life man would lose Christ. For Christ came into the world with an Intellectuality that is still of the very same essence as once lived in the Divine Spiritual, when the Divine-Spiritual in its own Being still informed the Cosmos. But if at the present time we speak in such a manner that our thoughts can also be the thoughts of Christ, we set over against the Ahrimanic Powers something which can save us from succumbing to them. To understand the meaning of Michael's mission in the Cosmos is to be able to speak in this way. In the present time we must be able to speak of Nature in the way demanded by the evolutionary stage of the Consciousness Soul or Spiritual Soul. We must be able to receive into ourselves the purely natural-scientific way of thinking. But we ought also to learn to feel and speak about Nature in a way that is according to Christ. We ought to learn the Christ-Language — not only about redemption from Nature, about the soul and things Divine — but about the things of the Cosmos. When with inward, heartfelt feeling we realise the mission and the deeds of Michael and those belonging to him, when we enter into all that they are in our midst, then we shall be able to maintain our human connection with the Divine and Spiritual origin, and understand how to cultivate the Christ Language about the Cosmos. For to understand Michael is to find the way in our time to the Logos, as lived by Christ here on Earth and among men. Anthroposophy truly values what the natural-scientific way of thinking has learned to say about the world during the last four or five centuries. But in addition to this language it speaks another, about the nature of man, about his evolution and that of the Cosmos; for it would fain speak the language of Christ and Michael. If both these languages are spoken it will not be possible for evolution to be broken off or to pass over to Ahriman before the original Divine-Spiritual is found. To speak only in the natural-scientific way corresponds to the separation of intellectuality from the original Divine and Spiritual. This can indeed lead over into the Ahrimanic realm if Michael's mission remains unobserved. But it will not do so if through the power of Michael's example the intellect which has become free finds itself again in the original cosmic intellectuality, which has separated from man and become objective to him. For that cosmic intellectuality lies in the original source of man, and it appeared in Christ in full reality of being within the sphere of humanity, after it had left man for a time so that he might unfold his freedom. 112. The Divine-Spiritual comes to expression in the Cosmos in different ways, in succeeding stages: (1) through its own and inmost Being ; (2) through the Manifestation of this Being; (3) through the active Working , when the Being withdraws from the Manifestation; (4) through the accomplished Work , when in the outwardly apparent Universe no longer the Divine itself, but only the forms of the Divine are there. 113. In the modern conception of Nature man has no relation to the Divine, but only to the accomplished Work. With all that is imparted to the human soul by this science of Nature, man can unite himself either with the powers of Christ or with the dominions of Ahriman. 114. Michael is filled with the striving — working through his example in perfect freedom — to embody in human cosmic evolution the relation to the Cosmos which is still preserved in man himself from the ages when the Divine Being and the Divine Manifestation held sway. In this way, all that is said by the modern view of Nature — relating as it does purely to the image, purely to the form of the Divine — will merge into a higher, spiritual view of Nature. The latter will indeed exist in man; but it will be an echo in human experience of the Divine relation to the Cosmos which prevailed in the first two stages of cosmic evolution. This is how Anthroposophy confirms the view of Nature which the age of the Spiritual Soul has evolved, while supplementing it with that which is revealed to spiritual seership.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

The Activity of Michael and the Future of Mankind

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c06.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c06

When with deep and earnest feeling a human being takes the inner vision of Michael's being and his deeds into his outlook on life, there will dawn upon him the true understanding of the way in which this world is to be taken by man — this world which is neither the Divine Being, nor the Manifestation, nor Active Working, but the Accomplished Work of the Gods. To look with knowledge into this world is to have before us forms and formations which speak aloud of the Divine; in which, however — if we are under no illusion about it — independent, living, Divine Being cannot be found. Nor must we consider merely our knowledge of the world. It is true that with respect to knowledge this configuration of the world, as it surrounds man at the present day, is revealed most strikingly. But more essential for everyday life is our feeling, our willing and work in a world which — though in its formation we may well feel it to be Divine — cannot really be experienced as actively imbued with Divine life. In order to bring real moral life into such a world, the ethical impulses I have described in my book Philosophy of Freedom are necessary. For the man who feels truly, Michael's Being and his present world of deeds can shine forth in this world of the Divine accomplished work. Michael does not enter into the physical world as a phenomenal appearance. He keeps himself with all his activity within a supersensible region — albeit one which borders directly upon the physical world of the present phase of world-evolution. Thus it can never happen that men's view of Nature will be led away into the fantastic through the impressions they receive from the Being of Michael; nor will they be inclined thereby to shape their ethical and practical life in this world — Divine as it is in its form, but void of Divine life — as if impulses could be there in it which did not require to be sustained, ethically and spiritually, by man himself. If we transplant ourselves into the Spiritual, be it in thinking or in willing, we shall always be obliged to approach Michael. We shall thereby live spiritually in the following way. We shall accept both our knowledge and our life in the manner in which we are obliged to accept them since the fifteenth century. But we shall hold fast to Michael's revelation. We shall let this revelation shine like a light into the thoughts we receive from Nature; we shall carry it as warmth in our hearts when we have to live in accordance with a world which is the accomplished work of the Divine. We shall then place before us not only the observation and experience of the present world but also that which Michael makes possible for us, namely a past condition of the world — one which Michael, through his Being and his deeds, brings into the present. If it were otherwise — if Michael were to work in such a manner that he carried his deeds into the world which at the present time man must know and experience as the physical — man would now learn of the world, not that which in reality is in it but that which was in it. This illusory conception of the world, when it takes place, leads the human soul away from the reality that is suited to it and into another — into a Luciferic one. The manner in which Michael brings the past into activity in present human life is the one which is in accordance with the true spiritual progress of the world and contains nothing Luciferic. It is important that in the human mind there should be a correct idea of the way in which, in Michael's mission, everything Luciferic is avoided. To have this attitude towards the light of Michael which is dawning in human history means at the same time to be able to find the right way to Christ. Michael will point out the right road with respect to the world which lies about man, for him to know and be active in it. The way to Christ will have to be found within . It is quite comprehensible that, during the period in which the knowledge of Nature has the form given to it by the last five centuries, the knowledge of the supersensible world should also have become such as humanity now experiences. Nature has to be known and experienced in such a manner that the Gods are nowhere in it. In consequence of this, man in this form of his relation to the world, experiences himself no longer. Inasmuch as he is a supersensible being, the position of his Self with respect to Nature which is in accordance with this age yields him nothing at all regarding his own being. Nor, if he has this position alone in view, can he live ethically in a manner in keeping with his true humanity. Naturally, this causes people to prevent the modern way of knowledge and of life from entering into anything that relates to the supersensible nature of man, nay to the supersensible world at all. They separate this latter realm from anything accessible to human knowledge. A sphere of Revelation by Faith, apart from science or above it, is set up in contradistinction to the sphere of what is knowable. But over against this there stands the purely spiritual activity of Christ, who since the Mystery of Golgotha can be reached by the human soul. The soul's relation to Christ need not remain indefinite or dimly mystical in feeling; it can become one that is quite concrete, humanly deep and clearly experienced. Then, from the life together with Christ, there flows into the human soul what it ought to know regarding its own supersensible being. The religious revelation must then be felt in such a manner that the living experience of Christ continually streams into it. It will become possible for life to be filled with Christ, through Christ being perceived as the Being who gives to the human soul the knowledge of its own supersensible nature. Thus the Michael experience and the Christ experience will in the future be able to stand side by side. Through Michael man will find the path into the supersensible world in the right way with respect to the outer world of Nature. Our view of Nature, without being falsified in itself, will then be able to stand by the side of a spiritual view of the world and of man inasmuch as he is a cosmic being. Through his true attitude to Christ man will be able, in the active intercourse of his soul with Christ, to experience what he could otherwise only receive as a traditional revelation by faith. He will be able to experience the inner world of the soul's life as one that is shone through by the Spirit; and he will also experience the outer world of Nature as one that is upborne by the Spirit. If man were to gain information about his own supersensible nature without his life in union with Christ, this would lead him out of his own reality and into that of Ahriman. Christ bears within Himself, in a manner true to the whole Cosmos, the impulses for the future of humanity. To unite with Christ signifies for the human soul to receive into itself, in a manner true to the Cosmos, its own seeds for the future. Other beings who already at the present time manifest forms which will be cosmically right for man only in the future, belong to the Ahrimanic sphere. To unite ourselves with Christ in the right way is also to preserve ourselves in the right way from the Ahrimanic. Those who strictly demand that the revelations of religious faith shall be preserved from the invasions of human knowledge are unconsciously afraid that by such ways as this man might come under Ahrimanic influences. This fact must be appreciated. But it should also be appreciated that it is to the honour and true recognition of Christ when that gift of grace, which is the inflowing of the Spiritual into the human soul, is ascribed to the living experience with Him. Thus in the future the Michael experience and the Christ experience can stand side by side; man will thereby find his right path of freedom between the Luciferic deviation into illusions in thought and life, and the Ahrimanic allurement into forms of the future which may satisfy his pride but cannot as yet be his present forms. To fall into Luciferic illusions means not to become fully Man — not to wish to progress to the stage of spiritual freedom but to wish to halt, as God-Man, at a premature stage of evolution. To succumb to Ahrimanic temptations means not to be willing to wait until at a certain stage of human development the right cosmic moment will have come, but to wish to forestall this stage. Michael-Christ will stand in future as the guiding word at the entrance to the path upon which man may arrive at his world-goal, in a way that is cosmically right, between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic powers. 115. Man goes on his way through the Cosmos in such manner that his looking back into past ages can be falsified by the impulses of Lucifer, and his thinking into the future deceived by the allurements of Ahriman. 116. To the falsifying influences of Lucifer he finds the right relation when he imbues his attitude to life and knowledge with the Being and the Mission of Michael. 117. Moreover, in so doing he provides against the allurements of Ahriman. For the path of the Spirit into external Nature, which Michael inspires, leads to a right relation to the domain of Ahriman, inasmuch as a true and living experience with Christ is also found thereby.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

The Michael-Christ-Experience of Man

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c07.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c07

When the work of Michael at the present time is approached through spiritual experience, it becomes possible, from the spiritual-scientific point of view, to obtain light on the cosmic nature of Freedom. This does not refer to my Philosophy of Freedom (or ‘Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,’) which is based on the purely human faculties of cognition, where these are operative in the field of the spirit. In order to follow the thought of this book, it is not yet necessary to join company with the beings of other worlds. But it may be said that the Philosophy of Freedom prepares the way for the understanding of the freedom which, in spiritual connection with Michael, can then be experienced. And this is as follows. If freedom is to be a living reality in human action, then that which is accomplished in the light of it must be completely independent of man's physical and etheric organisation. There can be no freedom except through the ‘I,’ and the astral body must be able to vibrate in harmony with the free activity of the ‘I,’ so that it may be able to transmit it to the physical and etheric bodies. But this is only one side of the matter. The other side becomes clear in connection with the mission of Michael. For it is also true that what man experiences in freedom must not in any way affect his physical or etheric body. Were this to happen, he would have to lose entirely what he had gained during his evolution under the influence of Divine-Spiritual Being, and Divine-Spiritual Manifestation. What man experiences through this his environment which is but the accomplished Work of the Divine and Spiritual, must take effect on his spiritual nature (i.e. his Ego) only. His physical and etheric Organisation must only be affected by that which flows on, in the stream of evolution, not in his outer environment, but within his own being, and which had its origin in the Being and Manifestation of the Divine-Spiritual. But this must not work together with that in the human being which lives in the element of freedom. All this is only made possible because Michael carries over from the far past of evolution something that brings man into connection with that Divine-Spiritual reality which in the present day no longer penetrates the physical and etheric Organisation. Through this the foundation is being laid, within the mission of Michael, for a human intercourse with the spiritual world which does not interfere at all with the working of Nature. It is inspiring to see how the human being is raised by Michael into the spiritual sphere, whereas the unconscious and subconscious elements which develop beneath the sphere of freedom are uniting ever more strongly with the world of matter. Man's position with respect to the world will in the future become more and more incomprehensible to him if he is not prepared to recognise, in addition to his relations to the beings and processes of Nature, such relations as this to the Michael Mission. Our relations to Nature are recognised by looking at them from without; our relations to the spiritual world proceed from something like an inner conversation with Beings to whom we have opened up the way by adopting a spiritual view of the world. In order, therefore, for man to realise the impulse of freedom, he must be able to hold at a distance certain influences of Nature which affect his being from the Cosmos. This ‘holding at a distance’ is taking place in the sub-consciousness, when in the consciousness there are the forces which represent the life of the Ego in freedom. For the inward perception of man himself there is the consciousness of his activity in freedom, but for the spiritual Beings connected with man from other spheres of the Universe it is different. The Being from the hierarchy of the Angeloi, who leads human existence from one earthly life to another, sees at once how the matter stands regarding human action in freedom; he sees how man thrusts away from himself cosmic forces which want to form and mould him further — which want to give to his Ego-organisation the necessary physical supports, as they did before the age of Michael. Michael, who is a member of the hierarchy of the Archangeloi, receives his impressions with the aid of the Beings of the Angeloi-hierarchy. He devotes himself, in the manner here described, to the task of bringing to man from the spiritual part of the Cosmos forces which can replace those from the realm of Nature which have been suppressed. He accomplishes this by bringing his activity into the most perfect accord with the Mystery of Golgotha. The forces which man requires for the compensation of suppressed impulses of Nature when he acts through freedom, are contained in the activity of Christ within earthly evolution. But man must then really bring his soul into that inner life in union with Christ, of which we have already spoken in these articles on the Michael Mission. When a man faces the physical Sun and receives from it warmth and light he knows that he is living in a reality. In the same way he must live in the presence of Christ, the spiritual Sun, who has joined His life to that of the Earth, and receive actively from Him into his soul that which in the spiritual world corresponds to warmth and light. He will feel himself permeated by ‘spiritual warmth’ when he experiences the ‘Christ in me.’ Feeling himself thus permeated he will say to himself: ‘This warmth liberates my human being from bonds of the Cosmos in which it may not remain. For me to gain my freedom the Divine-Spiritual Being of primeval times had to lead me into regions where it could not remain with me, where, however, it gave me Christ, that His forces might bestow upon me as a free human being what the Divine-Spiritual primeval Being once gave me by way of Nature, which was then also the Spirit-way. This warmth leads me back again to the divine sources, whence I came.’ And in this feeling there will grow together in man, in inner warmth of soul, the experience in and with Christ and the experience of real and true humanity. ‘Christ gives me my humanity’ — that will be the fundamental feeling which will well up in the soul and pervade it. When this feeling is once there, another comes: man feels raised by Christ beyond mere earthly existence, he feels one with the starry firmament around the Earth and with all that can be recognised in this firmament as Spiritual and Divine. It is the same with the spiritual Light. Man can feel himself fully in his true human nature by becoming aware of himself as a free individual. A certain darkening is however connected with this. The Divine-Spiritual of primeval times no longer shines. The primeval Light appears again in the Light brought by Christ to the human ego. In the life in union with Christ this blissful thought may shine like a sun through the whole soul: ‘The glorious primal Divine Light is here again; it shines, although its light comes not from Nature.’ And man unites himself, while in the present, with the spiritual, cosmic forces of Light belonging to that past when he was not yet a free individual. And in this Light he can find the paths which lead him aright as a human being, when in his soul he unites himself, with understanding, with the Michael Mission. Then in the Spirit-warmth man will feel the impulse which so carries him over into his cosmic future, that in this future he will be able to remain true to the original gifts of Divine Spiritual Beings, albeit he has evolved in their worlds to free individuality. And in the Spirit-light he will feel the power which leads him with open eyes and ever higher and wider consciousness to the world in which as a free human being he will find himself again with the Gods of his origin. If man wishes to continue in the original existence and keep the primal naive Divine Goodness which held sway in him, and shrinks from the full use of freedom — it leads him, in this present world in which everything tends to develop his freedom, to Lucifer, who wishes the present world to be denied. If man devotes himself to present existence and wishes the natural world alone to hold sway (the natural world which is accessible to the present intellect and which is neutral with respect to Goodness), if he wishes to experience the use of freedom in the intellect alone, then in this present world where evolution needs to be continued in deeper regions of the soul, while freedom rules in the upper regions — he will after all be led to Ahriman, who wishes to see the present world transformed into a Cosmos of pure intellectuality. Certainty of soul and spirit flourishes in those regions where man feels that in the direction of the outer world his gaze rests spiritually on Michael, and in the direction towards the inner being of the soul on Christ. It is that certainty through which he will be able to traverse the cosmic path upon which he will, without losing his origin, in the future find his true perfection. 118. That action alone can be free in which no process of Nature, either within man or without him, plays an active part. 119. But there is also the other pole, the opposite aspect of this truth. Whenever the individuality of man works freely, a Nature-process is suppressed in him. In an unfree action this process of Nature would indeed be present, giving to the human being his cosmically predestined character. 120. To the man who with his own life and being really partakes in the present and future stages of World-evolution, this character is not vouchsafed by way of Nature. But it comes to him by way of the Spirit when he unites himself with Michael, whereby he also finds the way to Christ.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

Michaels Mission in the Cosmic Age of Human Freedom

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c08.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c08

When one considers the relation of Michael to Ahriman, one may well feel impelled to ask: How are these spiritual Powers related to one another in the cosmic sense, seeing that both of them are active in the unfolding of the forces of Intellectuality? In the past Michael unfolded the Intellectuality throughout the Cosmos. He did this as the servant of the Divine Spiritual Powers, to whom both he himself and man owed their origin. And he wishes not to depart from this relationship to Intellectuality. When Intellectuality was loosened from the Divine-Spiritual Powers in order to find its way into the inner being of man, Michael resolved thenceforth to assume his true relationship to mankind in order that in mankind he might find his relationship to the Intellectuality. But he wanted to do all this only in the sense of the Divine Spiritual Powers and as their servant still. For with these Powers he has been united ever since his own origin and that of men. Therefore it is his intention that Intellectuality shall flow in future through the hearts of men, but that it shall flow there as the self-same force which it was in the beginning when it poured forth from the Divine-Spiritual Powers. It is altogether different with Ahriman. He is a Being who long, long ago severed himself from the stream of evolution to which those Divine-Spiritual Powers belong of whom we are speaking. In an age of primal antiquity he set himself up beside them as an independent power in the Cosmos. This Being, though in the present day he is there in the world of space to which man belongs, evolves no relationship of inner forces with the Beings rightly belonging to this world. It is only through the Intellectuality, loosened from the Divine Spiritual Beings, which comes into this world, that Ahriman — finding himself akin to it — is able in his own way to unite himself with mankind. For in an ancient and primeval past he already united with himself this Intellectuality which man receives in the present as a gift from the Cosmos. Ahriman, if he succeeded in his intentions, would make the intellect, given to mankind, similar to his own. Now Ahriman appropriated Intellectuality to himself in an age when he could not make it an inner reality within him. It has remained in his being as a force, utterly detached from anything of heart or soul. Intellectuality pours forth from Ahriman as a cold and freezing, soulless cosmic impulse. Those human beings who are taken hold of by this impulse bring forth that logic which seems to speak for itself alone, void of compassion and of love, which bears no evidence of a right, heartfelt, inner relationship of soul between the human being and what he thinks and speaks and does. In real truth it is Ahriman who speaks in this kind of logic. But Michael has never appropriated Intellectuality to himself. He rules it as a Divine-Spiritual force while feeling himself united with the Divine-Spiritual Powers. And when he pervades the intellect it becomes manifest that the intellect can equally well be an expression of the heart and soul as an expression of the head and mind. For Michael has within him all the original forces of his Gods as well as those of man. Consequently he does not convey to the intellect anything that is soulless, cold, frosty, but he stands by it in a manner that is full of soul and inwardly warm. Herein, too, lies the reason why Michael moves through the Cosmos with earnest mien and gesture. To be inwardly united in this way with intelligence means at the same time to be obliged to fulfil the requirement that into it shall be brought no subjective caprice, wish or desire. Otherwise logic becomes the arbitrary activity of one being, instead of the expression of the Cosmos. Michael considers that his special virtue consists in strictly maintaining his being as the expression of the World-Being, keeping within himself all that would make itself felt as his own being. His aims are directed towards the great purposes of the Cosmos; this is expressed in his mien. His will, as it approaches man, must reflect what he sees in the Cosmos; and this is shown in his attitude, his gesture. Michael is earnest in all things, for earnestness, as the manifestation of a being, is a reflection of the Cosmos from this being; smiling is the expression of that which proceeds and radiates from a being into the world. One of the Imaginations of Michael is the following: he rules through the passage of time; bearing the light from the Cosmos really as his own being; giving form to the warmth from the Cosmos as the revealer of his own being; as a being he keeps steadily on his course like a world, affirming himself only by affirming the world, as if leading forces down to the Earth from all parts of the Universe. Contrast this with an Imagination of Ahriman: As he goes along he would like to capture space from time; he has darkness around him into which he shoots the rays of his own light; the more he achieves his aims the severer is the frost around him; he moves as a world which contracts entirely into one being, viz., his own, in which he affirms himself only by denying the world; he moves as if he carried with him the sinister forces of dark caves in the Earth. When man seeks freedom without inclining towards egoism — when freedom becomes for him pure love for the action which is to be performed — then it is possible for him to approach Michael. But if he desires to act freely and at the same time develops egoism — if freedom becomes for him the proud feeling of manifesting himself in the action — then he is in danger of falling into Ahriman's sphere. The Imaginations we have just described shine forth from a man's pure love for the action (Michael), or from his own self-love in acting (Ahriman). When man feels himself as a free being in proximity to Michael he is on the way to carry the intellectual power into his ‘whole man’; he thinks indeed with his head, but his heart feels the brightness of the thought or its shade; the will radiates forth the essential being of man by allowing thoughts, to stream into it as intentions and aims. Man becomes more and more man by becoming the expression of the world; he finds himself, not by seeking himself, but by uniting himself voluntarily with the world. If, when man unfolds his freedom, he succumbs to Ahriman's temptations, he is drawn into intellectuality as if into a spiritual automatic process in which he is a part; he is no longer himself. All his thinking becomes an experience of the head; but this separates it from the experience of his own heart and the life of his own will, and blots out his own being. Man loses more and more of the true inner human expression by becoming the expression of his own separate existence; he loses himself by seeking himself, he withdraws himself from the world which he refuses to love. It is only when he loves the world that a man truly experiences himself. From the above description it may be evident that Michael is the Guide to Christ. Michael goes with love on his way through the world, with all the earnestness of his nature, attitude and action. The man who attaches himself to him cultivates love in relation to the outer world . And love must be unfolded first of all in relation to the outer world, otherwise it becomes self-love. If this love in the spirit of Michael is there, then one's love of another being will shine back into one's own self. The self will be able to love without loving itself. And on the paths of this love Christ can be found by the human soul. One who holds fast to Michael cultivates love in relation to the outer world, and he thereby finds that relation to the inner world of his soul which brings him in touch with Christ. The age now dawning requires that humanity should turn its attention to a world immediately bordering upon the world perceived as physical — one in which can be found what we have here described as the Being and the Mission of Michael. For the world which man pictures as Nature when he sees this physical world, is also not the one in which he is immediately living, but one which lies as far below the truly human world as the world of Michael lies above it. It is only that man fails to notice that unconsciously, when he makes for himself a picture of his world, the image of another world really arises. When he paints this picture he at the same time excludes himself and succumbs to the spiritual automatic process. Man can only preserve his humanity by placing over against this picture, in which he loses himself in the picture of Nature, the other, in which Michael rules — in which Michael leads the way to Christ. 121. We have not fully understood the significance or the Universe of something that is working there — for instance, of the Cosmic Thoughts — so long as we stop short at the thing itself. We must also look to recognise the Beings from whom it proceeds. Thus for the Cosmic Thoughts we must see whether it is Michael or Ahriman who bears them out into the world and through the world. 122. Proceeding from the one Being — by virtue of his relation to the world — the same thing will work creatively and wholesomely; proceeding from another, it will prove fatal and destructive. The Cosmic Thoughts carry man into the future when he receives them from Michael; they lead him away from the future of his salvation when Ahriman has power to give them to him. 123. Such reflections lead us ever more to overcome the idea of an undefined Spirituality, pantheistically conceived as holding sway at the root of all things. We are led to a conception that is definite and real, capable of clear ideas about the spiritual Beings of the Hierarchies. For the reality is everywhere a reality of Being. Whatsoever in it is not Being, is the activity that proceeds in the relation of one Being to another. This too can only be understood if we can turn our gaze to the active Beings.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

The World-Thoughts in the Working of Michael and in the Working of Ahriman

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c09.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c09

Before this time a complete change is taking place in the spiritual life of mankind. It is evident on looking back, that Imaginations still play a large part in human perception. Single individuals, it is true, have already associated themselves in their soul-life with pure ‘concepts’; but the soul-life of the greater number of people consists in a struggle between Imaginations on the one hand, and ideas born from the purely physical world on the other. This is true, not only as regards ideas concerning events in the world of Nature, but also those concerning the developments of history. What spiritual observation is able to discover in this direction is confirmed throughout by external evidence. Let us now look at some instances of this. The way in which people in previous centuries had thought and spoken about historical events had found its way into writing just before the age of the Spiritual Soul set in. Thus we have preserved to us out of this time ‘sagas’ and the like, in which a true picture is given of how ‘history’ was represented in past times. A fine example is the story of ‘Gerhard the Good,’ contained in a poem by Rudolf of Ems, who lived in the first half of the thirteenth century. ‘Gerhard the Good’ is a rich merchant of Cologne. He undertakes a journey to Russia, Livonia and Prussia, to buy sables, and then travels farther to Damascus and Nineveh to get silk-stuffs and similar merchandise. On the homeward journey he is driven out of his course by a storm. In the strange country in which he finds himself he becomes acquainted with a man, who is keeping a number of English knights, and the betrothed of the King of England, in captivity. Gerhard sacrifices all that he has acquired on his journey by trading, and receives the prisoners in exchange. When the ships arrive at the point where the ways of the travellers part, Gerhard sends the knights home, but the King's betrothed he detains, in the hope that the bridegroom, King William, will come to fetch her himself, as soon as he receives news of her release, and of the place of her abode. The King's bride and the maidens who accompany her are entertained by Gerhard in the best way imaginable. She lives, like a much loved daughter, in the house of her deliverer from captivity. A long time passes without the King coming to take her away. Then, in order to ensure his foster daughter's future, Gerhard decides to marry her to his son. For the supposition is possible that William is dead. The wedding of Gerhard's son is being celebrated, when an unknown pilgrim arrives. It is William. He has wandered about for a long time, searching for his betrothed. Gerhard's son unselfishly resigns her and she is given back to William. Both remain for a time with Gerhard; then the latter fits out a ship to convey them to England. When Gerhard's prisoners — who have been restored to honour — are first able to greet him in England they wish to make him king. But he is able to reply that he is bringing to them their lawful king and queen. They, too, had thought William dead and wished to choose another king to rule their country, which during William's wanderings had fallen into a chaotic state. The Cologne merchant renounces all the honours and riches offered to him and returns to Cologne, there to be again the simple merchant he had been before. The story goes on to relate how Otto I, King of Saxony, journeys to Cologne to make the acquaintance of Gerhard the Good. For the powerful king has succumbed to the temptation to count upon ‘earthly recompense’ for much that he has done. Through becoming acquainted with Gerhard he learns from his example how a simple man does an unspeakable amount of good — sacrificing all the goods he had acquired in order to liberate captives; restoring to William his son's affianced bride; then taking the trouble to convey William to England again, etc. — without desiring any earthly reward whatever for it, but leaving all reward to the ruling of Divine Providence. The man is universally known as ‘Gerhard the Good’; the king feels that he himself receives a strong moral and religious impulse through becoming acquainted with Gerhard's mind and character. The story which I have briefly outlined above — in order not merely to indicate by name something that is little known — shows quite clearly from one aspect the mental attitude of the age before the coming of the Spiritual Soul in the evolution of humanity. Those who enter into the spirit of the story, as told by Rudolf of Ems, will be able to feel how the experience of the earthly world has changed since the time of King Otto (the tenth century). Notice how, during the age of the Spiritual Soul, the world has in a certain way become ‘clear’ to the mental eye of man, as regards the comprehension of physical existence and its development. Gerhard travels with his ships as if in a mist. He only knows the small portion of the world with which he wishes to come in contact. In Cologne you hear nothing of what is taking place in England, and you have to search for years for a person who is in Cologne. You get to know about the life and property of another man such as the one on whose shore Gerhard is cast on his homeward journey, only when you have been brought directly by destiny to the place. The present-day grasp of circumstances in the world is related to that of those earlier times as the looking into a broad, sunlit landscape is to the groping about in a dense fog. What is related in connection with Gerhard the Good has nothing to do with what we call ‘historical’ now-a-days, but it is all the more concerned with the character and mood of soul and with the whole spiritual situation of the time. It is these, and not the single events in the physical world, which are depicted in Imaginations. In the picture before us, we see a reflection of how man not only feels himself as a being who lives and is active as a member in the chain of events in the physical world, but also feels spiritual, supersensible Beings working into his earthly existence and having connection with his will. The tale of Gerhard the Good shows how the twilight dimness, which, in respect of the penetration of the physical world, preceded the period of the Spiritual Soul, turned man's gaze to the vision of the spiritual world. Man did not see the breadth of the physical world, but he saw all the more into the depth of the spiritual. Yet in the period that we describe, it was no longer the same as it once had been when a twilight clairvoyance showed to mankind the spiritual world. The Imaginations were there; but when they appeared within the human soul, it was already in its apprehension of things strongly disposed in the direction of thought. The result of this was that men no longer knew how the world that revealed itself in Imaginations was related to the world of physical existence. Hence, to people who were already holding more strongly to the thought element, these Imaginations seemed to be fictions, invented at will and having no reality. Men no longer knew that through the Imaginations they saw into a world in which man stands with a quite different part of his being than in the physical world. Thus in the picture before us, two worlds stand side by side; and in the way the story is told, both worlds bear a character that would make one believe the spiritual events to have taken place in among the physical events, and just as perceptibly as these. In addition to this, the physical events in many of these tales are in utter confusion. People whose lives are centuries apart appear as contemporaries; events are transferred to another place or period. Facts of the physical world are viewed by the human soul in such a way as one can really only view what is spiritual, for which Time and Space have a different significance. The physical world is depicted in Imaginations instead of in thoughts. On the other hand, the spiritual world is woven into the narrative as if one were dealing, not with a different form of existence, but with something that was a continuation of physical facts. A historical conception that keeps to the physical only, thinks that the old Imaginations of the East, of Greece, etc., have been taken over and interwoven poetically with the historical subjects that were occupying men's minds at the time. The writings of Isidor of Seville of the seventh century are said to contain a regular collection of old legendary ‘motifs.’ Yet this is merely an external point of view, and has significance only for those who have no understanding of that condition of soul which still knows itself to be in direct connection with the spiritual world, and which feels itself impelled to express this knowledge in Imaginations. Whether a writer makes use of his own Imagination, or whether he applies, in an understanding and living way, one that has been handed down through history, is not the essential point. The essential point is that the soul is orientated towards the spiritual world and sees both its own actions and the events in the course of Nature as forming a part of that world. It is however true that in the way stories and legends were told in the time before the dawn of the epoch of the Spiritual Soul, a certain tendency to error is noticeable. Spiritual observation sees in this tendency the working of the Luciferic powers. That which urges the soul to receive the Imaginations into its experience is the result not so much of faculties possessed by the soul in ancient times — through a dreamlike clairvoyance — but rather of faculties present in the periods between the eighth and the fourteenth centuries AD. These faculties were already pressing more strongly towards an understanding, in terms of thought, of what was perceived by the senses. Both kinds of faculties were present simultaneously during the transition period. The soul was placed between the old orientation, which penetrates to the spiritual world and sees the physical only as in a mist, and the new orientation, which is centred on physical happenings and in which the spiritual vision fades. The Luciferic power works into this wavering balance of the human soul. It wants to prevent man from attaining to complete orientation in the physical world. It wants to keep him, with his consciousness, in spiritual realms that were adapted for him in ancient times. It wants to prevent pure thinking, directed towards the understanding of physical existence, from flowing into Ms dreamlike, imaginative conception of the world. It is able to hold back, in a wrong way, man's power of perception from the physical world. It is not however, able to maintain in the right way the experience of the old Imaginations, and so it makes man reflect imaginatively, and yet at the same time he is not able to transplant his soul completely into the world in which the Imaginations have their full value. At the dawn of the Spiritual Soul epoch, Lucifer is active in such a manner that, through him, man is transplanted to the supersensible region immediately bordering on the physical in a way not in keeping with his nature. We can see this quite clearly in the legend of Duke Ernst (Herzog Ernst), which was one of the favourite legends of the Middle Ages and was related in wide circles. Duke Ernst has a disagreement with the Emperor, who is determined to make war upon him unjustly and bring him to ruin. The Duke feels impelled to escape from this untenable relation with the head of the State by taking part in the Crusade to the East. In the experiences which he goes through before he reaches his destination, the physical and spiritual are woven together in saga form in the manner indicated. For instance, the Duke, in the course of his wanderings, encounters a people with heads shaped like those of cranes. He is driven ashore on the Magnet Mountain, which draws ships with magnetic power, so that people who come into the vicinity of the mountain cannot escape, but are doomed to a miserable end. Duke Ernst and his followers effect their escape by sewing themselves up in skins, and letting themselves be carried on to a hill by griffins, who are accustomed to capture those driven on to the Magnet Mountain; thence, after cutting the skins, they escape in the absence of the griffins. The continuation of the journey leads them to a people whose ears are so long that they can fling them round them like a cloak; and to yet another people whose feet are so large that when it rains, they can lie on the ground and spread their feet over them like umbrellas. He comes from a race of dwarfs to a race of giants, etc. Many similar things are related in connection with the Duke Ernst's journey to the Crusades. The ‘Legend’ does not let one feel in the right way how, whenever Imaginations enter into the story, an orientation is set up towards a spiritual world, and how events are then related through pictures which are enacted in the astral world, and which are connected with the Will and Fate of earthly man. This is also the case with the beautiful ‘Story of Roland,’ in which Charles the Great's crusade against the heathen in Spain is commemorated. It is related there (as if in confirmation of the Bible) that in order that Charles the Great could attain the end he was striving for, the sun stopped in its course, so that one day became as long as two. In the case of the ‘Nibelung Saga,’ one can see how in, Northern lands it has kept a form that maintains more purely and directly the perception of the Spiritual, whereas in Central Europe the Imaginations are brought nearer to physical life. In the Northern form of the story the Imaginations are referred to an ‘astral world’; in the Central European form of the Lay of the Nibelungs, the Imaginations glide over into the perception of the physical world. The Imaginations appearing in the Legend of Duke Ernst refer in reality to what is experienced between the experiences in the physical sphere, in an ‘astral world,’ to which man belongs just as much as to the physical. If one applies spiritual vision to all this, then one sees how the entrance into the Age of Consciousness signifies outgrowing a phase of evolution in which the Luciferic powers would have prevailed over mankind, had not a new evolutionary impulse come into the human being through the Spiritual Soul with its force of intellectuality. That orientation towards the spiritual world which would lead into the paths of error is hindered through the Spiritual Soul; the gaze of man is drawn away and turned upon the physical world. Everything that happens in this direction withdraws humanity from the Luciferic powers that are misleading it. Michael is already at this time active for humanity from the spiritual world. He is preparing his later work from out of the supersensible. He is giving humanity impulses which preserve the former relation to the Divine-Spiritual world, without this preservation adopting a Luciferic character. Then in the last third of the nineteenth century Michael himself presses forward into the physical earthly world with the activities which he has exercised in preparation from out of the Supersensible, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. Humanity had to undergo a period of spiritual evolution for the purpose of freeing itself from that relation to the spiritual world which threatened to become an impossible one. Then the evolution was guided, through the Michael Mission, into paths which brought the progress of Earth humanity once more into a good and healthy relation to the spiritual world. Thus Michael stands in his activity between the Luciferic World-picture , and the Ahrimanic World-intellect . The World-picture becomes through him a World-revelation full of wisdom, which reveals the World-intellect as Divine World-activity . And in this World-activity lives the care of Christ for humanity — even in the World-activity which can thus reveal itself to the heart of man out of Michael's World-revelation. 124. The dawn of the age of Consciousness (the age of the Spiritual Soul) in the fifteenth century was preceded, in the twilight of the age of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, by a heightened Luciferian activity, which continued for a certain time even into the new epoch. 125. This Luciferian influence tried to preserve ancient forms of pictorial conception of the world in a wrong way. Thus it tried to prevent man from understanding with Intellectuality and entering with fullness of life into the physical existence of the World. 126. Michael unites his being with the activity of mankind so that the independent Intellectuality may remain — not in a Luciferian, but in a righteous way — with the Divine and Spiritual from which it is inherited.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

First Study: At the Gates of the Spiritual Soul (Consciousness-Soul). How Michael in the Spiritual World is Preparing for His Earth-Mission through the Conquest of Lucifer

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c10.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c10

At the time when the Spiritual Soul was entering the evolution of mankind on Earth, it was difficult for the Beings of the spiritual world next to this earthly existence to approach mankind. The form assumed by earthly events at that time proves that very peculiar conditions were necessary in order to enable the Spirit to find its way into the physical life of mankind. But it shows another thing as well, and in a way that is often most illuminating. It shows how, at a point when the Powers of the past are still at work and those of the future already beginning their activity, one spiritual influence tries to find its way into the earthly life of mankind in vigorous opposition to another. Between 1339 and 1453 a chaotic, devastating war begins between France and England. It lasts for more than a hundred years. In the chaos of this war, which was due to a certain spiritual current unfavourable to the evolution of mankind, events which would otherwise have brought the Spiritual Soul into humanity more quickly were definitely hindered. Chaucer, who died in 1400, laid the foundations of English literature. We need only remember the great spiritual consequences which took their start in Europe from the founding of this literature, and we shall see the importance of the fact that such an event was not able to work itself out freely, but fell into the midst of the confusions of a prolonged war. Moreover, already in 1215 that way of political thought which can receive its true stamp and character through the Spiritual Soul had begun in England. The further evolution of this fact, too, fell into all the hindrances of war. This was a time when the spiritual forces, seeking to evolve man according to the potentialities laid in him from the very beginning by yet loftier Divine-Spiritual Powers, encountered their strong adversaries. These adversaries wish to divert man into channels other than those appointed for him from the beginning. If they were to succeed, man would not be able to apply the forces of his origin to his further evolution. His cosmic childhood would remain unfruitful for him. It would become a dying, withering part within his being. The consequence would be that man could then fall a prey to the Luciferic or Ahrimanic Powers and lose his own true and proper development. If the adversaries of mankind had succeeded in their efforts — if they had not only put hindrances in the way, but achieved complete success — the entry of the Spiritual Soul could have been prevented. An event which reveals the inpouring of the Spiritual into the earthly events in a most clear and radiant way is the appearance and subsequent history of Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans (1412 - 1431). The impulses for what she does lie in the deep, subconscious foundations of her soul. She follows dim inspirations from the spiritual world. On the Earth there is confusion and disorder, through which the age of the Spiritual Soul is to be hindered. Michael has to prepare from the spiritual world his later mission; this he is able to do where his impulses are received into human souls. Such a soul lives in the Maid of Orleans. And Michael also worked through many other souls, although this was possible only in a minor degree and is less apparent in outer historical life. In events such as the war between England and France he met with opposition from his Ahrimanic adversary. In our last number we spoke of the Luciferic adversary Michael found at the same time. And indeed, this adversary is particularly apparent in the course of events following upon the appearance of the Maid of Orleans. From these events it may be seen that mankind no longer knew how to deal with an intervention of the spiritual world in the destiny of humanity, which could be understood and also received by men into the will as long as Imaginative understanding existed. The earlier attitude towards such intervention became impossible when the Intellectual Soul ceased to act; the attitude corresponding to the Spiritual Soul had not at that time been discovered; nor has it yet been achieved. Thus it came about that Europe was moulded from the spiritual world without men understanding what was happening, and without that which they were able to do having any appreciable influence on this process. The significance of this event, the determining causes of which lay in the spiritual world, will be perceived if one tries to imagine what would have happened in the fifteenth century had there been no Maid of Orleans. There are some who wish to explain this phenomenon materialistically. It is impossible to come to an understanding with such people because they arbitrarily interpret in the materialistic sense something that is obviously spiritual. In certain directions of spiritual striving, too, it may now be clearly seen that humanity can no longer find the way to the Divine-Spiritual without difficulty, even though men search with resolution. There are difficulties which did not exist in the age when insight could still be gained with the aid of Imaginations. In order to judge correctly what is here meant, all that is necessary is to see in a clear light those individuals who come forward as philosophical thinkers. A philosopher cannot be judged by his effect on his age alone, nor by observing how many people have accepted his ideas. He is rather the expression , the manifestation in person for his age. The philosopher presents in his ideas that which the greater part of humanity bears within it as its frame of mind, unconscious feelings and impulses of life. Like a thermometer which registers the degree of the surrounding warmth, he registers the mental condition of his age. The philosophers are no more the causes of the psychology of their age than the thermometer is the cause of the surrounding temperature. Consider, from this point of view, the philosopher René Descartes, who worked when the age of the Spiritual Soul had already commenced. (He lived from 1596 to 1650.) The slender support for his connection with the spirit-world (the world of true being) is the experience ‘I think, therefore I am.’ In the centre of self-consciousness, in the ‘I,’ he tries to feel reality; and indeed, only so much as the Spiritual Soul can tell him. And he endeavours intellectually to understand the rest of the Spiritual by inquiring what guarantee the certainty of his own self-consciousness gives for the certainty of anything else. Regarding the truths handed on to him historically he always inquires: Are they as clear as the ‘I think, therefore I am’? And if he can answer this in the affirmative he accepts them. In this kind of human thought is not the Spirit eliminated from all observation that is directed towards the things in the world? The manifestation of the Spirit has withdrawn to the pin-point support in self-consciousness; all else, as it shows itself directly , is void of any revelation of the Spirit. Only indirectly, by the intellect in the Spiritual Soul, can the light of this spirit-revelation be thrown on that which lies outside self-consciousness. The man of this age allows the content of his Spiritual Soul, which is as yet almost empty, to stream towards the spiritual world with intense longing. A tiny ray goes thither. The beings in the Spirit-world immediately bordering upon the Earth-world, and the human souls on Earth, come to one another with difficulty. Michael's supersensible preparation for his later Mission is also experienced by the human soul only under the greatest hindrances. In order to grasp the essential nature of the frame of mind expressed in Descartes, compare this philosopher with St. Augustine, who, in the outer formulation of it, sets up for the experience of the spiritual world the same support as Descartes. But in St. Augustine it takes place out of the full force of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. St. Augustine (354 - 430) is justly found to be related to Descartes, but his intellect is still the remnant of what is cosmic, whereas that of Descartes is the intellect that is already entering the individual human soul. In the progress of spiritual striving from St. Augustine to Descartes it may be seen how the cosmic character of the power of thought is lost and how it then reappears in the human soul. But it can also be seen at the same time with what difficulty Michael and the human soul come together so that Michael may lead in man what he once led in the Cosmos. The Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces are at work to prevent this union. The Luciferic forces want man to unfold only that which was proper to him during his cosmic childhood; the Ahrimanic forces, which are opposed to the Luciferic and yet co-operate with them, would like to develop only those forces which were gained in later ages of the world, and so let the cosmic childhood of man wither away. Under increased resistances such as these, the human souls in Europe digested the spiritual impulses contained in old world-conceptions which had streamed from the East to the West through the Crusades. The Michael-forces lived very strongly in these conceptions. The Cosmic Intelligence, the rulership of which was the ancient spiritual heritage of Michael, was dominant in these old world-conceptions. How could they be received, seeing that there was a chasm between the forces of the spirit-world and the human souls? These forces came to the Spiritual Soul which was only just beginning to evolve. On one side they met with the hindrance given in the Spiritual Soul itself which was still but little developed. And on the other they no longer found a consciousness supported by Imagination. The human soul could not with full insight unite them with itself. They were accepted either quite superficially or superstitiously. We have to pay attention to this frame of mind if we wish to understand the movements of thought connected on the one hand with the names of Wycliffe, Huss and others, and on the other with the name of ‘Rosicrucianism.’ 127. At the beginning of the Age of Consciousness, man evolved the intellectual forces of his soul only to a small extent as yet. Hence there arose a gap between what the soul of man in unconscious depths was longing for, and what the forces from the region of Michael's abode could give him. 128. Owing to this gap, there was a greater possibility for the Luciferic powers to hold man back in the forces of cosmic childhood, thus bringing about his further evolution, not on the paths of the Divine-Spiritual Powers with whom he was united from the beginning, but on the paths of Lucifer. 129. Moreover there was a greater possibility for the powers of Ahriman to wrest man away from the forces of his cosmic childhood, thus dragging him down, for his further evolution, into their own domain. 130. Neither of these dangers was realised, for the forces of Michael were after all at work. But the spiritual evolution of mankind had to take place under the resulting hindrances, and it was thus that it became what it has, in fact, hitherto become.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

Second Study: How the Michael Forces Work in the Earliest Unfolding of the Spiritual Soul

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c11.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c11

Throughout Europe, the incorporation of the Spiritual Soul brought about a disturbance in the experiences of religious faith and ritual. A clear sign of the coming disturbance may be seen about the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the arising of the ‘Proofs of God’ (especially in the work of Anselm of Canterbury). The existence of God now had to be proved by intellectual reasoning. The desire to do such a thing could only arise when the old way of experiencing ‘God’ with the forces of the inner soul was vanishing. For we never set out to prove by logic what we experience in such a way. The old way was to perceive with one's inner soul the Beings or Intelligences, up to the Godhead. The new way, arising at this time, was to evolve intellectual thoughts about the Prime Foundations of the Universe. The former way was supported by the forces of Michael in the spiritual realm of Earth. Behind the thought-forces directed to the things of outer sense, the forces of Michael equipped the soul with faculties to perceive divine Being and Intelligence in the Universe. On the other hand, for the second way to find its fulfilment, the inner union of the soul with the forces of Michael must first be developed and accomplished. In the sphere of religious ritual, even the central doctrine of the Holy Communion began to totter. We find this happening in far-spread regions of the religious experience of man, from Wycliffe in England (fifteenth century) to Huss in Bohemia. In Holy Communion man was able to find his union with the spiritual world which was opened up to him through Christ. For he was able to unite his being with Christ in such a way that the fact of the outer sense-union was at the same time a spiritual fact. The consciousness of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul was able to form an idea of this union. For the Mind-Soul still possessed ideas, both of Spirit and of Matter, near to one another — so that it was possible for it to conceive the one (Matter) passing over into the other (Spirit). Ideas of this kind, however, cannot possibly be so intellectualistic as to require at the same time proofs of God's existence. Such ideas must still contain something of the living Imagination which enables man to feel, in Matter, the Spirit that is active in it; and in the Spirit, the striving towards Matter. Ideas of this kind have the cosmic forces of Michael behind them. Think only how much was beginning to totter for the human soul at that time: how much of what was connected with the innermost and holiest experience of men! Personalities arose — Huss, Wycliffe and others — in whom the existence of the Spiritual Soul shone out most radiantly. Their inner state of soul was such as to unite them with the Michael forces with an intensity that would not come for others till centuries afterwards. From the voice of Michael in their hearts, they proclaimed the worthiness of the Spiritual Soul to rise to the conception of the deepest religious mysteries. They felt that the Intellectuality which was coming with the Spiritual Soul must be able to include in the realm of its ideas that which had been attainable, in older times, by Imagination. On the other hand, the historical and traditional attitude of the human soul to these things had in very wide circles lost all its inner force and strength. What history refers to as the evils and abuses of religious life which were dealt with by the great Councils of Reform in the age when the Spiritual Soul was beginning its activity — all this is connected with the life of those human souls who, not yet feeling the Spiritual Soul within them, were on the other hand no longer able to find in the old Intellectual or Mind-Soul a sufficient source of inner strength or certainty. Historical experiences of men, such as were laid bare at the Councils of Constance and Basle, may be said to reveal: — in the spiritual world above the down-pouring of the Intellectuality seeking to find its way to men, and in the earthly realm below, the working of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, no longer in accordance with the time. The Michael forces are hovering between, looking back to their own past union with the Divine-Spiritual, and down upon the human realm. The human realm likewise enjoyed the same union in the past, but it must now pass into a sphere in which Michael will help it from the Spirit, though he may not unite his own inner being with this realm. Absolutely necessary as it is in cosmic evolution — yet signifying, to begin with, a disturbance in the balance of the Cosmos — this striving of Michael underlies that which mankind had to experience in that age even with respect to the most sacred truths. We gaze deeply into the characteristic features of that age when we turn our thoughts to Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa. (One may read what I have said about him in the book Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life ... 1 Mysticism and Modern Thought ) His personality is like an outstanding monument of time. He wants the affairs of the world directed by points of view, which — instead of fighting the abuses and evils of the physical world by revolutionary tendencies — meet them with healthy common-sense, seeking to restore to the proper channel those things which have become diverted from it. We recognise this tendency in the influence he brought to bear at the Council of Basle, and generally within his ecclesiastical community. Thus Nicholas of Cusa is fully inclined towards the great change in evolution which comes with the unfolding of the Spiritual Soul. On the other hand he brings forth thoughts and ideas which reveal in a most radiant way the working of Michael's forces within them. Into the midst of his age he places the good old ideas which, in the epoch when Michael still ruled the Cosmic Intellectuality, led the human soul to the unfolding of faculties to perceive the Beings and Intelligences in the Cosmos. The ‘Learned Ignorance’ of which he speaks is a perception over and above that which is directed to the outer world of sense — a perception which leads man's thinking beyond the intellectuality of ordinary knowledge into a region where, in ignorance or emptiness of knowledge, the Spiritual is taken hold of by a pure, inner experience of seership. Thus Nicholas of Cusa is a personality who, feeling in his own soul-life the disturbance of the cosmic balance by Michael, would like intuitively to contribute as much as possible towards the turning of this disturbance to the welfare of humanity. Between the things of the spiritual life that came to light in this way there lived something else which remained hidden. Certain individuals who perceived and understood the position of the Michael-forces in the Universe, wished to prepare the forces of their own souls in such a way that they might consciously enter the spirit-realm bordering upon the earthly sphere — the realm in which Michael makes his efforts on behalf of humanity. They sought justification for this spiritual enterprise by conducting themselves outwardly in life, in their calling and in other circumstances, in such a way that their life could not be distinguished from that of other men. By lovingly performing their earthly duties in the ordinary sense they were able to turn their inner manhood freely towards the Spiritual which we have described. What they did in this direction was something between themselves and that with which they united themselves ‘in secret.’ As regards what took place in the physical realm, the world was at first apparently quite unaffected by this spiritual striving. And yet all this was needed in order to bring souls into the necessary union with the Michael-world. It was not a question of ‘Secret Societies’ in any bad sense, nor of anything that tried to hide because it feared the light of day, but rather of persons coming together, and in so doing convincing themselves that each one in their circle possessed the true consciousness of the Michael Mission. Those who thus worked together did not speak of their work before others who through lack of understanding could only have disturbed the aims they had set themselves. These aims consisted primarily in working in spiritual streams which flow, not within earthly life, but in the spirit-world next to it, but which nevertheless cast their impulses into earthly life. This gives an indication of the spirit-work of human beings who indeed live in the physical world but co-operate with Beings who belong to the spirit-world — Beings who do not themselves enter the physical world or incarnate in it. We are here speaking of those who, with very little reference to the real facts, are named in the world as the ‘Rosicrucians.’ True Rosicrucianism lies absolutely in the line of activity of the Michael Mission. It helped Michael to prepare on Earth the spirit-work which he wished to prepare for a later age. We shall be able to estimate what could be achieved thereby if we consider the following. The above-described difficulties, nay, impossibilities, for Michael to work into human souls, are connected with the fact that Michael himself, in his essential being, does not wish to come in contact in any way with the physical present of earthly life. He wishes to remain in the nexus of forces which existed for Spirits of his kind, and for human beings, in the past . Any contact with that with which, in present earthly life, man is obliged to come in contact — this Michael could only consider as a pollution of his being. Now in ordinary human life the spiritual experience of the soul works into the physical earthly life, and conversely the latter reacts upon the former. It is a reaction which expresses itself especially in man's frame of mind and in the direction of his soul towards some earthly thing. An interaction of this kind is as a rule the case — though not invariably — especially in persons engaged in public life. Hence the hindrances to Michael's work in many of the Reformers were very great. The Rosicrucians overcame the difficulty in this direction by keeping their external life — which consisted in their earthly duties — quite apart from their work with Michael. When Michael, together with his impulses, came in contact with what a Rosicrucian prepared in his soul for him, he found himself in no way exposed to the danger of meeting what was earthly. For, through the state of soul which he purposely cultivated, anything earthly was kept away from that which united the Rosicrucian with Michael. In this way the true Rosicrucian striving formed for Michael the path here on the Earth towards his coming earthly Mission. 131. In the beginning of the Age of the Spiritual Soul, the Intellectuality now emancipated in man wanted to occupy itself with the truths of religious faith and ritual. The life of the human soul was thereby brought into uncertainty and doubt. Men tried to prove by logic spiritual realities that were formerly a direct experience within the soul. They tried to understand, nay even to determine by logical deduction, the contents of sacred ritual which can only be taken hold of in spiritual Imaginations. 132. All this is connected with the fact that while Michael is determined to avoid any kind of contact with the present earthly world, which man must enter; yet at the same time it is still his task to guide in man the cosmic Intellectuality which he administered in ages past. Thus there arises through the Michael-forces a disturbance in the cosmic balance albeit, a disturbance necessary for the further progress of world-evolution. 133. Michael's mission was made easier for him by certain personalities — the genuine Rosicrucians — who arranged their outward life on Earth so that it in no way interfered ,with their inner life of soul. They could thus develop forces within them, whereby they worked together in spiritual realms with Michael, without the danger of entangling him in present earthly happenings, which would have been impossible for him.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

Second Study (Continued). Hindrances and Helps to the Michael Forces in the Dawn of the Age of the Spiritual Soul

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c12.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c12

As the new Age of Consciousness proceeds, it grows less and less possible for Michael to connect himself with the existence of mankind in general. Intellectuality has become human and is now entering humanity. From it the Imaginative conceptions, which could reveal to man the Divine Being and Intelligence in the Cosmos, are vanishing. The possibility for Michael himself to approach man begins only with the last third of the nineteenth century. Before that time it was only possible by those paths which were sought for in the true Rosicrucian sense. With his own budding intellectuality, man looks out into Nature. He sees there a physical and etheric world, in which he himself is not contained. Through the great ideas of men such as Copernicus and Galileo, he attains a picture of the world external to man. But he loses the picture of himself. When he gazes on himself he has no possibility of reaching any insight as to what he truly is. In the depths of his being, that which is destined to bear and sustain his intelligence is being awakened in him. With this, his Ego becomes united. Thus man now bears a threefold nature within him: first, in his spirit-and-soul being, manifesting as physical-etheric, that which originated once upon a time, in the old Saturn and Sun epochs, and then ever and again placed him within the kingdom of the Divine-Spiritual. It is here that the Human Being and the Michael Being go together. Secondly, man bears within him his later physical and etheric nature, that which evolved in him during the Moon and Earth epochs. All this is the work and active working of the Divine-Spiritual. But the Divine-Spiritual itself is no longer living and present within it. It only becomes fully living and present once more when Christ passes through the Mystery of Golgotha. In that which is at work spiritually in the physical and etheric body of man, Christ can indeed be found. Thirdly, man has within him that part of his soul and spirit which received new being in the Moon and Earth epochs. Here Michael has remained active (whereas in the part of man that is inclined towards the Moon and Earth, he has become more and more inactive.) In the former Michael has preserved, for man, his picture of Man and the Gods together. He was able to do this until the dawn of the new age of Consciousness — the age of the Spiritual Soul. Then the spirit and soul of man sank down, as it were, entirely in the physical-etheric nature, in order to draw forth from there the Spiritual Soul. Radiantly there arose in the consciousness of man what his physical and his etheric body could tell him about the physical and etheric in the world of Nature. And what his astral body and Ego had been able to tell him about himself vanished away from his vision. In the age which now began, there arose in man the feeling that with his own insight he could no longer reach himself . Thus there began a search for knowledge of the human being. Man could no longer find satisfaction for this quest in what the present was able to provide. He went back to earlier ages of history. Humanism arose in the evolution of the spiritual life. Humanism became the object of men's striving, not because they had grasped Man in his essential nature, but because they had lost him. As long as they possessed this knowledge, Erasmus of Rotterdam and others would have worked from a trend of soul quite different from anything that Humanism could give them. In Faust , Goethe discovered at a later time a figure representative of the man who had completely lost hold of his essential being. This quest of the human being grows more and more intense as time goes on. For man has now no other alternative: he must either make himself blunt and insensitive as regards his own being, or else the longing for it must come forth as an essential element in his soul's life. Right into the nineteenth century, the best minds in the spiritual life of Europe evolve ideas in the most varied fields and in the most different ways — ideas historical, scientific, philosophical, mystical, all of which represent the striving to find, in what has now become an intellectualistic world-conception, the human being himself. Renaissance, spiritual re-birth, humanism, are striving restlessly — even tempestuously — for a spiritual element in a direction in which it is not to be found. And, in the direction in which it should be sought, there is impotence, illusion, bewilderment of consciousness. And yet everywhere — in Art, in Knowledge — the Michael-forces are breaking through into the human being, though not as yet into the newly-growing forces of the Spiritual Soul. It is a critical time for the spiritual life. Michael turns all his forces towards the past in cosmic evolution so that he may gain the power to hold the ‘Dragon’ balanced and constrained beneath his feet. It is under these mighty exertions of Michael that the great creations of the Renaissance are born. Yet they still only represent a renewal by Michael of Intellectual or Mind-Soul forces. They are not yet a working of the new soul-forces. We can behold Michael filled with anxiety. Will he really be able to master the ‘Dragon’ in the long run? He perceives human beings in one region trying to gain a picture of Man out of the newly-acquired picture of Nature. He sees how they observe Nature and then seek to form a picture of Man from what they call the ‘Laws of Nature.’ He sees them forming their conceptions: — ‘This animal quality becomes more perfect, that system of organs more harmonious, and man “arises”!’ But before the spirit-gaze of Michael man does not arise. For in effect, what is thus thought of as being harmonised, perfected, is there only in thought. No one can see it evolving in reality, for nowhere does this happen in actual fact. And so, with these their conceptions about Man, men live in empty pictures, in illusions. They are forever running after a picture of Man which they only imagine that they have, while in real truth there is nothing in their field of vision. ‘The power of the spiritual Sun shines upon their souls. Christ Himself is working; but they are not yet able to perceive His presence. The power of the Spiritual Soul holds sway in the body; but it still will not enter into their souls.’ That is approximately the inspiration one can hear of what Michael says in great anxiety. Is it possible that the forces of illusion in man will give the ‘Dragon’ so much power that it will be impossible for Michael to maintain the balance? Other persons try with more inward artistic power to feel Nature at one with man. Mighty are the words in which Goethe described Winkelmann's work in a beautiful book: ‘When the healthy nature of man acts as a whole, when he feels himself in the world as in a great, beautiful, majestic and worthy whole, when harmonious case gives him pure, free delight; then would the Universe, if it were conscious of itself, shout aloud for joy, as having reached its goal, and marvel at the climax of its own development and being.’ That which stimulated Lessing with fiery spirit and ensouled Herder's wide outlook on the world, rings out in these words of Goethe. And the whole of Goethe's own work is like a many-sided revelation of these his own words. In his ‘Aesthetic Letters’, Schiller has described an ideal human being who, in the sense described in the above words, bears the Universe within himself and realises it in social intercourse with other human beings. But whence comes this picture of Man? It shines like the morning sun over the Earth in spring. But it has entered into human feeling from study of the ancient Greeks. It arose in men with a strong inward Michael-impulse; but they could give form to this impulse only by turning the mind's eye to days of yore. When Goethe wished to experience ‘Man,’ he felt himself in the greatest conflict with the Spiritual Soul. He sought for Man in Spinoza's philosophy; but only during his tour in Italy, when he studied the nature of Greek art, did he feel that he had a glimpse of him. He went away finally from the Spiritual Soul, which is striving upwards in Spinoza, to the Intellectual Soul or Mind-Soul which was gradually dying out. However, with his far-reaching conception of Nature he was able to carry over an infinite amount from the Intellectual Soul into the Spiritual Soul. Michael also looks with earnestness upon this search for Man. What is in accordance with his idea is indeed entering here into the spiritual evolution of man: — it is that human being who once beheld the Divine Being and Intelligence when Michael still ruled it from the Cosmos. But if this were not laid hold of by the spiritualised force of the Spiritual Soul it would in the end inevitably slip away from Michael's control and come under the sway of Lucifer. The other great anxiety in Michael's life is, lest in the oscillation of the cosmic spiritual state of balance Lucifer might gain the upper hand. Michael's preparation of his Mission for the end of the nineteenth century flows on in cosmic tragedy. Below, on the Earth, there is often the greatest satisfaction in the working out of the new picture of Nature; whereas in the region where Michael works there is a tragic feeling regarding the hindrances to the coming of the picture of Man. Formerly Michael's austere, spiritualised love lived in the sun's rays, in the shimmering dawn, in the sparkling of the stars; this love had now acquired most strongly the note of looking down at humanity with awakening sorrow. Michael's situation in the Cosmos became tragically difficult, but it also pressed for a solution just at the period of time which preceded his earthly mission. Men were able to keep intellectuality only in the sphere of the body and there only in the sphere of the senses. On one hand, therefore, they received into their views nothing that the senses did not tell them; Nature became the field of the revelations of the senses, considered quite materially. The forms of Nature were no longer perceived as the work of the Divine-Spiritual but as something devoid of spirit, and yet something of which it is affirmed that it brings forth that spiritual element in which man lives. On the other hand, as regards a Spirit-world, men would now accept only what the historical accounts narrated. Direct vision of the Spirit working in the past was discredited, as was the vision of the Spirit in the present. In the soul of man there now lived only that which came from the sphere of the present, which Michael does not enter. Man was glad to stand on ‘sure’ ground. He believed he possessed this because in ‘Nature’ he sought no thoughts, in which he might have had to fear the presence of arbitrary fancies. But Michael was not glad. In his own sphere, beyond man, he had to wage war with Lucifer and Ahriman. This resulted in tragic difficulty, because Lucifer is able to approach man the more easily, the more Michael — who indeed also preserves the past — is obliged to keep himself away from man. And thus a severe battle for man took place between Michael and Ahriman and Lucifer in the spiritual world immediately bordering upon the Earth, while on the Earth itself man kept his soul in action against what was beneficial to his evolution. All this applies of course to the spiritual life of Europe and America. We should have to speak differently with respect to that of Asia. 134. In the very earliest time of the evolution of the Spiritual Soul, man began to feel that he had lost the picture of Humanity — the picture of his own Being — which had formerly been given to him in Imagination. Powerless as yet to find it in the Spiritual Soul, he sought for it by way of Natural Science or of History. He wanted the ancient picture of Humanity to arise in him again. 135. Man reaches no fulfilment in this way. Far from becoming filled with the true being of Humanity, he is only led into illusions. But he is unaware that they are so; he thinks they have real power to sustain Humanity. 136. Thus, in the time that went before his working upon Earth, Michael had to witness with anxiety and suffering the evolution of mankind. For in this time men eschewed any real contemplation of the Spirit, and thus they severed all the links that connected them with Michael.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

Third Study: Michael is Suffering Over Human Evolution Before the Time of His Earthly Activity

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c13.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c13

Our study of the Michael Mystery was irradiated by thoughts of the Mystery of Golgotha. For, in effect, Michael is the Power who leads man towards the Christ along the true way of man's salvation. But the Michael Mission is one of those that are repeated again and again in rhythmical succession in the cosmic evolution of mankind. In its beneficial influence on earthly mankind it was repeated before the Mystery of Golgotha. It was connected in that time with all the active revelations which the Christ-Force — as yet external to the Earth — had to pour down to the Earth for the unfolding of mankind. After the Mystery of Golgotha, the Michael Mission enters the service of what must now be achieved in earthly humanity through Christ Himself. In its repetitions, the Michael Mission now appears in a changed and ever-progressing form. The point is that it appears in repetitions. The Mystery of Golgotha, on the other hand, is an all embracing World-event, taking place once only in the whole course of the cosmic evolution of mankind. It was only when humanity had reached the unfolding of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul that the ever-continued danger which was there potentially from the beginning — the danger lest humanity's existence should become severed from the existence of the Divine-Spiritual — made itself fully felt. And in the same manner in which the soul of man loses the conscious experience in and with the Divine-Spiritual Beings, there emerges around him that which we today call ‘Nature.’ Man no longer sees the essence and being of Humanity in the Divine-Spiritual Cosmos; he sees the accomplished work of the Divine-Spiritual in this earthly realm. To begin with, however, he sees it not in the abstract form in which it is seen today — not as physically sensible events and entities held together by those abstract ideal contents which we call ‘Natural Laws.’ To begin with, he sees it still as Divine-Spiritual Being — Divine-Spiritual Being surging up and down in all that he perceives around him, in the birth and decay of living animals, in the springing and sprouting of the plant-world, in the activity of water-wells and rivers, in cloud and wind and weather. All these processes of being around him represent to him the gestures, deeds and speech of the Divine Being at the foundation of ‘Nature.’ Once upon a time, man had seen in the constellations and movements of the stars the deeds and gestures of the Divine Beings of the Cosmos, whose words he was thus able to read in the heavens. In like manner, the ‘facts of Nature’ now became for him an expression of the Goddess of the Earth. For the Divinity at work in Nature was conceived as feminine. Far down into the Middle Ages, the relics of this mode of conception were still at work in the souls of men, filling the Intellectual or Mind-Soul with an Imaginative content. When men of knowledge wanted to bring the ‘processes of Nature’ to the understanding of their pupils, they spoke of the deeds of the ‘Goddess.’ It was only with the gradual dawn of the Spiritual Soul that this living study of Nature, filled as it was with inner soul, grew unintelligible to mankind. The way in which men looked in this direction in the age of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul is reminiscent of the Myth of Persephone and of the mystery that underlies it. Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, is compelled by the God of the Underworld to follow him into his kingdom. Eventually it is achieved that she spends one-half of the year only in the Nether world and dwells for the remainder of the year in the Upper world. This Myth of Persephone was still a great and wonderful expression of the way in which Man, in an age of immemorial antiquity, had perceived and known the evolutionary process of the Earth in dream-like clairvoyance. In primeval times all the world-creative activity had proceeded from the surroundings of the Earth. The Earth itself was only in process of becoming, and moulded its existence in cosmic evolution from out of the activities of the surrounding world. The Divine-Spiritual Beings of the Cosmos were the creators and moulders of the Earth's existence. But when the Earth was far enough advanced to become an independent heavenly body, Divine-Spiritual Being descended from the great Cosmos to the Earth and became the Earth-Divinity. This cosmic fact the dream-like clairvoyance of primeval mankind had seen and known; and of such knowledge the Myth of Persephone remained — but not only this. For indeed, far down even into the Middle Ages, the way in which men sought to know and penetrate into ‘Nature’ was still a relic of the same ancient knowledge. It was not yet as in these later times, when men only see according to their sense-impressions, i.e., according to that which appears on the surface of the Earth. They still saw according to the forces that work upwards to the surface from the depths of the Earth. And these ‘forces of the depths’ — the ‘forces of the Nether world’ — they saw in mutual interplay with the influences of the stars and elements working from the Earth's environment. The plants in their varied forms grow forth, revealing themselves in many-coloured glory. Therein are at work the forces of Sun and Moon and Stars, together with the forces of the Earth's depths. The ground and foundation for this is given in the minerals, whose existence is entirely conditioned by that part of the cosmic Beings which has become earthly. Through those heavenly forces alone, which have become earthly, rock and stone shoot forth out of the Nether world. The animal kingdom, on the other hand, has not assumed the forces of the earthly depths. It comes into being through those world-forces alone which are at work from the surroundings of the Earth. It owes its growth, development and surging life, its powers of nutrition, its possibilities of movement, to the Sun-forces streaming down to the Earth. And under the influence of the Moon-forces streaming down to the Earth it has the power to reproduce itself It appears in manifold forms and species because the starry constellations are working in manifold ways from the Cosmos, shaping and moulding this animal life. The animals are, as it were, only placed down here on Earth from out the Cosmos. It is only with their dim life of consciousness that they partake in the earthly realm; with their origin, development and growth, with all that they are in order to be able to perceive and move about, they are no earthly creatures. This mightily conceived idea of the evolution of the Earth lived once upon a time in mankind. The greatness of the conception is scarcely recognisable any longer in the relics of it which came down to the Middle Ages. To attain this knowledge one must go back, with the true vision of the seer, into very ancient times. For even the physical documents that are extant do not reveal what was really present there in the souls of men, save to those who are able to penetrate to it by a spiritual path. Now man is not in a position to hold himself so much aloof from the Earth as do the animals. In saying this, we are approaching the Mystery of Humanity as well as the Mystery of the Animal Kingdom. These Mysteries were reflected in the animal cults of the ancient peoples, and above all in that of the Egyptians. They saw the animals as beings who are but guests upon the Earth, and in whom one may perceive the nature and activity of the spiritual world immediately adjoining this earthly realm. And when in pictures they portrayed the human figure in connection with the animal, they were representing to themselves the forms of those elementary, intermediate beings who, though they are indeed in cosmic evolution on the way to humanity, yet purposely refrain from entering the earthly realm, in order not to become human. For there are such elementary, intermediate beings and in picturing them the Egyptians were but reproducing what they saw. Such beings, however, have not the full self-consciousness of man, to attain to which man had to enter this earthly world so completely as to receive something of this earthly nature into his very own. Man had to be exposed to the fact that in this earthly world, though the work of the Divine-Spiritual Beings with whom he is connected is indeed present here, yet it is only their accomplished work . And just because only the accomplished work, severed from its Divine origin, is present here, therefore the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings have access to it. Thus it becomes necessary for man to make this realm of the Divine-accomplished work, permeated as it is by Lucifer and Ahriman, the field of action for one part — namely, the earthly part — of his life's development. So long as man had not progressed to the unfolding of his Intellectual or Mind-Soul, this was possible, without man's nature becoming permanently severed from its original Divine-Spiritual foundation. But when this point was reached, a corruption took place in man — a corruption of the physical, the etheric and the astral bodies. To an ancient science, this corruption was known as something that was living in man's nature. It was known as a thing that was necessary in order that consciousness might advance to self-consciousness in man. In the stream of knowledge that was cultivated in the centres of learning founded by Alexander the Great, there lived an Aristotelianism which, rightly understood, contained this ‘corruption’ as an essential element in its psychology. It was only in a later time that these ideas were no longer penetrated in their inward essence. In the ages before the evolution of his Intellectual or Mind Soul, man was, however, interwoven still with the forces of his Divine-Spiritual origin, so much so that from their cosmic field of action these forces were able to balance and hold in check the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Powers that reach out to man on Earth. And from the human side enough was done by way of co-operation to maintain the balance, in those actions of Ritual and of the Mysteries, wherein the picture was unfolded of the Divine-Spiritual Being diving down into the realm of Lucifer and Ahriman and coming forth again triumphant. Hence in times prior to the Mystery of Golgotha we find in the religious rites of different peoples pictorial representations of that which afterwards, in the Mystery of Golgotha, became reality. When the Intellectual or Mind-Soul was unfolded, it was through the reality alone that man could continue to be preserved from being severed from the Divine-Spiritual Beings who belonged to him. The Divine had to enter inwardly as Being, even in the earthly life, into the Organisation of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul which, during earthly existence, has its life from what is earthly. This took place through the Divine-Spiritual Logos, Christ, uniting His cosmic destiny with the Earth for the sake of mankind. Persephone came down to the Earth in order to save the plant kingdom from being obliged to form itself from what belongs only to Earth. That is the descent of a Divine Spiritual Being into the Nature of the Earth. Persephone, too, has a kind of ‘resurrection.’ but this takes place annually, in rhythmical succession. Over against this event — which is also a cosmic event occurring on the Earth — we have for Humanity the descent of the Logos. Persephone descends to bring Nature into its original direction. In this case there must be rhythm at the foundation; for the events in Nature take place rhythmically. The Logos descends into humanity. This occurs once during human evolution. For the evolution of humanity is but one part in a gigantic cosmic rhythm, in which, before the stage of man's existence, humanity was something altogether different, and in which, after this stage is passed, it will be something altogether different again; whereas the plant life repeats itself as such in shorter rhythms. From the age of the Spiritual Soul onwards it is necessary for humanity to see the Mystery of Golgotha in this light. For already in the age of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul there would have been a danger of man being separated, if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place. In the age of the Spiritual Soul a complete darkening of the Spirit-world would needs come about for human consciousness, if the Spiritual Soul could not strengthen itself sufficiently to look back in inward vision to its Divine-Spiritual origin. If, however, it is able to do this, it finds the cosmic Logos, as the Being Who can lead it back. It fills itself with the mighty picture which reveals what took place on Golgotha. The beginning of this understanding is the loving comprehension of the cosmic Christmas, the cosmic Initiation-Night, the festive remembrance of which is celebrated each year. For the Spiritual Soul, which first receives the element of Intellectuality, is strengthened by allowing true love to enter into this, the coldest element of soul. And the warmth of true love is there in its highest form when it goes out to the Jesus child who appears on Earth during the cosmic Initiation-Night. In this way man has allowed the highest earthly Spirit-fact, which was at the same time a physical event, to work upon his soul; he has entered upon the path by which he receives Christ into himself. Nature must be recognised in such a way that in Persephone — or the Being who was still seen in the early Middle Ages when they spoke of ‘Nature’ — it reveals the Divine Spiritual, original and eternal Force out of which it originated and continually originates, as the foundation of earthly human existence. The world of Man must be so recognised that in Christ it reveals the original and eternal Logos who works for the unfolding of the Spirit-being of man in the sphere of the Divine Spiritual Being bound up with man from the Beginning. To turn the human heart in love to these great cosmic facts: this is the true content of the festival of remembrance which approaches man each year when he contemplates the cosmic Initiation-Night of Christmas. If love such as this lives in human hearts, it permeates the cold light-element of the Spiritual Soul with warmth. Were the Spiritual Soul obliged to remain without such permeation, man would never become filled with the Spirit. He would die in the cold of the intellectual consciousness; or he would have to remain in a mental life that did not progress to the unfolding of the conscious Spiritual Soul. He would then come to a stop with the unfolding of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. But in its essential nature the Spiritual Soul is not cold. It seems to be so only at the commencement of its unfolding, because at that stage it can only reveal the light-element in its nature, and not as yet the cosmic warmth in which it has indeed its origin. To feel and experience Christmas in this way will enable the soul to realise how the glory of the Divine-Spiritual Beings, whose images are revealed in the Stars, announces itself to man, and how man's liberation takes place, within the precincts of the Earth, from the Powers which wish to alienate him from his origin . (Christmas, 1924) 137. The activity in the evolution of the World and Mankind which comes about through the forces of Michael, repeats itself rhythmically, though in ever-changing and progressing forms, before the Mystery of Golgotha and after. 138. The Mystery of Golgotha is the greatest event, occurring once and for all in the evolution of mankind. Here there can be no question of a rhythmic repetition. For while the evolution of mankind also stands within a mighty cosmic rhythm, still it is one — one vast member in a cosmic rhythm. Before it became this One, mankind was something altogether different from mankind; afterwards it will again be altogether different. Thus there are many Michael events in the evolution of mankind, but there is only one event of Golgotha. 139. In the quick rhythmic repetition of the seasons of the year, the Divine-Spiritual Being which descended into the depths of Earth to permeate Nature's process with the Spirit, accomplishes this process. It is the ensouling of Nature with the Forces of the Beginning and of Eternity which must remain at work; even as Christ's descent is the ensouling of Mankind with the Logos of the Beginning and of Eternity, whose working for the salvation of mankind shall never cease.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

A Christmas Study: The Mystery of the Logos

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c14.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c14

In the spatial Cosmos we have the contrast of the Universal spaces and the Earthly centre. In the Universal spaces the stars, as it were, are scattered wide, while from the Earthly centre forces are streaming out in all directions into the far spread Universe. To man as he stands in the world in the present cosmic epoch, it is only as a great totality that the glory of the stars and the working of the earthly forces can represent the finished work of the Divine-Spiritual Beings with whom he in his inner being is connected. But there was once a cosmic epoch when the glory of the stars and the forces of the Earth were still a direct spiritual revelation of the Divine-Spiritual Beings. At that time, man in his dim consciousness felt the Divine-Spiritual Beings actively working in his own nature. Another epoch of time ensued. The starry heavens became severed, as a corporeal existence, from the Divine-Spiritual working. There originated what we may call the ‘World-spirit’ and the ‘World-body.’ The World-spirit is a multitude of Divine-Spiritual Beings. In the former epoch these Beings had worked from the starry places inward to the Earth. All that had shone forth from universal space, all that had radiated by way of forces from the earthly centre, was in reality Intelligence and Will of the Divine-Spiritual Beings, who were working creatively upon the Earth and Earth humanity. In the later cosmic epochs — after the Saturn and Sun evolutions — the working of the Intelligence and Will of the Divine-Spiritual Beings became more and more spiritually inward. That in which They had been actively present in the beginning became the ‘World-body’: the harmonious arrangement of stars in universal space. Looking back on these matters with a spiritual world-conception, we may express it thus: From the original spirit-body of the World-creative Beings, the World-spirit and the World-body were evolved. And in the ordering and movement of the stars, the World-body now shows what the Intelligent and Will-imbued working of the Gods once upon a time was like. For the cosmic present however, what was once the Divine Intelligence and Will living and moving freely in the stars, has become fastened in the fixed Laws of the starry universe. Today, therefore, that which shines inward from the starry worlds to man on Earth is no longer an immediate expression of Divine Will and Divine Intelligence, but it is a sign that has come to stand: — a sign of what the Divine Will and Intelligence was, once upon a time, even in the very stars. Potent as it is to call forth wonder in the human soul, we must recognise in the sublime formation of the starry heavens a revelation of the Gods which is of the past; we cannot perceive in it their present revelation. That, however, which in the shining of the stars is ‘of the past,’ is ‘present’ in the Spirit-world. And in this ‘present’ Spirit-world, man with his own true being dwells. Studying the formation of the world, we must look back to an ancient cosmic epoch when the World-spirit and the World-body still worked as an undivided unity. Then we must envisage the middle epoch , in which they unfold as a duality. And at length we must think into the future — into the third epoch when the World-spirit will once again take up the World-body into its active working. For the old epoch, it would have been impossible to ‘calculate’ the constellations and the courses of the stars; for these were then the expression of the free Intelligence and free Will of Divine-Spiritual Beings. Moreover, in the future they will once again become ‘incalculable.’ ‘Calculation’ has a meaning only for the middle cosmic epoch. And this holds good, not only of the constellations and the movements of the stars, but of the working of the forces which radiate from the earthly centre to the far-spread Universe. That which works ‘out of the depths’ also becomes ‘calculable.’ Everything strives from the older cosmic epoch towards the middle epoch, when the Spatial and Temporal becomes ‘calculable,’ and the Divine-Spiritual as manifestation of Intelligence and Will must be sought for ‘behind’ this ‘calculable’ world. Only in this middle epoch are the conditions given for man to progress from a dim state of consciousness to one of free and bright self-conscious being, with a free Intelligence and a free Will of his own. Thus there had to come the time when Copernicus and Kepler could ‘calculate’ the body of the world. For it was through the cosmic forces with which this moment was connected, that the self-consciousness of man had to take shape. The seed of man's self-consciousness had been laid in an older time; and now the time was come when it was far enough advanced to ‘calculate’ the far-spread Universe. On the Earth, ‘History’ takes place. What we call ‘History’ would never have come about if the far spaces of the Universe had not evolved into the ‘hard and fast’ constellations and starry courses. In ‘historic evolution’ on the Earth we have an image — albeit thoroughly transformed — of what was once upon a time ‘heavenly History.’ Earlier peoples still had this ‘heavenly History’ in their consciousness, and were indeed far more aware of it than of the Earthly. In earthly History there lives the intelligence and will of men — in connection, to begin with, with the cosmic Will and Intelligence of the Gods; then, independent of them. In heavenly History, on the other hand, there lived the Intelligence and Will of the Divine-Spiritual Beings who are connected with mankind. When we look back into the spiritual life of nations, we come to an age of far-distant antiquity when there was present in man a consciousness of being and willing in communion with the Divine-Spiritual Beings — so much so that ,the History of men was heavenly History. The man of that age, when he came to speak of ‘origins,’ did not relate earthly events but cosmic. And even in relation to his own present time, that which was going on in his earthly environment seemed to him so insignificant beside the cosmic processes that he gave his attention to the latter only, not to the former. There was an epoch when humanity was conscious of beholding the history of the heavens in mighty and impressive revelations, wherein the Divine-Spiritual Beings themselves stood before the soul of man. They spoke, and man in Dream Inspiration hearkened to their speech; they revealed their forms, and in Dream-Imagination man saw them. This heavenly History, which for a long time filled the souls of men, was followed by the mythical History, generally regarded in our time as a poetic creation of the ancients. Mythical History combines heavenly events with earthly. ‘Heroes,’ for instance, — super-human beings — appear on the scene. They are beings at a higher stage in evolution than the human being. In a given epoch, for example, man had developed the members of human nature only so far as to the Sentient Soul, but the ‘Hero’ had already evolved what will one day appear in man as Spirit-Self. In the existing conditions of the Earth, the ‘Hero’ could not incarnate directly, but he could do so indirectly by diving down into the body of a human being, and thus becoming able to work as a man among men. Such beings are to be seen in the ‘Initiates’ of an earlier time. To understand the true position of the facts in this world process, we must not imagine that in the successive epochs mankind ‘conceived’ of the processes and events in just this way. But that which actually took place, as between the more spiritual, ‘incalculable’ and the corporeal, ‘calculable’ world, underwent a change. Long after the world-relationships had actually changed, human consciousness in this or that nation still held fast to a world-conception corresponding to a far earlier reality. To begin with, this was due to the fact that the consciousness of men, which does not keep pace exactly with the cosmic process, really continued to behold the old condition. Afterwards there came a time in which the vision faded, but men still held fast to the old by tradition. Thus in the Middle Ages an in-playing of the heavenly world into the earthly was still conceived out of tradition, but it was no longer seen, for the force of Imaginative picture-seeing was no longer present. In the earthly realm, the different peoples evolved in such a way as to hold fast to the content of one or other world conception for varying periods of time. Thus, world conceptions which by their nature follow one upon the other are found living side by side. Albeit, the variety of world conceptions is due not to this alone, but also to the fact that the different nations, according to their inner talents, did really see different spiritual things. Thus the Egyptians beheld the world in which beings dwell who have come to a premature standstill on the path of human evolution and have not become earthly Man. The Egyptians too saw man himself, after his earthly life, in the midst of all that he had to do with beings such as these. The Chaldaean peoples, on the other hand, saw more the way in which extra-earthly spiritual Beings, both good and evil, entered into the earthly life to work there. The ancient ‘Heavenly History’ properly speaking, which belonged to a very long epoch of time, was followed by the epoch of Mythological History, shorter, but, in comparison to the subsequent period of ‘History’ in the accepted sense, none the less very long. It is, as I explained above, only with difficulty that man in his consciousness takes leave of the old conceptions wherein the Gods and men are thought of in living interplay and co-operation. Thus the period of Earthly History in the proper sense has long been present; it has in fact been present since the unfolding of the Intellectual or Mind-soul. Nevertheless for a long time men continued to ‘think’ in the sense of what had been before. It was only when the first germs of the Spiritual Soul evolved, that they began therewith to pay attention to what is now called ‘History in the proper sense.’ And in this Human-Spiritual element, which, loosed from the Divine-Spiritual, becomes ‘History,’ the free Intelligence and the free Will can be experienced consciously by men. Thus the World-process in which man is interwoven, runs its course between the fully calculable and the working of the free Intelligence and the free Will. This World-process manifests itself in all conceivable intermediate shades of co-operation between these two. Man lives his life between birth and death in such a manner that in the ‘calculable’ the bodily foundation is created for the unfolding of his inner soul-and-spirit nature, which is free and incalculable. He goes through his life between death and new birth in the incalculable, but in such a way that the calculable there unfolds, in thought, ‘within’ his existence of soul and spirit. Out of this calculable element he thereby becomes the builder of his coming life on Earth. That which cannot be calculated is manifested forth on Earth in ‘History,’ but into it the calculable is incorporated, though only to a slight extent. The Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings oppose themselves to the order which is established between the incalculable and the calculable by the Divine-Spiritual Beings who have been united with man from the very beginning; they oppose the harmonising of the Cosmos by the Divine-Spiritual Beings through ‘measure, number and weight.’ Lucifer cannot unite anything calculable with the nature that he has given to his being. His ideal is a cosmic and unconditioned activity of Intelligence and Will. This Luciferic tendency is in keeping with the cosmic order in the realms in which there should be happenings that are free. And Lucifer is there the competent spiritual helper of the unfolding of humanity. Without his assistance freedom could not enter into the human life of spirit and soul which is built on the foundation of the calculable bodily nature. But Lucifer would like to extend this tendency to the whole Cosmos. And in this, his activity becomes a conflict against the Divine-Spiritual order to which man originally belongs. At this point Michael steps in. With his own being he stands within the incalculable; but he balances the incalculable with the calculable, which he bears within him as the cosmic Thought that he has received from his Gods. The position of the Ahrimanic Powers in the world is different. They are the exact opposite of the Divine-Spiritual Beings with whom man is originally united. At the present time these latter are purely spiritual Powers who possess absolutely free Intelligence and absolutely free Will, but in this Intelligence and Will they create the wise insight of the necessity of the calculable and the unfree — the cosmic Thought out of whose lap man is to unfold as a free being. And in the Cosmos they are united in love with all that is calculable — with the cosmic Thought. This love streams from them through the Universe. In complete contrast with this, there lives, in the greedy desire of the Ahrimanic powers, cold hatred against all that unfolds in freedom. Ahriman's efforts are directed towards making a cosmic machine out of that which he allows to stream forth from the Earth into universal space. His ideal is ‘measure, number and weight’ and nothing else than these. He was called into the Cosmos that serves the evolution of humanity, because ‘measure, number and weight,’ which is his sphere, had to be unfolded. The world is truly understood only by one who comprehends it everywhere with respect to spirit and body. This must be carried right into Nature, with respect to such Powers as the Divine-Spiritual who work in love and the Ahrimanic who work in hatred. In Nature's cosmic warmth which comes in spring and works more strongly towards summer, we must perceive the love of the Divine-Spiritual Beings working through Nature; in the icy blast of winter we must become aware of Ahriman's working. At midsummer, Lucifer's power weaves itself into the love that works in Nature: — into the warmth. At Christmas the power of the Divine-Spiritual Beings with whom man is originally united is directed against the frost-hatred of Ahriman. And towards spring the Divine Love working in Nature continually softens down the Ahriman-hatred there. The appearance of this Divine Love which comes each year is a time of remembrance, for with Christ the free element of God entered into the calculable element of Earth. Christ works in absolute freedom in the calculable element, and in this way He renders innocuous the Ahrimanic which craves for the calculable alone. The Event of Golgotha is the free cosmic deed of love within Earthly History, and it can only be grasped by the love which man develops for its comprehension. (About Christmas, 1924) 140. The cosmic process in which the evolution of mankind is interwoven — reflected, in the consciousness of man, as ‘History’ in the widest sense — reveals the following successive epochs: a long epoch of ‘Heavenly History’; a shorter epoch of ‘Mythological History’; and the epoch, relatively very short, of ‘Earthly History.’ 141. Today, this cosmic process is divided, into the working of Divine-Spiritual Beings in free Intelligence and Will which none can calculate, and the ‘calculable’ process of the World-body. 142. Against the calculable order of the World-body the Luciferian Powers stand opposed; against all that creates in free Intelligence and Will, the Ahrimanic. 143. The Event of Golgotha is a cosmic deed, and free. Springing from the Universal love, it is intelligible only by the love in Man.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

Heavenly History - Mythological History - Earthly History. The Mystery of Golgotha

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c15.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c15

When we are able to look back with spiritual knowledge into the former Earth-lives of a human being, we find that there are a number of such lives in which man was already a ‘person.’ His outward form was similar to what it is today, and he had an inner life of individual stamp and character. Earthly lives emerge, revealing that the Intellectual or Mind-Soul was present in them, but not as yet the Spiritual Soul; others appear, in which only the Sentient Soul was developed — and so forth. We find it so in the epochs of Earthly History, and indeed it was so long before these epochs. But as we look back still farther, we come into ages of time when it was not yet so — ages in which we find Man interwoven still, both in his inner life and in his outer formation, with the world of Divine-Spiritual Beings. Man is already there as earthly man, but he is not yet detached from Divine Spiritual Being, Thinking and Willing. And in yet earlier epochs man as a separate being disappears altogether; there are present only the Divine Spiritual Beings, bearing man within them. Man has undergone these three stages of evolution during his earthly time. The transition from the first to the second took place in the latest epoch of Lemuria; that from the second to the third in Atlantean times. Now just as in his present earthly life man bears his experiences within him in the shape of memory, so does he bear within him as a cosmic memory all that he has undergone in the way above described. What is the earthly life of the soul? It is the world of our memories, ready at every moment to have fresh perceptions. In this interplay of memory and fresh experience, man lives, his inner life on Earth. But this inner life on Earth could not unfold at all if there were not present still in man, as a cosmic memory, what we see when we look back with spiritual vision into the first stage of his becoming Earthly Man — the stage in which he was not yet detached from Divine-Spiritual Being. Of all that took place in the world at that time, there is livingly present on the Earth today, that alone which is unfolded within the human system of nerves and senses. In outer Nature, all the forces that were then at work have died and can now only be seen in their dead forms. Thus in the human world of Thought there lives as a present manifestation something which, in order to have earthly existence, requires as its basis the very thing that was already evolved in man before he attained individual, earthly being. Every time he passes through the life between death and a new birth, man experiences this stage anew. But into the world of Divine-Spiritual Beings, which receives him again even as it once entirely contained him — into this world he now carries his full individual existence which has taken shape during his lives on Earth. Between death and a new birth, man is indeed in the present, but he is living also in all the time that he has undergone through repeated lives on Earth and lives between death and a new birth. It is different with that which lives in the Feeling-world of man. This is related to those experiences of the past which came immediately after the ones in which man was yet unmanifest as such. It is related, that is to say, to experiences which man already underwent as man but when he was not yet separated from Divine-Spiritual Being, Thinking and Willing. Man in the present could not unfold the world of Feeling if it did not arise on the foundation of his rhythmic system. And in his rhythmic system we have the cosmic memory of the above-described second stage of his evolution. Thus in the world of Feeling the ‘present’ in the human soul is working together with that which works on in him from an ancient time. In the life between death and a new birth, man experiences the contents of the epoch of which we are here speaking as the boundary of his Cosmos. What the starry heavens are to man in the physical life on Earth, his existence between his full union with the Divine-Spiritual world and his severance from it, is to him spiritually in the life between death and a new birth. In that life, there appear to him at the ‘world-boundary’, not the physical heavenly bodies, but in the place of each star the sum-total of Divine-Spiritual Beings, who, as we know, are in reality the star. Connected with the Will alone and not with Feeling or with Thought, there lives in man that which is manifested by those earthly lives which, when we look back on them, reveal already the personal, individual character. That which from cosmic sources gives to man his outer form, is preserved in this outer form as a cosmic memory. This cosmic memory lives in the human form as a totality of forces. But these are not the immediate forces of the Will; they represent that in the human organism which is the foundation of the forces of the Will. In the life between death and a new birth, this region of the human being lies beyond the ‘world-boundary.’ Man there conceives of it as of something that will belong to him once more in his new life on Earth. In his system of nerves and senses, man is today still united with the Cosmos in the way he was when he was manifest only germinally within the Divine-Spiritual womb. In his rhythmic system, man is today still living in the Cosmos in the way he lived when he was already there as man, but not yet detached from the Divine-Spiritual. In his system of metabolism and limbs — the foundation for the unfolding of his Will — man lives in such a way that all that he has undergone in his personal individual lives on Earth, ever since these began, and in his lives between death and a new birth, works on within this system. From the forces of the Earth, man receives that alone which gives him consciousness of self. The physical bodily foundation of self-consciousness is due also to what the Earth brings about. But everything else in the human being has a cosmic origin, external to the Earth. The sentient and thought-bearing astral body with its etheric-physical foundation, all the moving life in the etheric body, and even that which works physico-chemically in the physical body, is of extra-earthly origin. Strange as this may seem, the physico-chemical which is at work within the human being is not derived from the Earth. The fact that man evolves this extra-earthly, cosmic life within him, is due to the working of the planets and other stars . All that he thus unfolds, the Sun with its forces carries to the Earth. By the Sun, the human-cosmic element is transplanted into the earthly realms. By the Sun, man lives as a heavenly being on the Earth. And that alone, whereby he transcends his own human formation — namely, his power to bring forth his kind — is a gift of the Moon. Needless to say these are not the only influences of Sun and Moon. Lofty spiritual influences also proceed from them. When about Christmas-time the Sun increases more and more in power for the Earth, it is the yearly influence — manifesting rhythmically in the physical-earthly realm — which is an expression of the Spirit in Nature. The evolution of mankind is a single member in what we may describe as a gigantic cosmic year, as will be evident from our preceding studies. And in this cosmic year the cosmic Christmas is at the point where the Sun not only works towards the Earth out of the Spirit of Nature, but where the Christ-Spirit, the Soul of the Sun, descends on to the Earth. As in the single human being what he experiences individually is connected with the cosmic memory, so will the human soul have a right feeling of the yearly Christmas when he conceives the heavenly and cosmic Christ-Event as working on and on , comprehending it as a memory not only human but cosmic. For at Christmas-time not only man remembers in celebration the descent of Christ, but the Cosmos does so too. (about New Year, 1925) 144. Looking back into a human being's repeated lives on Earth, we find three distinct stages. In a remote past, man did not exist with individuality of being, but as a germ in the Divine and Spiritual. As we look back into this stage we find not yet a human being but Divine-Spiritual Beings: the Primal Forces, Principalities or Archai. 145. This was followed by an intermediate stage. Man existed already with individuality of being, but he was not yet detached from the Thinking and Willing and Being of the Divine-Spiritual World. At this stage he had not yet his present personality, with which he appears on Earth as a being completely self-possessed, detached from the Divine Spiritual World. 146. The present condition is the third and latest. Here man experiences himself in human form and figure, detached from the Divine-Spiritual World; and he experiences the world as an environment with which he stands face to face, individually and personally. This stage began in Atlantean time.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

What is Revealed When One Looks Back into Repeated Lives on Earth

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c16.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c16

In our last study we followed human life as a whole by turning our attention to the successive lives on Earth. The second point of view, which can throw still more light upon what was revealed by the first, is yielded when we consider the successive lives between death and new birth. Here also we see that the content of these lives, such as they are at the present time, goes back only to a certain point of time in earthly evolution. Their content is determined by the circumstance that man carries with him through the gate of death the inward power of self-consciousness gained in earthly life. This also enables him to confront as an individual the Divine-Spiritual Beings into whose presence he comes. This was not the case in a preceding period. At that time man had not yet progressed very far in the unfolding of his self-consciousness. The power gained on Earth was insufficient to detach him from the Divine-Spiritual Beings and so give him individual existence between death and new birth. Not that man was then within the Divine-Spiritual Beings, but he was within their sphere of influence, so that his will was essentially their will, not his own. Before this period there lies another in which, as we look back, we do not meet with man in his present constitution of soul and spirit at all, but we find a world of Divine Spiritual Beings within whom man only exists germinally. These Beings are the Primal Forces, the Archai. And indeed, if we trace back the life of one human being, we find not one Divine-Spiritual Being but all the Beings that belong to this Hierarchy. In these Divine-Spiritual Beings lives the will that man shall be. The will of all these Beings plays a part in the ‘becoming’ of each single human being. The cosmic aim of their harmonious co-operation is the production of the human form ; for man is still without form in the Divine-Spiritual World. It may seem strange that the whole choir of Divine Spiritual Beings should work for a single human being. But the Hierarchies of the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim also worked in this way at a still earlier stage throughout the Moon, Sun and Saturn evolutions, in order that man might come into being. What had previously originated as a kind of pre-human being on Saturn, Sun and Moon, had no uniform shape. Some of these pre-human beings were chiefly organised with respect to the limbs-system, others with respect to the breast system, others again with respect to the head-system. These were actual human beings; we describe them here as pre-human only in order to distinguish them from the later stage, when the union of all these systems appears in the human form. The differentiation among them goes even further, for we may speak of heart-men, lung-men, etc. The Hierarchy of the Primal Forces considered it their task to lead into the general human form all these pre-human beings, whose soul-life also corresponded to their one-sided formation. They took over Man from the hands of the Exusiai. The latter had already in thought created unity out of the human multiplicity; but among the Exusiai this unity was still an ideal form, a World-thought-form. Out of this the Archai moulded the etheric form, and this form already contained the forces which made it possible for the physical shape to originate. When we observe these things a stupendous fact is revealed, viz., that man is the ideal and aim of Gods. But this vision cannot be for man the source of vanity and pride; for he may only reckon, as coming from himself, what he has with full self-consciousness made out of himself during earthly life. And, expressed in cosmic proportions, this is little as compared with that foundation for his individual being which the Gods have created out of the macrocosm which they themselves are, as the microcosm, which he is. The Divine Spiritual Beings confront one another in the Cosmos. The visible expression of this fact is the form of the starry heavens. They wished to create in a unity as Man all that they themselves are as a choir. In order really to understand what the whole choir of the Hierarchy of the Archai accomplished when they created the human form, we must remember that there is a very great difference between this form and the physical body of man. The physical body is made up of the physical and chemical processes in man. These processes take place in the present human being within the human form. But this form itself is something that is altogether spiritual . It ought to fill us with solemn feelings when, on looking at the human form, we realise that with physical senses we are perceiving in the physical world something that is spiritual. For one who is able to see spiritually it is really the case that in the human form he sees a true Imagination which has descended into the physical world. If we wish to see Imaginations we must pass from the physical world to the neighbouring spiritual world, and then we realise how the human form is related to these Imaginations. When with the inner vision of the soul man looks back over the lives between death and a new birth he finds a first period during which this human form originated. And at the same time the deeper relation that exists between man and the Hierarchy of the Archai is revealed. During this period there is just an indication of the difference between earthly life and the life between death and new birth. For the Hierarchy of the Archai works in rhythmical epochs at the development of the human form. In one period of their work the Archai direct the thoughts which guide their several wills more towards the Cosmos beyond the Earth; at another time they look down to the Earth. And out of the co-operation of what is aroused from the Cosmos and from the Earth the human form is developed, which is thus the expression of the fact that man is an Earth-being and at the same time an extra-earthly, cosmic being. But the human form, here described as the creation of the Hierarchy of the Archai, comprises not merely the external outline of man and the formation of the surface as it is determined by the limit of the skin, but also the formation of the forces contained in his carriage, in his power of movement, which is adapted to the conditions on the Earth, and in the capacity to use his body as a means whereby to express his inner being. It is owing to this creative work of the Hierarchy of the Archai that man is able to assume his upright position within the earthly conditions of gravity, that within these conditions he can maintain his balance while moving freely, that he can liberate his arms and hands from the force of gravity and use them freely — all this he owes to the Archai, in addition to much more that lies within him and yet has form. All this is prepared during the life which may also for this period be called the life between death and a new birth. It is here prepared in such a manner that, in the third period, at the present time, man is himself able, during his life between death and a new birth, to work at this form for his earthly existence. (New Year, 1925) 147. Man's lives between death and a new birth also show three distinct periods. In the first of these, he lived entirely within the Hierarchy of the Archai, who prepared, for the physical world, the human form and figure which he was afterwards to bear. 148. Thus the Archai prepared the human being subsequently to unfold the free Self-consciousness. For this Self-consciousness can only evolve in beings who can show it forth, in the form and figure which was here created, out of an inner impulse of the soul. 149. In this we see how qualities and powers of Mankind, becoming manifest in the present cosmic age, were laid down in germ in ages long gone by. We see how the Microcosm grows out of the Macrocosm.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

What is Revealed When One Looks Back into Former Lives Between Death and a New Birth - I

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c17.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c17

In a second period man passes from the realm of the Archai to that of the Archangeloi. With these, however, he is no longer united in so bodily-spiritual a way as he was with the Archai. His union with the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi is more purely spiritual. But it is still so intimate that he cannot yet be said to have been severed in this period from the Divine-Spiritual world. The Archangeloi Hierarchy gives to man for his etheric body that which corresponds in it to the form in the physical, which he owes to the Archai. The physical body, through its form, is adapted to the Earth in such a way as to become on Earth the vehicle of self-consciousness. In like manner the etheric body is adapted to the extra-earthly cosmic forces and relationships of forces. In the physical body lives the Earth; in the etheric the world of the stars. All the inner forces which man bears within him in such a way that while he is on Earth he does at the same time, in his posture, movement and gesture, emancipate himself from the Earth, he owes to the creation of the Archangeloi in his etheric body. As the Earth forces are able to live in the physical body through its formation, so in the etheric body there live the forces which stream down on all sides from the encircling Cosmos to the Earth. The Earth-forces living in the physically visible formation of the body are those which make the form of man relatively complete, hard and fast within itself. Subject to a certain metamorphosis, the main outlines of man remain hard and fast throughout his earthly life. His faculties of movement, too, have hardened into permanent habits and the like. In the etheric body on the other hand, there is perpetual mobility, mirroring the constellations of the stars as they change during the earthly life of man. The etheric body shapes itself even in accordance with the changes in the heavens as between day and night; and it does so also with the changes that take place between the birth and death of the man concerned. This adaptation of the etheric body to the heavenly forces is not in contradiction to the gradual severance of the starry heavens from the Divine-Spiritual Powers, mentioned in earlier studies. It is true to say that in very ancient times Divine Will and Divine Intelligence were living in the stars, and that in later times the stars passed over into the “calculable”. Through what has now become their finished work, the Gods are no longer working upon man. Nevertheless, through his etheric body man gradually achieves a relationship of his own to the stars, just as he does through his physical body to earthly gravity. What man incorporates into his nature when at birth he descends from the Spirit-world on the Earth — namely the etheric body which absorbs the extra-earthly, cosmic forces — is created in this second period by the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi. One of the essential features which man receives through this Hierarchy is his membership of a group of human beings on the Earth. Humanity is differentiated over the face of the Earth. Looking back into this second period, it is not, however, the present differentiation of races and nations that we find, but a somewhat different — a more spiritual one. It is due to the fact that the starry forces strike the different places of the Earth in varying constellations. For on the Earth itself — in the distribution of land and water, in climate, vegetation and the like — the starry heavens are indeed active. Inasmuch as man must adapt himself to these conditions, which are really there as heavenly conditions on the Earth, such adaptation belongs to his etheric body; and the forming of the latter is a creative work of the choir of Archangeloi. But now it is just in this second period that the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Powers enter the life of man in a peculiar degree. Their entry is necessary, albeit to begin with it may seem to be driving man beneath the level of his true nature. If man is to develop self-consciousness in his earthly life, he must get loose from the Divine-Spiritual world from which he originally proceeded, in greater measure than that world itself can bring about. This is what takes place in the time when the Archangeloi are at work upon him. For his union with the Spirit-world is no longer as firm as it was when the Archai were at work upon him. Lucifer and Ahriman are more able to grapple with the spiritual forces proceeding from the Archangeloi, than with the stronger forces of the Archai. The Luciferic Powers permeate the etheric formation of man with a more intense inclination towards the starry world than it would have if the Divine-Spiritual Powers, originally united with man were alone at work. The Ahrimanic Powers entwine his physical formation more tightly in the realm of earthly gravity than would have been the case if they were unable to exert their influence. By this means the seed of full self-consciousness and of free will is planted into man. Much as the Ahrimanic Powers hate free will, in man — by tearing him loose from his Divine Spiritual world — they bring about the germinal beginnings of free will. To begin with, however, during the second period itself, that which the various Hierarchies from the Seraphim down to the Archangeloi have brought about in man, is impressed into his physical and etheric bodies more deeply than would have been possible without the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influence. For without this influence, the working of the Hierarchies would remain more in the astral body and the Ego. Thus it happened that the more spiritual grouping of mankind over the face of the Earth, which the Archangeloi were striving for, did not take place. Being pressed down into the physical and etheric body, the spiritual forces are transformed into their opposite. In place of something more spiritual, the differentiation of races and nations comes about. Without the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influence, human beings on Earth would see themselves differentiated by forces working downwards from the heavens. The different groups would be to one another in their life like beings who willingly with love, give to one another of the spiritual and receive in turn. In races and nations it is earthly gravity which appears through the human body; in the spiritual groupings a mirrored image of the Divine-Spiritual world would have appeared. With all this, the beginnings of what afterwards became the full self-consciousness of man had to be implanted in his evolution already at that time. And this meant that — in a mitigated form, it is true, but yet in a certain way — the primeval differentiation of humanity which existed when man passed over from the Hierarchy of the Exusiai to that of the Archai remained preserved. Man — as it were in a cosmic school — experienced this stage in his evolution, contemplating it with inner feeling. True, he did not yet develop a knowledge of the fact that this was an essential preparation for his subsequent self-consciousness. But his feeling vision of the forces of his evolution at that time was none the less important for the incorporation of self-consciousness into his astral body and his Ego. With respect to Thought, the following took place. By the Luciferic Powers man was informed with the tendency still to immerse himself in the old forms of the Spiritual, instead of adapting himself to the new. Lucifer indeed always has this striving to conserve for man the earlier forms of his life. By this means human Thinking was evolved. In the life between death and a new birth man gradually developed that faculty which in primeval times had formed the thoughts in him. It was a faculty which at that time could behold the Spiritual, though it was like what is now mere sense perception. For at that time the Physical still carried the Spiritual upon its surface. Today, however, the faculty of thought preserved from that time can only work as restricted sense-perception. Man's power to lift himself in thought to the spiritual world gradually declined. This became fully evident at length when in the age of the Spiritual Soul the spiritual world was veiled for man in complete darkness. Thus in the nineteenth century it came about that the best men of science, unable to become materialists, declared: We have no alternative but to limit our research to that world which can be investigated by measure, number and weight and by the senses. We have, however, no right to deny a spiritual world, hidden beneath this world of Nature. In such words they indicated that there might be a world full of light, unknown to man , where man can only stare into an empty darkness. And as Thought in man was misdirected by Lucifer, so was Will by Ahriman. Man's will was endowed with a tendency to a kind of freedom which he should have entered only at a later stage. This freedom is not real; it is but the illusion of freedom. Men lived in this illusion of freedom for a long time, and thereby became unable to evolve the idea of freedom in a truly spiritual way. They vacillated to and fro, between the one opinion and the other: that man is free, or that he is involved in a sphere of rigid necessity. And when with the spiritual Age of Consciousness true freedom came, they were unable to recognise it, because their powers of perception had too long become entangled in the illusion of freedom. All that had sunk into the being of man during this second stage in the evolution of his lives between death and a new birth, he carried as a cosmic memory into the third, in which he still lives today. In this third stage he is related to the Hierarchy of the Angeloi as in the second to that of the Archangeloi. Only, this relationship to the Angeloi is such that through it the full independent individuality comes into being. For the Angeloi — not the chorus this time, but one Angelos for one human being — restrict themselves to the task of bringing about the right relation of the life between death and a new birth and the life on Earth. A fact that may seem remarkable to begin with is this. For the individual human being in the second stage in the evolution of his lives between death and a new birth the whole Hierarchy of Archangeloi was working. Afterwards the guidance of nations and tribes becomes the task of this Hierarchy, and there is then one Archangelos as the Folk-Spirit for one nation. In the races the Primal Forces or Archai remain at work. Here again, for one race, one Being of the Hierarchy of the Primal Forces works as the Race-Spirit. Thus the man of present time contains, in the life between death and a new birth also, the cosmic memory of earlier stages of his life. And in the physical world too, where something of spiritual guidance appears as it does in the races and nations, this cosmic memory is most distinctly present. (New Year, 1925) 150. In a second period of evolution of the lives between death and a new birth, man entered the domain of the Archangeloi. The seed of his later conscious Selfhood — prepared for, in the first period, in the forming of the human figure — was now implanted in the nature of his soul. 151. During this second period he was driven by Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences more deeply into the physical than would have happened without their intervention. 152. In the third period, man enters the domain of the Angeloi, who only wield their influence, however, in the astral body and the Ego. This third period is the present; but what took place in the two former ones still lives on in human evolution and explains the fact that in the nineteenth century — within the age of the Spiritual Soul — man stared into the spiritual world as into vacant darkness.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

What is Revealed When One Looks Back into Former Lives Between Death and a New Birth - II

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c18.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c18

The consciousness of the seer finds the macrocosm increasingly alive, the more his vision penetrates into the past. In the far distant past, the macrocosm so lives that there ceases to be any question of ‘calculating’ the manifestations of its life. Out of this living condition man is then brought forth as a separate being, while the macrocosm enters more and more into the ‘calculable’ sphere. But in this it undergoes a slow process of death. In the same measure in which man — the microcosm — arises as an independent being from the macrocosm, the macrocosm dies. In the present cosmic time, a dead macrocosm is existing. But it was not only man who arose in the process of its evolution. The Earth too came forth out of the macrocosm. Deriving from the Earth the forces for his self-consciousness, man is far too close to it in his inner life to perceive its nature clearly. In the age of the Spiritual Soul, with the full unfolding of self-consciousness, we have grown accustomed to focus our attention on the spatial magnitude of the Universe, and to look on the Earth as a speck of dust, insignificant compared to the great universe of physical space. Hence it will seem strange, to begin with, when spiritual vision unfolds the true cosmic significance of this alleged ‘particle of dust.’ In the mineral ground of the Earth the other kingdoms of Nature — the animal and plant kingdoms — are imbedded. In all this there live the forces which manifest themselves in varied forms of appearance through the seasons. Consider the world of plants. In autumn and winter it manifests the physically dying forces. In this form of appearance, the consciousness of the seer perceives the nature of those forces which have brought about the gradual death of the macrocosm. In spring and summer, forces of growth, springing and sprouting forces, show themselves in the plant life. In the growing, sprouting process, the seer's consciousness perceives not only what brings forth the abundant blessing of the plant life for the given year, but an excess . It is an excess of germinating force . The plants contain more germinating force than they expend upon the growth of foliage, flower and fruit. For the consciousness of the seer, this excess of germinating force flows out into the extra-earthly macrocosm. Now in the same manner a surplus of force streams out from the mineral kingdom to the extra-earthly Cosmos. This force has the task of carrying the forces from the plant-world to the right places in the macrocosm. Under the influence of the mineral forces, the plant-forces become a newly fashioned picture of a macrocosm. Likewise there are forces proceeding from the animal nature. These however do not work, like the plant and mineral forces, radiating from the Earth. They work in such a way that the plant-nature, which the mineral forces carry in clear formation into the great Universe, is gathered into a sphere, so that the picture arises of a macrocosm compact and self-contained on all sides. It is thus the spirit-seeing consciousness beholds the essence of the earthly realm, which stands as a new, life-kindling element within the dead and dying macrocosm . As when the old plant has died and fallen away, the new plant, however large, is formed again from the seed in space so insignificant and small — so while the old dead macrocosm falls asunder a new macrocosm is coming forth from this ‘speck of dust,’ the Earth. It is a true contemplation of the Earth-nature which sees in it on all hands a germinating universe. We only learn to understand the kingdoms of Nature around us when we feel in them the presence of this germinating life. In the midst of it man fulfils his Earth-existence. He partakes in the germinating life as well as in the dead and dying. From the dead he derives the forces of his thought. In the past, when the forces of his thought were coming forth from the still living macrocosm, they did not provide the foundation for self-conscious humanity. They lived, as growth forces, in a human being who did not yet possess self-consciousness. For themselves , the forces of thought must not have life of their own if they are to provide a basis for the free self-consciousness of man. With the macrocosm whose life has gone out, they for themselves must be the dead shadows of what once was living in the primeval Cosmos. On the other side man shares in the germinating life of the Earth, from which he has the forces of his will. These forces are indeed life itself, but with his self-consciousness man does not take part in their real nature. Deep down within the human being they radiate into the shadows of his thought. The shadows of thought flow through them, and in the flowing of free thought as it unfolds within the germinating earthly nature, the full and free human self-consciousness enters into man during this age of the Spiritual Soul. The past throwing its shadows, the future fraught with the germs of a new reality meet in the human being; and their meeting constitutes the human life of present time. That these things are so, is clearly revealed to the consciousness of the seer the moment he enters that spirit-region which immediately adjoins the physical and in which the active presence of Michael is found. The life of all this earthly realm becomes clear and transparent when we feel at its foundation the germ of a new Universe. Every single plant and stone appears in a new light to the soul of man when he becomes aware that each of these creations is contributing by its life or by its form to this great fact: that the Earth in its unity is an embryo — the seed of a macrocosm newly rising into life. One should but try to make the thought of these things fully living in oneself, and one will feel how much it may signify for the human heart and mind. (January, 1925) 153. In the beginning of the age of the Spiritual Soul, it became the custom to turn attention to the physically spatial greatness of the Universe. Impressed above all by this immensity of physical appearance, men speak of the Earth as a mere speck of dust within the Universe. 154. To the consciousness of the seer this ‘speck of dust,’ the Earth, is revealed as the germ and beginning of a new-rising Macrocosm, while the old Macrocosm appears as a thing whose life has died away. For the old Macrocosm had to die, that man might sever himself from it with full Self-consciousness. 155. In the cosmic present, man partakes with the Thought forces that make him free, in the dead Macrocosm; and with the Will-forces, whose essence is concealed from him, in the germinating of this Earth-existence — the Macrocosm newly springing into life.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

What is the Earth in Reality within the Macrocosm?

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c19.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c19

In the study of Anthroposophy, sleeping and waking have been dealt with often and from varied points of view. But our understanding of these facts of life must be deepened and refreshed again and again, when other points in the constitution of the world have been considered by us. Our previous explanation, showing how the Earth is the seed of a newly arising macrocosm, will give us fresh possibilities for a deeper understanding of sleeping and waking. In the waking state, man lives in the Thought-shadows cast by a dead and dying world, and in the Will-impulses into the inner nature of which, with his ordinary consciousness, he can no more penetrate than into the processes of deep, dreamless sleep. Where sub-conscious impulses of Will flow into the shadows of Thought, the free dominion of self-consciousness arises. In this self-consciousness, the human ‘Ego’ lives. While man experiences his environment in this condition, his inner feeling is permeated by extra-earthly, cosmic impulses, entering from a remote and cosmic past into the present time. He does not become conscious of this fact. For a being can only become conscious of things in which it partakes with its own, dying forces, and not with the growing forces that are the creative kindlers of its life. Thus man experiences himself in consciousness while that which lies at the basis of his inner being is lost to the eye of his mind. And by this very fact he is able, during the waking state, to feel himself so entirely within his shadowed Thoughts. There is no glimmer of life to hinder the full absorption of his inner being in the dead and dying. But from this his ‘life in the dead and dying,’ the essential being of the earthly sphere conceals the fact that it is in reality the seed of a new Universe. Man in the waking state does not perceive the Earth in its true nature. The cosmic life that is germinating in the Earth escapes him. Thus man lives in what the Earth gives to him as the basis of his self-consciousness. In the age of unfolding of the self-conscious Ego, the true form both of his inner impulses and of his outer environment is lost to his mind's eye. But as he thus hovers over the true being of the world, he experiences in consciousness the being of the ‘I’: he experiences himself as a self-conscious being. Above him is the extra-earthly Cosmos; beneath him, in the earthly realm, a world whose true essence is hidden from him. But in between, the free ‘I’ manifests itself, its essence radiating out in the full light of knowledge and of free volition. It is different in the sleeping state. In sleep, man lives in his astral body and Ego in the germinating life of the Earth. The strongest ‘urge into new life’ is there in the environment of man in dreamless sleep. His dreams too are permeated by this life, though not so intensely as to prevent him from experiencing them in a kind of semi-consciousness. Gazing half consciously upon his dreams, man witnesses the creative forces whereby he himself is woven out of the Cosmos. Even while the dream lights up, the Astral — kindling man to life — becomes visible as it flows into the etheric body. In this lighting-up of dreams, Thought is still alive . It is only after man wakens that Thought is gathered up into the forces whereby it dies and becomes a shadow. This connection between our dream-conceptions and our waking thoughts is of the greatest significance. Man thinks within the sphere of those very forces whereby he grows and lives. Yet he cannot become a thinker until these forces die. At this point there dawns in us a true understanding of why it is that man takes hold of the reality of things in Thought. For in his thoughts he possesses the dead picture of that which, working from the fully living reality of the world, builds and creates him. It is the dead picture. But this dead picture proceeds from the work of the greatest painter — from the very Cosmos. It is true that the life remains out of it. If it did not, the Ego of man could not unfold. Nevertheless, the full content of the Universe, in all its greatness, is contained within this picture. So far as was possible at that time and in that context, I indicated this inner relation of Thought and World-reality in my ‘Philoso phy of Freedom.’ It is in the passage of that book where I say that there is indeed a bridge leading from the thinking Ego's depths to the depths of Nature's reality. Sleep extinguishes the ordinary consciousness because it carries us into the germinating life of Earth — the Earth as it springs forth into the new, living Macrocosm. When the extinction is overcome by Imaginative consciousness, there stands before the human soul — not a sharply outlined Earth in mineral, plant and animal kingdoms of Nature — but a vital process, kindled to life within this Earth and flaming forth into the Macrocosm. It is thus: In the waking state man must lift himself with his own Ego-being out of the being of the world, in order to attain to free self-consciousness. And in sleep he unites with the being of the world once more. Such is the rhythm in the present moment of cosmic time the rhythm of man's earthly existence outside the inner being of the world while he experiences his own being in consciousness, and of his existence within the inner being of the world where the consciousness of his own being is extinguished. In the condition between death and a new birth, the human Ego lives within the Beings of the Spirit-world. Then, everything that was withdrawn from man's consciousness during his waking life on Earth comes into it again. The macrocosmic forces emerge from their full state of life in a far distant past to their dead and dying nature in the present. And there emerge the earthly forces — the seed of the new living macrocosm. Then the human being looks into his sleeping states as clearly as in his earthly life he looks forth upon the Earth that glistens in the sunlight. The Macrocosm, as it is today, has indeed become a thing of death. Yet it is through this alone that between death and a new birth man can undergo a life which signifies, compared to the waking life on Earth, a loftier awakening. For it is indeed an awakening, whereby he becomes able fully to control the forces that light up so dimly and fleetingly in dreams. These forces fill the Cosmos, they are all-pervading. From them the human being derives the impulses through which, as he descends on to the Earth, he forms this body — the greatest work-of-art of the Macrocosm. That which lights up so dimly in the dream — deserted, as it were, by the clear light of the sun — lives in the Spirit-world where the spiritual Sun flows through and through it, and where it waits until the Beings of the Hierarchies or man himself shall summon it to the creation of a new existence. 156. In Waking life, to experience himself in full and free Self-consciousness, man must forego the conscious experience of Reality in its true form, both in his existence and in that of Nature. Out of the ocean of Reality he lifts himself, that in his shadowed Thoughts he may make his own ‘I’ his very own in consciousness. 157. In Sleep, man lives with the life of his environment of Earth, but this very life extinguishes his consciousness of Self. 158. In Dreaming, there flickers up into half-consciousness the potent World-existence out of which the being of man is woven and from which, in his descent from Spirit-world, he builds his body. In earthly life this World-existence with its potent forces is put to death in man; it dies into the shadows of his Thought. For only so can it become the basis of self-conscious Manhood.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

Sleeping and Waking in the Light of Recent Studies

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c20.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c20

When the Mystery of Golgotha took place, the ‘Gnosis’ was the mode of thought of those among humanity who were able, already at that time, to understand this event — the most momentous in the earthly evolution of mankind — with an understanding not only of deep feeling but of clear knowledge. To comprehend the mood of soul whereby the Gnosis lived in man, we must bear in mind that its age was the age of unfolding of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. In this same fact we can discover the cause of the disappearance — well-nigh complete — of the Gnosis from human history. Till we can thus understand it, the disappearance of the Gnosis is, after all, one of the most astonishing occurrences in human evolution. The unfolding of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul was preceded by that of the Sentient Soul, and this in turn by that of the Sentient Body. When the facts of the world are perceived through the Sentient Body, the whole of man's knowledge lives in his senses. He perceives the world coloured, resonant, and so forth; but within the colours and sounds, within the states of warmth, he knows the presence of a world of Spiritual Beings. He does not speak of ‘substances,’ of ‘matter’ to which the phenomena of colour, warmth, etc., are supposed to adhere, but of Spiritual Beings who manifest themselves through the perceptions of the senses. In this age, there is as yet no special development of an ‘intellect’ — there is no intellect in man beside the faculty of sense-perception. Man either gives himself up with his own being to the outer world, in which case the Gods reveal themselves to him through the senses; or else in his soul-life he withdraws from the outer world and is then aware of a dim sense of life within. But a far-reaching change takes place with the unfolding of the Sentient Soul. The manifestation of the Divine through the senses grows dim and fades away. In place of it man begins to perceive the mere sense-impressions — colours, states of warmth, etc. — empty, as it were, of the Divine. And within him the Divine now manifests itself in a spiritual form, in pictorial ideas. He now perceives the world from two sides: through sense-impressions from without, and through Spirit impressions of an ideal kind from within. Man at this stage must come to perceive the Spirit impressions in as definite a shape and clear a form as he hitherto perceived the divinely permeated sense-impressions. And indeed, while the age of the Sentient Soul holds sway he is still able to do this. For from his inner being the idea pictures rise before him in a fully concrete shape. He is filled from within with a sense-free Spirit-content — itself an image of the contents of the World. The Gods, who hitherto revealed themselves to him in a garment of sense, reveal themselves now in the garment of the Spirit. This was the age when the Gnosis really originated and had its life. It was a wonderful and living knowledge, in which man knew that he could share if he unfolded his inner being in purity and thus enabled the Divine content to manifest itself through him. From the fourth to the first millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha, this Gnosis lived in those portions of humanity which were most advanced in knowledge. Then begins the age of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. Of their own accord the World-pictures of the Gods no longer rise out of the inner being of man. Man himself must apply an inner force to draw them forth from his own soul. The outer world with all its sense-impressions becomes a question — a question to which he obtains the answers by kindling the inner force to draw forth the World-pictures of the Gods from within him. But these pictures are pale now, beside their former shape and character. Such was the soul-condition of the portion of humanity that evolved so wonderfully in ancient Greece. The Greek felt himself intensely in the outer world of the senses, wherein he also felt the presence of a magic power summoning his own inner force to unfold the World-pictures. In the field of Philosophy, this mood of soul came forth in Platonism. But behind all this there stood the world of the Mysteries. In the Mysteries, such Gnosis as still remained from the age of the Sentient Soul was faithfully preserved. Human souls were definitely trained for this task of preservation. In the time when the Intellectual or Mind-Soul arose by way of ordinary evolution, the Sentient Soul was kindled into life by special training. Most especially in the age of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, behind the ordinary life of culture there was a richly developed life of the Mysteries. In the Mysteries the World-pictures of the Gods lived also in this way, that they were made the inner content of a cult or ritual. We gaze into the centres of those Mysteries and behold the Universe, portrayed in the most wonderful acts of ritual. The human beings who experienced these things were also those who, when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, perceived and penetrated it in its deep, cosmic significance. But this life of the Mysteries was kept entirely apart from the turmoil of the outer world, in order to unfold in purity the world of Spirit-pictures. And it became increasingly difficult for the souls of men to unfold the pictures. Then it was that in the highest places of the Mysteries, Spirit-beings descended from the spiritual Cosmos, coming to help the human beings in their intense strivings after knowledge. Thus under the influence of the ‘Gods’ themselves the impulses of the age of the Sentient Soul continued to unfold. There arose a ‘Gnosis of the Mysteries’ of which only the very few had any notion. And that which human beings were able to receive with the Intellectual or Mind-Soul was present alongside of this. It was the exoteric Gnosis whose fragments have come down to posterity. In the esoteric Gnosis of the Mysteries, human beings grew less and less able to rise to the unfolding of the Sentient Soul. The esoteric Wisdom passed over more and more into the keeping of the Gods alone. It is a great secret of the historic evolution of humanity, that ‘Divine Mysteries’ — for as such we may indeed describe them — were at work in it from the first Christian centuries on into medieval times. In these ‘Divine Mysteries,’ Angel-beings preserved in Earth-existence what human beings were no longer able to preserve. Thus did the Gnosis of the Mysteries hold sway, while men were diligently wiping out the exoteric Gnosis. The World-picture-content , guarded in the Gnosis of the Mysteries by Spirit-beings in a spiritual way, while its influence was still required in the progress of mankind, could not, however, be preserved for the conscious understanding of man's soul. But its deep feeling-content had to be preserved. For in the right cosmic moment this was to be given to a humanity duly prepared to receive it, so that at a later stage the Spiritual Soul — fired by the inner warmth of it — might newly penetrate into the Spirit-realm. Thus, Spirit beings built the bridge from the old World-content to the new. Indications of this secret of human evolution do indeed exist. The sacred jasper cup of the Holy Grail which Christ made use of when He broke the bread and in which Joseph of Arimathea gathered the blood from the wound of Jesus — which contained therefore the secret of Golgotha — was received into safe keeping, according to the legend, by Angels until Titurel should build the Castle of the Grail, when they could allow it to descend upon the human beings who were prepared to receive it. Spiritual Beings protected the World-pictures in which the secrets of Golgotha were living. And when the time was come, they let down — not the picture-content, for this was not possible — but the full Feeling-content, into the hearts and minds of men. This implanting of the Feeling-content of an ancient knowledge can only serve to kindle, but it can indeed kindle most powerfully the unfolding in our age — out of the Spiritual Soul and in the light of Michael's activity — of a new and full understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Anthroposophy strives for this new understanding, which — as we may see from the above description — cannot be a renewal of the Gnosis. For the content of the Gnosis was the way of knowledge of the Sentient Soul, while Anthroposophy — in a completely new way — must draw forth a content no less rich from the Spiritual Soul. January, 1925 159. The Gnosis in its proper form evolved in the age of the Sentient Soul (from the fourth to the first millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha). It was an age when the Divine was made manifest to man as a spiritual content in his inner being; whereas in the preceding age (the age of the Sentient Body) it had revealed itself directly in his sense-impressions of the outer world. 160. In the age of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, man could only experience in paler cast the spiritual content of the Divine. The Gnosis was strictly guarded in hidden Mysteries. And when human beings could no longer preserve it, because they could no longer kindle the Sentient Soul to life, spiritual Beings carried over — not indeed the Knowledge-content — but the Feeling-content of the Gnosis into the Middle Ages. (The Legend of the Holy Grail contains an indication of this fact.) Meanwhile the exoteric Gnosis, which penetrated into the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, was ruthlessly exterminated. 161. Anthroposophy cannot be a revival of the Gnosis. For the latter depended on the development of the Sentient Soul; while Anthroposophy must evolve out of the Spiritual Soul, in the light of Michael's activity, a new understanding of Christ and of the World. Gnosis was the way of Knowledge preserved from ancient time — which, at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, was best able to bring home this Mystery to human understanding.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

Gnosis and Anthroposophy

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c21.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c21

In the human faculty of memory there lives the personal image of a cosmic force — a cosmic force that worked upon the human being in the past, in the way revealed by our last studies. This cosmic force is still working at the present time. It works as the force of growth, as the life-giving impulse in the background of human life. The major portion of it works in this way, and only a small part is separated off as an activity that enters into the conscious Spiritual Soul, where it shows itself as the force of memory. We must learn to see this force of memory in its true light. When in the present epoch of cosmic evolution a man perceives with his senses, his perception is a momentary lighting-up of world- pictures in consciousness. This lighting-up takes place when the senses are directed to the outer world. It illumines the consciousness and vanishes when the senses are no longer directed outward. That which lights up in the human soul in this way must not have duration. For if man did not eliminate it from his consciousness quickly enough, he would lose himself in this content of consciousness. He would no longer be himself. For a short time only — in the so-called ‘after-images’ in which Goethe was so interested — the inner illumination of a sense-perception may live on in consciousness. Nor must this content of consciousness crystallise into real being. It must remain a picture . It must on no account become real, any more than the picture in a looking-glass can become real. Man would lose himself in anything that lived and worked itself out as a reality in his consciousness, just as he would lose himself in something which of its own nature possessed duration there. In this case, too, he could no longer be himself. Thus our sense-perception of the outer world is an inward picture-painting by the human soul; a painting without materials; a painting in the ebb and flow — in the coming into-being and the vanishing of Spirit. As in Nature a rainbow comes forth and passes away, leaving no trace behind, so does a perception arise and pass away, without of its own inherent nature leaving any memory behind. But simultaneously with each perception another process takes its course between the soul of man and the outer world — a process lying in the more hidden portions of the soul-life, where the forces of growth, the life-impulses are at work. In this part of the soul's life, not only a fleeting image but a permanent and real image is impressed in every act of perception. Man can suffer this, for this is a part of the contents of the world, connected with his being. He cannot lose himself while this process is taking place, any more than he loses himself through the fact that he grows and is nourished without his own full consciousness. This second process takes place in every act of outward perception. And when a man draws forth his memories from within him, it is an inward perception of that which has remained permanent through the second process. Once again the soul paints a picture, but now it paints the past that is living in the man's own inner being. And once again, while he is thus painting, no lasting reality may form itself in consciousness , but only a picture that arises and vanishes again. Such is the connection in the human soul between the forming of an idea in the act of perception and the remembering of it. But the forces of memory are perpetually striving to be more than they can be if man is not to lose himself as a self-conscious being. For the forces of memory are relics of the past in human evolution, and as such they come within the realm of Lucifer's power. Lucifer strives so to condense the impressions of the outer world in the human being that they may continuously shine as ideation in his consciousness. This Luciferic striving would be crowned with success if it were not for the force of Michael which counteracts it. Michael's force does not allow that which is painted in the inner light to crystallise into real being, but keeps it in the state of a fleeting picture. But the excess of force, which presses upward from within the human being through Lucifer's activity, will be transformed in this Age of Michael into the force of Spiritual Imagination. For gradually into the common intellectual consciousness of mankind there will enter the force of Imagination. But this does not mean that man will burden his present consciousness with lasting realities. His present consciousness will still be working in the fleeting pictures that arise and vanish. With his Imaginations, however, he reaches up into a higher Spirit-world, just as with his memories he reaches down into his own human nature. Man does not keep the Imaginations within him. They are drawn as cosmic pictures into cosmic existence and thence he is able to copy them, painting them again and again in his own life of picture-ideation. Thus what Michael preserves from crystallisation in the inner being of man is received by the spiritual world. What man experiences of the force of conscious Imagination becomes at once a part of the World-contents. That this can be so, is an outcome of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ force impresses the spiritual Imagination of man into the Cosmos. It is the Christ-force, united with the Earth. So long as it was not united with the Earth but worked upon the Earth as the Sun-force from without, all the impulses of life and growth went into the inner nature of man. He was formed and maintained by them, out of the Cosmos. Since the Christ-Impulse has been living with the Earth, man in his self-conscious being is given back again to the Cosmos. From a cosmic being, man has become an earthly being. He has the potentiality to become a cosmic being once again, when as an earthly being he has become himself . Thus in his momentary ideation or forming of ideas man lives not in an element of real being, but only in a mirroring of being — in a picture-being. In this fact the possibility of development of Freedom lies inherent. All that is being in consciousness has power to compel. But a picture cannot compel. If anything is to be brought about through the impression that the picture makes, it must happen quite independently of the picture. Man becomes free through the fact that with his Spiritual Soul he rises out of the ocean of being and emerges in the picture-existence which has no being . Here the weighty question arises: Does not man lose hold of being altogether, inasmuch as he leaves it and plunges into non-being with a portion of his nature? This is another point where in our contemplation of the world we find ourselves face to face with one of the greatest riddles. That which is experienced in consciousness as ideation, originated from the Cosmos. In relation to the Cosmos, man plunges into non-being. He frees himself in ideation from all the forces of the Cosmos. He paints the Cosmos while he himself is outside it. If this were all , freedom would light up in the human being for a single cosmic moment, but in the very same moment the human being would dissolve away. But while in ideation man becomes free from the Cosmos, in his unconscious life of soul he is still organically connected with his former earthly lives, and his lives between death and a new birth. As a conscious man he is in the sphere of picture-being, while with his unconscious life he maintains himself within the spiritual reality. He experiences freedom in the present ego, while his past ego preserves him in the element of real being. With respect to real being, man in his life of ideation is completely given to what he has become through the whole course of the cosmic and earthly past. We are here pointing to the abyss of nothingness in human evolution which man must cross when he becomes a free being. It is the working of Michael and the Christ-Impulse which makes it possible for him to leap across the gulf. 162. In ideation man lives not in Being, but in Picture-being — in a realm of Non-being — with his conscious Spiritual Soul. Thus is he freed from living and experiencing with the Cosmos. Pictures do not compel; Being alone has power to compel. And if man does direct himself according to the pictures, his doing so is independent of them, that is to say in freedom from the Universe. 163. In the moment of such ideation man is joined to the Being of the Universe by that alone which he has become through his own past: through his former lives on Earth, and lives between death and new birth. 164. Only through Michael's activity and the Christ Impulse, can man achieve this leap across the gulf of Nonbeing in relation to the Cosmos.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

The Freedom of Man and the Age of Michael

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c22.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c22

With his power to form ideas (thinking) and his experience of memories, man finds himself within the physical world. But wherever he may turn his gaze in this physical world, he will nowhere find with his senses anything that could give him the power to form ideas and to remember. Self-consciousness appears in the act of forming ideas. This is, in accordance with our former studies, an acquisition man possesses from the forces of the Earth. But these earthly forces are such as remain concealed from the vision of the senses. During earthly life man thinks only that which his senses impart to him, but the power to think is not given him by anything of all that he thus thinks. Where do we find this force which forms ideas (thought) and the pictures of memory out of that which belongs to the Earth? We find it when the spiritual vision is directed to that which man brings with him from the previous Earth-lives. The ordinary consciousness knows nothing of this. It lives in man unconsciously at first; but when, after his spiritual life, man enters into earthly existence, it immediately shows itself to be related to those earthly forces which do not come into the sphere of sense-observation and sense-thought. Man is not in this sphere with his ideas (thought), but with his will, which works in accordance with destiny. When we consider that the Earth contains forces outside the sphere of the senses we may speak of the “spiritual Earth” as the opposite pole of the physical. It then follows that as a Willing being man lives in and with the “spiritual Earth,&148; while as a Thinking being he is indeed within the physical Earth, but as such he does not live with it . Man as a thinking being carries forces from the Spirit world into the physical, but with these forces he remains a Spirit-being who only appears in the physical world, but does not form a union with it. The thinking human being forms a mutual relationship during earthly existence with the ‘spiritual Earth’ only; and out of this mutual relationship his self-consciousness develops. We therefore owe the development of self-consciousness to spiritual processes which take place in man during earthly life. If with spiritual vision we grasp that which is here described, we have before us the ‘human ego.’ With the experiences of memory we come into the sphere of the human astral body. In the act of remembering there stream into the present ego not merely the results of former Earth-lives, as is the case in thinking, but into his inner being stream the forces of the Spirit-world, which man experiences between death and new birth. This in-streaming takes place into the astral body. Again there is no sphere within the physical Earth for the immediate reception of the forces which thus stream in. As a being who remembers, man cannot unite with the objects and processes perceived by his senses, any more than he can unite with them as a being who forms ideas. But he forms a mutual relationship with that which is not indeed physical, but which transposes the physical into processes, into events. These are the rhythmical processes in Nature and in human life. In Nature, day and night alternate rhythmically, the seasons of the year follow in rhythmic succession, etc. In man, the processes of respiration and the circulation of the blood take place rhythmically; so do the alternating states of waking and sleeping, etc. Rhythmical processes are nothing physical, either in Nature or in man. They might be called half spiritual. The physical as object vanishes in the rhythmic process. In the act of remembering, man's being is transposed into his own rhythm as well as into that of Nature. He lives in his astral body. Indian Yoga wishes to submerge itself entirely in the experience of rhythm. It wishes to leave the sphere of thought, the sphere of the ego, and in an inward experience similar to memory look into the world that lies behind the one which it is possible for the ordinary consciousness to know. It is not permissible for the spiritual life of the West to suppress the ego in order to ‘know.’ It must bring the ego (‘I’) to the perception of the Spiritual. This cannot take place if we penetrate from the world of the senses to the world of rhythm, and so experience in the rhythm only the process in which the physical becomes half spiritual. Rather we must find that sphere of the Spirit world which reveals itself in rhythm. Two things are therefore possible. Firstly, the experience of the physical in the rhythmical element as the physical becomes half spiritual. This is an older path, one not to be followed any longer at the present time. Secondly, the experience of the Spirit-world, which possesses as its sphere the cosmic rhythm within man and without him, just as man's sphere is the earthly world with its physical beings and processes. Now to this Spirit-world belongs everything that takes place at the present cosmic moment through Michael. A Spirit such as Michael brings that which otherwise would lie in the Luciferic sphere into the purely human evolution which is not influenced by Lucifer — by choosing the world of rhythm for his dwelling-place. All this can be seen when man enters into Imagination. For with Imagination the soul lives in rhythm, and Michael's world is the one which reveals itself in rhythm. Memory stands already in this world, but not very deeply. The ordinary consciousness experiences nothing of it. But if we enter into Imagination there emerges first of all, out of the world of rhythm, the world of subjective memories; and this passes over at once into the archetypal pictures for the physical world which are created by the Divine-Spiritual world and which live in the etheric. We experience the ether which lights up in cosmic pictures and conceals within it the creative activity of the Universe. And the Sun-forces weaving in this ether are there not merely radiant, they conjure up the archetypal world-pictures out of the light. The Sun appears as the cosmic world-painter. It is the cosmic counterpart of the impulses which in man paint the pictures of thought. (February, 1925) 165. Man as a thinking being, though he lives in the realm of the physical Earth, does not enter into communion with it. He lives, a spiritual being, in such a way as to perceive the physical; but the forces for his Thinking, he receives from the ‘spiritual Earth,’ in the same way in which he receives his Destiny — the outcome of his former lives on Earth. 166. What he experiences in Memory is already within that world where in rhythm the physical becomes half spiritual, and where such Spirit-processes take place as are being brought about in the present cosmic moment by Michael. 167. He who learns to know Thinking and Memory in their true nature, will also begin to understand how man as an earthly being, though he lives within the earthly realm, does not become submerged in it with his full being. For as a being from beyond the Earth, he is seeking by communion with the spiritual Earth for his Self-consciousness — for the fulfilment of his Ego.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

Where is Man as a Being Who Thinks and Remembers?

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c23.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c23

In the present age he does not feel himself related in the same way to the stars that are around him. But this lasts only so long as he is not conscious of his etheric body. To grasp the etheric body in Imaginations means to develop a feeling that we belong to the world of the stars, just as we have this feeling regarding the Earth through the consciousness of the physical body. The forces which place the etheric body in the world come from the Cosmos around the Earth; those for the physical body radiate from the centre of the Earth. But together with the etheric forces which stream to the Earth from the sphere of the Cosmos there come also the World-impulses which work in the astral body of man. The ether is like an ocean in which the astral forces swim from all directions of the Cosmos and approach the Earth. But in the present cosmic age only the mineral and plant kingdoms come into a direct relation to the astral, which streams down to the Earth on the waves of the ether; not the animal kingdom and not the human kingdom. Spiritual vision shows that in the animal embryo there lives, not the astral that is now streaming to the Earth, but that which streamed in during the Old Moon period. In the case of the plant kingdom we see how its manifold and wonderful forms are developed through the astral loosening itself from the ether and working over to the world of plants. In the animal kingdom we see how, from out of the Spiritual, the astral which was active in very ancient times — during the Moon evolution — has been preserved, and works as something stored up and preserved, remaining on at the present time in the spirit-world, and not coming forth into the etheric world. The activity of this astral is, moreover, mediated by the Moon-forces, which have likewise remained in the same condition, from the previous stage of the Earth. In the animal kingdom we have, therefore, the result of impulses which manifested themselves externally in Nature in a previous stage of Earth-existence, whereas in the present cosmic age they have withdrawn into the Spirit-world which actively penetrates the Earth. Now it is manifest to spiritual vision that within the animal kingdom only the astral forces which have been preserved in the present Earth from the former period are important for the permeation of the physical and etheric bodies with the astral body. But when the animal is once in possession of its astral body, the Sun-impulses appear actively in this astral body. The Sun-forces cannot give the animal anything astral; but when this is once in the animal, they must set to work and foster growth, nutrition, etc. It is different for the human kingdom. This, too, receives its astrality to begin with from the Moon-forces that have been preserved. But the Sun-forces contain astral impulses which while they remain inactive for the animal kingdom, in the human astral continue to act in the same way in which Moon-forces worked when man was first permeated with astrality. In the animal astral body we see the world of the Moon; in the human, the harmonious accord of the worlds of the Sun and Moon. The fact that man is able to receive, for the development of self-consciousness, the Spiritual which rays forth in what belongs to the Earth, depends upon this which belongs to the Sun in the human astral body. The astral streams in from the sphere of the Universe. It acts either as astrality which pours in at the present time or as astrality which streamed in, in ancient times and has been preserved. But everything that is connected with the shaping of the Ego as the vehicle of self-consciousness must radiate from the centre of a star. The astral works from the circumference; that which belongs to the Ego works from a centre. From its centre the Earth as a star gives the impulse to the human Ego. Every star radiates from its centre forces which mould or shape the Ego of some being. This shows the polarity existing between the centre of a star and the sphere of the Cosmos. From the above it may also be seen how the animal kingdom still stands there today as the result of former evolutionary forces of the Earth's being, how it uses up the astral forces which have been preserved, and how it must disappear when these have been consumed. Man, however, acquires new astral forces from that which belongs to the Sun. These enable him to carry on his evolution into the future. From all this it may be seen that the nature of man cannot be understood unless we are just as conscious of his connection with the stars as of his connection with the Earth. And that which man receives from the Earth for the unfolding of his self-consciousness depends also upon the Spirit world active within all that belongs to the Earth. The circumstance that the Sun gives to man what he needs for his astral depends upon the activities which took place during the Old Sun period. At that time the Earth received the capacity to unfold the Ego-impulses of humanity. It is the Spiritual from that period which the Earth has preserved for itself from the Sun nature; and it is preserved from dying out through the present activity of the Sun. The Earth was itself Sun at one time. Then it was spiritualised. In the present cosmic age, what belongs to the Sun works from outside. This continually rejuvenates the Spiritual which originated in ancient times and is now growing old. At the same time this which belongs to the Sun and acts in the present, preserves that which belongs to a former period from falling into what is Luciferic. For that which continues to work, without being received into the forces of the present, succumbs to Luciferic influences. We may say that man's feeling of belonging to the Cosmos beyond the Earth is in this cosmic epoch so dim that he does not notice it within his consciousness. And it is not only dim, it is drowned by his feeling of belonging to the Earth. As man is obliged to find his self-consciousness in the elements of the Earth, he so grows together with them during the early part of the age of the Spiritual Soul, that they act upon him much more strongly than is compatible with the true course of his soul-life. Man is to a certain extent stupefied by the impressions of the world of the senses, and during this condition, thought which is free and has life in itself cannot rise within man. The whole of the period since the middle of the nineteenth century has been a period of stupefaction through the impressions received by the senses. It is the great illusion of this age that the over-powerful life of the senses has been considered to be the right one — that life of the senses whose aim was to obliterate completely the life in the Cosmos beyond the Earth. In this stupefaction the Ahrimanic Powers were able to unfold their being. Lucifer was repulsed by the Sun-forces more than Ahriman, who was able to evoke, especially in scientific people, the dangerous feeling that ideas are applicable only to the impressions of the senses. Thus it is exactly in these circles that one can find so little understanding for Anthroposophy. They stand face to face with the results of spiritual knowledge and try to understand them with their ideas. But these ideas do not grasp the Spiritual because the experience of the ideas is drowned by the Ahrimanic knowledge of the senses. And so they begin to fear that if they have anything to do with the results of spiritual investigation, they may fall into a blind belief in authority. In the second half of the nineteenth century the Cosmos beyond the Earth became darker and darker for human consciousness. When man becomes able to experience ideas within himself once more, then, even when he does not support his ideas on the world of the senses, light will again meet his gaze from the Cosmos beyond the Earth. But this signifies that he will become acquainted with Michael in his own kingdom. When once the Festival of Michael in autumn becomes true and inward, then this thought will arise in all sincerity in the mind of him who celebrates the festival, and it will live in his consciousness: Filled with ideas, the soul experiences Spirit Light, when sense-appearance only echoes in man like a memory . If man is able to feel this he will also be able, after his festive mood, to plunge again in the right way into the world of the senses. And Ahriman will not be able to injure him. (March, 1925) 168. In the beginning of the age of the Spiritual Soul, man's sense of community with the Cosmos beyond the Earth grew dim. On the other hand — and this was so especially in men of science — his sense of belonging to the earthly realm grew so intense in the experience of sense-impressions, as to amount to a stupefaction. 169. While he is thus stupefied, the Ahrimanic powers work upon man most dangerously. For he lives in the illusion that the over-intense, stupefying experience of sense-impressions is the right thing and represents the true progress in evolution. 170. Man must find the strength to fill his world of Ideas with light and to experience it so, even when unsupported by the stupefying world of sense. In this experience of the world of Ideas — independent and in their independence filled with light — his sense of community with the Cosmos beyond the Earth will re-awaken. Hence will arise the true foundation for festivals of Michael.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

Man in His Macrocosmic Nature

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c24.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c24

When man first applies Imaginative Cognition to the contemplation of his own human being, he begins by eliminating his own sense-system from the field of vision. As he now observes himself, he becomes a being without the system of senses. Not that he ceases to have before his soul pictures such as were previously conveyed by the sense-organs. But he ceases to feel himself connected with the outer physical world through the sense-organs. The pictures of the outer physical world which he now has before his soul are no longer conveyed by the organs of sense. His very vision of them is proof of the fact that even through the sense-connection with the outer world of Nature, he has yet another connection with this world — one that does not depend on the senses. It is a connection with the Spirit that is embodied in the world of Nature. In such vision, therefore, the physical world falls away from man. It is the earthly world that falls away. Man no longer feels this earthly world upon him. It might be imagined that he would in the same moment lose self-consciousness. For this would seem to follow from our previous studies, which showed self-consciousness to be an outcome of the connection of man with the Earth-nature. But it is not so. Man preserves what he has gained through the earthly nature, even when, after having gained it , he divests himself of it in the conscious activity of higher knowledge. By the above-described, spiritually Imaginative vision, the fact is revealed that man's sense-system is not, fundamentally speaking, at all intensely connected with his being. It is not really he who lives in this sense-system, but his environment. It is the outer world with its nature which has built itself into the sense-organisation of man. Therefore, when he becomes an Imaginative seer, man really regards his sense-system as a portion of the outer world. It is indeed closer to his being than the world of Nature around him; but still, it belongs to the outer world. It is only distinguished from the remaining outer world in this, that man can dive down into the latter with activity of knowledge through sense-perception and in no other way. Into his own sense-system, on the other hand, he dives down with conscious inner experience. The sense-system is a part of the outer world; but into this outer world man penetrates with his own being of soul-and-spirit, which he brings with him as he descends from the Spirit-world and enters Earth-existence. Except for this fact that he fills it with his own being of soul-and-spirit, man's sense-system is of the outer world, just as is the plant kingdom that is spread around him. The eye in the last resort belongs to the world and not to man, just as the rose which man perceives belongs not to him, but to the world. In the age of cosmic evolution that man has just passed through, thinkers arose who declared that colour, sound, warmth-impressions and the like were not really in the world, but in the human being. The ‘red colour,’ they say, is not anything at all out there in the world-environment of man; it is but the effect of an unknown reality upon him. But the very opposite of this conception is the truth. It is not the colour which, with the eye, belongs to man; it is the eye that with the colour belongs to the world. During his life on Earth man does not let the Earth-environment pour in upon himself, but grows outward — from birth to death — into this outer world. It is significant that at the end of the Age of Darkness, when men stared out into the world without even dimly experiencing the light of the Spirit, the true idea of man's relationship to his environment was replaced by its very opposite. When, in Imaginative Cognition, man has eliminated that environment in which he lives by means of his sense-system, there enters into the sphere of conscious experience another system — namely, that which is the bearer of his Thought, even as the sense-system is the bearer of his picture-world of sense-perception. And now man knows himself to be connected through his thinking system with the cosmic environment of the stars, even as he previously knew himself to be connected through his sense-system with the Earth-environment. He now recognises himself as a cosmic being. His thoughts are no longer phantom-shadow pictures. They are saturated with reality, as sense-pictures are in the act of sense-perception. And if at this stage the knower passes on to Inspiration, he becomes aware that he can cast aside this world of which the thinking system is the bearer, just as he can cast aside the earthly. He sees that with his thinking system, too, he belongs, not to his own being, but to the world. He realises how the world thoughts hold sway in him by means of his own thinking system. Here again he becomes aware that he thinks, not by receiving images of the world into himself, but by growing outward with his own thinking Organisation into the Thinking of the world. Both with respect to his sense-system and his thinking system, man is world . The world builds itself into him. In sense-perception and in thought, he is not he himself, but part of the contents of the world. Now into his thinking system man penetrates with his own being of soul-and-spirit, which belongs neither to the earthly world nor to the world of stars, but is of a wholly spiritual nature and thrives in man from life to life on Earth. This being of soul-and-spirit is accessible only to Inspiration. Thus man steps out of the earthly and cosmic systems of his nature, to stand before himself as a being of pure soul-and-spirit through conscious Inspiration. And in this being of pure soul-and-spirit he meets the life and law of his own destiny. With the sense-system man lives in his physical body, with the thinking system in his etheric body. Both systems having been cast aside in living activity of knowledge, he finds himself in his astral body. Every time man casts aside a portion of the nature which he has assumed, the content of his soul is indeed impoverished on the one hand; and yet on the other hand it is enriched. The physical body being eliminated, the beauty of the plant world as the senses see it is before him no longer, save in a far paler form; but on the other hand the whole world of elemental beings dwelling in the plant-kingdom rises up before his soul. Because this is so, the man of true spiritual knowledge has no ascetic attitude to what the senses can perceive. In the very spiritual experience, there remains alive in him the inner need to perceive once more through the senses what he now experiences in the Spirit. In the full human being, seeking as he does to experience the whole reality, sense perception awakens the longing for its counterpart — the world of elemental beings. Likewise the vision of the elemental beings kindles the longing for the content of sense-perception once again. Thus in the fullness of the life of man, Spirit longs for sense and sense for Spirit. There would be emptiness in spiritual existence, if the experiences of the conscious life in the senses were not there as a memory. There would be darkness in the life of sense-experience, if it were not for the active force of the Spirit which lights into it, albeit subconsciously at first. Hence, when man will have made himself ripe to experience the activity of Michael, it will not mean that souls become impoverished in their experience of Nature. On the contrary, they will be enriched in this respect. And in the life of feeling, too, man will not tend to withdraw from sense experience, but will be glad and eager to receive the wonders of this world of the senses more fully yet into his soul. (March, 1925) 171. The Organisation of the human senses belongs not to man's own nature, but is built into it by the outer world during his earthly life. Spatially though it is in man, in its real essence the perceiving eye is in the World . Man with his soul and spirit reaches out into that which the World is experiencing in him through his senses. He does not receive the physical environment into himself during his life on Earth, but grows out into it with his own soul and spirit. 172. Likewise his thinking Organisation: through this he grows out into the existence of the stars. He knows himself as a world of stars; he lives and moves in the Cosmic Thoughts, when in the living experience of Knowledge he has put away the Organisation of the senses. 173. When both are put away-the earthly world and the world of the stars as well-man stands before himself as a Being of soul, and spirit. Here at length he is no longer of the World ; here he is truly man. To become aware of what he experiences here, is Self-knowledge ; even as it is World-knowledge to become aware in the Organisation of the senses and of thought.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

The Sense- and Thought-Systems of Man in Relation to the World

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c25.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c25

In sleep man is given up to the Cosmos. He carries out into the Cosmos that which he possesses as a result of former lives on Earth, when he descends from the world of soul-and-spirit into the earthly world. During his waking life he withdraws this content of his human being from the Cosmos. In this rhythmic giving-himself-up to the Cosmos and withdrawing from it, man's life between birth and death takes its course. While he withdraws it from the Cosmos, the soul-spiritual being of man is at the same time received by the system of nerves and senses. With the physical and life-processes that take place in the nerves-and-senses system, the soul-and-spirit of man combines in waking life, so that they work together unitedly. In this united action, sense-perception, the forming of memory-pictures and the play of fancy are contained. All these activities are bound to the physical body. The conceptions, the thinking experience — in which man becomes conscious of what is taking place half-consciously in perception, fancy and memory — are bound to the thinking system. In this thinking Organisation properly speaking, there also lies the region by which man experiences his self-consciousness. The thinking Organisation is an Organisation of the stars. If it lived and expressed itself as such alone, man would bear within him not a consciousness of self but a consciousness of the Gods. The thinking Organisation is, however, lifted out of the Cosmos of the stars and transplanted into the realm of earthly processes. Man becomes a self-conscious being in that he experiences the world of stars within the earthly realm. Here, therefore, we have the region of the inner life of man where the Divine-Spiritual world, united with the human being, sets him free in order that he may become Man in the fullest sense. But directly beneath the thinking organisation — namely, where sense-perception, the play of fancy and the forming of memory, take place — the Divine-Spiritual world lives on within the life of man. We may say: it is in the unfolding of memory that the Divine-Spiritual lives in the waking state of man. For the other two activities, sense-perception and the play of fancy, are only modifications of the process that goes on in the forming of memory-pictures. In sense-perception we have the forming of a memory-content at the moment of its origin; in the content of fancy there lights up in the soul that of the content of memory which is preserved within the soul's existence. Sleep carries over the soul-spiritual being of man into the cosmic world. With the activity of his astral body and his Ego, the sleeping man is steeped in the Divine-Spiritual Cosmos. He is not only outside the physical but outside the world of stars. But he is within the Divine-Spiritual Beings in whom his own existence has its origin. In the present moment of cosmic evolution these Divine Spiritual Beings work in such a way as to impress the moral content of the Universe into the astral body and Ego of man during sleep. All the World-processes in sleeping man are really moral processes, and cannot be spoken of as even remotely like the activities of Nature. In their after-effects, man carries these processes over from sleeping into waking. But the after-effects remain asleep. For man is awake in that part of his life only which inclines to the sphere of Thought. What actually takes place in his sphere of Will is wrapped in darkness even in the waking state, as the whole life of the soul is wrapped in darkness during sleep. But in this sleeping life of the Will, the Divine-Spiritual works on in the waking life of man. Morally, man is as good or as bad as he can be according to the nearness with which he approaches the Divine-Spiritual Beings when asleep. And he comes nearer to them, or remains farther away from them, according to the moral quality of his former lives on Earth. From the depths of the waking being of the soul's existence, that which was able to implant itself in the soul's existence, in community with the Divine-Spiritual world during sleep, sounds forth. This is the voice of conscience . We see how the very things which a materialistic view of the world is most inclined to explain merely from the natural side, are found to lie on the moral side of things when seen by spiritual knowledge. In Memory the Divine-Spiritual being works directly within the waking man. In Conscience the same Divine-Spiritual being works in the waking man indirectly — as an after-effect. The forming of memory takes place in the Organisation of nerves and senses. The forming of conscience takes place — albeit as a pure process of soul and spirit — in the metabolic and limbs-system. Between the two there lies the rhythmic Organisation, whose activity is polarised in two directions. In the breathing rhythm it is in intimate relation to sense-perception and to thought. In the breathing of the lung the process is at its coarsest. Thence it grows finer and finer, till, as a highly refined breathing process, it becomes sense-perception and thought. Sense-perception is still very near to breathing; it is only a breathing through the sense-organs, not through the lungs. Thought, ideation, is farther removed from the lung-breathing, and is upheld by the Thinking system of man. And that which reveals itself in the play of fancy is already very close to the rhythm of blood-circulation. It is a very inward breathing, that comes into connection with the system of metabolism and the limbs. Psychologically, too, the activity of fancy reaches down into the sphere of Will, just as the circulatory system reaches down into the system of metabolism and the limbs. In the activity of fancy, the thinking system comes close up to the system of the Will. The human being dives down into that sphere of his waking life which is asleep — the sphere of Will. Hence, in human beings who are especially developed in this direction, the contents of the soul appear like dreams in the waking state. Such a human Organisation was present in Goethe. Goethe once said that Schiller must interpret to him his own poetic dreams. In Schiller himself, a different human system was at work. He lived on the strength of what he brought with him from former lives on Earth. He had a strong life of the Will, and had to seek actively for the corresponding wealth of fancy. The Ahrimanic Power, in its world-intentions, counts upon those human beings who are especially developed in the sphere of fancy — whose perception of sense-reality quite naturally transforms into the pictures of fancy. With the help of such human beings, the Ahrimanic Power hopes to be able to cut off the evolution of mankind from the past, and carry it on in the direction of its own, Ahrimanic intentions. The Luciferic Power reckons on those human beings who, while naturally more developed in the sphere of Will, are inspired by an inner love for the ideal world-conception to transform their vision of sense-reality actively into pictures of creative fancy. Through such human beings the Luciferic Power would like to keep human evolution entirely within the impulses of the past. It would thus be able to preserve mankind from diving down into the sphere where the Ahrimanic Power must be overcome. In this our earthly existence, we stand between two opposite poles. Above us spread the stars. From thence there radiate the forces which are connected with all things calculable and regular in Earth-existence. The regular alternation of day and night, the seasons, the longer cosmic periods, are the earthly reflection of the real process in the stars. The other pole radiates out from the interior of the Earth. Irregular activities are at work in it. Wind and weather, thunder and lightning, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, are a reflection of this process of the inner Earth. Man himself is an image of this existence of the Stars and Earth. In his Thinking system lives the order of the Stars; in the Willing system of his limbs the chaos of the Earth. In the Rhythmic system he experiences in consciousness his own earthly being, in free balance and interplay between the two. (March, 1925) 174. Man is organised in spirit and in body from two different sides. First, from the physical-etheric Cosmos. Whatever radiates from the Divine-Spiritual Being into this organisation in man's nature, lives in it as the force of sense-perception, of the faculty of memory and of the play of fancy. 175. Secondly, man is organised out of his own past lives on Earth. This Organisation is purely of the soul and spirit, and lives in him through the astral body and the Ego. Whatever enters of the life of Divine-Spiritual Beings into this human nature — its influence lights up in a man as the voice of conscience and all that is akin to this. 176. In his rhythmic Organisation man has the constant union of the Divine-Spiritual impulses from the two sides. In life and experience of rhythm the force of memory is carried into the Willing life, and the might of conscience into the life in Ideas.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

Memory and Conscience

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c26.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c26

To gain a true appreciation of Anthroposophy in relation to the development of the Spiritual Soul, we must turn our gaze again and again to the particular mental condition of civilised mankind which began with the blossoming forth of the Natural Sciences and reached its climax in the nineteenth century. One should place the character of this age vividly before the soul's eye, comparing it with that of preceding ages. In all ages of the conscious evolution of mankind, Knowledge was regarded as that which brings man to the world of Spirit. To Knowledge, man ascribed whatever relationship to Spirit he possessed. Art and Religion were none other than the living life of Knowledge. All this became different when the age of the Spiritual Soul began to dawn. With a very great part of the life of the human soul, Knowledge now concerned itself no more. Henceforth, it sought to investigate that relation to existence which man unfolds when he directs his senses and his intellectual judgement to the world of ‘Nature.’ It no longer wanted to concern itself with that which man unfolds as a relation to the world of Spirit, when he uses — not his outer senses — but his inner power of perception. Thus there arose the necessity to connect the spiritual life of man, not with any living present Knowledge, but with Knowledge gained in the past — with Tradition. The life of the human soul was rent in twain. On the one hand there stood before man the new science of Nature, striving ever onward and unfolding in the living present. On the other side there was the experience of a relation to the spiritual world, for which the corresponding Knowledge had arisen in the ages past. All understanding of how the Knowledge, corresponding to this side of human experience, had been gained in ages past, was gradually lost. Men possessed the Tradition, but they had lost the way by which the truths of Tradition had been known — discovered. All they could do now was to believe in the Tradition. A man who had consciously reflected on the spiritual situation, say about the middle of the nineteenth century, would have been bound to admit: mankind has come to a point where it no longer feels itself capable of evolving any Knowledge, beyond that science which does not concern itself with the Spirit. Whatever can be known about the Spirit, a humanity of earlier ages was able to investigate and discover, but the human soul has lost the faculty for such discovery. But men did not place before themselves the full bearing of what was taking place. They were content to say: Knowledge simply does not reach out into the spiritual world. The spiritual world can only be an object of Faith. To gain some light upon these facts of modern history, let us look back into the time when the old Grecian wisdom had to retreat before the power of Rome, when Rome had accepted Christianity. When the last Greek Schools of the Philosophers were closed by the Roman Emperor, the last custodians of the ancient Knowledge too departed from the regions in which European spiritual life was henceforth to evolve. They found a haven in the Academy of Gondishapur in Asia, to which they now became attached. This was one of the centres of learning in the East where through the deeds of Alexander the tradition of the ancient Knowledge had been preserved. The ancient Knowledge was living on there in the form which Aristotle had been able to give to it. But in the Academy of Gondishapur it was also taken hold of by that Oriental spiritual stream which we may describe as Arabism. Arabism in one aspect of its nature, is a premature unfolding of the Spiritual Soul. Through the soul-life working prematurely in the direction of the Spiritual Soul, the possibility was given in Arabism for a spiritual wave to go forth, extending over Africa to southern and western Europe, and filling certain of the men of Europe with an intellectualism that should not properly have come until a later stage. In the seventh and eighth centuries, southern and western Europe received spiritual impulses which ought to have come only in the age of the Spiritual Soul. This spiritual wave was able to awaken the intellectual life in man, but not the deeper founts of experience whereby the soul penetrates into the world of Spirit. And now, when in the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries man exercised his faculty of Knowledge, he could but reach down to those levels of the soul where he did not yet impinge upon the spiritual world. Arabism, entering into the spiritual life of Europe, held back the souls of men, in Knowledge, from the Spirit-world. Prematurely it brought that intellect into activity which was only able to apprehend the outer world of Nature. This Arabism proved very powerful indeed. Whosoever was taken hold of by it, was seized by an inward — though for the most part quite unconscious — pride. He felt the power of intellectualism, but not the impotence of intellect by itself to penetrate into Reality. Thus he gave himself up to the externally given Reality of the senses, which places itself before the human being of its own accord. And it did not even occur to him to approach the spiritual Reality. The spiritual life of the Middle Ages found itself face to face with this position. It possessed the sublime Traditions about the spiritual world. But the soul-life was intellectually so impregnated by the hidden influence of Arabism, that medieval Knowledge found no access to the sources from which the contents of the great Tradition had after all proceeded. Thus from the early Middle Ages onwards, that which men felt instinctively within them as a connection with the Spirit, was battling with Thought in the form that this had assumed under Arabism. Man felt the world of Ideas within him; he experienced it as something real. But he could not find the power in his soul to experience, in the Ideas, the Spirit. Thus arose Realism , feeling the reality in the Ideas and yet unable to discover it. In the world of the Ideas, Realism heard the speaking of the Cosmic Word, but it could not understand the speech. And Nominalism in opposition to it, seeing that the speech could not be understood, denied that there was any speech at all. For Nominalism, the world of Ideas was but a multitude of formulae within the human soul-rooted in no Reality of Spirit. What lived and surged in these two currents, worked on into the nineteenth century. Nominalism became the mode of thought of Natural Science, which built up an imposing conceptual system of the outer world of sense, but destroyed the last relics of insight into the nature of the world of Ideas. Realism lived a dead existence. It knew still of the reality of the world of Ideas, but had no living Knowledge with which to reach it. But man will reach it when Anthroposophy finds the way from the Ideas to the living experience of Spirit in the Ideas . In Realism truly carried forward, there will arise — side by side with the Nominalism of Natural Science — a path of Knowledge which will prove that the science of the Spiritual, far from being, extinguished in mankind, can enter into human evolution once again, springing forth from newly-opened sources in the soul of man. (March, 1925) 177. Looking with the eye of the soul upon the evolution of mankind in the Age of Science, a sorrowful perspective opens up before us to begin with. Splendid grew the knowledge of mankind with respect to all that constitutes the outer world. On the other hand there arose a feeling as though a knowledge of the spiritual world were no longer possible at all. 178. It seems as though such knowledge had only been possessed by men of ancient times, and man must now rest content — in all that concerns the spiritual world — simply to receive the old traditions, making these an object of Faith. 179. From the resulting uncertainty, arising in the Middle Ages as to man's relation to the spiritual world, Nominalism and Realism proceeded. Nominalism is unbelief in the real Spirit-content of man's Ideas; we have its continuation in the modern scientific view of Nature. Realism is well aware of the reality of the Ideas, yet it can only find its fulfilment in Anthroposophy.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

The Apparent Extinction of Spirit-Knowledge in Modern Times

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c27.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c27

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the appearance on the scene of peoples from the East — the great migrations — are a phenomenon of history to which the attention of true research must again and again be turned. For the present day still contains many an after-effect of these catastrophic happenings. A true understanding of these events is impossible to merely exoteric history. For we must look into the souls of the human beings who took part in these migrations and witnessed the downfall of the Roman Empire. Ancient Greece and Rome flourished in the epoch of human evolution when the Intellectual or Mind-Soul was unfolding. Indeed the Greeks and Romans were most essentially the bearers of this unfolding process. But in the Greek and Roman peoples the evolving of this stage of the soul did not contain the seed from out of which the Spiritual Soul could truly have developed. All the contents of soul and spirit, latent in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, blossomed forth luxuriantly in the life of ancient Greece and Rome. But Greece and Rome were unable, out of their own inherent powers, to pass on to the new stage of the Spiritual Soul. The stage of the Spiritual Soul did, of course, appear none the less. But the Spiritual Soul was as something implanted from without into the character of the Greek or Roman — something that did really not proceed out of the personality. The connection with and severance from the Divine Spiritual Beings, of which we have said so much in these studies, takes place with varying intensity in the course of succeeding ages. In olden times, it was a power entering into human evolution with the impulse of a mighty living process. In the Greek and Roman experience of the first Christian centuries it was a feebler power — but it still existed. While he was unfolding the fullness of the Intellectual or Mind Soul within him, the Greek or Roman felt — unconsciously, but with no less deep a meaning for his soul — a loosening or severance from the Divine-Spiritual nature and a growing independence of the human. But this ceased in the first Christian centuries. The early dawn of the Spiritual Soul was felt as a renewed union, a closer connection with the Divine-Spiritual. Men evolved back again, from a greater to a lesser degree of independence of soul. Nor could they receive the Christian content into the human Spiritual Soul, for they were unable to receive the Spiritual Soul itself into their human being. Thus they came to regard the Christian content as something given to them from outside — from the spiritual outer world — not as something with which they could become united through their own faculties of Knowledge. But it was different with the peoples coming from the North-East, who now entered on the scene of history. They had passed through the stage of the Intellectual or Mind Soul in a condition which, to them, conveyed a feeling of dependence on the spiritual world. They only began to feel something of human independence when, with the beginnings of Christianity, the earliest forces of the Spiritual Soul were dawning. In them the Spiritual Soul appeared as something deeply bound up with the human being. They felt a glad sense of unfolding force within them when the Spiritual Soul was stirring into life. It was into this new-springing life of the dawning Spiritual Soul that the Christian content entered in these peoples. They felt the Christian content as something springing to life within their souls, not as something given from outside. Such was the mood in which these peoples approached the Roman Empire and all that was connected with it. Such was the mood of Arianism in contrast to Athanasianism. It was a deep inner conflict in world-historical evolution. In the Spiritual Soul of the Greek and Roman, external as it was to man, there worked, to begin with, the Divine Spiritual essence, not uniting fully with the earthly life, but raying into it from without. And in the Spiritual Soul of the Franks, the Germanic tribes, etc., which was only just dawning into life, such of the Divine-Spiritual as was able to unite with mankind worked as yet but feebly. To begin with, the Christian content living in the Spiritual Soul that hovered over man grew and expanded in outer life. On the other hand, that Christian content which was united with the human soul, remained as an inner urge, an impulse within the human being waiting for future development — for a development which can only take place when a certain stage has been attained in the unfolding of the Spiritual Soul. In the time from the first Christian centuries until the evolutionary epoch of the Spiritual Soul, the dominant spiritual life was a Spirit-content hovering above mankind — a content with which man was quite unable to unite himself in Knowledge. He therefore united with it in an outward way. He ‘explained’ it, and pondered on the question: how, and why, and to what degree the faculties of the soul were insufficient to bring about the full union with it in Knowledge. Thus he distinguished the realm into which Knowledge can penetrate, from that into which it cannot. It became the proper thing to renounce the exercise of those faculties of soul which rise with Knowledge into the spiritual world. And at length the time approached — the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — in which the forces of the soul that inclined towards the Spirit were diverted from the Spiritual altogether, so far as active Knowledge was concerned. Men began to live their conscious life in those forces of the soul only, which are directed to the sense-perceptible. Blunt indeed became the powers of Knowledge for spiritual things — most of all in the eighteenth century. The thinkers of humanity now lost the spiritual content from their Ideas. In the Idealism of the first half of the nineteenth century, the Spirit-empty Ideas themselves are represented as the creative substance of the world. Thus Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. Or again, they point to a Supersensible which vanishes into thin air because it is bereft of Spirit. Thus Spencer, John Stuart Mill, and others. The Ideas are dead when they no longer seek the living Spirit. There is no escaping the fact, lost was the sense of spiritual vision for the things of the Spirit. A ‘continuation’ of the old life of spiritual Knowledge is impossible. With the Spiritual Soul unfolding within him, man's faculties of soul must strive onward to reach their new union with the Spirit-world, a union elementary, immediate and living. Anthroposophy would fain be such a striving. In the spiritual life of this age, it is just the leading personalities who to begin with do not know what Anthroposophy intends. Wide circles of people who follow in their wake are thereby kept away from Anthroposophy. The leading people of today live in a soul-content which in the course of time has grown altogether unaccustomed to use the spiritual forces. For them, it is as though one would call upon a man having an organ paralysed, to use it. Paralysed were the higher faculties of Knowledge from the sixteenth into the latter half of the nineteenth century. And mankind remained utterly unconscious of the fact; indeed, the one-sided application of Knowledge-powers directed to the outer world of sense was regarded as a sign of special progress. (March, 1925) 180. The Greeks and Romans were the peoples predestined by their very nature for the unfolding of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. They developed this stage of the soul to perfection. But they did not bear within them the seeds of a direct, unbroken progress to the Spiritual Soul. Their soul-life went under in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. 181. In the time from the origin of Christianity until the age of the unfolding of the Spiritual Soul, a world of the Spirit was holding sway which did not unite with the forces of the human soul. The latter contrived to ‘explain’ the world of the Spirit, but they could not experience it in living consciousness. 182. The peoples advancing from the North-East in the great migrations, encroaching on the Roman Empire, took hold of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul more in the inner life of feeling. Meanwhile, imbedded in this element of feeling, the Spiritual Soul was evolving within their souls. The inner life of these peoples was waiting for the present time, when the re-union of the soul with the world of the Spirit is fully possible once more.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

Historic Cataclysms at the Dawn of the Spiritual Soul

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c28.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c28

The Age of Philosophy is often said to have been superseded, about the middle of the nineteenth century, by the rising Age of Natural Science . And it is said that the Age of Natural Science still continues in our day, although many people are at pains to emphasise at the same time that we have found our way once more to certain philosophic tendencies. All this is true of the paths of knowledge which the modern age has taken, but not of its paths of life . With his conceptions and ideas, man still lives in Nature, even if he carries the mechanical habit of thought into his Nature-theories. But with his life of Will he lives in the mechanical processes of technical science and industry to so far-reaching an extent, that it has long imbued this Age of Science with an entirely new quality. To understand human life we must consider it to begin with from two distinct aspects. From his former lives on Earth, man brings with him the faculty to conceive the Cosmic — the Cosmic that works inward from the Earth's encircling spheres, and that which works within the Earth domain itself. Through his senses he perceives the Cosmic that is at work upon the Earth; through his thinking Organisation he conceives and thinks the Cosmic influences that work downward to the Earth from the encircling spheres. Thus man lives, through his physical body in Perception, through his etheric body in Thought. That which takes place in his astral body and his ego holds sway in the more hidden regions of the soul. It holds sway, for example, in his destiny. We must, however, look for it, to begin with, not in the complicated relationships of destiny, but in the simple and elementary processes of life. Man connects himself with certain earthly forces, in that he gives his body its right orientation within them. He learns to stand and walk upright; he learns to place himself with arms and hands into the equilibrium of earthly forces. Now these are not forces working inward from the Cosmos. They are forces of a purely earthly nature. In reality, nothing that man experiences is an abstraction. He only fails to perceive whence it is that an experience comes to him; and thus he turns ideas about realities into abstractions. He speaks of the laws of mechanics. He thinks he has abstracted them from the connections and relationships of Nature. But this is not the case. All that man experiences in his soul by way of purely mechanical laws, has been discovered inwardly through his relationship of orientation to the earthly world (in standing, walking, etc.). The Mechanical is thus characterised as that which is of a purely earthly nature. For the laws and processes of Nature as they hold sway in colour, sound, etc., have entered into the earthly realm from the Cosmos. It is only within the earthly realm that they too become imbued with the mechanical element, just as is the case with man himself, who does not confront the mechanical in his conscious experience until he comes within the earthly realm. By far the greater part of that which works in modern civilisation through technical Science and Industry — wherein the life of man is so intensely interwoven — is not Nature at all, but Sub-Nature . It is a world which emancipates itself from Nature — emancipates itself in a downward direction. Look how the Oriental, when he strives towards the Spirit, seeks to get out of the conditions of equilibrium whose origin is merely in the earthly realm. He assumes an attitude of meditation which brings him again into the purely Cosmic balance. In this attitude the Earth no longer influences the inner orientation of his body. (I am not recommending this for imitation; it is mentioned merely to make our present subject clear. Anyone familiar with my writings will know how different is the Eastern from the Western spiritual life in this direction.) Man needed this relation to the purely earthly for the unfolding of his Spiritual Soul. Thus in the most recent times there has arisen a strong tendency to realise in all things, and even in the life of action, this element into which man must enter for his evolution. Entering the purely earthly element, he strikes upon the Ahrimanic realm. With his own being he must now acquire a right relation to the Ahrimanic. But in the age of Technical Science hitherto, the possibility of finding a true relationship to the Ahrimanic civilisation has escaped man. He must find the strength, the inner force of knowledge, in order not to be overcome by Ahriman in this technical civilisation. He must understand Sub-Nature for what it really is. This he can only do if he rises, in spiritual knowledge, at least as far into extra-earthly Super-Nature as he has descended, in technical Sciences, into Sub-Nature. The age requires a knowledge transcending Nature, because in its inner life it must come to grips with a life-content which has sunk far beneath Nature — a life-content whose influence is perilous. Needless to say, there can be no question here of advocating a return to earlier states of civilisation. The point is that man shall find the way to bring the conditions of modern civilisation into their true relationship-to himself and to the Cosmos. There are very few as yet who even feel the greatness of the spiritual tasks approaching man in this direction. Electricity, for instance, celebrated since its discovery as the very soul of Nature's existence, must be recognised in its true character — in its peculiar power of leading down from Nature to Sub Nature. Only man himself must beware lest he slide downward with it. In the age when there was not yet a technical industry independent of true Nature, man found the Spirit within his view of Nature. But the technical processes, emancipating themselves from Nature, caused him to stare more and more fixedly at the mechanical-material, which now became for him the really scientific realm. In this mechanical-material domain, all the Divine-Spiritual Being connected with the origin of human evolution, is completely absent. The purely Ahrimanic dominates this sphere. In the Science of the Spirit, we now create another sphere in which there is no Ahrimanic element. It is just by receiving in Knowledge this spirituality to which the Ahrimanic powers have no access, that man is strengthened to confront Ahriman within the world . (March, 1925) 183. In the age of Natural Science, since about the middle of the nineteenth century, the civilised activities of mankind are gradually sliding downward, not only into the lowest regions of Nature, but even beneath Nature . Technical Science and Industry become Sub-Nature. 184. This makes it urgent for man to find in conscious experience a knowledge of the Spirit, wherein he will rise as high above Nature as in his sub-natural technical activities he sinks beneath her. He will thus create within him the inner strength not to go under . 185. A past conception of Nature still bore within it the Spirit with which the source of all human evolution is connected. By degrees, this Spirit vanished altogether from man's theory of Nature. The purely Ahrimanic spirit has entered in its place, and passed from theory of Nature into the technical civilisation of mankind.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts

From Nature to Sub-Nature

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c29.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA026_c29

Rudolf Steiner, the teacher, guide and friend, is no longer among the living on the Earth. A severe illness, beginning in sheer physical exhaustion, tore him away. In the very midst of his work he had to lie down on the bed of sickness. The powers he had devoted so copiously, so unstintingly, to the work of the Anthroposophical Society no longer sufficed to overcome his own illness. With untold grief and pain, all those who loved and honoured him had to stand by and witness how he who was loved by so many, who had been able to help so many others, had to allow fate to take its appointed course when his own illness came, well-knowing that higher powers were guiding these events. In this small volume the fruits of our united work are recorded. The teaching of Anthroposophy is for medical science a veritable mine of inspiration. From my knowledge and experience as a doctor, I was able to confirm it without reserve. I found in it a fount of wisdom from which it was possible untiringly to draw, and which was able to solve and illumine many a problem as yet unsolved in Medicine. Thus there arose between Rudolf Steiner and myself a living co-operation in the field of medical discovery. Our co-operation gradually deepened, especially in the last two years, so that the united authorship of a book became a possibility and an achievement. It had always been Rudolf Steiner's endeavour —_and in this I could meet him with fullest sympathy of understanding to renew the life of the ancient Mysteries and cause it to flow once more into the sphere of Medicine. From time immemorial, the Mysteries were most intimately united with the art of healing, and the attainment of spiritual knowledge was brought into connection with the healing of the sick. We had no thought, after the style of quacks and dilettanti, of underrating the scientific Medicine of our time. We recognized it fully. Our aim was to supplement the science already in existence by the illumination that can flow from a true knowledge of the Spirit, towards a living grasp of the processes of illness and of healing. Needless to say, our purpose was to bring into new life, not the instinctive habit of the soul which still existed in the Mysteries of ancient time, but a method of research corresponding to the fully evolved consciousness of modern man, which can be lifted into spiritual regions. Thus the first beginnings of our work were made. In the Clinical and Therapeutic Institute founded by myself at Arlesheim. in Switzerland, a basis was given in practice for the theories set forth in this book. And we endeavoured to unfold new ways in the art of healing to those who were seeking, in the sense here indicated, for a widening of their medical knowledge. We had intended to follow up this small volume with further productions of our united work. This, alas, was no longer possible. It is, however, still my purpose, from the many notes and fruitful indications I received, to publish a second volume and possibly a third.* As to this first volume, the manuscript of which was corrected with inner joy and satisfaction by Rudolf Steiner only three days before his death, may it find its way to those for whom it is intended those who are striving to reach out from life's deep riddles to an understanding of life in its true greatness and glory. Ita Wegman Arlesheim-Dornach September 1925

Fundamentals of Therapy

Preface to the 1st Edition

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_pre1.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_pre1

About sixty years ago Rudolf Steiner worked on this book together with the then leader of the Medical Section of the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. Great indeed was the enthusiasm of Dr Ita Wegman for that work! One could see her driving off after a very quick supper up to the place where she was expected by the great man. With the help of this book, the medical profession is given the opportunity to learn the new way of a medicine which considers man, not only as a physical being, but one consisting also of soul and spirit. This knowledge shows clearly the connection of man with the forces in nature and the universe. After Rudolf Steiner's death it was Ita Wegman who helped to spread the work which led to a whole medical movement. Many doctors all over the world presently belong to it. Consequently, different clinics had to be enlarged and new ones to be founded. The original small house in Arlesheim for patients became the large Ita Wegman Clinic with many sick-beds. The Lucas Clinic in Arlesheim was built for research in the treatment of cancer, and which has gained the respect of official medical specialists in different countries. An impressive number of clinics now exist around the world whose work is on the lines indicated by Steiner and Wegman (a list of clinics and their addresses is given at the end of this book). Among those who have made enormous strides in furthering Anthroposophical medicine include in West Germany, the Fielder Clinic in Stuttgart, and two others in Herdecke and Pforzheim. In Sao Paolo, Brazil, has been established the Tobias Clinic. It is important to know that there exist places where doctors and medical students can get a thorough teaching accordingly. There is a regular medical seminar for several months a year in Arlesheim which has been attended by hundreds of doctors so far, and another place with similar courses is in Holland. Recently a university based on the work of the Herdecke Clinic was opened in West Germany, with a medical faculty for lectures and for practice in the new way of medicine. Through the endeavour of Ita Wegman, many new homes for the treatment of mentally handicapped children were founded. Such homes exist in nearly all European countries, but also in the U.S.A., Southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

Fundamentals of Therapy

Preface to the 4th Edition (1983)

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_pre4.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_pre4

This book will indicate new possibilities for the science and art of Medicine. It will only be possible to form an accurate view of what is described if the reader is willing to accept the points of view that predominated at that time when the medical approach outlined here came into being. It is not a question of opposition to modern [homogenic] medicine which is working with scientific methods. We take full cognizance of the value of its principles. It is also our opinion that what we are offering should only be used in medical work by those individuals who can be fully active as qualified physicians in the sense of those principles. On the other hand, to all that can be known about the human being with the scientific methods that are recognized today, we add a further knowledge, whose discoveries are made by different methods. And out of this deeper knowledge of the World and Man, we find ourselves compelled to work for an extension of the art of medicine. Fundamentally speaking, the [homogenic] medicine of today can offer no objection to what we have to say, seeing that we on our side do not deny its principles. He alone could reject our efforts a priori who would require us not only to affirm his science but to adduce no further knowledge extending beyond the limits of his own. We see this extension of our knowledge of the World and Man in Anthroposophy, which was founded by Rudolf Steiner. To the knowledge of the physical man which alone is accessible to the natural-scientific methods of today, Anthroposophy adds that of spiritual man. Nor does it merely proceed by dint of reflective thought from knowledge of the physical to knowledge of the spiritual. On such a path, one only finds oneself face to face with more or less well conceived hypotheses, of which no one can prove that there is anything in reality to correspond to them. Before making statements about the spiritual, Anthroposophy evolves the methods which give it the right to make such statements. Some insight will be gained into the nature of these methods if the following be considered: all the results of the accepted science of our time are derived in the last resort from the impressions of the human senses. However far man may extend the sphere of what is yielded by his senses, in experiment or in observation with the help of instruments, nothing essentially new is added by these means to his experience of the world in which the senses place him. His thinking, too, in as much as he applies it in his researches of the physical world, can add nothing new to what is given through the senses. In thought he combines and analyses the sense-impressions in order to discover laws (the laws of nature), and yet, as a researcher of the material world he must admit: this thinking that wells up from within me adds nothing real to what is already real in the material world of sense. All this immediately changes if we no longer stop short at that thinking which man acquires through his experience of ordinary life and education. This thinking can be strengthened and reinforced within ourselves. We place some simple, easily encompassed idea in the centre of consciousness and, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, concentrate all the power of the soul on such representations. As a muscle grows strong when exerted again and again in the direction of the same force, so our force of soul grows strong when exercised in this way with respect to that sphere of existence which otherwise holds sway in thought. It should again be emphasized that these exercises must be based on simple, easily encompassed thoughts. For in carrying out the exercises the soul must not be exposed to any kind of influences from the subconscious or unconscious. (Here we can but indicate the principle of such exercises; a fuller description, and directions showing how such exercises should be done in individual cases, will be found in the books, such as Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Occult Science, and other anthroposophical works. It is tempting to object that anyone who thus gives himself up with all his strength to certain thoughts placed in the focus of consciousness will thereby expose himself to all manner of auto-suggestion and the like, and that he will simply enter a realm of fantasy. But Anthroposophy shows how the exercises should be done from the outset, so that this objection loses its validity. It shows the way to advance within the sphere of consciousness, step by step and fully wide-awake in carrying out the exercises, as in the solving of an arithmetical or geometrical problem. At no point in solving a problem of arithmetic or geometry can our consciousness veer off into unconscious regions; nor can it do so during the practices here indicated, provided always that the anthroposophical suggestions are properly observed. In the course of such practice we attain a strengthening of a power of thought, of which we had not the remotest idea before. Like a new content of our human being we feel this power of thought holding sway within us. And with this new content of our own human being there is revealed at the same time a world-content which, though we may perhaps have divined its existence before, was unknown to us by actual experience until now. If in moments of introspection we consider our everyday activity of thought, we find that the thoughts are pale and shadow-like beside the impressions that our senses give us. What we experience in the now strengthened capacity of thought is not pale or shadow-like by any means. It is full of inner content, vividly real and graphic; it is, indeed, of a reality far more intense than the contents of our sense perceptions. A new world begins to dawn for the man who has thus enhanced the force of his perceptive faculty. He, who until now was only able to perceive in the world of the senses, learns to apperceive in this new world; and as he does so he discovers that all the laws of nature known to him before hold good in the physical world only; it is of the intrinsic nature of the world he has now entered that its laws are different, in fact, the very opposite to those of the physical world. In this world for instance the earthly force of gravity does not apply, on the contrary, another force emerges, working not from the centre of the earth outwards but in the reverse direction, from the circumference of the universe towards the centre of the earth. And so it is in like manner with the other forces of the physical world. Man's faculty to perceive in this world, attainable as it is by exercise and practice, is called, in Anthroposophy, the imaginative faculty of knowledge. Imaginative not for the reason that one is dealing with “fantasies”, the word is used because the content of consciousness is filled with pictures, instead of the mere shadows of thought. And as in sense perception we feel as an immediate experience that we are in a world of reality, so it is in the activity of soul, which is here called imaginative knowledge. The world to which this knowledge relates is called in Anthroposophy the etheric world. This is not to suggest the hypothetical ether of modern physics, it is something really seen in the spirit. The name is used in keeping with older, instinctive presentiments with regard to that world. Against what can now be known with full clarity, these old presentiments no longer have a scientific value; but if we wish to designate a thing we have to choose some name. Within the etheric world an etheric bodily nature of man is perceptible, existing in addition to the physical bodily nature. This etheric body is also to be found in its essential nature in the plant-world. Plants too have their etheric body. The physical laws really only hold good for the world of lifeless mineral nature. The plant-world is possible on earth because there are substances in the earthly realm which do not remain enclosed within, or limited to the physical laws, but can lay aside the whole complex of physical law and assume one which opposes it. The physical laws work streaming from the earth; the etheric work from all sides of the universe streaming to the earth. It is not possible for man to understand how the plant world comes into being, till he sees in it the interplay of the earthly and physical with the cosmic-etheric. So it is with the etheric body of man himself. Through the etheric body something is taking place in man which is not a straightforward continuation of the laws and workings of the physical body with its forces, but rests on a quite different foundation: in effect the physical substances, as they pour into the etheric realm, divest themselves to begin with of their physical forces. The forces that prevail in the etheric body are active at the beginning of man's life on earth, and most distinctly during the embryonic period; they are the forces of growth and formative development. During the course of earthly life a part of these forces emancipates itself from this formative and growth activity and becomes the forces of thought, just those forces which, for the ordinary consciousness, bring forth the shadow-like world of man's thoughts. It is of the greatest importance to know that man's ordinary forces of thought are refined formative and growth forces. Something spiritual reveals itself in the formation and growth of the human organism. The spiritual element then appears during the course of life as the spiritual force of thought. And this force of thought is only a part of the human formative and growth force that works in the etheric. The other part remains true to the purpose it fulfilled in the beginning of man's life. But because the human being continues to evolve even when his growth and formation have reached an advanced stage, that is, when they are to a certain degree completed, the etheric spiritual force, which lives and works in the organism, is able to emerge in later life as the capacity for thought. Thus the formative or sculptural force, appearing from the one side in the soul-content of our thought, is revealed to the imaginative spiritual vision from the other side as an etheric-spiritual reality. If we now follow the material substance of the earth into the etheric formative process we find wherever they enter this formative process these substances assume a form of being which estranges them from physical nature. While they are thus estranged, they enter into a world where the spiritual comes to meet them transforming them into its own being. The way of ascending to the etherically living nature of man as described here is a very different thing from the unscientific postulation of a “vital force” which was customary even up to the middle of the nineteenth century in order to explain the living entities. Here it is a question of the actual seeing — that is to say, the spiritual perception — of a reality which, like the physical body, is present in man and in everything that lives. To bring about spiritual perception of the etheric we do not merely continue ordinary thinking nor do we invent another world through fantasy. Rather we extend the human powers of cognition in an exact way; and this extension yields experience of an extended universe. The exercises leading to higher perception can be carried further. Just as we exert an enhanced power in concentrating on thoughts placed deliberately in the centre of our consciousness, so we can now apply such an enhanced power in order to suppress the imaginations — (pictures of a spiritual-etheric reality) — achieved by the former process. We then reach a state of completely emptied consciousness. We are awake and aware, but our wakefulness to begin with has no content. (Further details are to be found in the above-mentioned books.) But this wakefulness does not remain without content. Our consciousness, emptied as it is of any physical or etheric pictorial impressions, becomes filled with a content that pours into it from a real spiritual world, even as the impressions from the physical world pour into the physical senses. By imaginative knowledge we have come to know a second member of the human being; by the emptied consciousness becoming filled with spiritual content we learn to know a third. Anthroposophy calls the knowledge that comes about in this way knowledge by inspiration. (The reader should not let these terms confuse him, they are borrowed from the instinctive ways of looking into spiritual worlds which belonged to more primitive ages, but the sense in which they are here used is stated exactly.) The world to which man gains entry by “inspiration” is called the “astral world”. When one is speaking in the sense explained here of an “etheric world”, we mean those influences that work from the circumference of the universe towards the earth. If we speak of the “astral world”, we proceed, as is seen by the perception of inspired consciousness, from the influences of the cosmos towards certain spiritual beings which reveal themselves in these influences, just as the materials of the earth reveal themselves in the forces that radiate out from the earth. We speak of real spiritual beings working from the distant universe just as we speak of the stars and constellations when we look out physically into the heavens at nighttime. Hence the expression “astral world”. In this astral world man bears the third member of his human nature, namely his astral body. The earth's substances must also flow into this astral body. Through this it is estranged from its physical nature. — Just as man has the etheric body in common with the world of plants, so he has his astral body in common with the world of animals. What essentially raises the human being above the animal world can be recognized through a form of cognition still higher than inspiration. At this point Anthroposophy speaks of intuition. In inspiration a world of spiritual beings manifests itself; in intuition, the relationship of the discerning human being to the world grows more intimate. He now brings to fullest consciousness within himself that which is purely spiritual, and in the conscious experience of it, he realises immediately that it has nothing to do with experience from bodily nature. Through this he transplants himself into a life which can only be described as a life of the human spirit among other spirit-beings. In inspiration the spiritual beings of the world reveal themselves; through intuition we ourselves live with these beings. Through this we come to acknowledge the fourth member of the human being, the essential “I”. Once again we become aware of how the material of the earth, in adapting to the life and being of the “I”, estranges itself yet further from its physical nature. The nature which this material assumes as “ego organization” is, to begin with, that form of earthly substance in which it is farthest estranged from its earthly physical character. In the human organization, that which we thus learn to know as the “astral body” and “I ” is not bound to the physical body in the same way as the etheric body. Inspiration and intuition show how in sleep the “astral body” and the “I” separate from the physical and etheric, and that it is only in the waking state that there is the full mutual permeation of the four members of man's nature to form a human entity. In sleep the physical and the etheric human body are left behind in the physical and etheric world. Yet they are not in the same position as the physical and the etheric body of a plant or plant-like being. For they bear within them the after-effects of the astral and the Ego-nature. Indeed, in the very moment when they would no longer bear these aftereffects within them, the human being must awaken. A human physical body must never be subjected to the merely physical, nor a human etheric body to the merely etheric effects. Through this they would disintegrate. Inspiration and intuition however also show something else. Physical substance experiences further development of its nature in its transition to living and moving in the etheric. It is a condition of life that the organic body is snatched out of the earthly state to be built up by the extraterrestrial cosmos. This building activity however brings about life, but not consciousness, and not self-consciousness. The astral body must build up its organization within the physical and the etheric; the ego must do the same with regard to the ego organization. But in this building there is no conscious development of the soul life. For this to occur a process of destruction must oppose the process of building. The astral body builds up its organs; it destroys them by allowing the soul to develop an activity of feeling within consciousness; the ego builds up its “ego-organization”; it destroys this, in that will-activity becomes active in self-consciousness. The spirit within the human being does not unfold on the basis of constructive material activity but on the basis of what it destroys. Wherever the spirit is to work in man, matter must withdraw from its activity. Even the origin of thought in the etheric body depends not on a further development but, on the contrary, on a destruction of etheric being. Conscious thinking does not take place in the processes of growth and formation, but in the processes of deformation, fading, dying which are continually interwoven with the etheric events. In conscious thinking, the thoughts liberate themselves out of the physical form and become human experiences as soul formations. If we consider the human being on the basis of such a knowledge of man, we become aware that the nature of the whole man, or of any single organ, is only seen with clarity if one knows how the physical, the etheric, the astral body and the ego work in him. There are organs in which the chief agent is the ego; in others the ego works but little, and the physical organization is predominant. Just as the healthy man can only be understood by recognizing how the higher members of man's being take possession of the earthly substance, compelling it into their service, and in this connection also recognizing how the earthly substance becomes transformed when it enters the sphere of action of the higher members of man's nature; so we can only understand the unhealthy man if we understand the situation in which the organism as a whole, or a certain organ or series of organs, find themselves when the mode of action of the higher members falls into irregularity. We shall only be able to think of therapeutic substances when we evolve a knowledge of how some earthly substance or earthly process is related to the etheric, to the astral and to the ego. Only then shall we be able to achieve the desired result, by introducing an earthly substance into the human organism or by treatment with an earthly process of activity, enabling the higher members of the human being to unfold again unhindered, or by the earthly substance (of the physical body) finding, in what has been added, the necessary support to bring it into the path where it becomes a basis for the earthly working of the spiritual. Man is what he is by virtue of physical body, etheric body, soul (astral body) and ego (spirit). He must, in health, be seen and understood from the aspect of these his members; in disease he must be observed in the disturbance of their equilibrium, and for his healing we must find the therapeutic substances that can restore the balance. A medical approach built on such a basis is to be suggested in this book.

Fundamentals of Therapy

True Knowledge Of The Human Being as a Foundation For The Art Of Medicine

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c01.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c01

Anyone who reflects on the fact that the human being can be ill, will find himself involved in a paradox which he cannot avoid if he wishes to think purely on the lines of natural science, he will have to assume to begin with that this paradox lies in the very nature of existence. For, considered superficially, whatever takes place in the course of the illness is a natural process. What takes place in the healthy state is also a natural process. In the first place, the processes of nature are known to us only by observation of the world external to man, and of man himself inasmuch as we observe him in just the same way as a part of nature; we conceive that the processes going on within him however complicated, are yet of the same kind as the processes we can observe outside him, the outer processes of nature. Here, however, a question emerges which is quite unanswerable from this point of view. How do there arise in man (not to speak at this point, of the animal) processes of nature which run counter to the healthy ones? The healthy human organism would seem to be intelligible as part of nature; not so the sick. It must, therefore, in some way be intelligible out of itself, by virtue of something which it does not have from nature. The prevalent idea is that the spiritual in man has for its physical foundation a very complicated process of nature, like a continuation of the natural processes we find outside man. Let us, however, look and see whether the continuation of any process of nature based on the healthy human organism ever calls forth spiritual experiences as such? The reverse is the case. Spiritual experience is extinguished when the natural process continues on an uninterrupted path. This is what happens in sleep; it happens, too, in unconsciousness. Consider, on the other hand, how the conscious spiritual life is sharpened when an organ becomes diseased. Pain ensues, or at least discomfort and displeasure. The life of feeling receives a content which it otherwise does not have. The life of will is impaired. The movement of a limb which takes place as a matter of course in the healthy state can no longer be accomplished properly, pain or discomfort hinders and prevents it. Observe now the transition from the painful movement of a limb to its paralysis. In the movement accompanied by pain we have the initial stages of a movement paralysed. The active spirit intervenes in the organism. In health, this activity reveals itself to begin with in the life of thought or representation. We activate a certain representation, and the movement of a limb ensues. We do not enter consciously with the representation into the organic processes which culminate in the movement. The representation submerges itself in the unconscious. Between the representation and the movement, feeling at the soul level intervenes in the healthy state. It does not refer itself distinctly to any physical organ. This, however, is the case in the diseased state. The feeling, experienced in health as free from the physical organism, unites with this in the experience of illness. This shows the relationship of the process of healthy feeling and the experience of illness. There must be something there, which, when the organism is in health, is less intensely united with it than when it is sick. To spiritual perception this something is revealed to be the astral body. The astral body is a super-sensible organization within the physical organization. It may intervene loosely in an organ when it leads to soul experience which is self-supporting and is not experienced in connection with the body. Or it intervenes intensively in an organ; then it leads to the experience of illness. One of the forms of illness must be conceived as an abnormal seizing of the organism by the astral body, which causes the spiritual part of man to submerge itself in the body more deeply than is the case in health. But thinking also has its physical basis in the organism. In the healthy state it is even freer from this than is feeling. In addition to the astral body, spiritual perception discovers a special ego-organization which expresses itself freely in the soul in thinking. If, with this ego-organization, man submerges himself intensively in his bodily nature, the ensuing condition makes his observation of his own organism similar to that of the external world — it is a fact that if we observe an object or process of the outer world, the idea in man and what he observes are not in a living reciprocal relationship, but are independent of each other. In a human limb this condition only takes place when it is paralyzed. The limb then becomes a piece of the outer world. The ego-organization is no longer lightly united with it as it is in health, when it can unite with the limb in the act of movement and withdraw again at once; it submerges itself in the limb permanently and is no longer able to withdraw. Here again the process of healthy movement of a limb and of paralysis stand side by side in their relationship. One sees clearly that the initial stage of healthy movement is the first beginning of a paralysis, a paralysis which is released as soon as it begins. We must see the very essence of illness in this intensive union of the astral body or ego-organization with the physical organism. Yet this union is only an intensification of that which exists more lightly in a state of health. Even the normal way in which the astral and ego-organization take hold of the human body, is related not to the healthy processes of life, but to the sick. Wherever the soul and spirit are at work, they annul the ordinary functioning of the body, transforming it into its opposite. In so doing they bring the organism into a line of action where illness tends to set in. In normal life this is regulated directly as it arises by a process of self-healing. A certain form of illness occurs when the spirit, or the soul, pushes its way too far into the organism, with the result that the self-healing process can either not take place at all or is too slow. In the faculties of soul and spirit, therefore, we have to seek the causes of illness. Healing must then consist in releasing [loosening] this soul or spiritual element from the physical organization. This is the one kind of illness. There is another. The ego organization and the astral body may be prevented from reaching even that looser union with the bodily nature which is conditioned, in ordinary life, by the independent activities of feeling, thinking and will. Then, in the organs or processes which the soul and spirit are thus unable to approach, there will be continuation of the healthy processes beyond the due measure which is appropriate for the organism. But spiritual perception shows that in such a case the physical organism does not merely carry out the lifeless processes of external nature. For the physical organism is permeated by an etheric. The physical organism alone could never call forth a process of self-healing. It is in the etheric organism that this process is kindled. We are thus led to recognize health as that condition which has its origin in the etheric. Healing must therefore consist in a treatment of the etheric organism.

Fundamentals of Therapy

Why Does Man Become Ill?

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c02.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c02

We cannot come to understand the human organism, in health or in illness, if we conceive that the working effects of any substance, taken in with the food from external nature, simply continue into the inner parts of the organism. Within the human organism it is not a question of continuing, but, on the contrary, of overcoming the reactions observable in the substance while outside the organism. The illusion that the substances of the outer world simply continue to work of their own nature in the organism, is due to the fact that to the ordinary chemical conception of today it appears to be so. This, according to its researchers, is dedicated to the belief that hydrogen, for example, is present in the body in the same form as in external nature, since it occurs first in the substances consumed as food and drink, and then in the products of excretion: air, sweat, urine, faeces, or in secretions such as bile. One feels no necessity to ask what happens within the living body to that which appears as hydrogen before its entry into and after its exit from the organism. One does not ask: What does that which appears as hydrogen experience inside the organism? When, however, one raises this question, one is at once impelled to turn one's attention to the contrast between the waking and sleeping organism. When the organism is asleep, its physical nature provides no basis for the unfolding of conscious or self-conscious experience, but it still provides a basis for the unfolding of life. In this respect the sleeping organism is distinguished from the dead. For the substantial basis of the latter is no longer one of life. And so long as one only sees this contrast in the differing composition of substances in the dead and living organism, one will not progress in one's understanding. Half a century ago the eminent physiologist Du Bois Reymond pointed out that consciousness can never be explained by the reactions of material substance. Never, he declared, shall we understand why it should not be a matter of indifference to so many atoms of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, what their relative position is, or was, or will become. or why, by these their changes of position, they should bring forth in man the sensations: I see red, I smell the scent of roses. Such being the case, Du Bois Reymond contended, natural-scientific thought can never explain the waking human being, filled as he is with sensations; it can only explain the sleeping man. Yet in this view he fell subject to an illusion. He believed that the phenomena of life, though not of consciousness, would be intelligible as an outcome of the reactions of material substance. But in reality, we must say of the phenomena of life, as he said of those of consciousness: Why should it occur to so many atoms of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen to bring forth, by the manner of their present, past, or future relative positions, the phenomenon of life? Observation shows, after all, that the phenomena of life have an altogether different orientation from those that run their course within the lifeless realm. Of the latter we shall be able to say: They reveal that they are subject to forces radiating outward from the essence of material substance. These forces radiate from the relative centre of the earth to the periphery. But the manifestations of life show the material substance appears subject to forces working from without inward — toward the relative centre. Passing on into the sphere of life, the substance must withdraw itself from the forces radiating outward and subject itself to those that radiate inward. Now it is to the earth that every earthly substance, or earthly process, owes its forces of the kind that radiate outward; it has these forces in common with the earth. It is, indeed, only as a constituent of the earth-body that any substance has the nature which chemistry discovers in it. When it comes to life, then it must stop being simply a piece of earth, it leaves its community with the earth. It is gathered up into the forces that radiate inward to the earth from all sides, from beyond the earthly realm. Whenever we see a substance or process unfold in forms of life, we must conceive it to be withdrawing from the forces that work upon it as from the centre of the earth, and entering the domain of others, which have, not a centre, but a periphery. From all sides they work, these forces, as if striving towards the central point of the earth. They would tear asunder the material nature of the earthly realm, dissolve it into complete formlessness, were it not for the heavenly bodies beyond the earth which mingle their influences in the field of these forces and modify the dissolving process. In the plant we can observe what happens. In plants, the substances of the earth are lifted out of the domain of earthly influences. They strive towards the formless. But this transition to the formless is modified by the influences of the sun and similar effects from the cosmos. When these are no longer working, or when they are working differently, as in the night, then, in the substances in question, the forces which they have from their community with earth begin to stir once more. From the cooperation of earthly forces and cosmic, the plant nature arises. If we comprise in the term physical the domain of all those forces and reactions which the substances unfold under the earth's influence we shall have to designate the entirely different forces which do not radiate outward from the earth, but in toward it, by a name in which this different character must find expression. Here we come from a new aspect to that element in the organization of man which was indicated from another in the former chapter. In harmony with an older usage, which has fallen into confusion under the modern purely physical way of thinking, we have agreed to denote this part of the human organism as the etheric. Thus, we shall have to say: in the plant-like nature, inasmuch as it appears alive, the etheric is holding sway. In man too, inasmuch as he is a living being, the same etheric principle holds sway. Nevertheless, even with respect to the mere phenomena of life, an important difference is apparent in his nature as against the plant's. For the plant lets the physical hold sway within it when the etheric from the cosmic spaces is no longer unfolding its influence, as is the case when at night-time the sun-ether ceases to work. The human being, on the other hand, only lets the physical hold sway within his body when death ensues. In sleep, though the phenomena of consciousness and self-consciousness vanish away; the phenomena of life remain, even when the sun-ether is no longer working in the cosmic spaces. Perpetually, throughout its life the plant is receiving into itself the ether-forces as they ray in towards the earth. Man, however, carries them within him in an individualized way, from the embryonic period of his existence. During his life, he takes out of himself what the plant receives continually from the universe because he received it for his further development already in the mother's womb. A force whose proper nature is originally cosmic, destined to pour its influences in towards the earth, works out of the lung or liver. It has accomplished a metamorphosis of its direction. Thus we shall have to say, man bears the etheric within him in an individualized form. As he carries the physical in the individualized form of his physical body and its organs, so too with the etheric. He has his own special etheric body, as he has his physical. In sleep, the etheric body of man remains united with the physical and gives it life; it only separates from it in death.

Fundamentals of Therapy

The Manifestations Of Life

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c03.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c03

The form and organization of plants in the plant kingdom are exclusively the result of the two fields of force: that which radiates outwards from the earth and that which radiates in towards it; this is not exclusively the case in animal or man. The leaf of a plant stands under the exclusive influence of these two domains of forces; the lung of an animal is subject to the same influences, but not exclusively. For the leaf, all the formative creative forces lie within these two domains while for the lung there are other formative forces besides these. This applies both to the formative forces which give the outward shape, and to those that regulate the inner movements of the substances, giving them a definite direction, combining them or separating them. It can be said of the substances which the plant absorbs that it is not a matter of indifference whether they are alive or not, because they attain the realm of the forces radiating into the earth. Within the plant they are lifeless if the forces of the universe do not work upon them; they come into life if they come under the influence of these forces. But to the plant substance, even when alive, the past, present, or future relative position of its members is a matter of indifference so far as any action of their own is concerned. They abandon themselves to the action of the external forces that ray in and out. The animal substance comes under influences that are independent of these forces. It moves within the organism, or moves as a whole organism in such a way that the movements do not follow only forces radiating outward and inward. Because of this the animal configuration arises independently of the domains of forces raying outward from and inward to the earth. In the plant, the play of forces here described gives rise to an alternation between the conditions of being connected and disconnected with the current of the forces that pour in from the periphery. The single being of the plant thus falls into two parts. The one tends to life and is wholly under the domain of the world-circumference; these are the sprouting organs, growth and blossom bearing organs. The other inclines towards the lifeless, it stays in the domain of the forces raying outward from the earth; this part comprises all that hardens the growth, provides a firm support for life, and so on. Between these two parts, life is forever being kindled and extinguished; and the death of the plant is only an increase of the effects of what rays out over what forces ray in. In the animal, part of the substantial nature is drawn right out of the domain of these two kinds of forces. Another part is thus brought about other than that which we found in the plant. Organ formations arise which stay within the domain of the two realms of forces, but others too come into being, which lift themselves out of this domain. Between these two formations, reciprocal relationships take place, and in these reciprocal relationships lies the cause why animal substance can become the bearer of feeling. One consequence is the difference, both in appearance and in constitution, between animal and vegetable substance. Thus in the animal organism we have a domain of forces independent of those radiating outward from, and inward to the earth. Beside the physical and the etheric, there is in fact the astral domain of forces, of which we have already spoken from another point of view. One need not be put off by the term “astral”. The forces radiating outward are the earthly ones, those radiating inwards are those of the cosmic circumference about the earth; in the “astral”, something is present of a higher order than these two kinds of forces. This higher presence first makes of the earth itself a heavenly body — a “star” (Astrum). Through the physical forces the earth separates itself from the universe; through the etheric it subjects itself to the influence of the universe upon it; with the “astral” forces it becomes an independent individuality within the universe. In the animal organism, the “astral” principle is an independent, self-contained part like the physical and the etheric. We can therefore speak of this part as an “astral body”. The animal organization only becomes intelligible by studying the reciprocal relationships between the physical, the etheric and the astral bodies. For all of these are present, independently, as its three parts; moreover, all three are different from what exists outside by way of lifeless (mineral) bodies or living bodies of a plant-like nature. True, the animal physical organism may be spoken of as lifeless; yet it is different from the lifeless nature of the mineral, for it is first estranged by the etheric and the astral organism from the mineral nature, and then, by a withdrawal of etheric and astral forces, it is returned to the lifeless realm. It is an entity in which the mineral forces, those that work in the earth domain alone, can only act destructively. This physical body can serve the animal organization as a whole only so long as the etheric and astral maintain the upper hand over the destructive intervention of the mineral forces. The animal etheric organism lives as that of the plant, but not in the same manner. For by the astral forces, the life has been brought into a condition foreign to itself; it has in fact been torn away from the forces raying in toward the earth and then returned once more to their domain. The etheric organism is a structure in which the merely plant-like forces have an existence too dull for the animal nature. Only through the astral forces continually lighting up its manner of activity can it serve the animal organism as a whole. When the activities of the etheric gain the upper hand, sleep ensues; when the astral organism becomes predominant, wakefulness prevails. Neither sleeping nor waking may overstep a certain boundary in their effect. If this were to happen in the case of sleep, the plant-nature in the organism as a whole would incline towards the mineral; there would arise a diseased condition, a hypertrophy of the plant-nature. And if it happened in the case of waking, the plant-nature would become entirely estranged from the mineral, the latter would assume forms within the organism belonging, not to it, but to the external, inorganic, lifeless sphere. It would be a diseased condition because of hypertrophy of the mineral nature. Into all the three organisms, physical, etheric and astral, [material] substance penetrates from outside. Each of the three in its own way must overcome the special nature of the [material]. Through this there is a threefold organization of the organs. The physical organization produces organs which have gone through the etheric and astral organizations but are on the way back again to their realm. They cannot altogether have arrived there, for this would mean death to the whole organism. The etheric organism forms organs which have passed through the astral organization but are striving ever and again to withdraw from it; they have in them a force towards the dullness of sleep, they incline to develop this merely vegetative life. The astral organism forms organs which estrange the vegetative life. They can only exist if this vegetative life takes hold of them again and again. Having no relationship either with the radiating outward or with the radiating inward [field] forces of the earth, they would fall out of the earthly realm altogether if it did not again and again take hold of them. In these organs, a rhythmic interplay of the animal and plant like natures must take place. This determines the alternating states of sleeping and waking. In sleep, the organs of the astral forces, too, are in the dull stupor of a plant-like life. They have no active influence on the etheric and physical realm. They are then entirely abandoned to the domains of [field] forces pouring in toward and outward from the earth.

Fundamentals of Therapy

Concerning The Nature Of The Sentient Organism

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c04.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c04

In the astral body the animal form arises, outwardly the form as a whole, inwardly the formation of the organs. The sentient animal substance is, then, an outcome of the form-giving activity of this astral body. Where this process of formation is carried to its conclusion, the animal is produced. In man it is not carried to its conclusion. At a certain point on its way it is held up, blocked. In the plant we have material substance transformed by the forces raying inward to the earth. This is the living substance. It is continually interacting with the lifeless [matter]. We must conceive that in the plant, living substance is perpetually being separated out of the lifeless. It is in the living substance that the plant form then appears as a product of the forces raying in towards the earth. Thus we have one stream of substance. Lifeless substance transforms itself into living; living transforms itself into lifeless. In this stream the plant-like organs come into being. In the animal the sentient substance comes forth from the living, as in the plant the living from the lifeless. Thus there is a twofold stream of substance. The life is not carried to the point of formed living in the etheric. It is kept in flow, and form inserts itself through the astral organization into the streaming life. In man, this latter process too is kept in flow. The sentient substance is drawn into the realm of a still further organization. This we may call the ego-organization. The sentient substance transforms itself once more. A threefold stream of substance is produced. In this, man's inner and outer form arises. Through this it becomes the bearer of self-conscious spiritual life. Down to the smallest particle of his substance, man in his form is a result of this ego-organization. We can now trace these processes of formation in their material aspect. The transformation of substance from the one level to the next appears as a separation of the upper level from the lower, and a building of the form out of this separated substance. In the plant, out of the lifeless substance the living is separated. In this separated substance, the etheric forces work, raying inward to the earth, creating form. To begin with, there takes place not an actual separation but an entire transformation of physical substance by the etheric forces. This, however, only happens in the formation of the seed. Here the transformation can be complete, because the seed is protected by the surrounding maternal organization from the influences of the physical forces. But when the seed formation is freed from the maternal organization, the working of the forces in the plant divides; in one direction, the forming of substance is such as to strive upward into the realm of the etheric, while in the other it strives back again to physical formation. Parts of the being of the plant arise that are on the way to life and those which are on the way to death. The latter then appear as the excretory members of the plant organism. The bark-formation of the tree is a particularly characteristic example in which we may observe this excretory process. In the animal there are dual processes of separation, and dual processes of excretion. The plant-process of excretion is not carried to a conclusion but kept in flow, and there is added to it the transformation of living substance into sentient. This sentient substance separates itself from the merely living. We have, therefore, on the one hand, substance that is striving towards sentient existence, and on the other, substance that is striving away from it to the condition of mere life. In a living organism there is, however, a reciprocal relationship of all parts. Hence in the animal the excretion towards the lifeless realm, which in the plant approaches very nearly to the outer lifeless world, the mineral, still remains far removed from mineral nature. In the bark-forming process of the plant, we see the forming of a substance which is already on the way to mineral nature and loosens itself from the plant-organism increasingly, the more mineral it becomes; this appears in the animal as the excreted products of digestion. These are farther removed from the mineral nature than the excretions of the plant. In man, that part is separated out of the sentient substance which then becomes the bearer of the self-conscious spirit. But a continual separation is also brought about, for in the process, substance is produced that strives towards the merely sentient faculty. Animal nature is therefore present within the human organism as a perpetual excretion. In the animal organism, in the waking stage, the separation and formation of what is excreted, as well as the excretion of the sentient substance, stand under the influence of the astral activity. In man there is added the activity of the ego organism. In sleep the astral and the ego-organism are not directly active. But the substance has been taken hold of by their activity and continues in it as though by inertia. A substance once formed through and through as occurs by the workings of the astral and ego-organization, will go on working in the way of these organizations in the sleeping state, as it were, out of inertia. We cannot therefore speak of any merely vegetative action of the organism in sleeping man. Even in sleep, the astral and ego-organizations work on in the substance that has been formed under their influence. The difference between sleeping and waking is not to be represented as an alternation of human and animal with physical and vegetative modes of action. The reality is altogether different. In waking life the sentient substance, and that which can act as a bearer of the self-conscious spirit, are lifted out of the organism as a whole and placed at the disposal of the astral body and ego-organization. The physical and the etheric organism must then work in such a way that the forces raying outward from the earth and in toward it, alone are active in them. True, they are also taken hold of by the astral body and ego-organization yet only from outside. In sleep, they are taken hold of inwardly by the substances that come into existence under the influence of astral body and ego-organization; while man is sleeping, from the universe as a whole only the forces radiating out of the earth and in toward it work upon him, there are working on him from within, the substance-forces which the astral body and ego-organization have prepared. If we call the sentient substance the residue of the astral body, and that which has arisen under the ego-organization's influence its residue, then we may say: in the waking human organism the astral body and ego-organization themselves are working, and in the sleeping human organism their substantial residues are at work. In waking life man lives in activities which bring him into connection with the outer world through his astral body and through his ego-organization; in sleep his physical and etheric organisms live on what has become the material residue of these two organizations. A substance absorbed by man, both in the sleeping and in the waking state, like oxygen in breathing, must therefore be differentiated as to its mode of action in the two conditions. According to these two conditions, the oxygen absorbed from without has the effect not of awakening, but of putting man to sleep. Increased uptake of oxygen leads to abnormal drowsiness. In waking life the astral body battles perpetually against the soporific influence of the absorption of oxygen. When the astral body suspends its work upon the physical, the oxygen unfolds its proper nature and sends the man to sleep.

Fundamentals of Therapy

Plant, Animal, Man

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c05.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c05

The activities of the several human organisms in relation to the organism as a whole are strikingly expressed in the formation of the blood and nerves. Where the foodstuffs absorbed into the body become progressively transformed in the process of blood-formation, this whole process stands under the influence of the ego-organization. From the processes that take place in the tongue and palate, accompanied by conscious sensation, down to the unconscious and subconscious processes in the workings of pepsin, pancreatic juice, bile, etc., the ego-organization is at work. Then the working of the ego-organization withdraws, and in the further transformation of foodstuffs into the substance of blood, the astral body is predominantly active. This continues to the point where, in the breathing process, the blood meets the air, the oxygen. At this point the etheric body carries out its main activity. In the carbonic acid that is on the point of being breathed out but has not yet left the body, we have a substance which is in the main only living — that is to say, it is neither sentient, nor dead. (Everything is alive that carries in it the activity of the etheric body.) The main quantity of this living carbonic acid leaves the organism; a small part continues to work into the processes that have their centre in the head organization. This portion shows a strong tendency to pass into the lifeless inorganic nature, but it does not become entirely lifeless. The nervous system shows an opposite phenomenon. In the sympathetic nervous system which permeates the organs of digestion, the etheric body is paramount. The nerve organs with which we are here concerned are primarily living organs. The astral and ego-organizations do not organize them from within but from without. For this reason the influence of the astral and ego-organizations working in these nerve-organs is powerful. Passions and emotions have a deep and lasting effect upon the sympathetic nervous system. Sorrow and anxiety will gradually destroy it. The spinal nervous system, with its many ramifications, is the one in which the astral organization primarily intervenes. Hence it is the bearer of everything which is psychological in man, namely the reflex processes, but not of that which takes place in the ego, in the self-conscious spirit. It is the actual cranial nerves which underlie the ego organization. In these, the activities of the etheric and astral organization withdraw. We see three distinct regions arising in the organism as a whole. In a lower region, nerves permeated from within mainly by the action of the etheric organism work with a blood substance that is predominantly subject to the activity of the ego-organization. In this region, during the embryonic and post-embryonic period of development, we have the starting-point for all organ-formations connected with the giving of inner life to man's organism. In the formation of the embryo, this region, being weak as yet, is supplied with formative and life-giving influences by the surrounding maternal organism. Then there is a middle region, where nerves, influenced by the astral organization, are working with blood-processes which are likewise dependent on this astral organization and, in their upper parts, on the etheric. Here, in the periods of formation of man, lies the starting point for the formation of those organs which are instrumental in the processes of outer and inner movement, this applies not only to the muscles for example, but all organs which are causes of mobility, whether or not they be muscles in the proper sense. Finally there is an upper region where nerves, subject to the inner organizing activity of the ego, work with blood-processes that have a strong tendency to pass into the lifeless, mineral realm. Here lies the starting point, during man's formative epoch, for the formation of the bones and all else that serves the human body as organs of support. We shall only understand the brain of man if we see in it a bone-forming tendency interrupted in its very first beginning. And we shall only understand the bone formation when we recognize in it the working of the same impulses as in the brain; in the bone formation, the brain-impulse is carried to its final conclusion and permeated from without by the impulses of the middle organism, where astrally determined nerve-organs are working together with blood-substance etherically determined. In the bone-ash which remains with its particular configuration when the bones are subjected to combustion, we see the results of the uppermost region of the human organization. While in the cartilaginous organic residue which remains when the bones are treated with dilute hydrochloric acid, we have the result of the impulses of the middle region. The skeleton is the physical image of the ego-organization. In the bone creating process the human organic substance, as it tends toward the lifeless mineral, is entirely subject to the ego-organization. In the brain, the ego is active as a spiritual being. The capacity of the ego to create form in the physical substance is here overwhelmed entirely by the organizing activity of the etheric, even by the forces proper to the physical. The brain is based only minimally on the ego's organizing power, which here becomes submerged in the processes of life and in the workings of the physical. Yet this is the very reason why the brain is the bearer of the spiritual work of the ego. For, inasmuch as the organic and physical activities in the brain do not involve the ego-organization, the latter is able to devote itself freely to its own activities. In the bony system of the skeleton, perfect though it is as a physical picture of the ego-organization, the latter exhausts itself in the act of forming and organizing the physical, and as spiritual activity, there is nothing left. Therefore the processes in the bones are the most unconscious So long as it is in the organism, the carbonic acid which is pushed out in breathing is still a living substance; it is taken hold of and driven outward by the astral activity that has its seat in the middle or spinal region of the nervous system. The portion of carbonic acid which the metabolism carries up into the head is there combined with calcium, and thus develops a tendency to come into the sphere of action of the ego-organization. Through this, calcium carbonate is driven under the influence of the head nerves, motivated inwardly by the ego-organization, toward bone-formation. The substances myosin and myogen produced out of the foodstuffs, tend to become deposited in the blood; they are substances astrally conditioned to begin with, and they stand in reciprocal interaction with the sympathetic, which is organized from within by the etheric body. These two proteins are, however, also taken hold of to some extent by the activity of the middle nervous system which is under the influence of the astral body. They thus come into relationship with the breakdown products of albumen, with fats, sugar, and other substances similar to sugar. This enables them, under the influence of the middle nervous system, to find their way into the process of muscle-formation.

Fundamentals of Therapy

Blood and Nerve

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c06.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c06

The human organization does not consist of a self-contained system of interlocking processes. If it were such a system it could not be the bearer of the soul or the spirit. It is only because the human organism is continually decaying or entering the path of lifeless mineral activity in its nerve and bone substance and in the processes with which these substances are incorporated, that the soul and spirit can have the human organism as their basis. In the nervous tissues the protein disintegrates. But in these tissues, unlike what happens in the egg-cell and other organic forms, it is not built up again by coming into the domain of the influences radiating in toward the earth. It simply disintegrates. Through this the ether-influences radiating in through the sense organs from the objects and processes of the environment, as well as those that are formed when the organs of movement are involved, are thereby enabled to use the nerves as organs along which they are carried throughout the body. In the nerves there are two kinds of processes: the disintegration of protein, and the permeation of this disintegrating substance with etheric substance, whose flow is started and stimulated by acids, salts, and materials of the character of phosphorus and sulphur. The equilibrium between the two processes is mediated by fats and water. Seen in their essential nature, these are processes of disease which permeate the organism all the time. They must be balanced by no less continuous processes of healing. This balance is brought about through the blood, which contains not only those processes that constitute growth and metabolism, but in addition a constant healing action by which the nerve processes inducing illness are opposed. In the plasma substance and in the fibrinogen the blood contains those forces which serve the growth and metabolism in the narrower sense. In that which appears as an iron content when the red corpuscles are examined, there lies the origins of the blood's healing property. Accordingly, iron also appears in the gastric juice, and as iron-oxide in the chyle. In all of these, sources are created for processes that counterbalance the processes of the nerves. Iron reveals itself, upon examination of the blood, as the only metal which, within the human organism, retains a certain tendency toward crystallization. It thus asserts, even within the body, forces which are in fact none other than the external, physical, mineral forces of nature. Within the human organism they form a system of forces that is orientated in the sense of outer physical nature. This is, however, perpetually being overcome by the ego-organization. We have therefore two systems of forces. The one has its origin in the nerve processes; the other in the blood-formation. In the nerve processes, pathogenic processes only develop to the degree that the perpetual counter-influence of the blood processes is able to heal them. These nerve-processes are brought about in the nervous substance, and hence in the organism as a whole, by the astral body. The blood processes, on the other hand, are those in which the ego-organization within the human organism confronts outer physical nature, which is here continued into the body and subjugated by the ego-organization to its own formative process. In this inter-relationship we can directly grasp the essential processes of becoming ill and healing. If there arises within the body increases of those activities which are present in their normal measure in all that is stimulated by the nervous process then there is illness. And if we can confront such processes by others presenting reinforcement of certain effects of outer nature in the organism, a healing effect can then be brought about if these effects of outer nature can be mastered by the ego-organism and are such as to counterbalance processes directed in opposition. Milk contains only small quantities of iron. Milk is the substance which as such represents least in its activities, pathogenetic forces; the blood must perpetually expose itself to all that produces illness; it requires therefore the organized iron, that is to say the iron which has been received into the ego-organization — the haematin — as a continually acting remedy. For a remedy which is to influence a morbid condition appearing in the inner organization, or one that is brought about externally but takes its course within the organism, the first point is to discover how and to what extent the astral organization is working so as to bring about, at some point in the body, a disintegration of protein such as is induced by the nervous organization in the normal way. Let us assume that we are dealing with obstructions in the lower abdomen. We can observe in the presenting pain an excessive activity of the astral body. In which case we are dealing with a characteristic situation for the bowel organism. The important question now is: how is the intensified astral influence to be counterbalanced? This can be done by introducing substances into the blood which can be taken hold of by just that part of the ego-organization which works in the intestinal system. These are potassium and sodium. If we introduce these into the organism in some preparation — or through the organization of a plant, e.g., Anagallis arvensis — we take away the excessive nerve-effect of the astral body and through the blood, bring about the transition of the astral body's excess action to that activity of the named substances mastered by the ego-organization. If the substance is given in mineral form, we shall have to take care that the potassium or sodium enters the circulation of the blood in the right way, so as to arrest the metamorphosis of protein before the point of disintegration; this may be done by the use of auxiliary remedies, or better still by combining the potassium or sodium in the preparation with sulphur. Sulphur has the peculiar property of helping to arrest the disintegration of albumen; it holds as it were the organizing forces of proteins together. Brought into the circulation in such a way as to maintain its union with potassium or sodium, it will make its effect felt in the region of those organs to which potassium or sodium have a special affinity. This applies to the intestinal organs.

Fundamentals of Therapy

Nature Of Healing Effects

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c07.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c07

Throughout all its members, the human organism unfolds activities which can only have their origin in the organism itself. Whatsoever is received from outside, must either merely provide the occasion for the organism to unfold its own activities, or else its activity in the body must be such that the foreign activity cannot be distinguished from an inner activity of the body once it has penetrated it. Man's essential food contains carbohydrates for example. To a degree these are similar to starch. As such they are substances which unfold their activity in the plant. They enter into the human body in the state which they can achieve in the plant. In this state starch is a foreign body. The human organism does not develop any activity which lies in the direction of what starch can unfold as activity in the state in which it enters the body. For example, what develops in the human liver as a substance similar to starch (glycogen), is something different from plant starch. On the other hand grape-sugar is a substance which stimulates activities that are of a nature similar to the activities of the human body. To develop an effect that plays any real part in the body, it must first be transformed. It is transformed into sugar by the activity of ptyalin in the mouth. Protein and fats are not altered by ptyalin. To begin with they enter into the stomach as foreign substances. Here the proteins are so transformed by the secreted gastric pepsin that breakdown products as far as peptides arise. The peptides are substances whose impulses of action coincide with those of the body. Fat, on the other hand, also remains unchanged in the stomach. It is only changed when it comes in contact with the pancreatic secretion, where it gives rise to substances that appear on examination of the dead organism as glycerine and fatty acids. Now the transformation of starch into sugar continues through the whole process of digestion. Transformation of starch also takes place through the gastric juice if it has not already been accomplished by the ptyalin. Where the transformation of starch is achieved by ptyalin, the process stands at the boundary of that which takes place, in man, in the domain referred to in the second chapter as the organization of the ego. It is in this domain that the first transformation of the materials received into the human body from the outer world takes place. Glucose is a substance that can work in the sphere of the ego-organization. Corresponding to it is the taste of sweetness, which has its being in the ego-organization. If sugar is produced from starch through the gastric juice, this shows that the ego-organization penetrates into the region of the digestive system. For conscious experience, the sensation of sweet taste is absent in this case; nevertheless, the same thing that goes on in consciousness- in the domain of the ego-organization — while the sensation “sweet” is experienced, now penetrates into the unconscious regions of the human body, where the ego-organization becomes active. Now, in the regions of which we are unconscious, the astral body, in the sense explained in Chapter II, comes into play. The astral body is active when starch is transformed into sugar in the stomach. Man can only be conscious through that which works in his ego-organization in such a way that this is not overwhelmed or disturbed by anything, but able to unfold itself to the full. This is the case in the domain where the ptyalin influences lie. In the realm of the pepsin influences, the astral body overwhelms the ego-organization. The ego-activity becomes submerged in the astral. Thus, in the sphere of material substance, we can trace the ego-organization by the presence of sugar. Where there is sugar, there is the ego organization; the ego-organization emerges where sugar arises in order to direct the sub-human (vegetative and animal) material towards the human. Now sugar occurs as a product of excretion in diabetes mellitus. Here the ego-organization appears in the human body in such a form that it works destructively. If we observe it in any other region of its activity, we find that the ego organization dives down into the astral. Sugar, directly consumed, is in the ego-organization. There it induces the sweet taste. Starch, consumed and transformed into sugar by ptyalin or in the gastric juice, reveals the action in the mouth or in the stomach, of the astral body working with the ego-organization and submerging the latter. However, sugar is present in the blood as well. The blood, as it circulates with its sugar content, carries the ego-organization through the whole body. But there through the working of the human organism the ego-organization is everywhere held in equilibrium. We saw in Chapter II how the human being contains, besides the ego-organization and astral body, the etheric body and the physical. These also take up the ego-organization and retain it in themselves. As long as this is the case, sugar is not secreted in the urine. How the ego-organization carrying sugar is able to live, is shown by processes in the organism bound up with sugar. In a healthy man sugar can only appear in the urine if consumed too copiously as sugar, or if too much alcohol is consumed. Alcohol enters directly into the processes of the body without intermediate products of transformation. In both these cases the sugar-process appears independently as such, alongside the other activities in the human being. In diabetes mellitus the case is as follows: the ego-organization, as it submerges in the astral and etheric realm, is so weakened that it can no longer effectively accomplish its action upon the sugar-substance. The sugar then undergoes the processes in the astral and etheric realms which should take place in the ego-organization Diabetes is aggravated by everything that draws the ego organization away and impairs its effective penetration into the bodily activities: over-excitement occurring not once but repeatedly; intellectual over-exertion; hereditary predispositions hindering the normal co-ordination of the ego-organization with the body as a whole. At the same time and in connection with these things, processes take place in the head system which ought properly to be parallel to the processes accompanying activity of the soul and spirit; they fall out of their true parallelism because the latter activity takes place either too slowly or too quickly. It is as though the nervous system were thinking independently alongside of the thinking human being. Now this is an activity which the nervous system should only carry out during sleep. In the diabetic, a form of sleep in the depths of the organism runs parallel to the waking state. Hence in the further course of the disease a morbid degeneration of nervous substance takes place. It is a consequence of the deficient penetration of the ego-organization. The formation of boils is another collateral symptom in diabetes. Boils arise through an excessive activity in the domain of the etheric. The ego-organization fails where it should be working. The astral activity cannot unfold itself because at such a place it only has power when in harmony with the ego-organization. The result is an excess of etheric activity revealing itself in the formation of boils. From all this we see that a real healing process for diabetes mellitus can only be initiated if we are in a position to strengthen the ego-organization of the patient.

Fundamentals of Therapy

Activities Within The Human Organism. Diabetes Mellitus

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c08.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c08

Protein is that substance of the living body which best lends itself to the various transformations brought about by the body's formative forces, so that what results from the transformed protein substance appears in the structures of the organs and of the whole organism. To be suitable for such use, protein must have the inherent capacity to lose whatever form may result from the nature of its material constituents the moment it is called upon, within the organism, to be of service to a form the organism needs. We thus perceive that in protein the forces proceeding from the natures and mutual relationships of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon, disintegrate. The inorganic chemical bonding ceases and in the disintegration of the protein, organic formative forces begin to work. Now these formative forces are dependent on the etheric body. Protein is constantly on the point of being taken up in the activity of the etheric body or of being precipitated out. Removed from the organism to which it once belonged, it assumes the tendency to become a compound, subject to the chemical forces of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon. Protein that remains a constituent of the living organism suppresses this tendency in itself and aligns itself to the formative forces of the etheric body. The protein ingested as a constituent of food is, to begin with, a foreign body in the human organism. It still contains residual activities from the etheric processes of the living being whence it was derived. These must be entirely removed from it. It now has to be absorbed into the etheric activities of the human organism. Hence, as the human process of digestion takes its course, we are dealing with two kinds of protein substances. At the beginning of this process the protein is foreign to the human organism. At the end it belongs to the organism. Between these two conditions there is an intermediate one, where the protein received as food has not yet entirely discarded its previous etheric actions, not yet entirely assumed the new. At this stage it is virtually completely inorganic. It is then subject to the influences of the human physical body alone. This physical body of man, in its form a product of the ego organization, is the bearer of inorganically active forces. It thus has a lethal effect on anything that is alive. Everything that enters the realm of the ego-organization dies. Hence, in the physical body the ego-organization incorporates purely inorganic substances. In the human physical organism these do not work in the same way as in lifeless nature outside man; but they work inorganically, that is to say, causing death. This deadening effect upon the albumen takes place in that part of the digestive tract where trypsin, a constituent of the pancreatic juice, is active. That inorganic forces are concerned in the action of trypsin, may be gathered also from the fact that it unfolds its activity with the help of alkali. Until it meets the trypsin in the pancreatic fluid, the albuminous nourishment continues to live in a manner foreign to the human organism, namely, according to the organism from which it is derived. Meeting the trypsin, it becomes lifeless. But it is only for a moment, as it were, that the protein is lifeless in the human organism. Then it is absorbed into the physical body in accordance with the organization of the ego. The latter must have the force to carry over what the albumen has now become, into the domain of the human etheric body. In this way the protein constituents of food become formative material for the human organism. The foreign etheric influences, pertaining to them originally, leave the human being. For the healthy digestion of the protein constituent of food, man must possess a sufficiently strong ego-organization to enable all the protein, which the human organism needs, to pass into the domain of the human etheric body. If this is not the case, the result is an excessive activity of this etheric body. The quantity of protein prepared by the ego organization, which the etheric body receives, is insufficient for its activity. The consequence is that the activity orientated towards enlivening that protein absorbed by the ego-organization overwhelms that protein still containing foreign etheric effects. The human being receives in his own etheric body a multitude of influences that do not belong to it. These must now be excreted in an abnormal manner. This results in a pathological process of excretion. This pathological excretion appears in albuminuria. The albumen which should be received into the domain of the etheric body is excreted. It is albumen, which, owing to the weakness of the ego-organization, has not been able to assume the well-nigh lifeless intermediate stage. Now the forces in man which bring about excretion are bound up with the domain of the astral body. In albuminuria, the astral body is forced to carry out an activity for which it is not properly adapted, its activity becomes atrophied in those regions of the organism where it ought properly to unfold. This is in the renal epithelia. The degeneration of the epithelia in the kidneys is a symptom showing that the activity of the astral body which is intended for these organs has been diverted. It is clear from all this where the healing process for albuminuria must intervene. The power of the ego-organization in the gland of the pancreas, which is weak, needs to be strengthened.

Fundamentals of Therapy

The Function Of Protein In The Human Body, and Albuminuria

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c09.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c09

Of all substances in the organism, fat proves least of all a foreign body when taken in from the outer world. More readily than any other substance, it passes over from the quality it brings with it when taken as a food, to the mode of action of the human organism itself. The 80% of fat contained, for instance, in butter, passes unchanged through the domains of ptyalin and pepsin and is only transformed by the pancreatic juice into glycerine and fatty acids. This behaviour of fat is only possible because it carries with it as little as possible of the specific nature of a foreign organism (of its etheric forces, etc.) into the human organism. The latter can easily incorporate it into its own activity. This again is due to the fact that fat plays its part above all in the production of the inner warmth. Now the inner warmth is the element of the physical organism in which the ego organization prefers to live. Of every substance to be found in the human body, only as much is appropriate for the ego organization as gives rise to the development of warmth. By its total behaviour fat proves itself to be a substance which merely fills the body, is merely carried by the body, and is important for the active organization through those processes alone in which it engenders warmth. Derived as foodstuff, for example, from an animal source, fat will take nothing with it from the animal organism into the human, save only its inherent faculty of evolving warmth. Now this development of warmth is one of the last processes of the metabolism. The fat received as food is therefore preserved as such throughout the first and middle processes of metabolism; its absorption only takes place in the region of the inmost activities of the body, beginning with the pancreatic fluid. The occurrence of fat in human milk points to an exceedingly significant activity of the organism. The body does not consume this fat, it allows it to pass over into a product of secretion. Now, into this secreted fat the ego-organization also passes over. It is on this that the form-giving power of the mother's milk depends. The mother thereby transmits her own formative forces of the ego-organization to the child, and thus adds something more to the formative forces she has already transmitted by heredity. The healthy process occurs when the human form-giving forces consume the fat store present in the body in the development of warmth. On the other hand it is unhealthy if the fat is not used up by the ego-organization in processes of warmth, but carried over, unused, into the organism. Such fat will then give rise at one point or another in the body to an excessive power of producing warmth. The warmth thus engendered will mislead other life processes by interfering in the organism here and there without being grasped by the ego-organization. There may arise what may be called parasitic foci of warmth. These bear within themselves the tendency to inflammatory conditions. The origin of such must be sought in the fact that the body develops a tendency to accumulate more fat than the ego-organization requires for its life in inner warmth. In the healthy organism, the animal (astral) forces will produce or receive as much fat as the ego-organization is able to translate into warmth-processes and, in addition, as much as is required to keep the mechanism of muscle and bone in order. The warmth that the body needs will then be created. If the animal forces supply the ego-organization with an insufficient quantity of fat, the ego-organization will experience hunger for warmth. The necessary warmth must be withdrawn from the activities of the organs. The latter then become internally stiff and fragile. Their essential processes take place too sluggishly. We see the appearance, at one point or another, of pathological processes for an understanding of which it will be necessary to recognize if and how they are due to a general deficiency of fat. If on the other hand, as in the case already mentioned, there is an excess of fat, giving rise to parasitic foci of warmth, organs will be taken hold of in such a way as to become active beyond their normal measure. Tendencies towards excessive nourishment will then arise, so as to overload the organism. It need not imply that the person becomes an excessive eater. It may be, for instance, that the metabolic activity of the organism supplies too much substance to an organ of the head, withdrawing it from organs of the lower body and from the secretory processes. The action of the organs thus deprived will then be lowered in vitality. The secretions of the glands, for instance, may become deficient. The fluid constituents of the organism are brought into an unhealthy relationship in their mixture. For instance, the secretion of bile may become too great compared with that of pancreatic fluid. Once again it will be important to recognize how a syndrome arising locally is to be judged in that it may proceed in one way or another from an unhealthy activity of fat.

Fundamentals of Therapy

The Function Of Fat In The Human Organism and The Deceptive Local Syndromes

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c10.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c10

Ingestion of albumen is a process connected with one aspect of the inner activities in the human organism. This is that aspect which comes about on the basis of the absorption of physical substance. All such activities result in growth, creation of form, or new formation of material content. All that is related to the unconscious functions of the organism, belongs to this domain. The processes of this kind are opposed by those which consist of excretion. These may be excretions directed outward; but they may also be processes of secretion where the product is further elaborated internally, in the forming or laying down of substances in the body. These are the processes of secretion where the product is further elaborated internally, in the forming or laying down of substances in the body. These are the processes which provide the material foundation of conscious experience. Through the first kind of processes the force of consciousness is muted if it exceeds that which can be held in balance by means of the second kind of processes. A most remarkable excretory process is that of uric acid. The astral body is active in this excretion. This has to take place throughout the whole organism. It takes place to a particular degree through the urine. In a very finely divided way it takes place for example, in the brain. In the secretion of uric acid in the urine the astral body is mainly active, while the part played by the ego-organization is only subsidiary. In the secretion of uric acid in the brain, on the other hand, the ego-organization is the important factor and the astral body is in the background. Now in the organism, the astral body is the intermediary between the activity of the ego-organization and the etheric and physical bodies. The ego-organization must carry lifeless substances and forces into the organs. Only through this impregnation of the organs with inorganic material can man become the conscious being that he is. Organic substance and organic force would lower human consciousness to the dim level of the animal. The action of the astral body inclines the organs to receive the inorganic impregnations of the ego-organization. Its function is in fact to prepare the way. We see, therefore, that in the lower parts of this human organism the activity of the astral body has the upper hand. Here the uric acid substances must not be received into the organism. They must be excreted copiously. Under the influence of this excretion the impregnation with inorganic material must be prevented. The more uric acid is excreted, the more lively is the activity of the astral body, while that of the ego-organization impregnating the body with inorganic materials is correspondingly diminished. In the brain, on the other hand, the activity of the astral body is slight. Little uric acid is excreted, whereas more inorganic material in the sense of the ego-organization is deposited. The ego-organization cannot master large quantities of uric acid; and thus they fall under the action of the astral body; small quantities, on the other hand, enter the organization of the ego and there provide the foundation for the forming of the inorganic in the sense of the ego-organization. In the healthy organism there must be a correct economy in the distribution of uric acid in the different regions. Whatever belongs to the system of nerve-sense organization must be provided with as much uric acid as the ego-activity can make use of and no more; while, for the system of metabolism and the limbs, the ego-activity must be suppressed and the astral enabled to unfold its action in the more copious secretion of the uric acid. Now since it is the astral body that makes way for the ego-activity in the organs, a correct distribution in the deposition of uric acid must be regarded as an essential factor in human health. For in this is expressed whether the correct relationship between the ego-organization and astral body exists in any particular organ or system of organs. Let us assume that in some organ, in which the ego organization should predominate over the astral activity, the latter begins to gain the upper hand. This can only apply to an organ where the excretion of uric acid beyond a certain measure is impossible by virtue of structural arrangement of the organ. The organ becomes overloaded with uric acid uncontrolled by the ego-organization. Nevertheless, the astral body begins to bring about a secretion of uric acid. Since the organs of excretion are lacking in such a region, the uric acid is deposited not outwardly but in the organism itself. And if it finds its way to places in the body where the ego-organization is unable to take a sufficiently active part, we find inorganic substance i.e. something which is only proper to the ego-organization, but which the latter leaves to the action of the astral activity. Foci arise, where subhuman (animal) processes insert themselves into the human organism. We are dealing with gout. If gout is frequently reputed to develop as a result of inherited tendencies, it is due to the simple fact that when the forces of inheritance predominate the astral-animal nature becomes especially active and the ego-organization is thereby repressed. We shall, however, understand the matter more clearly if we look for the true cause of gout in this: substances are introduced into the human body in the process of nourishment, which the activity of the organism is not strong enough to divest of their foreign nature. The ego-organization, being weak, is unable to lead them over into the etheric body, and they thus remain in the region of astral activities. If an articular cartilage or a portion of connective tissue become over-charged with uric acid and, as a result, overburdened with inorganic materials and forces, it shows that in these parts of the body the ego's activity lags behind that of the astral. And since the whole form of the human organism is an outcome of the organization of the ego, this abnormality must necessarily give rise to a deformation of the organs. In effect, the human organism will then strive away from its true and proper form.

Fundamentals of Therapy

The Forming Of The Human Body And Gout

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c11.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c11

The human body, like other organisms, forms itself out of the semi-fluid[colloidal] state. However for its formation a constant supply of gaseous material is necessary. The most important is the oxygen transmitted by breathing. We may consider in the first place a solid constituent of the body, e.g., a bony structure. It is precipitated from semi-fluid material. In this separation the ego-organization is active. Anyone may convince himself of this who studies the formation of the bony system. For, in the embryonic period and in childhood, the bony system develops in the same measure in which the human being receives his human form and figure, the characteristic expression of the ego-organization. The transformation of protein which underlies this process first separates the (astral and etheric) foreign forces from the protein; the protein then passes through the inorganic state, and in so doing, has to become fluid. In this condition, the ego-organization, working in the element of warmth, takes hold of it and introduces it to man's own etheric body. It thus becomes human protein, but it still has a long way to go before the transformation into bony substance is achieved. After its transformation into human protein, it must first be prepared for the receiving and transforming of calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate and the like. To this end it must undergo an intermediate stage. It must come under the influence of the absorption of gaseous substance. This brings into the protein the transformation-products of carbohydrates. The substances which thus arise can provide a basis for the form of the individual organs. They do not represent the finished substances of the organs, e.g. liver or bone-substance, but a more general, less differentiated substance, out of which the individual organs of the body can then be built up. It is the ego-organization which is active in moulding the final shape of the organs. The astral body is active in the above-mentioned undifferentiated organic substance. In the animal, this astral body also takes upon itself the task of moulding the final form of the organs; in man, the activity of the astral body and, with it the animal nature as such, persists only as a general underlying foundation for the ego-organization. In man the animal development is not carried to a conclusion; it is interrupted in its path and humanity is imposed, as it were, by the ego-organization upon it. Now the ego-organization lives entirely in states of warmth. It derives the individual organs from the undifferentiated astral nature. It works upon the undifferentiated substance with which the astral nature provides it, by enhancing or lowering the states of warmth of the nascent organs. If the ego-organization lowers the state of warmth, inorganic materials enter the substance and a hardening process sets in; the basis is provided for the formation of the bones. Salt-like substances are absorbed. If on the other hand the ego-organization enhances the state of warmth, organs are formed whose action is to dissolve the organic substance, leading it over into a liquid or gaseous condition. Let us assume, the ego-organization finds insufficient warmth developed in the organism, for the adequate enhancement of the warmth-conditions in those organs which require it. Organs whose proper functioning lies in the direction of a dissolving process will then fall into a hardening activity. They assume in a pathological way the tendency which in the bones is healthy Now the bone, once it has been formed, is an organ which the ego-organization releases from its domain. It enters a condition where it is no longer taken hold of by the ego organization inwardly, but only in an outward way. It is removed from the domain of growing and organizing processes, and serves the ego in a merely mechanical capacity, carrying out the movements of the body. Only a remainder of the inner activity of the ego-organization continues to permeate it throughout life because the bony system must, after all, remain as an integral organic part within the organism; it must not be allowed to fall entirely out of the sphere of life. The arteries are the organs which for the reason above mentioned, may pass into a formative activity similar to that of the bones. We then have the calcifying disease of the arteries known as sclerosis. The ego-organization is, in a certain sense, driven out of these organ-systems The opposite is the case when the ego-organization fails to achieve that lowering of the state of warmth which is needed for the region of the bones. The bones then assume a condition similar to those organs which normally unfold a dissolving kind of activity. Owing to the deficient hardening process, they are no longer able to provide a basis for the incorporation of salts. Thus the final process in the development of the bone-formations, which properly belongs to the organizing domain of the ego, fails to take place. The astral activity is not arrested at the proper point on its path. Tendencies towards malformation of shape must then appear; for the healthy creation of the human form and figure is only possible within the realm of the ego-organization. We have here the ricketic diseases. From all this it becomes evident how the human organs are connected in their activities. The bone comes into being in the realm of the ego-organization. It still continues to serve it even when the actual formation is concluded, when the ego-organization no longer forms and creates the bone, but uses it for voluntary movements. It is the same for that which arises in the domain of the astral organization. Undifferentiated substances and forces are there engendered. These occur throughout the body as an underlying basis for the differentiated organ forming processes. The astral activity carries them up to a certain stage and then makes use of them. The entire human organism is permeated by semi-fluid material, in which an astrally directed activity holds sway. This activity spreads itself in the secretions which are made use of to form the organism in the direction of its higher members. Secretions tending in this direction are to be seen in the products of the glands which play so important a part in the economy of the organism and its functions. In addition to these inward secretions, we then have the processes that are excretions in the proper sense, towards the outer world. But we make a mistake if we regard the excreta merely as those portions of the food consumed which the organism cannot make use of and therefore discards. For the important thing is not the mere fact that the organism throws certain substances out, but rather, that it goes through the activities which result in the excretions. The exercise of these activities is something that the organism needs for its subsistence. This activity is just as necessary as that by which the substances are received into the organism, or deposited internally. In the healthy relationship of both activities, there lies the very essence of organic life and action. Thus, in the outward excretions we see the result of astrally orientated activity. And if the excreta contain substances which have been carried as far as the inorganic nature, then the ego-organization, too, is expressing itself in them. Indeed, this part of the ego-organization's life is of particular importance. For the force that is spent on such excretions creates, as it were, an inward counter-pressure. And this latter is a necessary factor for the healthy existence of the organism. Thus the uric acid, which is secreted through the urine, creates as an inward reaction the correct tendency of the organism to sleep. Too little uric acid in the urine and too much in the blood will give rise to so little sleep that it is insufficient for the health of the organism.

Fundamentals of Therapy

Construction And Excretion in The Human Organism

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c12.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c12

Pain, which may occur somewhere in the organism, is experienced in the astral body and the ego. Both of these — the astral body and the ego, each in its own way are appropriately engaged within the physical and etheric body while man is in the waking state. When sleep takes place, the physical and etheric body carry out the organic activities alone. The astral body and ego are separated from them. In sleep the organism returns to the activities which belong to the starting point of its development, namely, to the embryonic periods and early infancy. In waking life those processes predominate which take place at its conclusion — in aging and dying. At the starting point of man's development the activity of the etheric body predominates over that of the astral; then, gradually in the course of life, the activity of the latter grows more intense while that of the etheric body retreats. Nor does the etheric body regain, even in sleep, the intensity it had at the beginning of life. It preserves the degree of intensity it has developed in relation to the astral in the course of life. In every age of life, to every organ of the human body a certain intensity of etheric activity is properly assigned and corresponds moreover to a certain intensity of the astral. It depends upon these relationships whether or not the astral body can properly engage itself with the etheric. If through a lowering of etheric activity it is unable to do so, pain ensues, if on the other hand the etheric body becomes active beyond its normal measure, the mutual penetration of astral and etheric activities becomes unusually intense. Pleasure and comfort ensue. We must however bear in mind that pleasure enhanced beyond a certain point passes over into pain, likewise pain into pleasure. If this were not borne in mind what is here said might seem in contradiction with some former explanations. An organ becomes ill when its proper etheric activity cannot unfold. Take, for instance, that metabolic action which is continued, from the actual digestive process, into the organism as a whole. If the products of metabolism are transmitted everywhere without residue into the activity and substantial formation of the organism, it is a sign that the etheric body is working appropriately. If, on the other hand, substances are deposited along the paths of metabolism without entering into the general action of the organism, it shows that the etheric body is impaired in its activity. The physical processes normally stimulated by the astral body, processes which serve the organism only when confined to their own sphere, exceed their proper limits and infringe on the etheric sphere of action. Thus processes arise, the existence of which is due to the predominance of the astral body. They are processes which have their proper place when the aging and disintegration of the body sets in. The point now is to bring about a proper harmony between the etheric and the astral activity. The etheric body must be strengthened, the astral weakened. This can be done by bringing the physical substances, which the etheric body has to assimilate, into a condition wherein they lend themselves more readily to its influences than they do in the disease. Likewise the ego-organization must be supplied with added strength; for the astral body, with the animal orientation of its activity, is held more in check when the ego-organization is made stronger in its human organizing power. The way to penetrate these matters with clear knowledge will be found when we observe the kind of effects which a particular substance unfolds along the paths of metabolism. Take sulphur for example. It is contained in protein. It is indeed fundamental to the whole process which takes place in the absorption of protein food. It passes from the foreign etheric nature, through the inorganic state into the etheric activity of the human organism itself. It is found in the fibrous tissues of the organs, in the brain, in the nails and hair. Thus it finds its way along the paths of metabolism out to the periphery of the organism. In all these ways, sulphur proves to be a substance which plays an essential part in the reception of proteins into the domain of the human etheric body. Now the question arises, does sulphur also play a part in the transition from the domain of etheric action to that of astral, and has it anything to do with the ego-organization? It does not combine appreciably with inorganic substances introduced into the organism so as to form salts or acids. Such a combination would provide the basis for a reception of the sulphur processes into the astral body and ego-organization. We see, therefore, that sulphur does not penetrate into these regions. It unfolds its activity in the realm of the physical and etheric body. This is also shown by the fact that an increased supply of sulphur to the organism gives rise to feelings of giddiness, reduction of consciousness. Sleep, too, i.e. the condition of the body when the astral and ego-organization are not working as soul being, grows more intense when the supply of sulphur is increased. From all this we can see that sulphur, introduced as a medicament, will make the physical activities of the organism more inclined to submit to the active intervention of the etheric than in the diseased condition. With phosphorus the case is different. It is present in the human organism as phosphoric acid and phosphoric salts, in albumens in the fibrous tissues, in the brain and in the bones. Its tendency is towards the inorganic substances, the importance of which is in the realm of the ego-organization. It stimulates the conscious activity of man. Thereby it also conditions sleep, though by an opposite process to sulphur, namely, by previous stimulation of conscious activity, while sulphur favours sleep by enhancing the unconscious activities of the physical and etheric. Phosphorus is present as calcium phosphate in the bones, i.e. in those organs which are subject to the ego-organization, not where it works from within in processes of growth, regulation of metabolism, and the like, but where it uses the outer mechanism of the system for the movements of the body. As a medicament, therefore, phosphorus will be effective when the diseased condition is a hypertrophy of the astral domain over the ego-organization and the latter needs to be strengthened in order to repress the astral. Consider rickets. The disease is due, as was explained before, to a hypertrophy of etheric-astral activity, it leads to a defective action of the ego-astral activity, it leads to a defective action of the ego-organization. If it is treated first with sulphur in the proper way, the etheric activity is strengthened in relation to the astral, and if after this has been done, a phosphorus treatment is made to follow, the healing effect which has been prepared in the etheric organization is led over to that of the “ego”; and the rickets is confronted from two sides. (We are aware that the efficacy of the treatment of rickets with phosphorus is disputed; but none of the cures hitherto attempted have anything to do with the method described here.)

Fundamentals of Therapy

On The Essential Nature Of Illness and Healing

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c13.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c13

Silicic acid carries its activities along the paths of metabolism right into those parts of the human organism where the living becomes lifeless. It occurs in the blood, through which the formative forces have to take their course; it occurs also in the hair, i.e. where the forming and shaping process finds its outward conclusion; and we find it in the bones, where the process of formation finishes inwardly. It appears in the urine as a product of excretion. It constitutes the physical basis of the ego-organization. For this has a formative action. This ego-organization uses the silicic acid process, right into those regions of the organism in which the shaping, the forming action borders on the outer and the inner (unconscious) world. At the periphery of the organism where the hair contains silicic acid, the human organization connects with the unconscious outer world. In the bones it connects with the unconscious inner world, in which the will is working. In the healthy human organism the physical foundation of consciousness must unfold between these two fields of action of silicic acid. The silicic acid has a dual function. Within, it sets a boundary to the mere processes of growth, nutrition etc. Outwardly, it closes off the mere activities of external nature from the interior of the organism, so that the organism within its own domain is not obliged to continue the workings of external nature, but is enabled to unfold its own activities. In its youth the human organism is most highly equipped with silicic acid in those localities where tissues with strong formative forces are situated. Thence the silicic acid unfolds its activity towards the two boundary areas, creating between them the space in which the organs of conscious life can form themselves. In the healthy organism, these are primarily the sense-organs. We must, however, bear in mind that the sensory life permeates the whole human organism. The reciprocal relationship of the organs depends upon the fact that the one organ is continually perceiving the activity of the other. In organs which are not sense-organs in the proper meaning of the term, for instance in the liver, spleen, or kidneys, the perception is so slight as to remain beneath the threshold of consciousness in normal waking life. Nevertheless, every organ, besides serving this or that function within the organism, is in addition a sense-organ. The whole human organism is in fact permeated with perceptions which mutually influence one another and must be so if all the different processes are to work healthily in it together. All this is dependent upon a correct distribution of the activities of silicic acid. We can even go so far as to speak of a special silicic acid organism, permeating the whole organism; this silicic acid organism conditions the mutual sensitivity of the organs on which the healthy life and activity depend; it determines their correct inward and outward relationships, inwardly their relation to the unfolding of the life of soul and spirit, and outwardly in the sense that it provides in each case for the proper conclusion of the activities of external nature. This special organism will only work correctly if silicic acid is present in such quantities in the organism that the ego organization is able to make full use of it. Any remaining amounts of silicic acid, the astral organization which lies beneath that of the ego must have the power to excrete, either through the urine or in some other way. Excessive quantities of silicic acid, which are neither excreted nor taken hold of by the ego-organization, must be deposited as foreign substances in the body; through the very form-creating tendency whereby — in the right quantity — they serve the ego-organization, they will then interfere with it. Excessive quantities of silicic acid introduced into the organism will thus impair the workings of the gastro-intestinal tract. It is then the task of the digestive tract to dispose of the excessive form-creating tendency. Desiccation will be brought about where the fluid element should predominate. This is most clearly evident when the excessive introduction of silicic acid is followed by psychological disturbance behind which the corresponding organic disturbances are unmistakable. One feels giddy and is unable to stop falling asleep; one feels unable to direct the perceptions of sight and hearing in the proper way; one may even have a feeling as though the impressions of the senses become congested and held up at the point where they should be continued into the nervous system. All this shows how silicic acid pushes out towards the periphery of the body and how, if it arrives there in excessive quantities, it disturbs the normal formative process by introducing an alien tendency. Disturbances occur also at the inner boundary of the form-creating process. One experiences uncontrollability of one's motor-system, and joint-pain. All these conditions may eventuate in processes of inflammation, arising wherever the alien formative activity of silicic acid is too strong. This points at the same time to the healing forces which silicic acid can unfold in the human organism. Assume that an organ, not a sense organ in the proper meaning of the term, becomes over-sensitive in its unconscious power of perception with respect to the parts of the organism external to it. We shall then observe a disturbance in the functions of this organ. We shall be able to deal effectively with the morbid condition if we are in a position to eliminate the over-sensitivity by administering silicic acid. It will, however, be necessary so to influence the organic working of the body that the added silicic acid takes effect only in the neighbourhood of the diseased organ, and does not work upon the whole body with a general influence as described above. Through the combination of silicic acid with other substances it can be brought about that on its introduction into the organism the silicic acid reaches just that organ where it is needed, whence it will be carried out again as a product of excretion without doing harm to other organs. In another case the sensitivity of an organ to the activities of the remaining organs may be unduly lowered. We are then dealing with an accumulation of the silicic acid activity in the neighbourhood of this organ. It will be necessary, therefore, to find a means of influencing the silicic acid activity of the whole organism, so as to deprive the localized action of its power; or again, the removal of the silicic acid may be stimulated by the use of medicines that encourage excretion. The former method is preferable; for an accumulation of silicic acid in one locality generally calls forth a corresponding deficiency in another. The distribution of the localized silicic acid activity over the whole organism may be brought about for instance, by a sulphur therapy. The reader will perceive why this is so if he will refer to the effects of sulphur in the organism in another part of this book.

Fundamentals of Therapy

An Approach To The Therapeutic Way Of Thinking

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c14.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c14

Our knowledge of the effects of therapeutic substances is based upon the understanding of the development of forces in the world outside man. For, in order to bring about a healing process, we must bring into the organism substances which will distribute themselves in it in such a way that the disease process gradually transforms itself to a normal one. It is the essential nature of a disease process that something is going on within the organism which does not integrate itself into its total activities. Such a disease process has this in common with a similar process in outer nature. We may say: If there arises within the organism a process similar to one of external nature, illness ensues. Such a process may take hold of the physical or the etheric organism. Either the astral body or the ego will then have to complete a task they do not normally fulfil. In a period of life when they should be unfolding in free activity of soul, they must revert to an earlier stage — even in many cases as far back as the embryonic period — and then have to assist in creating physical and etheric formations which should already have passed into the domain of the physical and etheric organism, for in the earliest periods of human life these formations are in fact provided for by the astral body and ego-organization; only afterwards are they taken over by the unaided physical and etheric bodies. The whole development of the human organism is based upon this principle; originally the entire form and configuration of the physical and etheric body proceed from the activity of the astral body and ego-organization; then, with increasing age, the astral and ego-activities within the physical and etheric organization go on their own accord. But if they fail to do so, the astral body and ego-organization will have to intervene at a later stage of their development in a way for which they are no longer properly adapted. Let us assume that we have to do with lower abdominal disorders. The physical and etheric organizations are failing to carry out, in the corresponding parts of the human body, the activities which were transmitted to them at a former age of life. The astral and ego-activities must intervene. Because of this they are weakened for other functions in the organism. They are no longer present where they ought to be — for instance, in the formation of the nerves that go into the muscles. Paralytic symptoms arise as a result, in certain parts of the body. It will then be necessary to bring into the body substances which can relieve the astral and ego-organization of the activity that does not belong to them. We find that the processes which work in the formation of powerful etheric oils in the plant organism, notably in the formation of the flower, are able to fulfil this purpose. The same applied to certain substances containing phosphorus. But we must see to it that the phosphorus is so mixed with other substances as to unfold its action in the intestinal tract and not in the metabolism that lies beyond. If it is a case of inflammatory conditions in the skin, here too the astral body and ego-organization are unfolding an abnormal activity. They are then withdrawn from the influences which they ought to bring to bear on organs situated more internally. They reduce the sensitivity of internal organs. These again, owing to their lessened sensitivity, will cease to carry out their proper functions. In this way abnormal conditions may arise, for instance in the action of the liver, and the digestion may be incorrectly influenced. If we now introduce silicic acid into the organism, the activities which the astral and ego-organism have been devoting to the skin are relieved. The normal inward activity of this organism is set free again and a healing process is thus initiated. Again, we may be confronted by disease conditions manifesting themselves in palpitations; in such a case, an irregular action of the astral organism is influencing the circulation of the blood. This astral activity is then weakened for the processes in the brain. Epileptiform conditions arise, since the weakened astral activity in the head organism involves an undue tension and exertion of the etheric activities of that region. We can introduce into the system the gumlike substance obtainable from Levisticum (lovage) — as a decoction, or preferably in the slightly modified form of a preparation — then the activity of the astral body, wrongly absorbed by the circulation, is set free, and the strengthening of the brain organization occurs. In all these cases the real direction of the disease activities must be determined by an appropriate diagnosis. Take the last mentioned case. It may be in fact that the disturbance in the interplay of the etheric and astral bodies proceeds originally from the circulation. The brain symptoms are then a consequence. We can proceed with a cure along the lines described above. But the opposite may also be the case. The original cause of irregularity may arise between the astral and etheric activities in the brain system. Then the irregular circulation and abnormal cardiac activity will be the consequence. In such a case we shall have to introduce sulphates, for example, into the metabolic process. These work on the etheric organization of the brain in such a way as to call forth in it a strong force of attraction to the astral body. The effect can be observed as the consequent improvement in initiative of thought, in the will-sphere, and in the patient's general state of composure and control. It will then probably be necessary to supplement this treatment by the use, for instance, of a copper salt, so as to assist the astral forces in gaining their renewed influence upon the circulatory system. We shall observe that the organism as a whole returns to its regular activity when the excessive action of the astral and ego-organism in some part of the body, conditioned by the physical and the etheric, is replaced by an activity which has been externally induced. The organism has the tendency to balance-out its own deficiencies. Hence it will restore itself if an existing irregularity can for a time be regulated artificially by combating the abnormal process, which was internally induced and must be made to cease, with a similar process brought about externally.

Fundamentals of Therapy

The Therapeutic Process

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c15.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c15

It is necessary to know the substances that may be considered for use as remedies in such a way that one can judge the possible effects of the forces they contain within and outside the human organism. In this connection the reactions which ordinary chemistry investigates only come into consideration to a small extent; the important thing is, to observe those effects which result from the connection of the inner constitution of the forces in a substance, in relation to the forces that radiate from the earth or stream in towards it. Let us consider e.g., grey antimony ore from this point of view. Antimony shows a strong relationship to the sulphur compounds of other metals. Sulphur possesses a number of properties which only remain constant within relatively narrow limits. It is very sensitive to those natural processes such as heating, combustion, etc. This also makes it able to play an important part in the proteins' faculty of completely freeing themselves from the earth-forces and subjecting themselves to the etheric. Antimony will readily partake in this intimate connection with the etheric forces through its affinity with sulphur. Hence it is easy to introduce into the activity of protein in the human body; and it will help the latter in its etheric action when the body itself, through some disease condition, is unable to transform a protein introduced from without, so as to make the protein an integral part of its own activity. But antimony shows other characteristics as well. Wherever it can do so, it strives towards a cluster formation. It distributes itself in lines which strive away from the earth, toward the forces that are active in the ether. With antimony, we thus introduce into the human organism something that comes half way to meet the influences of the etheric body. What antimony undergoes in the Seiger process also points to its etheric relationship. Through this process it becomes filamentous. However, the Seiger process is one that begins, as it were, in a physical way from below and passes upwards into the etheric. Antimony integrates itself into this transition. In addition, antimony oxidizes at a red heat; in the process of combustion it becomes a white vapour, which, deposited on a cold surface, produces the flowers of antimony. Moreover, antimony has some capacity to repel electrical effects. Under certain conditions, when deposited electrolytically on the cathode, it will explode on contact with a metallic point. All this shows that antimony has a tendency to pass easily into the etheric element the moment the conditions are present in the slightest degree. All these details merely count as indications for spiritual vision; for this directly perceives the relationship between the ego's activity and the working of antimony; it sees in effect how the antimony processes, when brought into the human organism, work in the same way as the ego-organization. As it flows through the human organism, blood shows a tendency to coagulate. This tendency stands under the influences of the ego-organization, by which it must be regulated. Blood is an intermediate organic product. The blood substance, as it originates, has undergone processes which are already on the way to the fully human organism, i.e., to the organization of the ego. It must undergo further processes which fit in with the configuration of this organism. What kind of processes these are, can be seen in the following. As the blood coagulates when removed from the body, it shows that it has in it the tendency to coagulate, but that within the organism it must be perpetually prevented from doing so. Now the power that hinders the coagulation of the blood is that by which it integrates itself into the human organism. It integrates itself into the configuration of the body by virtue of the form forces which lie just before the point of coagulation. If coagulation actually took place, life would be endangered. Hence, if we are dealing with a disease condition where the organism is deficient in those forces directed to the coagulation of the blood, antimony will work in one form or another as a therapeutic substance. The formation of the organism is essentially a transformation of protein, whereby the latter comes into collaboration with mineralizing forces. Chalk, for instance, contains such forces. The formation of the oyster shell demonstrates this. The oyster must rid itself of the elements which are present in the shell, in order to preserve the nature of the protein. A similar thing happens in the formation of the eggshell. In the oyster, what is chalky is excreted so as not to integrate it into the protein. This integration must take place in the human organism. The mere action of protein must be transformed into one wherein the formative forces, which can be evoked by the ego-organization from the chalky substances, work as well. This must take place within the formation of the blood. Antimony counteracts the forces that excrete chalk and leads the protein, which wishes to preserve its form, into formlessness; through its kinship with the ether element, this formless state is receptive to the influences of chalky substances or the like. Take the case of typhoid fever. The illness clearly consists of a deficient transmutation of protein into blood substance with its formative power. The kind of diarrhoea, occurring in this disease, shows that the incapacity for this transformation begins already in the intestinal tract. The markedly lowered consciousness shows that the ego-organization is driven out of the body and prevented from working. This is due to the fact that the protein cannot approach those mineralizing processes where the ego-organization is able to work. The fact that the excretions carry the danger of infection is also evidence for this viewpoint. Here the tendency to destroy the inner formative forces shows itself enhanced. If antimony preparations are used in typhoid manifestations in an appropriate compound, they will prove to be a therapeutic substance. They divest the protein of its own forces and enable it to integrate with the formative forces of the ego-organization. From the points of view that are so widespread and habitual today, it will be said: Such conceptions as these about antimony are inexact; and they will emphasize in contrast the scientific exactitude of the methods of ordinary chemistry. But the fact is, the chemical reactions of substances are no more significant for their action within the human organism than is the chemical composition of a paint for its application by the artist. Undoubtedly the artist will do well to have some knowledge of the chemical starting-point from which he works. But how he treats his colour as he paints is derived from another method. It is so for the therapist. He can regard chemistry as a basis which has some meaning for him, but the mode of action of the substances within the human organism has nothing to do with this chemical domain. So long as we only see exactitude in the conclusions of ordinary chemistry — its pharmaceutical branch as well — we destroy the possibility of gaining conceptions of what is taking place within the organism in the processes of healing.

Fundamentals of Therapy

Knowledge Of Therapeutic Substances

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c16.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c16

Anyone who wishes to assess the action of therapeutic substances must have an eye for the effects of forces which arise when a substance is introduced in some way into the human organism, and which shows certain activities external to the latter. A classic example is to be found in formic acid. It occurs in the body of ants as a corrosive substance causing inflammation. Here, it appears as a product of excretion. The animal organism must produce this in order to carry out its activities appropriately. The life lies in the excretory activity. Once it has been produced, the excretion no longer has a task within the organism. It must be excreted. The Being of an organism does not lie in its substances, but in its action. The organization is not a conglomeration of matter, it is an activity. Matter carries in it the stimulus to activity. Once it has lost this stimulus, it has no further meaning for the organization. In the human organism, too, formic acid is produced. There, however, it has its importance. It serves the ego organization. The astral body separates out parts, which tend to become lifeless, from the organic substance. The ego organization needs this transition of organic substance to the lifeless state. But it is the process of transition which it needs, not the result. Once the substance which is on the way to the lifeless state has been produced, it becomes a burden within the organism. It must either be separated out directly, or it must be dissolved in order to be eliminated indirectly. If something which ought to be dissolved fails to be dissolved, it will accumulate within the organism and may then constitute a foundation for conditions of gout or rheumatism. There, the formic acid as it arises within the human organism can act as a solvent. If the necessary amount of formic acid is produced, the organism will remove those products tending to the lifeless state in the correct manner. If the force to create formic acid is too weak, rheumatic and gouty conditions arise. By introducing formic acid into the organism from outside, we support it, by giving what it is unable to create for itself. We learn to recognize such modes of action by comparing one substance with another with respect to the way in which they continue working in the human organism. Take oxalic acid for example. Under certain conditions it turns into formic acid. The actions of the latter represent a metamorphosis of oxalic acid. Oxalic acid is an excretion of the plant, just as formic acid is of the animal. The creation of oxalic acid in the plant-organism is an activity analogous to that of formic acid in the animal, which means that the creation of oxalic acid corresponds to the domain of the etheric, and the creation of formic acid to the domain of the astral. The diseases which reveal themselves in rheumatic and gouty conditions are to be ascribed to a deficient action of the astral body. There are other conditions which present themselves such that the causes, which in gout and rheumatism stem from the astral organism, lie further back in the etheric organism. In which case there arise, not only congestions of forces towards the astral, which hinder and obstruct the ego organization, but also retarding effects in the etheric, which the astral organization is powerless to overcome. These reveal themselves in sluggish activity of the lower abdomen, in slowing of the liver and spleen activity, in stony deposits of gall and the like. If oxalic acid is given in such cases, the activity of the etheric organism is supported in the appropriate way. Through oxalic acid the etheric body is reinforced; for that force of the ego-organization is transformed by this acid into a force of the astral body which then has a strengthened effect on the etheric body. Starting with such observations, we can learn to recognize the healing effects of various substances on the organism. The study can start with plant life. In the plant, the physical activity is permeated by the etheric. In studying the plant, we learn to recognize how much can be attained by means of etheric activity. In the animal-astral organism, this activity is carried over into the astral. If as etheric activity it is too weak, it can be strengthened by adding to it the etheric activity from a plant-product, introduced into the body. Animal nature forms a basis for the human organism. Hence, it can be considered the same as the animal, within certain limits, where the interplay between the human etheric and astral bodies is concerned. By the use of therapeutic substances from the plant kingdom, we shall thus be able to remedy a disturbed relationship between the etheric and astral activities. But such medicaments will not suffice when anything in the physical, etheric and astral organization of man is disturbed, in connection with interplay with the organization of the ego. The ego-organization must direct its activity to processes which are tending to become mineral. Therefore, in these conditions of illness, only mineral substances will be useful as remedies. In order to get to know the remedial effects of a mineral, we must discover how far the substance can be broken down, for in the organism the mineral introduced from outside must first be broken down and then built up again in a new form by the body's organic forces. The healing influence must consist in this breaking down and building up process. The outcome of it must lie in the direction that a deficient activity of the organism is taken over by the activity of the medicament given. Take the case of menorrhagia. Here the power of the ego organization is weakened. It is expended one-sidedly in the formation of blood. Too little is left of it for the power to absorb the blood into the organism. The path, which the forces in the organism that incline towards the lifeless realm should take, is unduly shortened because these forces work too violently. They exhaust themselves half-way. We can come to their assistance by administering calcium in some combination to the organism. Calcium cooperates in the production and formation of the blood. The ego activity is thus relieved of this sphere and can turn to the absorption of the blood.

Fundamentals of Therapy

Knowledge of Substance As A Basis for the Knowledge Of Medicaments

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c17.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c17

Within the sphere of our therapy, a special position is occupied by what we describe as “curative eurythmy”. It was evolved initially by Rudolf Steiner as a new art, out of Anthroposophy. The essential nature of the art of eurythmy has often been described by Dr. Steiner, and indeed in its artistic form, it has enjoyed wide recognition. Eurythmy is presented on the stage by the human being in movement; but is not an art of dance. This is evident already from the fact that in eurythmy it is mainly the arms and hands that are in movement. Groups of people in movement elevate the whole to an artistic picture on the stage. All movements are based on the inner nature of the human organization. From this, speech flows in the first years of man's life. Just as in speech the sound frees itself from the constitution of man, so, with a real knowledge of this constitution, we can derive from the human being, and from groups of human beings, movements which represent a truly genuine visible speech, or visible song. These movements are as little arbitrary as speech itself. As in a spoken word an O cannot be pronounced where an I (EE) belongs; so, in eurythmy only one kind of gesture can appear for an I or for a C-sharp. Eurythmy is thus a true manifestation of human nature and can be derived out of it, not indeed unconsciously like speech or song, but consciously by means of a true knowledge of man. In the presentation of eurythmy we have people or groups of people in movement on the stage. The poem which is thus translated into visible speech, is recited simultaneously. The audience hear the content of the poem, and see it at the same time with their eyes. Or again, a piece of music is presented, and appears at the same time as visible song in the gestures of the performers. Eurythmy as a sculptured art of movement constitutes a true extension of the sphere of the fine arts. What has been discovered as an artistic form can now be developed in two different directions. On the one hand it can be applied to education. In the Waldorf School at Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and which stands under the direction of Rudolf Steiner, educational eurythmy is done throughout the school as well as gymnastics. The fact is that in ordinary gymnastics only the dynamics and statics of the physical body are developed. In eurythmy the full human being, body, soul and spirit, goes out into movement. The growing human being perceives this and experiences the eurythmy exercises as a perfectly natural expression of his human nature, just as in earlier years he experienced learning to speak. The other aspect of eurythmy is therapeutic. If the gestures of the artistic and educational eurythmy are modified, so that they flow out of the unhealthy being of man just as the others flow out of the healthy, then curative eurythmy arises. Movements thus carried out react on the diseased organs. We observe how the outwardly executed movement is continued inward with a health-giving influence into the organs, the moving gesture is exactly adapted to a diseased organ. Because this method of working in the human being through movement, affects body, soul and spirit, it works more intensely in the inner nature of the unhealthy human being, than all other movement-therapy. For this very reason, curative eurythmy can never become an affair for amateurs, and on no account must it be regarded or applied as such. The curative eurythmist, who must be well trained in a knowledge of the human organization, may only work in connection with the qualified doctor. All dilettantism can only lead to bad results. It is only on the basis of a proper diagnosis that the curative eurythmy treatment can be carried out. The practical results of curative eurythmy are such that we may describe them as a most beneficial part of the therapeutic approach explained in this book.

Fundamentals of Therapy

Curative Eurythmy

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c18.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c18

In this chapter we shall describe a number of cases from the practice of the Clinical and Therapeutic Institute at Arlesheim. They will show how, with the help of a knowledge of spiritual man, it is possible to achieve such a thorough picture of the disease that diagnosis directly teaches us the remedy which should be used. Fundamental to this is a view which recognizes the process of illness and of healing as one complete cycle. The illness begins with an irregularity in the composition of the human organism with respect to its parts, which have been described in this book. It has already reached a certain stage when the patient is received for treatment. Our object must now be to bring about a reversal of all the processes which have taken place in the organism since the beginning of the illness, so that we arrive at length at the previous state of health of the organism. A process of this kind, reversing on itself, cannot be accomplished without the organism as a whole undergoing some loss in the forces of growth, which are equivalent to those forces which the human organism - needs during childhood in order to increase in size. The therapeutic substances must therefore be so composed as not only to bring the diseased process back to its starting-point, but also to support the reduced vitality again. To some extent this latter effect must be left to dietary treatment. But as a general rule, in the more serious cases of illness, the organism is not in a condition to evolve sufficient vitality in the assimilation of its food. Therefore the actual treatment will also have to be constituted so as to give the organism the necessary support in this respect. In the typical remedies supplied by our clinical/therapeutic institutes, this provision has been made throughout. Hence it will only be realized on closer inspection, why a given preparation contains particular constituents. In estimating the course of the disease, not only the localized pathological process, but the changes suffered by the organism as a whole must be considered and included in the reversing process. How this is to be conceived in detail will be shown by the individual cases we shall now describe. We shall then continue the more general considerations. A twenty-six years old woman patient. The whole personality reveals an extraordinarily labile condition. It is clear from the patient that that part of the organism, which we have here called the astral body, is in a state of excessive activity. One observes that the ego-organization has only slight control over the astral body. As soon as the patient begins to do some work, the astral body develops a state of agitation. The ego-organization tries to make itself felt, but is constantly repulsed. This causes the temperature to rise in such a case. A well regulated digestion depends mainly on a normal ego-organization. The impotence of this patient's ego-organization expresses itself in an obstinate constipation. The migraine-like conditions and vomiting from which she suffers are a consequence of this disturbance in the digestive activity. In sleep, her impotent ego-organization shows itself in a deficient organic activity from below upward and impaired expiration. The consequence is an excessive accumulation of carbonic acid in the organism during sleep, which shows itself organically in palpitations on awakening; psychologically in anxiety, and screaming. Physical examination can show nothing other than a lack of those forces which bring about a regular connection of the astral, etheric and physical bodies. Owing to the excessive activity of the astral body in itself, too little of its powers can flow over into the physical and the etheric. The latter, therefore, have remained too delicate in their development during the period of growth. This has shown itself on examination in the patient's slight build and weak body, and also in the fact that she complains of frequent back pain. The latter arises because in the activity of the spinal cord the ego-organization must make itself felt most. The patient talks of many dreams. The reason is that the astral body, separated in sleep from the physical and the etheric, unfolds its own excessive activity. We must start with the fact that the ego-organization needs to be strengthened and the over-activity of the astral body lowered. The former is attained by selecting a remedy that is suitable to support the weakened ego-organization in the digestive tract. Such a remedy is to be found in copper. Applied in the form of a copper ointment compress to the region of the loins, it has a strengthening effect on the deficient inner warmth coming from the ego-organization. This is observed in a reduction of the abnormal activity of the heart and the disappearance of anxiety. The excessive activity of the astral body in itself is combated by the smallest doses of lead taken orally. Lead draws the astral body together and awakens in it the forces through which it unites more intensely with the physical body and the etheric. (Lead poisoning is composed of an over-intense union of the astral with the etheric and physical bodies, so that the latter are made subject to excessive breakdown processes.) The patient recovered visibly under this treatment. Her labile condition gave way to a certain inner firmness and assurance. Her moods, recovering from their disrupted state, grew inwardly calm and contented. The constipation and back pain disappeared; likewise the migrainous conditions and the headaches. The patient's capacity for work was restored. A forty-eight year old man. He had been a robust child with an active inner life. During the war, as he informed us, he had undergone a five months' treatment for nephritis and been discharged as cured. Married at the age of thirty-five, he had five healthy children; a sixth child died at birth. At the age of thirty-three, as a consequence of mental overwork, he began to suffer from depression, tiredness and apathy. These conditions increased continuously. At the same time he began to feel spiritual despair. He is confronted by questions, in which his profession — that of a teacher — appears to him in a negative light, which he cannot meet with anything positive. The illness shows an astral body which has too little affinity with the etheric and physical, and is rigid in itself. The physical and etheric bodies are thus enabled to assert their own inherent qualities. The feeling of the etheric not being rightly united with the astral body gives rise to states of depression; while the deficient union with the physical produces fatigue and apathy. That the patient is in a state of spiritual despair is due to the fact that the astral body cannot make use of the physical and the etheric. Consistently with all this, his sleep is good; for the astral body has little connection with the etheric and physical. For the same reason he has great difficulty in waking up. The astral body is loath to enter the physical. It is only in the evening, when the physical and etheric bodies are tired, that their normal union with the astral begins to take place. Therefore the patient becomes properly awake in the evening. This whole condition indicates that it is necessary first of all to strengthen the astral body in its activity. This can always be attained by giving arsenic internally in the form of a mineral water. It becomes clear that the particular individual is seen to gain more command over his body after some time. The connection between the astral and the etheric is strengthened; the depression, apathy and fatigue cease. But the physical body also, which through its long defective union with the astral has become sluggish and immobile, must be helped; this is done by giving treatment with a mild dose of phosphorous. Phosphorous supports the ego-organization, enabling it to overcome the resistance of the physical body. Rosemary baths are used to open a way out for the accumulated products of metabolism. Curative eurythmy re-establishes the harmony of the individual members of the organism (nerve-sense system, rhythmic system, motor and metabolic system), impaired as they are by the inaction of the astral body. Finally, by giving the patient elder-flower tea, the metabolism, which has gradually become sluggish owing to the inactivity of the astral body, is restored to a normal condition. We were able to observe a complete cure in this case. This patient was a musician, thirty-one years old, who visited our clinic during a concert tour. He was suffering from a severe inflammatory and functional disturbance of the urinary tract, catarrhal symptoms, fever, excessive bodily fatigue, general weakness, and incapacity for work. The past history of the patient showed that he had repeatedly suffered the same condition. Examination of the patient's spiritual state revealed a hypersensitive and exhausted astral body. The susceptibility of the physical and etheric body to catarrhal and inflammatory conditions was a consequence of this. Already as a child, the patient had a weak physical body, badly supported by the astral. Hence measles, scarlet fever, chicken-pox, whooping-cough and frequent attacks of sore throat; at the age of fourteen, there was an inflammation of the urethra, which recurred at the age of twenty-nine in conjunction with cystitis. At the age of eighteen, pneumonia and pleurisy; at twenty-nine, pleurisy again, following on an attack of influenza; and at the age of thirty, catarrhal inflammation of the frontal sinus. There is also a perpetual tendency to conjunctivitis. During the two months which he spent at our hospital the patient's temperature curve rose at first to 39.9¡C, after which, it descended, only to rise again on the fourteenth day; it then fluctuated between 37¡ and 36¡, occasionally rising above 37¡ and falling to 35¡. Such a temperature curve gives a clear picture of the changing states of the ego organisations. Such a curve arises when the effects of the semi-conscious contents of the ego-organization find expression in the warmth-processes of the physical and etheric bodies without being reduced to a normal rhythm by the astral. In this patient, the whole capacity of action of the astral body was concentrated on the rhythmic system, where it found expression in his artistic talent. The other systems fell short. As a significant result of this, the patient suffers from severe fatigue and insomnia during the summer. In the summer season, considerable demands are made upon the astral body by the outer world. Its inner capacity for activity recedes. The forces of the physical and etheric body become predominant. In the general perception of one's sense of well being, this manifests as severe fatigue. At the same time the weakened capacity for action of the astral body hinders its separation from the physical. Hence the insomnia. The deficient separation of the astral body from the etheric finds expression in anxious and unpleasant dreams, arising from the sensitivity of the etheric body to the lesions in the physical organism. Characteristically, the dreams symbolize these lesions in images of mutilated human beings. Their terrifying aspect is simply their natural quality and emphasis of feeling. As a consequence of the astral body functioning deficiently in the metabolic system, there is a tendency to constipation. And owing to the independence of the etheric body, which is too little influenced by the astral, the protein received as food cannot be completely transformed from vegetable and animal protein into human. Hence, protein is excreted in the urine, so that it is positive for albumen. If the astral body is functioning deficiently, processes will arise in the physical body which are really foreign processes in the human organism. Such processes express themselves in the formation of pus. This represents, as it were, an extra-human process within the human being. Thus in the sediment of the urine we actually find pure pus. But this formation of pus is accompanied by a parallel process in the soul. The astral body works as little psychically on the experiences of life, as it works physically on the substances of food. While extra-human substances are produced in the form of pus, mental and psychic contents of a extra-human character arise at the same time, as a keen interest in abnormal relationships of life, forebodings, premonitions and the like. We therefore set out to bring a balancing, purifying and strengthening influence to bear upon the astral body. As the ego organization is very much alive, its activity could be used, in a manner of speaking, as a carrier of the therapeutic remedy. The ego-organization, which is directed toward the external world, is most readily approached by influences whose direction is from without inward. This is achieved by the use of compresses. We first apply a compress of Melilotus, a remedy which works upon the astral body in such a way as to improve the balance and distribution of its forces, counteracting their one-sided concentration on the rhythmic system. Naturally the compresses must not be applied to that part of the body where the rhythmic system is especially concentrated. We applied them to the organs where the metabolic and motor systems are concentrated. We avoided compresses around the head, because the mood swings of the ego-organizations proceeding from the head, would have paralysed the effect. For the Melilotus to take effect, it was also necessary to assist the astral body and ego-organization, by drawing them together. This we sought to do by the addition of oxalic acid, derived from Radix bardanae. Oxalic acid works in such a way as to transform the activity of the ego-organization into that of the astral body. In addition, we gave oral remedies in very diluted doses; with the object of bringing the excretions into a regular connection with the influences of the astral body. We tried to normalise the excretions directed from the head organization by means of potassium sulphate. Those processes that depend upon the metabolic system in the narrower sense of the word, we sought to influence by potassium carbonate. We regulated the excretion of urine with Teucrium. We therefore gave a medicament, consisting of equal parts of potassium sulphate, potassium carbonate and Teucrium. The whole treatment had to reckon with a very labile balance in the whole, physical, psychical and spiritual organism. Thus we had to provide complete bed rest for physical rest, and mental quiet for spiritual balance; this alone made possible the proper interaction of the various remedies. Movement and agitation render such a complicated therapeutic process almost impossible. On completion of the treatment, the patient was restored to bodily strength and vigour, and was mentally in good condition. With such a labile state of health, it goes without saying that any external disruption may bring about a recurrence of one or another disturbance. It is part of the total treatment that in such a case such events should be avoided. A child, who was brought to our clinic twice, first at the age of four, and then at the age of five and a half years. Also the mother of the child, and the mother's sister. Diagnosis led us from the illness of the child to that of her mother and of the sister. As for the child, we received the following information: it was a twin, born six weeks prematurely. The other twin died in the last stage of foetal life. At the age of six weeks, the child was taken ill, began to scream excessively, and was admitted to hospital. They diagnosed pyloric stenosis. The child was partly breast fed by a wet nurse and partly fed artificially. At the age of eight months it left the hospital. On the first day after arrival home the child had a convulsion, which recurred daily for the next two months. During the attacks the child became stiff, with the eyes deviated. The attacks were preceded by fear and crying. The child also squinted with the right eye and vomited before the attack began. At the age of two and a half years there was another attack lasting five hours. The child was again stiff and lay there as though dead. At the age of four there was an attack lasting half an hour. According to the report we received, this was the first attack which was seen to be accompanied by fever. After the convulsions that had followed directly on the return from hospital, the parents had noticed a paralysis of the right arm and the right leg. At two and a half the child made the first attempt to walk, but was only able to step out with the left leg, dragging the right after it. The right arm, too, remained without volition. The same state prevailed when the child was brought to us. Our first concern was to determine the condition of the child with respect to the members of the human organization. This was attempted independently of the syndrome. We found a severe atrophy of the etheric body, which, in certain parts, received only a very slight influence from the astral body. The region of the right chest was as though paralysed in the etheric body. On the other hand, there was a kind of hypertrophy of the astral body in the region of the stomach. The next thing was to establish the relation between this diagnosis and the syndrome. There could be no doubt that the astral body strongly involved the stomach during the process of digestion, which, however, owing to the paralysed condition of the etheric body was blocked at the transition from the gut to the lymph. Hence the blood was under-nourished. We thus attached great importance to the symptoms of nausea and vomiting. Convulsions always occur when the etheric body becomes atrophied and the astral gains a direct influence over the physical without the mediation of the etheric body. This was present to the greatest extent in the child. Moreover, if, as in this case, the condition becomes permanent during the period of growth, those processes which prepare the motor system to receive the will normally fail to take place. This showed itself in the uselessness on the right side in the child. We had now to relate the condition of the child to that of the mother. The latter was thirty-seven years old when she came to us. At the age of thirteen, she told us, she had already reached her present size. She had bad teeth at an early age, and had suffered in childhood from rheumatic fever, and maintained that she had had rickets. Menstruation began comparatively early. At the age of sixteen she had had a disease of the kidneys and she told of convulsive conditions which she had had. At twenty-five she had constipation owing to cramp in the sphincter ani, which had to be stretched. Even now she suffered from cramp on defaecation. Diagnosis by direct observation, without drawing any conclusions from this syndrome, revealed a condition extraordinarily similar to that of the child. But everything appeared in a far milder form. We must bear in mind that the human etheric body has its special period of development between the change of teeth and puberty. In the mother this expressed itself thus: with their deficient strength, the available forces of the etheric body enabled growth to take place only until puberty. At puberty the special development of the astral body begins and, being hypertrophied, now overwhelms the etheric body and takes hold of the physical organization too intensely. This showed itself in the arrest of growth at the thirteenth year. The patient was, however, by no means dwarf-like, on the contrary, she was very big; this was because the growth forces of the etheric body, deficient though they were, had worked uninhibited by the astral body and so brought about a large expansion of the volume of the physical body. But these forces had not been able to enter properly into the functions of the physical body. This showed itself in the appearance of rheumatic fever and, at a later stage, convulsions. Owing to the weakness of the etheric body there was a particularly strong influence of the astral body on the physical. Now this influence is a disintegrating one. In the course of normal development it is balanced by the regenerative forces during sleep, when the astral body is separated from the physical and the etheric. If, as in this case, the etheric body is too weak, the result is an excess of disintegration, which showed itself in the fact that she had the first filling already in the twelfth year. Moreover, if great demands are made on the etheric body as in pregnancy, on every such occasion the condition of the teeth grows worse. The weakness of the etheric body with respect to its connection with the astral was also shown by the frequency of the patient's dreams and by the sound sleep which she enjoyed in spite of all irregularities. Again the weakness of the etheric body shows itself in that foreign processes unmastered by the etheric take place in the physical body, and reveal themselves in the urine as protein, isolated hyaline casts, and salts. Very remarkable was the relationship of these disease-processes in the mother with those of her sister. As to the composition of the members of the human being, diagnosis revealed almost exactly the same. A feebly working etheric body and hence a preponderance of the astral. The astral body was, however, weaker than that of the mother. Accordingly, menstruation had begun early as in the former case, but instead of inflammatory conditions she had only pains due to an irritation of the organs, e.g. the joints. In the joints the etheric body must be particularly active if the vitality is to go on in the normal way. If the activity of the etheric body is weak, that of the physical body will predominate, a fact which appeared in this case in the swollen joints and in chronic arthritis. The weakness of the astral body, that did not work enough in the subjective feeling, was indicated by her liking for sweet dishes, which enhanced the experience of the astral body. When the weak astral body is exhausted at the end of the day, then, if the weakness persists, the pains will increase in intensity. Thus the patient complained of increased pain in the evening. The connection between the pathological conditions of these three patients points to the generation preceding that of the two sisters, and more especially to the grandmother of the child. It is here that the real cause must be sought. The disordered equilibrium between the astral and etheric bodies in all three patients can only have been founded in a similar condition in the grandmother of the child. This irregularity must have been due to a deficiency of the embryonic organs of nutrition, especially the allantois development by the astral and etheric bodies of the grandmother. A deficient development of the allantois must be looked for in all three patients. We determined this to begin with by purely spiritual-scientific methods. The physical allantois, passing into the spiritual realm, is metamorphosed into the effectiveness of the forces of the astral body. A degenerated allantois gives rise to a lessened efficiency of the astral body, which will express itself, especially, in all the motor organs. Such was the case in all three patients. It is indeed possible to recognize, from the constitution of the astral body that of the allantois. From this it will be seen that our reference to the preceding generation was not the result of drawing far-fetched conclusions, but of real spiritual-scientific observations. To anyone who is irritated by this fact, we would say that our statements here are not inspired by any love of paradox; rather by the wish not to withhold existing knowledge from anyone. Conceptions of heredity will always remain dark and mystical, as long as we shrink from recognizing the metamorphosis from the physical to the spiritual and vice-versa, which takes place in the sequence of the generations. Therapeutically, such an insight could of course only lead us to perceive the right starting-point for a healing process. Had not our attention thus been drawn to the hereditary aspect, had we merely observed the irregularity in the connection between the astral and etheric bodies, we should have used therapeutic substances which affect both these members of the human being. Such remedies however would have been ineffective in our case, for the damage, running through the generations, was too deep-seated to be made good within the etheric and astral bodies themselves. In a case like this, one must work on the organization of the ego; here it is, that one must bring to bear all those influences which relate to a harmonizing and strengthening of the etheric and astral bodies. One can achieve this if one gains access to the ego-organization through intensified sensory stimuli, (Sensory stimuli work upon the ego-organization.) For the child, we attempted this in the following way: we bandaged the right hand with a 5% iron pyrites ointment and simultaneously we massaged the left half of the head with ointment of Amanita caesarea. Externally applied, pyrites, compound of iron and sulphur, has the effect of stimulating the ego-organization to make the astral body more alive and increase its affinity to the etheric. The Amanita substance, with its peculiar content of organized nitrogen, gives rise to an influence proceeding from the head, which, working through the ego-organization, makes the etheric body more alive and increases its affinity to the astral. The healing process was supported by curative eurythmy, which moves the ego-organization as such into quickened activity. This brings what is externally applied into the depths of the organization. Initiated in this way, the healing process was then intensified, with remedies making the astral and etheric bodies especially sensitive to the influence of the ego-organization. In rhythmic daily succession we gave a decoction of solidago in baths, massaged the back with a decoction of Stellaria media and gave orally willow bark tea (which particularly affects the receptivity of the astral body) and stannum 0.001 (which particularly makes the etheric body receptive). We also gave diluted doses of poppy juice, to allow the damaged organization to give place to the healing influences. In the mother's case, the latter kind of treatment was mainly adopted, since the inherited forces had worked far less than in the succeeding generation. The same applied to the sister of the mother. While the child was still with us in the clinic, we established that it became more easily guided and the general psychological condition was improved. It grew far more obedient, for example; movements which it had carried out very clumsily, it now accomplished with greater skill. Subsequently the aunt reported that a great change had taken place in the child. It had grown quieter and the excess of involuntary movements had decreased; the child is now sufficiently adroit to be able to play by itself, psychologically the former obstinacy has disappeared. A woman patient, twenty-six years old, came to our clinic suffering from the serious consequences of influenza and bronchitis which she had undergone in 1918; this had been preceded in 1917 by pleurisy. Following the influenza, she had never properly recovered. In 1920 she was very emaciated and weak, with a slight temperature and night sweats. Soon after the influenza, back-pains began, which worsened continuously up to the end of 1920. Then, with violent pain, a curvature in the lumbar region became apparent. At the same time there was a swelling of the right forefinger. A rest cure had considerably lessened the back-pains. When the patient came to us, she was suffering from a cold abscess on the right thigh; her body was distended with slight ascites. There were catarrhal sounds over the apices of both lungs. Digestion and appetite were good. The urine was concentrated, with traces of protein. Spiritual-scientific investigation revealed a hypersensitivity of the astral body and the ego-organization; such an abnormality expresses itself to begin with in the etheric body, which produces, in place of the etheric functions proper, an etheric impress of the astral functions. The astral functions are destructive. Thus, the vitality and the normal process of the physical organs showed themselves to be stunted. This is always connected with processes occurring to some extent outside man, but taking place in the human organism. Hence the cold abscess, the lumbar pains, the distended abdomen, the catarrhal symptoms in the lungs, and also the deficient assimilation of protein. The treatment must therefore seek to reduce the sensitivity of the astral body and the ego-organization. This may be done by administering silicic acid, which always strengthens the inherent forces against sensitivity. In this case we gave powdered silicic acid in the food and in enemata. We also diverted the sensitivity by applying mustard plasters to the lower back. The effect of this depends upon the fact that it induces sensitivity of its own accord, thus relieving the astral body and ego-organization of theirs. By a process which damps down the over-sensitivity of the astral body in the digestive tract, we were able to divert the astral activity to the etheric body where it ought normally to be. We achieved this by minute doses of copper and carbo animalis. The possibility that the etheric body might withdraw from the normal activity of digestion, to which it was unaccustomed, was countered by administering pancreatic fluid. The cold abscess was punctured several times. Large quantities of pus were evacuated by aspiration. The abscess grew smaller and the distended stomach decreased in that the pus-formation grew continuously less and finally disappeared. While it was still flowing we were surprised one day by a renewed rise in temperature. This was not inexplicable to us, since, with the above-described constitution of the astral body, small psychological excitements could give rise to such fever. However, one must differentiate between the explanation of fever in such cases and its strongly harmful effect. For under these conditions, such a fever is the mediator for a profound intervention of the processes of destruction in the organism. One must provide at once for a strengthening of the etheric body, which will then paralyse the harmful effects of the astral. We gave high potency silver injections and the fever sank. The patient left the clinic with a twenty pounds' increase in weight, and in a stronger condition. We are under no illusion as to the necessity for further treatment to consolidate the cure. With the cases hitherto described, we wished to characterize the principles whereby we seek to find the therapeutic substances out of the diagnosis. For the sake of clear illustration we selected cases where it was necessary to proceed along very individual lines. But we have also prepared typical therapeutic substances applicable to typical diseases. We will now deal with a few cases where such typical medicaments were used. We had a patient with severe symptoms of hay fever. He had suffered with it from childhood. He came to us for treatment in his fortieth year. For this disorder we have our preparation “Gencydo”. This we used in this case at the time — the month of May — when the disease was at its worst. We treated him with injections and locally by painting the inside of the nose with “Gencydo” fluid. Following this there was a marked improvement, at a time of the year when formerly the patient had suffered severely from hay fever, undertaking a journey, he reported feeling incomparably better than in former years. In the hay fever season of the next year, he was travelling again from America to Europe and only had a far milder attack than previously. The repetition of the treatment achieved a tolerable condition for this year. For a thorough cure, treatment was repeated the next year, although he had no actual attack. In the fourth year the patient himself described his condition in the following words: “In the spring of 1923, I again began the treatment, as I was expecting fresh attacks. I found my nasal mucous membranes far less sensitive than before. I had to spend my time working among flowering grasses and pollen-producing trees. I also had to ride all through the summer along hot and dusty roads. Yet with the exception of a single day, no symptoms of hay fever occurred the whole summer, and I have every reason to believe that on that single day it was an ordinary cold, not an attack of hay fever. In thirty-five years this was the first time that I could stay and work unhindered in an environment where in former years I experienced real hell.” A woman patient, sixty-one years old, came to our clinic with sclerosis and albuminuria. Her immediate condition was the sequel of an attack of influenza, with slight fever and disturbances of the stomach and intestines. She had not felt well again since the influenza. She complained of difficult breathing on waking, attacks of vertigo, and a pounding sensation in the head, ears and hands, which was especially troublesome on waking, but occurred also when she walked or climbed uphill. Her sleep was good. There was a tendency to constipation. The urine contained protein. Her blood pressure was 185mm Hg. We took our start from the sclerosis which was noticeable in the over-activity of the astral body. The physical and etheric bodies were unable to receive the full activity of the astral. In such a case, excess activity of the astral body remains, which the physical and etheric do not re-absorb. The normal and firm poise of the human organization is only possible when this re-absorption is complete. Otherwise, as in this case, the non-absorbed part will make itself felt in attacks of vertigo and subjective sensory illusions, pounding etc. Also the non-absorbed part takes hold of the digested substances, forcing certain processes upon them before they have penetrated into the normal metabolism. This became apparent in the tendency to constipation, in the excretion of albumen, also in the stomach and intestinal disorders. The blood pressure is raised in such a case because the excess activity of the astral body also heightens the activity of the ego, and this reveals itself in raised blood pressure. — We treated the case mainly with our remedy, “Scleron”; we supplemented this with very minute doses of belladonna, only as an aid to counteract immediately the attacks of vertigo. We gave elder-flower tea to help the digestion, regulated the action of the bowels by enemas and laxative tea, and ordered a salt free diet, because salts tend to aggravate sclerosis. A comparatively quick improvement was the result. The attacks of vertigo receded, likewise the pounding. The blood pressure went down to 112mm Hg. The patient's subjective feeling visibly improved. During the subsequent year the sclerosis made no further progress. At the end of a year the patient came to us again with the same symptoms in a lesser degree. A similar treatment brought about a further improvement; now, after a lapse of considerable time since the treatment it is evident that the sclerosis is producing no further degeneration of the organism. The external symptoms characteristic of sclerosis are on the decline, and the accompanying rapid aging of the patient is no longer there. A woman patient, who came to us in the thirty-fourth year of her life. She is typical of an individual whose psychic state is strongly influenced by a certain heaviness and fragility of the physical body. Every word she utters seems to cost her an effort. Very characteristic is the concavity in the whole shape of her face; the root of the nose is as if it were held back within the organism. She tells us that she was delicate and sickly even as a schoolgirl. The only actual disease that she went through was a slight attack of measles. She was always pale and very tired and had a poor appetite. She was sent from one doctor to another, and the following were diagnosed in succession: Infection of the apex of the lung, gastritis, anaemia. In her own mind the patient felt that she was not so much physically ill, but rather psychologically. Having given this part of her history, we will now indicate the spiritual-scientific diagnosis, in order to examine everything further against the latter. The patient reveals a highly atonic condition of the astral body. The ego-organization is thus held back, as it were, from the physical and etheric bodies. The whole life of consciousness is permeated by a subtle, dull drowsiness. The physical body is exposed to the processes arising from the ingested substances. Therefore, these substances are transformed into parts of the human organization. The etheric body in its coherent vitality is too strongly muted by the ego and the astral body; hence the inner sensations, namely, the sense of well-being and the sense of the orthostasis of the body become far too vivid, and the activity of the external senses is too dull. All the bodily functions thus have to take a course whereby they come into disharmony with one another. Inevitably the feeling arises in the patient that she cannot hold the functions of her body together with her own ego. This appears to her as a powerlessness of the soul. Hence she says she is more psychologically than physically ill. If the powerlessness of the ego and astral body increases, disease conditions must arise in various parts of the body, as is also indicated by the different diagnoses. Powerlessness of the ego expresses itself in irregularities of glands, such as the thyroid and the suprarenal; also in disorders of the stomach and intestinal system. All this is to be expected in the patient and does in fact occur. Her goitre and the condition of her stomach and intestinal system correspond entirely with the spiritual-scientific diagnosis. Most characteristic is the following: owing to the powerlessness of the ego and the astral body the need for sleep is partly satisfied during waking life, the patient's sleep is therefore lighter than a normal person's. To her, this appears as a persistent insomnia. In connection with this, she has a sense of easily falling asleep and easily awakening. Also in this connection she thinks she has many dreams, they are not, however, real dreams but mixtures of dreams and waking impressions. Thus they do not remain in her memory and are not powerfully exciting, for her excitability is lowered. In the inner organs the powerlessness of the ego first expresses itself in the lungs. Infection of the apex of the lung is in reality always a manifestation of a weak ego organization. The metabolism not being fully taken care of by the ego leads to rheumatism. Subjectively these things come to expression in the patient's general fatigue. Menstruation began at the age of fourteen; the weak ego organization cannot supply a sufficient unfolding of its forces to repress and restrain the menstrual process once it has come into flow. The work of the ego in this act of restraint comes as a sensation into consciousness through those nerves that enter the spinal cord in the region of the sacrum. Nerves insufficiently permeated by the currents of the ego-organization and the astral body are painful. Thus the patient complains of lower back pain during menstruation. All this led us in the following way to treatment. We have discovered that Colchicum autumnale has a powerfully stimulating action on the astral body, notably on the part that corresponds to the organization of the neck and head. Hence, we apply Colchicum autumnale to all those diseases which have their most important symptom in goitre. Accordingly, we gave the patient five drops of our Colchicum preparation three times a day; the goitre swelling receded and the patient felt much relieved. When the astral body is thus strengthened, it mediates a better functioning of the ego-organism, so that remedies which can work upon the organs of digestion and reproduction keep their strength in the organism. As such a remedy we used wormwood enemas, mixing them with oil, since oil stimulates the digestive tract. With this remedy we attained a considerable improvement. We hold that this treatment can develop its particularly favourable influence about the thirty-fifth year of life, for at this age the ego-organization has a strong affinity to the rest of the organism and can be readily stimulated, even when weak. The patient was thirty-four years old when she came to us. This patient came to us at the age of fifty-five. She informed us that she had been weak and delicate as a child; during childhood she had measles, scarlet fever, chicken pox, whooping cough and mumps. Menstruation began at the age of fourteen to fifteen. The bleeding was unusually intense and painful from the outset. In the fortieth year she underwent an oopherohysterectomy because of a tumour in the lower abdomen. She also reported that she suffered since the age of thirty-five from a migrainous headache lasting three days, every three or four weeks, which in her forty-sixth year developed into a cerebral illness lasting three days with unconsciousness. The spiritual-scientific diagnosis of her current condition is as follows: General weakness of the ego organization, which expresses itself in that the activity of the etheric body is insufficiently immobilized by the ego organization. Hence the vegetative organic activity extends over the head and nerve-sense system to a far greater degree than is the case when the ego-organization is normal. This diagnosis is corroborated by certain symptoms. Firstly a frequent urgency of micturition. This is due to the fact that the normally developed astral body which regulates the secretion of the kidneys is unopposed by a normally restraining ego-organization of sufficient strength. A second symptom is the long time she took to fall asleep and her tiredness on awakening. The astral body has difficulty in leaving the physical and etheric, for the ego is not strong enough in drawing it away. And when she has awakened, the vital activity, working on after sleep, was perceived as a feeling of fatigue owing to the weakness of the ego. A third symptom is to be found in the scarcity of her dreams. The pictures which the ego-organization can impress upon the astral body are feeble and cannot express themselves as vivid dreams. These perceptions led to the following treatment: we had to pave the way for the ego-organization to the physical and etheric bodies. We did this by compresses with a two per cent Oxalis solution on the forehead in the evening, compresses with a seven per cent solution of Urtica dioica on the lower abdomen in the morning, and compresses with a twenty per cent solution of lime blossom on the feet at midday. The object was, in the first place, to tone down the vital activity during the night; this was brought about by the oxalic salt, which exercises within the organism the function of suppressing an excessive vital activity. In the morning we had to ensure that the ego-organization could find its way into the physical body. This was done by stimulating the circulation. The iron effect of the stinging nettle ( Urtica dioica ) was applied for this purpose. Finally, it was desirable to assist the penetration of the physical body by the ego-organization in the course of the day. This was done by the downward drawing action of the lime blossom compresses at midday. We have already referred to the headaches to which the patient had become subject, with their intensification at the forty-sixth year of life. For us there was connection between the headaches and the cessation of the menses after the operation and their intensification with unconsciousness as a compensatory symptom for the menopause. We first tried to effect an improvement by the use of antimony. This should have worked if we had been concerned with the general metabolism, regulated by the organization of the ego. There was, however, no improvement. This proved to us that we were dealing with the relatively independent part of the ego-organization which primarily regulates the organs of reproduction. For the treatment of this, we see a specific remedy of the root of Potentilla tormentilla at a very high dilution, and in fact this worked.

Fundamentals of Therapy

Typical Cases of Illness

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c19.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c19

We shall now describe and explain the efficacy of a few of our typical medicaments. They are designed for the typical disorders, and in so far as a pathological condition is typical, our medicament will represent the necessary means of bringing about a therapeutic action in the sense explained in this book. A number of our medicaments will be described from this point of view. Scleron consists of metallic lead, honey and sugar. Lead works upon the organism in such a way as to stimulate the catabolic action of the ego-organization. If we introduce it into the organism where this action is deficient, it will therefore stimulate it, if administered in sufficiently strong doses. If the doses are excessive, hypertrophy of the ego organization results. The body destroys more than it can build up and must disintegrate. In sclerotic illness the ego organization becomes too weak; it is not itself sufficiently catabolic. Therefore destruction only occurs through the astral body. The catabolic products are precipitated out of the organism and cause reinforcement of those organs that exist in salt substances. In appropriate dosage, lead takes back the catabolic process into the ego-organization. The catabolic products are eliminated and do not remain as hardened areas in the body. All healing of sclerosis can only consist of opening up the way out of the organism of salt forming processes which otherwise remain in the body. Through the lead the direction of the processes of the ego organization is determined. Further it is necessary that these processes in their course, remain transient to a certain extent. This is accomplished by adding honey. Honey brings the ego organization to the state where it can exercise the necessary mastery over the astral body. Therefore, it takes from the astral body its relative autonomy in sclerosis. Sugar works directly on the ego-organization. It strengthens it in itself. Our remedy, therefore, has the following effect: lead works catabolically in the manner of the ego-organization, not the astral body. The honey transfers the catabolic action of the astral body to the ego-organization and the sugar places the ego-organization in a position to fulfil its specific task. It can be observed that the initial stages of sclerosis express themselves in that the quickness of thought and precise command of memory cease. Applied in this early stage of sclerosis, our remedy will prevent the advanced stages. It proves effective, however, in the later stages too. (Instructions are included with the preparation.) The head-organization is so constituted that the internal white portion of the brain (the white-matter) represents physically the most highly advanced part of the human organization. This portion of the brain contains a sensory activity, which comprises the other senses and into which the ego and astral body work. It participates also in the rhythmic system of the organism, into which the astral body and the etheric are working, and it also participates, though to a very small extent, in the metabolic and limb-system in which the physical and etheric work. This part of the brain differentiates itself from the surrounding periphery, the grey matter, which in its physical organization contains far more of the metabolic and limb-system, somewhat more of the rhythmic system, and least of all of the nerves-and-senses system. If now the central brain is impoverished as to nerve-sense activity and richer in metabolic activity because of a repressed activity of the ego-organization, i.e. if the centre becomes more like the peripheral brain than in the normal state, migraine arises. Its cure will, therefore, depend upon: 1. A stimulation of the nerve-sense activity; 2. A transformation of the rhythmic activity from one that inclines to the metabolism, into one that inclines more to the breathing process; and 3. A restraint of the purely vegetative metabolic activity which forgoes regulation by the ego-organization. The first of these results is attained by the use of silicic acid. Silica, in combination with oxygen, contains processes equivalent to those that take place within the organism in the transition from the breathing to the nerve-sense activity. The second result is to be achieved by sulphur. This contains that process whereby the rhythm inclining to the digestive system is transformed into a rhythm inclining to respiration. The third is achieved through iron, which immediately after the (digestive) process guides the metabolism into the rhythms of the blood, which leads to suppression of the metabolic process itself. Iron, sulphur and silicic acid (processed) in an appropriate form must therefore be therapeutic in migraine. This has been confirmed for us in countless cases. We will now discuss a remedy which owes its existence to the knowledge which can relate the processes in substances to the processes in the human organism in the right way. In this connection we must bear in mind that a substance is really a process brought to a stand-still, a frozen process, as it were. Properly speaking we should say, not pyrites, but pyrites-process. This process, which is arrested as if frozen in the mineral pyrites, represents what can result from the working together of the iron and sulphur processes. Iron, as we saw in the previous section, stimulates the circulation of the blood, while sulphur mediates the connection of the circulation and the breathing. The origin of tracheitis and bronchitis, and of certain kinds of stammering, lies just where the circulation and the breathing come into a relationship. This process between the circulation and the breathing is also the process whereby the corresponding organs are created in the embryonic period, and continuously renew themselves again during life. This process can be taken over, if it is not working normally in the organism, by the iron-sulphur substance introduced into the body. Starting from this perception, we prepare a remedy for the above forms of disease out of the mineral pyrites; and in preparing the remedy, the mineral is so transformed that its forces can find their way through an internal indication into the diseased organs. We must, of course have knowledge of the paths which the processes of certain substances will take within the body. The iron-process is led from the metabolism as far as the circulation of the blood. The sulphur-process passes on from the circulation into the breathing. Antimony has an extraordinarily strong affinity to other bodies, e.g. sulphur. It thus reveals that it will readily accompany sulphur on the path which the latter takes through the organism, for example, into all the breathing processes. A further property of antimony is its tendency to cluster forms of crystals. Here it shows how easily it obeys certain radiations of forces in the earth's environment. This property becomes more evident when antimony is subjected to the Seiger process. Through this it becomes filamentous. Still more significantly this appears, when antimony is brought into the process of combustion and its white vapour develops. This vapour is deposited on cold surfaces and forms the very characteristic flowers of antimony. Now just as antimony gives itself up to the forces that work upon it when it is outside the human organism, so too, it obeys the form giving forces when it is within. In the blood, there is, as it were, a state of equilibrium between the form-giving and form-dissolving forces. By virtue of its properties above described, antimony can carry the form-creating forces of the human organism into the blood, if the way is prepared for it by combination with sulphur. The forces of antimony are therefore the very forces that work in the coagulation of the blood. To spiritual science the process appears as follows: the astral body is strengthened in those forces leading to the coagulation of the blood. For we must recognize in the astral body forces similar to those of antimony, working in the human organism centrifugally from within outward. These antimonizing forces oppose the forces directed from without inward, which liquefy the blood and place the liquefied blood plastically in the service of the formation of the body. The protein forces are also working in this direction. The forces contained in the protein process perpetually hinder the coagulation of the blood. Take the case of typhoid fever; it is due to an excess influence of the albuminizing forces. If antimony is administered in very minute doses to the organism, the forces that give rise to typhoid fever are counteracted. It must, however, be borne in mind that the effect of antimony is quite different whether it is given internally or externally. Administered externally, in ointments and the like, it weakens those centrifugal forces of the astral body which express themselves for instance in the symptoms of eczema; internally administered it counteracts the excessive centripetal forces which manifest themselves in typhoid fever. Antimony is an important remedy in all diseases accompanied by a dangerous lowering of consciousness (drowsiness). Here the formative centrifugal forces of the astral body, and hence also the processes of the brain and of the senses, are to some extent excluded. If antimony is administered, the deficient astral forces are engendered artificially. We shall always observe that the absorption of antimony strengthens the memory, enhances the creative powers of the soul and improves the inner poise and composure of the soul. From the strengthened soul the organism is regenerated. In older medicine this was felt. Antimony was thus regarded as a universal remedy. Even if we do not take such an extreme stance, we must see a versatile remedy in antimony as can be concluded from the above. We have been able to identify an important therapeutic substance in cinnabar. This is especially a substance that offers an opportunity to study the much defended and much attacked relationship of quicksilver to the human organism. Quicksilver is that solidified process which stands in the middle between those processes of reproduction which, themselves working within the organism, detach it almost entirely from its being (the regenerative processes which, working within the organism, detach themselves almost entirely from its existence). The forces of quicksilver have the peculiar property that they can bring back those detached forces to be re-absorbed into the whole organism. Quicksilver, therefore (in the finest dosage), can be used everywhere as therapy where separating processes develop in the organism which have to be brought back into the dominion of the whole organism. All catarrhal processes are included in this. They arise when one or other tract within the organism is torn away by some external agency from the dominion of the whole organism. This is the case, for example, with tracheitis and other catarrhal symptoms in the same region. Mercury forces, conveyed to this part of the body, will have a curative effect. We have referred already to the characteristic property of sulphur, which makes its influence felt in that domain of the organism where the circulation and the breathing processes border on each other, that is to say, in all that proceeds from the lungs. Cinnabar is a compound of mercury and sulphur; it is an effective remedy for all catarrhal symptoms in these regions. The pathological symptoms of hay fever represent an inflammatory condition of the mucous membranes of the eyes, the nose, the throat and upper respiratory tract. The past history of the hay fever sufferer generally indicates that in childhood there were pathological processes which may be included in the term “exudative diathesis”. These indications point to the etheric body and to the behaviour of the astral. The forces of the etheric body are dominant, while the astral body withdraws and shows a disinclination to take proper hold of the etheric and physical. The catarrhal symptoms result from the fact that in the diseased parts the regulated influence of the astral body — and hence, too, of the ego organization — is disturbed. The astral body and ego-organization become hypersensitive and show themselves in this way, also in the convulsive reactions to sense-impressions: to light, to heat and cold, to dust etc. A healing process for hay fever must therefore come to the assistance of the astral body, helping it to enter in and intervene properly in the etheric. This can be done by the aid of the juices of fruits that possess a leathery skin or rind. Observation shows in such fruits how strongly they are subject to form-creating forces of the kind that work from without inwards. By applying the juices of such fruits externally and internally, we can stimulate the astral body and urge it in the direction of the etheric; in the mineral constituents of the fruit-juices (potassium, calcium and silica, for example) this influence receives further support from the side of the ego-organization (cf. Chapter XVII). In this way, a real cure of hay fever is effected. Detailed instructions are included with the preparation.

Fundamentals of Therapy

Typical Therapeutic Substances

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_c20.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_c20

Thus far the fruits of our common work; and at this point, to the great grief of us all, the writing had to be discontinued when Rudolf Steiner's illness began. In the sequel it had been our plan to describe that which is working, by way of telluric and cosmic forces, in the metals: gold, silver, lead, iron, copper, mercury and tin, and to explain how they are to be used in the art of healing. It was also our intention to describe how the ancient Mysteries contained a deep and true understanding of the relation of the metals to the planets, and their relation again to the various organs of the human body. To speak of this kind of knowledge, to lay the foundations of it once more for our own time, such was our intention.

Fundamentals of Therapy

Postscript by Ita Wegman

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA027/English/RSP1983/GA027_ps.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA027_ps

SCHLACHTENSEE, 22. Sept. 1903. DEAR FRÄULEIN M— There was no time left yesterday for what I should have liked to say to you: that your last letter was deeply gratifying to me. You will not misunderstand me: it is not because of your kind and good words to myself, but on account of the whole way in which you relate yourself to our cause. For a long time I have known that you love the truth; it has been a joy and satisfaction to me that we have found one another in this love for truth, and your recent letter confirms and strengthens this feeling. I can only say to you that this love for the truth has always been my guide. I have been much misunderstood, and shall no doubt be much misunderstood in future, too. That lies in the very nature of my path. Every imaginable role has been ascribed to me - not least, that of a fanatic in one direction or in another. Fanaticism is the one thing of all others from which I know that I am free. For it is the greatest tempter into illusions. And it has ever been my principle to keep out of the way of all illusion. You write that I make manifest the Spirit in my life. In one respect, I assure you, I strive to do so: I never speak of anything spiritual that I do not know by the most direct spiritual experience . This principle is my guiding star, and it has enabled me to overcome illusions. I can see through the illusions. And I can truly say that for me the spiritual is absolutely real - not a whit less real than is the table at which I am now writing. Whoever is ready to look into all that I have said and done will discover harmony, where by not looking at the whole he only finds contradictions. I can but say: The same kind of experience which has taught me the truth in science has also taught me the “mystical fact” in Christianity. Moreover, those who know me well know that I have not unduly altered in my life. Of one thing I can assure you: I do not force myself, I put myself under no kind of strain, when I relate the truths of the spiritual life just as I would relate the realities of this world of the senses. We shall speak of these things again, no doubt, another time. Your devoted RUDOLF STEINER SCHLACHTENSEE NEAR BERLIN, SEESTRASSE 40.

The Story of My Life

Letter

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA028/English/APC1928/GA028_letter.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA028_letter

In public discussions of the anthroposophy for which I stand there have been mingled for some time past statements and judgments about the course which my life has taken. From what has been said in this connection conclusions have been drawn with regard to the origin of the variations so called which some persons believe they have discovered in the course of my spiritual evolution. In view of these facts, friends have felt that it would be well if I myself should write something about my own life. This does not accord, I must confess, with my own inclinations. For it has always been my endeavour so to order what I might have to say and what I might think well to do according as the thing itself might require, and not from personal considerations. To be sure, it has always been my conviction that in many provinces of life the personal element gives to human action a colouring of the utmost value; only it seems to me that this personal element should reveal itself through the manner in which one speaks and acts, and not through conscious attention to one's own personality. Whatever may come about as a result of such attention is something a man has to settle with himself. And so it has been possible for me to resolve upon the following narration only because it is necessary to set in a true light by means of an objective written statement many a false judgment in reference to the consistency between my life and the thing that I have fostered, and because those who through friendly interest have urged this upon me seem to me justified in view of such false judgments. The home of my parents was in Lower Austria. My father was born at Geras, a very small place in the Lower Austrian forest region; my mother at Horn, a city of the same district. My father passed his childhood and youth in the most intimate association with the seminary of the Premonstratensian Order at Geras. He always looked back with the greatest affection upon this time in his life. He liked to tell how he served in the college, and how the monks instructed him. Later on, he was a huntsman in the service of Count Hoyos. This family had a place at Horn. It was there that my father became acquainted with my mother. Then he gave up the work of huntsman and became a telegraphist on the Southern Austrian Railway. He was sent at first to a little station in southern Styria. Then he was transferred to Kraljevec on the border between Hungary and Croatia. It was during this period that he married my mother. Her maiden name was Blie. She was descended from an old family of Horn. I was born at Kraljevec on February 27, 1861. It thus happened that the place of my birth was far removed from that part of the world from which my family came. My father, and my mother as well, were true children of the South Austrian forest country, north of the Danube. It is a region into which the railway was late in coming. Even to this day it has left Geras untouched. My parents loved the life they had lived in their native region. When they spoke of this, one realized instinctively how in their souls they had never parted from that birthplace in spite of the fate that forced them to pass the greater part of their lives far away from it. And so, when my father retired, after a life filled with work, they returned at once there-to Horn. My father was a man of the utmost good will, but of a temper – especially while he was still young – which could be passionately aroused. The work of a railway employee was to him a matter of duty; he had no love for it. While I was still a boy, he would sometimes have to remain on duty for three days and three nights continuously. Then he would be relieved for twenty-four hours. Under such conditions life for him wore no bright colours; all was dull grey. Some pleasure he found in keeping up with political developments. In these he took the liveliest interest. My mother, since our worldly goods were none too plentiful, was forced to devote herself to household duties. Her days were filled with loving care of her children and of the little home. When I was a year and a half old; my father was transferred to Mödling, near Vienna. There my parents remained a half-year. Then my father was put in charge of the little station on the Southern Railway at Pottschach in Lower Austria, near the Styrian border. There I lived from my second to my eighth year. A wonderful landscape formed the environment of my childhood. The view stretched as far as the mountains that separate Lower Austria from Styria: “Snow Mountain,” Wechsel, the Rax Alps, the Semmering. Snow Mountain caught the sun's earliest rays on its bare summit, and the kindling reflection of these from the mountain down to the little village was the first greeting of dawn in the beautiful summer days. The grey back of the Wechsel put one by contrast in a sober mood. It was as if the mountains rose up out of the all-surrounding green of the friendly landscape. On the distant boundaries of the circle one had the majesty of the peaks, and close around the tenderness of nature. But around the little station all interest was centered on the business of the railway. At that time the trains passed in that region only at long intervals; but, when they came, many of the men of the village who could spare the time were generally gathered at the station, seeking thus to bring some change into their lives, which they found otherwise very monotonous. The schoolmaster, the priest, the book-keeper of the manor, and often the burgomaster as well, would be there. It seems to me that passing my childhood in such an environment had a certain significance for my life. For I felt a very deep interest in everything about me of a mechanical character; and I know how this interest tended constantly to overshadow in my childish soul the affections which went out to that tender and yet mighty nature into which the railway train, in spite of being in subjection to this mechanism, must always disappear in the far distance. In the midst of all this there was present the influence of a certain personality of marked originality, the priest of St. Valentin, a place that one could reach on foot from Pottschach in about three-quarters of an hour. This priest liked to come to the home of my parents. Almost every day he took a walk to our home, and he nearly always stayed for a long time. He belonged to the liberal type of Catholic cleric, tolerant and genial; a robust, broad-shouldered man. He was quite witty, too; had many jokes to tell, and was pleased when he drew a laugh from the persons about him. And they would laugh even more loudly over what he had said long after he was gone. He was a man of a practical way of life, and liked to give good practical advice. Such a piece of practical counsel produced its effects in my family for a long time. There was a row of acacia trees (Robinien) on each side of the railway at Pottschach. Once we were walking along the little footpath under these trees, when he remarked: “Ah, what beautiful acacia blossoms these are!” He seized one of the branches at once and broke off a mass of the blossoms. Spreading out his huge red pocket-handkerchief – he was extremely fond of snuff – he carefully wrapped the twigs in this, and put the “Binkerl” under his arm. Then he said: “How lucky you are to have so many acacia blossoms! “My father was astonished, and answered: “Why, what can we do with them?” “Wh-a-a-t?” said the priest. “Don't you know that you can bake the acacia blossoms just like elder flowers, and that they taste much better then because they have a far more delicate aroma?” From that time on we often had in our family, as opportunity offered from time to time, “baked acacia blossoms.” In Pottschach a daughter and another son were born to my parents. There was never any further addition to the family. As a very young child I showed a marked individuality. From the time that I could feed myself, I had to be carefully watched. For I had formed the conviction that a soup-bowl or a coffee cup was meant to be used only once; and so, every time that I was not watched, as soon as I had finished eating something I would throw the bowl or the cup under the table and smash it to pieces. Then, when my mother appeared, I would call out to her : “Mother, I've finished!” This could not have been a mere propensity for destroying things, since I handled my toys with the greatest care, and kept them in good condition for a long time. Among these toys those that had the strongest attraction for me were the kind which even now I consider especially good. These were picture-books with figures that could be made to move by pulling strings attached to them at the bottom. One associated little stories with these figures, to whom one gave a part of their life by pulling the strings. Many a time have I sat by the hour poring over the picture-books with my sister. Besides, I learned from them by myself the first steps in reading. My father was concerned that I should learn early to read and write. When I reached the required age, I was sent to the village school. The schoolmaster was an old man to whom the work of “teaching school” was a burdensome business. Equally burdensome to me was the business of being taught by him. I had no faith whatever that I could ever learn anything from him. For he often came to our house with his wife and his little son, and this son, according to my notions at that time, was a scamp. So I had this idea firmly fixed in my head: “Whoever has such a scamp for a son, nobody can learn anything from him.” Besides, something else happened, “quite dreadful.” This scamp, who also was in the school, played the prank one day of dipping a chip into all the ink-wells of the school and making circles around them with dabs of ink. His father noticed these. Most of the pupils had already gone. The teacher's son, two other boys, and I were still there. The schoolmaster was beside himself; he talked in a frightful manner. I felt sure that he would actually roar but for the fact that his voice was always husky. In spite of his rage, he got an inkling from our behaviour as to who the culprit was. But things then took a different turn. The teacher's home was next-door to the school-room. The “lady head mistress” heard the commotion and came into the school-room with wild eyes, waving her arms in the air. To her it was perfectly clear that her little son could not have done this thing. She put the blame on me. I ran away. My father was furious when I reported this matter at home. Then, the next time the teacher's family came to our house, he told them with the utmost bluntness that the friendship between us was ended, and added baldly: “My boy shall never set foot in your school again,” Now my father himself took over the task of teaching me; and so I would sit beside him in his little office by the hour, and had to read and write between whiles whenever he was busy with his duties. Neither with him could I feel any real interest in what had to come to me by way of direct instruction. What interested me was the things that my father himself was writing. I would imitate what he did. In this way I learned a great deal. As to the things I was taught by him, I could see no reason why I should do these just for my own improvement. On the other hand, I became rooted, in a child's way, in everything that formed a part of the practical work of life. The routine of a railway office, everything connected with it, – this caught my attention. It was, however, more especially the laws of nature that had already taken me as their little errand boy. When I wrote, it was because I had to write, and I wrote as fast as I could so that I should soon have a page filled. For then I could strew the sort of dust my father used over this writing. Then I would be absorbed in watching how quickly the dust dried up the ink, and what sort of mixture they made together. I would try the letters over and over with my fingers to discover which were already dry, which not. My curiosity about this was very great, and it was in this way chiefly that I quickly learned the alphabet. Thus my writing lessons took on a character that did not please my father, but he was good-natured and reproved me only by frequently calling me an incorrigible little “rascal.” This, however, was not the only thing that evolved in me by means of the writing lessons. What interested me more than the shapes of the letters was the body of the writing quill itself. I could take my father's ruler and force the point of this into the slit in the point of the quill, and in this manner carry on researches in physics, concerning the elasticity of a feather. Afterwards, of course, I bent the feather back into shape; but the beauty of my handwriting distinctly suffered in this process. This was also the time when, with my inclination toward the understanding of natural phenomena, I occupied a position midway between seeing through a combination of things, on the one hand, and “the limits of understanding” on the other. About three minutes from the home of my parents there was a mill. The owners of the mill were the god-parents of my brother and sister. We were always welcome at this mill. I often disappeared within it. Then I studied with all my heart the work of a miller. I forced a way for myself into the “interior of nature.” Still nearer us, however, there was a yarn factory. The raw material for this came to the railway station; the finished product went away from the station. I participated thus in everything which disappeared within the factory and everything which reappeared. We were strictly forbidden to take one peep at the “inside” of this factory. This we never succeeded in doing. There were the “limits of understanding” And how I wished to step across the boundaries! For almost every day the manager of the factory came to see my father on some matter of business. For me as a boy this manager was a problem, casting a miraculous veil, as it were, over the “inside” of those works. He was spotted here and there with white tufts; his eyes had taken on a certain set look from working at machinery. He spoke hoarsely, as if with a mechanical speech. “What is the connection between this man and everything that is surrounded by those walls?” – this was an insoluble problem facing my mind. But I never questioned anyone regarding the mystery. For it was my childish conviction that it does no good to ask questions about a problem which is concealed from one's eyes. Thus I lived between the friendly mill and the unfriendly factory. Once something happened at the station that was very “dreadful.” A freight train rumbled up. My father stood looking at it. One of the rear cars was on fire. The crew had not noticed this at all. All that followed as a result of this made a deep impression on me. Fire had started in a car by reason of some highly inflammable material. For a long time I was absorbed in the question how such a thing could happen. What my surroundings said to me in this case was, as in many other matters, not to my satisfaction. I was filled with questions, and I had to carry these about with me unanswered. It was thus that I reached my eighth year. During my eighth year the family moved to Neudörfl, a little Hungarian village. This village is just at the border over against Lower Austria. The boundary here was formed by the Laytha River. The station that my father had in charge was at one end of the village. Half an hour's walk further on was the boundary stream. Still another half-hour brought one to Wiener-Neustadt. The range of the Alps that I had seen close by at Pottschach was now visible only at a distance. Yet the mountains still stood there in the background to awaken our memories when we looked at lower mountains that could be reached in a short time from our family's new home. Massive heights covered with beautiful forests bounded the view in one direction; in the other, the eye could range over a level region, decked out in fields and woodland, all the way to Hungary. Of all the mountains, I gave my unbounded love to one that could be climbed in three-quarters of an hour. On its crest there stood a chapel containing a painting of Saint Rosalie. This chapel came to be the objective of a walk which I often took at first with my parents and my sister and brother, and later loved to take alone. Such walks were filled with a special happiness because of the fact that at that time of year we could bring back with us rich gifts of nature. For in these woods there were blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries. One could often find an inner satisfaction in an hour and a half of berrying for the purpose of adding a delicious contribution to the family supper, which otherwise consisted merely of a piece of buttered bread or bread and cheese for each of us. Still another pleasant thing came from rambling about in these forests, which were the common property of all. There the villagers got their supplies of wood. The poor gathered it for themselves; the well-to-do had servants to do this. One could become acquainted with all of these most-friendly persons. They always had time for a chat when Steiner Rudolf met them. “So thou goest again for a bit of a walk, Steiner Rudolf” – thus they would begin, and then they would talk about everything imaginable. The people did not think of the fact that they had a mere child before them. For at the bottom of their souls they also were only children, even when they could number sixty years. And so I really learned from the stories they told me almost everything that happened in the houses of the village. Half an hour's walk from Neudörfl is Sauerbrunn, where there is a spring containing iron and carbonic acid. The road to this lies along the railway, and part of the way through beautiful woods. During vacation time I went there every day early in the morning, carrying with me a “Blutzer.” This is a water vessel made of clay. The smallest of these hold three or four litres. One could fill this without charge at the spring. Then at midday the family could enjoy the delicious sparkling water. Toward Wiener-Neustadt and farther on toward Styria, the mountains fall away to a level country. Through this level country the Laytha River winds its way. On the slope of the mountains there was a cloister of the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer. I often met the monks on my walks. I still remember how glad I should have been if they had spoken to me. They never did. And so I carried away from these meetings an undefined but solemn feeling which remained constantly with me for a long time. It was in my ninth year that the idea became fixed in me that there must be weighty matters in connection with the duties of these monks which I ought to learn to understand. There again I was filled with questions which I had to carry around unanswered. Indeed, these questions about all possible sorts of things made me as a boy very lonely. On the foothills of the Alps two castles were visible: Pitten and Frohsdorf. In the second there lived at that time Count Chambord, who, at the beginning of the year 1870, claimed the throne of France as Henry V. Very deep were the impressions that I received from that fragment of life bound up with the castle Frohsdorf. The Count with his retinue frequently took the train for a journey from the station at Neudörfl. Everything drew my attention to these men. Especially deep was the impression made by one man in the Count's retinue. He had but one ear. The other had been slashed off clean. The hair lying over this he had braided. At the sight of this I perceived for the first time what a duel is. For it was in this manner that the man had lost one ear. Then, too, a fragment of social life unveiled itself to me in connection with Frohsdorf. The assistant teacher at Neudörfl, whom I was often permitted to see at work in his little chamber, prepared innumerable petitions to Count Chambord for the poor of the village and the country around. In response to every such appeal there always came back a donation of one gulden, and from this the teacher was always allowed to keep six kreuzer for his services. This income he had need of, for the annual salary yielded him by his profession was fifty-eight gulden. In addition, he had his morning coffee and his lunch with the “schoolmaster.” Then, too, he gave special lessons to about ten children, of whom I was one. For such lessons the charge was one gulden a month. To this assistant teacher I owe a great deal. Not that I was greatly benefited by his lessons at the school. In that respect I had about the same experience as at Pottschach. As soon as we moved to Neudörfl, I was sent to school there This school consisted of one room in which five classes of both boys and girls all had their lessons. While the boy who sat on my bench were at their task of copying out the story of King Arpad, the very little fellows stood at a black board on which i and u had been written with chalk for them. It was simply impossible to do anything save to let the mind fall into a dull reverie while the hands almost mechanically took care of the copying. Almost all the teaching had to be done by the assistant teacher alone. The “schoolmaster” appeared in the school only very rarely. He was also the village notary, and it was said that in this occupation he had so much to take up his time that he could never keep school. In spite of all this I learned earlier than usual to read well. Because of this fact the assistant teacher was able to take hold of something within me which has influenced the whole course of my life. Soon after my entrance into the Neudörfl school, I found a book on geometry in his room. I was on such good terms with the teacher that I was permitted at once to borrow the book for my own use. I plunged into it with enthusiasm. For weeks at a time my mind it was filled with coincidences, similarities between triangles, squares, polygons; I racked my brains over the question: Where do parallel lines actually meet? The theorem of Pythagoras fascinated me. That one can live within the mind in the shaping of forms perceived only within oneself, entirely without impression upon the external senses – this gave me the deepest satisfaction. I found in this a solace for the unhappiness which my unanswered questions had caused me. To be able to lay hold upon something in the spirit alone brought to me an inner joy. I am sure that I learned first in geometry to experience this joy. In my relation to geometry I must now perceive the first budding forth of a conception which has since gradually evolved in me. This lived within me more or less unconsciously during my childhood, and about my twentieth year took a definite and fully conscious form. I said to myself: “The objects and occurrences which the senses perceive are in space. But, just as this space is outside of man, so there exists also within man a sort of soul-space which is the arena of spiritual realities and occurrences.” In my thoughts I could not see anything in the nature of mental images such as man forms within him from actual things, but I saw a spiritual world in this soul-arena. Geometry seemed to me to be a knowledge which man appeared to have produced but which had, nevertheless, a significance quite independent of man. Naturally I did not, as a child, say all this to myself distinctly, but I felt that one must carry the knowledge of the spiritual world within oneself after the fashion of geometry. For the reality of the spiritual world was to me as certain as that of the physical. I felt the need, however, for a sort of justification for this assumption. I wished to be able to say to myself that the experience of the spiritual world is just as little an illusion as is that of the physical world. With regard to geometry I said to myself: “Here one is permitted to know something which the mind alone, through its own power, experiences.” In this feeling I found the justification for the spiritual world that I experienced, even as, so to speak, for the physical. And in this way I talked about this. I had two conceptions which were naturally undefined, but which played a great role in my mental life even before my eighth year. I distinguished things as those “which are seen” and those “which are not seen.” I am relating these matters quite frankly, in spite of the fact that those persons who are seeking for evidence to prove that anthroposophy is fantastic will, perhaps, draw the conclusion from this that even as a child I was marked by a gift for the fantastic: no wonder, then, that a fantastic philosophy should also have evolved within me. But it is just because I know how little I have followed my own inclinations in forming conceptions of a spiritual world – having on the contrary followed only the inner necessity of things – that I myself can look back quite objectively upon the childlike unaided manner in which I confirmed for myself by means of geometry the feeling that I must speak of a world “which is not seen.” Only I must also say that I loved to live in that world For I should have been forced to feel the physical world as a sort of spiritual darkness around me had it not received light from that side. The assistant teacher of Neudörfl had provided me, in the geometry text-book, with that which I then needed – justification for the spiritual world. In other ways also I owe much to him. He brought to me the element of art. He played the piano and the violin and he drew a great deal. These things attracted me powerfully to him. Just as much as I possibly could be, was I with him. Of drawing he was especially fond, and even in my ninth year he interested me in drawing with crayons. I had in this way to copy pictures under his direction. Long did I sit, for instance, copying a portrait of Count Szedgenyi. Very seldom at Neudörfl, but frequently in the neighbouring town of Sauerbrunn, could I listen to the impressive music of the Hungarian gipsies. All this played its part in a childhood which was passed in the immediate neighbourhood of the church and the churchyard. The station at Neudörfl was but a few steps from the church, and between these lay the churchyard. If one went along by the churchyard and then a short stretch further, one came into the village itself. This consisted of two rows of houses. One row began with the school and the other with the home of the priest. Between those two rows of houses flowed a little brook, along the banks of which grew stately nut trees. In connection with these nut trees an order of precedence grew up among the children of the school. When the nuts began to get ripe, the boys and girls assailed the trees with stones, and in this way laid in a winter's supply of nuts. In autumn almost the only thing anyone talked about was the size of his harvest of nuts. Whoever had gathered most of all was the most looked up to, and then step by step was the descent all the way down – to me, the last, who as an “outsider in the village” had no right to share in this order of precedence. Near the railway station, the row of most important houses, in which the “big farmers” lived, was met at right angles by a row of some twenty houses owned by the “middle class” villagers. Then, beginning from the gardens which belonged to the station, came a group of thatched houses belonging to the “small cottagers.” These constituted the immediate neighbourhood of my family. The roads leading out from the village went past fields and vineyards that were owned by the villagers. Every year I took part with the “small cottagers” in the vintage, and once also in a village wedding. Next to the assistant teacher, the person whom I loved most among those who had to do with the direction of the school was the priest. He came regularly twice a week to give instruction in religion and often besides for inspection of the school. The image of the man was deeply impressed upon my mind, and he has come back into my memory again and again throughout my life. Among the persons whom I came to know up to my tenth or eleventh year, he was by far the most significant. He was a vigorous Hungarian patriot. He took active part in the process of Magyarizing the Hungarian territory which was then going forward. From this point of view he wrote articles in the Hungarian language, which I thus learned through the fact that the assistant teacher had to make clear copies of these and he always discussed their contents with me in spite of my youthfulness. But the priest was also an energetic worker for the Church. This once impressed itself deeply upon my mind through one of his sermons. At Neudörfl there was a lodge of Freemasons. To the villagers this was shrouded in mystery, and they wove about it the most amazing legends. The leading role in this lodge belonged to the manager of a match-factory which stood at the end of the village. Next to him in prominence among the persons immediately interested in the matter were the manager of another factory and a clothing merchant. Otherwise the only significance attaching to the lodge arose from the fact that from time to time strangers from “remote parts” were visitors there, and these seemed to the villagers in the highest degree unwelcome. The clothing merchant was a noteworthy person. He always walked with his head bowed over as if in deep thought. People called him “the make-believe,” and his isolation rendered it neither possible nor necessary that anyone should approach him. The building in which the lodge met belonged to his home. I could establish no sort of relationship to this lodge. For the entire behaviour of the persons about me in regard to this matter was such that here again I had to refrain from asking questions; besides, the utterly absurd way in which the manager of the match-factory talked about the church made a shocking impression on me. Then one Sunday the priest delivered a sermon in his energetic fashion in which he set forth in due order the true principles of morality for human life and spoke of the enemy of the truth in figures of speech framed to fit the lodge. As a climax, he delivered his advice: “Beloved Christians, beware of him who is an enemy of the truth: for example, a Mason or a Jew.” In the eyes of the people, the factory owner and the clothing merchant were thus authoritatively exposed. The vigour with which this had been uttered made a specially deep impression upon me. I owe to the priest also, because of a certain profound impression made upon me, a very great deal in the later orientation of my spiritual life. One day he came into the school, gathered round him in the teacher's little room the “riper” children, among whom he included me, unfolded a drawing he had made, and with the help of this explained to us the Copernican system of astronomy. He spoke about this very vividly – the revolution of the earth around the sun, its rotation on its axis, the inclination of the axis in summer and winter, and also the zones of the earth. In all of it I was absorbed; I made drawings of a similar kind for days together, and then received from the priest further special instruction concerning eclipses of the sun and the moon; and thence-forward I directed all my search for knowledge toward this subject. I was then about ten years old, and I could not yet write without mistakes in spelling and grammar. Of the deepest significance for my life as a boy was the nearness of the church and the churchyard beside it. Everything that happened in the village school was affected in its course by its relationship to these. This was not by reason of certain dominant social and political relationships existing in every community; it was due to the fact that the priest was an impressive personality. The assistant teacher was at the same time organist of the church and custodian of the vestments used at Mass and of the other church furnishings. He performed all the services of an assistant to the priest in his religious ministrations. We schoolboys had to carry out the duties of ministrants and choristers during Mass, rites for the dead, and funerals. The solemnity of the Latin language and of the liturgy was a thing in which my boyish soul found a Vital happiness. Because of the fact that up to my tenth year I took such an earnest part in the services of the church, I was often in the company of the priest whom I so revered. In the home of my parents I received no encouragement in this matter of my relationship to the church. My father took no part in this. He was then a “freethinker.” He never entered the church to which I had become so deeply attached; and yet he also, as a boy and as a young man, had been equally devoted and active. In his case this all changed once more only when he went back, as an old man on a pension, to Horn, his native region. There he became again “a pious man.” But by that time I had long ceased to have any association with my parents' home. From the time of my boyhood at Neudörfl, I have always had the strongest impression of the manner in which the contemplation of the church services in close connection with the solemnity of liturgical music causes the riddle of existence to rise in powerful suggestive fashion before the mind. The instruction in the Bible and the catechism imparted by the priest had far less effect upon my mental world than what he accomplished by means of liturgy in mediating between the sensible and the supersensible. From the first this was to me no mere form, but a profound experience. It was all the more so because of the fact that in this I was a stranger in the home of my parents. Even in the atmosphere I had to breathe in my home, my spirit did not lose that vital experience which it had acquired from the liturgy. I passed my life amid this home environment without sharing in it, perceived it; but my real thoughts, feelings, and experience were continually in that other world. I can assert emphatically however, in this connection that I was no dreamer, but quite self-sufficient in all practical affairs. A complete counterpart to this world of mine was my father's political affairs. He and another employee took turns on duty. This man lived at another railway station, for which he was partly responsible. He came to Neudörfl only every two or three days. During the free hours of the evening he and my father would talk politics. This would take place at a table which stood near the station under two huge and wonderful lime trees. There our whole family and the other employee would assemble. My mother knitted or crocheted; my brother and sister busied themselves about us; I would often sit at the table and listen to the unheard of political arguments of the two men. My participation, however, never had anything to do with the sense of what they were saying, but only with the form which the conversation took. They were always on opposite sides; if one said “Yes,” the other always contradicted him with “No.” All this, however, was marked, not only by a certain intensity – indeed, violence – but also by the good humour which was a basic element in my father's nature. In the little circle often gathered there, to which were frequently added some of the “notabilities” of the village, there appeared at times a doctor from Wiener-Neustadt. He had many patients in this place, where at that time there was no physician. He came from Wiener-Neustadt to Neudörfl on foot, and would come to the station after visiting his patients to wait for the train on which he went back. This man passed with my parents, and with most persons who knew him, as an odd character. He did not like to talk about his profession as a doctor, but all the more gladly did he talk about German literature. It was from him that I first heard of Lessing, Goethe, Schiller. At my home there was never any such conversation. Nothing was known of such things. Nor in the village school was there any mention of such matters. There the emphasis was all on Hungarian history. Priest and assistant teacher had no interest in the masters of German literature. And so it happened that with the Wiener-Neustadt doctor a whole new world came within my range of vision. He took an interest in me; often drew me aside after he had rested for a while under the lime trees, walked up and down with me by the station, and talked – not like a lecturer, but enthusiastically – about German literature. In these talks he set forth all sorts of ideas as to what is beautiful and what is ugly. This also has remained as a picture with me, giving me many happy hours in memory throughout my life: the tall, slender doctor, with his quick, long stride, always with his umbrella in his right hand held invariably in such a way that it dangled by his side, and I, a boy of ten years, on the other side, quite absorbed in what the man was saying. Along with all these things I was tremendously concerned with everything pertaining to the railroad. I first learned the principles of electricity in connection with the station telegraph. I learned also as a boy to telegraph. As to language, I grew up in the dialect of German that is spoken in Eastern Lower Austria. This was really the same as that then used in those parts of Hungary bordering on Lower Austria. My relationship to reading and that to writing were entirely different. In my boyhood I passed rapidly over the words in reading; my mind went immediately to the perceptions, the concepts, the ideas, so that I got no feeling from reading either for spelling or for writing grammatically. On the other hand, in writing I had a tendency to fix the word-forms in my mind by their sounds as I generally heard them spoken in the dialect. For this reason it was only after the most arduous effort that I gained facility in writing the literary language; whereas reading was easy for me from the first. Under such influences I grew up to the age at which my father had to decide whether to send me to the Gymnasium or to the Realschule 1 The Gymnasium and the Realschule are secondary schools, the curriculum of the former giving more prominence to the classics and that of the later to science and modern languages. at Wiener-Neustadt. From that time on I heard much talk with other persons – in between the political discussions – as to my own future. My father was given this and that advice; I already knew: “He likes to listen to what others say, but he acts according to his own fixed and definite determination.”

The Story of My Life

Chapter I

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA028/English/APC1928/GA028_c01.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA028_c01

The decision as to whether I should be sent to the Gymnasium or the Realschule was arrived at by my father, on the basis of his intention to give me the right preparation for a “position” on the railway. This purpose of his finally took definite form in the decision that I should be a railway civil engineer. Hence his choice was the Realschule . Next, however, the question remained to be settled as to whether in passing from the village school of Neudörfl to one of the schools in the neighbouring Wiener-Neustadt, I should be prepared for admission to such a school. So I was taken to the town hall for an examination. These plans which were thus being carried through for my own future did not excite in me any deep interest. At that age these questions concerning my “position,” and whether the choice should fall on town school, Realschule , or Gymnasium were to me matters of indifference. Through what I observed around me and felt within me, I was conscious of undefined but burning questions about life and the world and the soul, and my wish was to learn something in order to be able to answer these questions of mine. I cared very little through what sort of school this should be brought about. The examination at the town school I passed very creditably. All the drawings I had made for the assistant teacher had been brought along; and these made such an impression upon the teachers who examined me that on this account my very defective knowledge was overlooked. I came out of the examination with a “brilliant” record. There was great rejoicing on the part of my parents, the assistant teacher, the priest, and many of the notabilities of Neudörfl. People were happy over the result of my examination because to many of them it was a proof that “the Neudörfl school can teach a thing or two!” For my father there came out of all this the thought that I should not spend a preliminary year in the town school – seeing that I was already so far along – but should enter the Realschule at once. So a few days later I was taken to that school for another examination. In this case matters did not turn out so well; nevertheless, I was admitted. This was in October 1872. I had now to go every day from Neudörfl to Wiener Neustadt. In the morning I could go by train; but I had to come back in the afternoon on foot, since there was no train at the right time. Neudörfl was in Hungary, Wiener Neustadt in Lower Austria. So every day I went from “Transleitanien” to “Cisleitanien.” (These were the official designations for the Hungarian and the Austrian districts.) During the noon recess I remained in Wiener-Neustadt. It so happened that a certain woman had come to know me during one of her stops at the Neudörfl station, and had learned that I was coming to Wiener-Neustadt to school. My parents had spoken to her of their concern as to how I was to pass the noon recess during my attendance at the Wiener-Neustadt school. She told them she would be glad to have me take lunch at her home without charge, and would welcome me there whenever I needed to come. In summer the walk from Wiener-Neustadt to Neudörfl was very beautiful; in winter it was often exceedingly hard. To get from the outskirts of the town to the village one had to walk for half an hour across fields which were not cleared of snow. There I often had to “wade” through the snow, and I would arrive at home a veritable “snow man.” The town life I could not share inwardly as I could the life of the country. I would fall into a brown study over the problem of what might be happening in and between those houses closed tight one against the other. Only before the booksellers' shops of Wiener-Neustadt did I often linger for a long time. What went on in the school also, and what I had to do there, proceeded at first without awakening any lively interest in my mind. In the first two classes I had great difficulty in “keeping up.” Only in the second half-year was the work easier in these two classes. Only then had I become a “good scholar”. I was conscious of one overwhelming need. I craved men whom I could take as human models to follow. The teachers of the first two classes were not such men. In this school life something now occurred which impressed me deeply. The principal of the school, in one of the annual reports which had to be issued at the close of each school year, published a lecture entitled Die Anziehungskraft betrachtet als eine Wirkung der Bezuegung . 1 Attraction Considered as an Effect of Motion . As a child of eleven years I could at first understand almost nothing of the content of this paper; for it began at once with higher mathematics. Yet from some of the sentences I got hold of a certain meaning. There formed itself in my mind a bridge between what I had learned from the priest concerning the creation of the world and these sentences in the paper. The paper referred also to a book which the principal had written, Die allgemeine Bewegung der Materie als Grundursache aller Naturerscheinungen . 2 The General Motion of Matter as the Fundamental Cause of All the Phenomenon of Nature. I saved my money until I was able to buy that book. It now became my aim to learn as quickly as possible everything that might lead me to an understanding of the paper and the book. The thing was like this. The principal held that the conception of forces acting at a distance from the bodies exerting these forces was an unproved “mystical” hypothesis. He wished to explain the “attraction” between the heavenly bodies as well as that between molecules and atoms without reference to such “forces.” He said that between any two bodies there are many small bodies in motion. These, moving back and forth, thrust the larger bodies. Likewise these larger bodies are thrust from every direction on the sides turned away from each other. The thrusts on the sides turned away from each other are much more numerous than those in the spaces between the two bodies. It is for this reason that they approach each other. “Attraction” is not any special force, but only an “effect of motion.” I came across two sentences stated positively in the first pages of the volume: “1. There exist space and in space motion continuing for a long period of time. 2. Space and time are continuous, homogeneous masses; but matter consists of separate particles (atoms).” Out of the motions occurring in the manner described between the small and great parts of matter, the professor would derive all physical and chemical occurrences in nature. I had nothing within me which inclined me in any way whatever to accept such a view; but I had the feeling that it would be a very important matter for me when I could understand what was in this manner expressed. And I did everything I could in order to reach that point. Whenever I could get hold of books of mathematics and physics, I seized the opportunity. It was a slow process. I set myself to read the paper over and over again; each time there was some improvement. Now something else happened. In the third class I had a teacher who really fulfilled the “ideal” I had before my mind. He was a man whom I could emulate. He taught computation, geometry, and physics. His teaching was wonderfully systematic and thorough-going. He built everything so clearly out of its elements that it was in the highest degree beneficial to one's thinking to follow him. A lecture accompanying the second annual school report was delivered by him. It had to do with the law of probabilities and calculations in life insurance. I buried myself in this paper also, although of this likewise I could not understand very much. But I soon came to grasp the idea of the law of probabilities. A more important result, however, for me was that the exactness with which my favourite teacher handled his materials gave me a model for my own thinking in mathematics. This now brought about a wonderfully beautiful relationship between this teacher and me. I was very happy to have this man through all the classes of the Realschule as teacher of mathematics and physics. Through what I learned from him I drew nearer and nearer to the riddle that had arisen for me through the paper by the principal. With still another teacher I came only after a long time into a more intimate spiritual relationship. This was the one who taught constructive geometry in the lower classes and descriptive geometry in the upper. He taught even in the second class. But only during his course in the third class did I come to an appreciation of the kind of man he was. He was an enthusiastic constructor. His teaching also was a model of clearness and order. The drawing of circles, lines, and triangles became to me, through his influence, a favourite occupation. Behind all that I was taking into myself from the principal, the teacher of mathematics and physics, and the teacher of geometrical design, there arose in me in a boyish way of thinking the problem of what goes on in nature. My feeling was: I must go to nature in order to win a standing place in the spiritual world, which was there before me, consciously perceived. I said to myself: “One can take the right attitude toward the experience of the spiritual world by one's own soul only when one's process of thinking has reached such a form that it can attain to the reality of being which is in natural phenomena.” With such feelings did I pass through life during the third and fourth years of the Realschule . Everything that I learned I so directed as to bring myself nearer to the goal I have indicated. Then one day I passed a bookshop. In the show window I saw an advertisement of Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft . 3 Critique of Pure Reason I did everything that I could to acquire this book as quickly as possible. As Kant then entered the circle of my thinking, I knew nothing whatever of his place in the spiritual history of mankind. What anyone whatever had thought about him, in approval or in disapproval, was to me entirely unknown. My boundless interest in the Critique of Pure Reason had arisen entirely out of my own spiritual life. In my boyish way I was striving to understand what human reason might be able to achieve toward a real insight into the being of things. The reading of Kant met with every sort of obstacle in the circumstances of my external life. Because of the long distance I had to traverse between school and home, I lost every day at least three hours. In the evenings I did not get home until six o'clock. Then there was an endless quantity of school assignments to master. On Sundays I devoted myself almost entirely to geometrical designing. It was my ideal to attain the greatest precision in carrying out geometrical constructions, and the most immaculate neatness in hatching and the laying on of colours. So I had scarcely any time left for reading the Critique of Pure Reason . I found the following way out. Our history course was handled in such a manner that the teacher appeared to be lecturing but was in reality reading from a book. Then from time to time we had to learn from our books what he had given us in this fashion. I thought to myself that I must take care of this reading of what was in my book while at home. From the teacher's “lecture” I got nothing at all. From listening to what he read I could not retain the least thing. I now took apart the single sections of the little Kant volume, placed these inside the history book, which I there kept before me during the history lesson, and read Kant while the history was being “taught” down to us from the professor's seat. This was, of course, from the point of view of school discipline, a serious fault; yet it disturbed nobody and it subtracted so little from what I should otherwise have acquired that the grade I was given on my history lesson at that very time was “excellent.” During vacations the reading of Kant went forward briskly Many a page I read more than twenty times in succession. I wanted to reach a decision as to the relation sustained by human thought to the creative work of nature. The feeling I had in regard to these strivings of thought was influenced here from three sides. In the first place, I wished so to build up thought within myself that every thought should be completely subject to survey, that no vague feeling should incline the thought in any direction whatever. In the second place, I wished to establish within myself a harmony between such thinking and the teachings of religion. For this also at that time had the very strongest hold upon me. In just this field we had truly excellent text-books. From these books I took with the utmost devotion the symbol and dogma, the description of the church service, the history of the church. These teachings were to me a vital matter. But my relation to them was determined by the fact that to me the spiritual world counted among the objects of human perception. The very reason why these teachings penetrated so deeply into my mind was that in them I realized how the human spirit can find its way consciously into the supersensible. I am perfectly sure that I did not lose my reverence for the spiritual in the slightest degree through this relationship of the spiritual to perception. On the other side I was tremendously occupied over the question of the scope of human capacity for thought. It seemed to me that thinking could be developed to a faculty which would actually lay hold upon the things and events of the world. A “stuff” which remains outside of the thinking, which we can merely “think toward,” seemed to me an unendurable conception. Whatever is in things, this must be also inside of human thought, I said to myself again and again. Against this conviction, however, there always opposed itself what I read in Kant. But I scarcely observed this conflict. For I desired more than anything else to attain through the Critique of Pure Reason to a firm standing ground in order to get the mastery of my own thinking. Wherever and whenever I took my holiday walks, I had in any case to set before myself this question, and once more clear it up: How does one pass from simple, clear-cut perceptions to concepts in regard to natural phenomena? I held then quite uncritically to Kant; but no advance did I make by means of him. Through all this I was not drawn away from whatever pertains to the actual doing of practical things and the development of human skill. It so happened that one of the employees who took turns with my father in his work understood book-binding. I learned bookbinding from him, and was able to bind my own school books in the holidays between the fourth and fifth classes of the Realschule. And I learned stenography also at this time during the vacation without a teacher. Nevertheless, I took the course in stenography which was given from the fifth class on. Occasions for practical work were plentiful. My parents were assigned near the station a little orchard of fruit trees and a small patch for potatoes. Gathering cherries, taking care of the orchard, preparing the potatoes for planting, cultivating the soil, digging the potatoes – all this work fell to my sister and brother and me. Buying the family groceries in the village, of this I would not let anyone deprive me at those times when the school left me free. When I was about fifteen years old I was permitted to come into more intimate relationship with the doctor at Wiener Neustadt whom I have already mentioned. I had conceived of a great liking for him because of the way in which he talked to me during his visits to Neudörfl. So I often slipped past his home, which was on the ground floor of a building at the corner of two very narrow streets in Wiener-Neustadt. One day he was at the window. He called me into his room I stood before what seemed to me then a great library He talked again about literature; then took down Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm from the collection of books, and said I must read that and afterwards come back to him. In this way he gave me one book after another to read and invite me from time to time to come to see him. Every time that I had an opportunity to go back, I had to tell him my impression of what I had read. In this way he became really my teacher in poetic literature. For up to that time both at my home and also at school, all this – except for some “extracts” – had been quite outside of my life. In the atmosphere of this lovable doctor, sensitive to everything beautiful, I learned especially to know Lessing. Another event deeply influenced my life. The mathematics books which Lübsen had prepared for home study became known to me. I was then able to teach myself analytical geometry, trigonometry, and even differential and integral calculus long before I learned these in school. This enabled me to return to the reading of those books on The General Motion of Matter as the Fundamental Cause of All the Phenomenon of Nature . For now I could understand them better through my understanding of mathematics. Meanwhile, we had come to the course in physics following that in chemistry, and this brought me a new set of riddles concerning human knowledge to add to the older ones. The teacher of chemistry was a distinguished man. He taught almost entirely by means of experiments. He spoke little. He let natural processes speak for themselves. He was one of our favourite teachers. There was something noteworthy in him which distinguished him in the eyes of his pupils from the other teachers. One felt that he stood in a closer relationship to his science than did the others. The others we addressed with the title “Professor”; he, although he was just as much a professor, was called “Doctor.” He was the brother of the thoughtful Tyrolese poet Hermann von Gilm. He had an eye which held one's attention firmly. One felt that this man was accustomed to looking intently at the phenomena of nature and then retaining what he had perceived. His teaching puzzled me a little. The feeling for facts which marked him could not always hold concentrated that state of mind through which I was then striving toward unification. Still he must have considered that I made good progress in chemistry, for he marked my notes from the start “creditable,” and I kept this grade through all the classes. One day I found at an antiquary's in Wiener-Neustadt Rotteck's history of the world. Until then, in spite of the fact that I received the highest grades in the school in history, this subject had always remained to me something external. Now it grew to be an inner thing. The warmth with which Rotteck conceived and set forth historic events swept me along. His one-sidedness of view I did not then perceive. Through him I was led to two other books which, by reason of their style and their vivid historical conceptions, made the deepest impression on me: Johannes von Müller and Tacitus. Amid such impressions, it was very hard for me to take any interest in the school lessons in history and in literature. But I strove to give life to these lessons from all that I made my own out of other sources. In this manner I passed my time in the three upper classes of the seven years of the Realschule. From my fifteenth year on I taught other pupils of the same grade as myself or of a lower grade. The teachers were very willing to assign me this tutoring, for I was rated as a very “good scholar.” Through this means I was enabled to contribute at least a very little toward what my parents had to spend out of their meagre income for my education. I owe much to this tutoring. In having to give to others in turn the matter which I had been taught, I myself became, so to speak, awake to this. For I cannot express the thing otherwise than by saying that I received in a sort of dream life the knowledge imparted to me by the school. I was always awake to what I gained by my own effort, and what I received from a spiritual benefactor, such as the doctor I have mentioned of Wiener-Neustadt. What I received thus in a fully self-conscious state of mind was noticeably different from what passed over to me like dream-pictures in the class-room instruction. The development of what had thus been received in a half-waking state was now brought about by the fact that in the periods of tutoring I had to vitalize my own knowledge. On the other hand, this experience compelled me at an early age to concern myself with practical pedagogy. I learned the difficulties of the development of human minds through my pupils. To the pupils of my own grade whom I tutored the most important thing I had to teach was German composition. Since I myself had also to write every such composition, I had to discover for each theme assigned to us various forms of development. I often felt then that I was in a very difficult situation. I wrote my own theme only after I had already given away the best thoughts on that topic. A rather strained relationship existed between the teacher of the German language and literature in the three upper classes and myself. The pupils considered him the “keenest professor,” and especially strict. My essays had always been unusually long. The briefer forms I had dictated to my fellow pupils. It took the teacher a long time to read my papers. After the final examination, during the celebration before the close of the session, when for the first time he was “in a good humour” among us pupils, he told me how I had annoyed him with my long themes. Still another thing happened. I had the feeling that some thing was brought into the school through this teacher which I must master. When he discussed the nature of poetic descriptions, it seemed to me that there was something in the background behind what he said. After a time I found out what this was. He adhered to the philosophy of Herbart. He himself said nothing of this. But I discovered it. And so I bought an Introduction to Philosophy and a Psychology , both of which were written from the point of view of Herbart's philosophy. And now began a sort of game of hide-and-seek between the teacher and me in my compositions. I began to understand much in him which he set forth in the colours of Herbart's philosophy; and he found in my compositions all sorts of ideas that came from the same source. Only neither he nor I mentioned Herbart as the source of our ideas. This was through a sort of tacit agreement. But one day I ended a composition in a way that was imprudent in view of the situation. I had to write about some characteristic or other of human beings. At the end I used this sentence: “Such a man possesses psychological freedom.” Our teacher would discuss the compositions with the class after he had corrected them. When he came to the discussion of this particular theme, he drew in the corners of his mouth with obvious irony and said: “You say something here about psychological freedom. There is no such thing” I answered: “That seems to me a mistake, Professor. There really is a psychological freedom, only there is no ‘transcendental freedom’ in an ordinary state of consciousness.” The lips of the teacher became smooth again. He looked at me with a penetrating glance and remarked: “I have noticed for a long while from your compositions that you have a philosophical library. I would advise you not to use it; you only confuse your thinking by so doing.” I could never understand at all why I would confuse my thinking by reading the same books from which his own thinking was derived. And thus the relation between us continued to be somewhat strained. His teaching gave me much to do. For he covered in the fifth class the Greek and Latin poets, from whom selections were used in German translation. Then for the first time I began to regret once in a while that my father had put me in the Realschule instead of the Gymnasium . For I felt how little of the character of Greek and Roman art I should get hold of through the translations. So I bought Greek and Latin text-books, and carried along secretly by the side of the Realschule course also a private Gymnasium course of instruction. This required much time; but it also laid the foundation by means of which I met, although in unusual fashion yet quite according to the rules, the Gymnasium requirements. I had to give many hours of tutoring, especially when I was in the Technische Hochschule 4 The Technische Hochschule does not correspond wholly to any English or American institution. It might be called a “university” with marked scientific emphasis. in Vienna. I soon had a Gymnasium pupil to tutor. Circumstances of which I shall speak later brought it about that I had to help this pupil by means of tutoring through almost the whole Gymnasium course. I taught him Latin and Greek, so that in teaching him I had to go through every detail of the Gymnasium course with him. The teachers of history and geography who could give me so little in the lower classes became, nevertheless, important to me in the upper classes. The very one who had driven me to such unusual reading of Kant wrote once a lecture for a school report on Die Fiszeit und ihre Ursachen . 5 The Glacial Age and Its Causes. I grasped the meaning of this with great eagerness of mind, and conceived from it a strong interest in the problem of the glacial age. But this teacher was also a good pupil of the distinguished geographer, Friedrich Simony. This fact led him to explain in the upper classes the geological-geographical evolution of the Alps with illustrative drawings on the blackboard. Then I did not by any means read Kant, but was all eyes and ears. From this side I now got a great deal from this teacher, whose lessons in history did not interest me at all. In the last class I had for the first time a teacher who gripped me with his instruction in history. He taught history and geography. In this class the geography of the Alps was set forth in the same delightful fashion as had already been the case with the other teacher. In the history lessons the new teacher got a strong hold upon us. He was to us a personality in the full sense of the word. He was a partisan, enthusiastic for the progressive ideas of the Austrian liberal movement of the time. But in the school there was no evidence of this. He brought nothing from his partisan views into the class room. Yet his teaching of history had, by reason of his own participation in life, a strong vitality. I listened to the temperamental historical analyses of this teacher with the results from my reading of the Rotteck volumes still in my memory. The experience produced a satisfying harmony. I cannot but think it was an important thing for me to have had the opportunity to imbibe the history of modern times in this manner. At home I heard much talk about the Russo-Turkish war (1877–78). The employee who then took my father's place every third day was an original sort of person. When he came to relieve my father, he always brought along a huge carpet-bag. In this he had great packets of manuscript. These were abstracts of the most varied assortments of scientific books. Those abstracts he gave to me, one after another, to read. I devoured them. He would then discuss these things with me. For he really had in his head a conception, somewhat chaotic to be sure but comprehensive, concerning all these things that he had compiled. With my father, however, he talked politics. He delighted to take the side of the Turks; my father defended with great earnestness the Russians. He was one of those persons still grateful to Russia for the service she rendered to Austria at the time of the Hungarian uprising (1848). For my father was on no sort of terms with the Hungarians. He lived in the Hungarian border town of Neudörfl during that period when the process of Magyarizing was going forward, and the sword of Damocles hung over his head – the danger that he might not be allowed to remain in charge of the station of Neudörfl unless he could speak Magyar. This language was quite unnecessary in that originally German place, but the Hungarian regime was endeavouring to bring it to pass that railway lines in Hungary should be manned with Magyar-speaking employees, even the privately owned lines. But my father wished to hold his place at Neudörfl long enough for me to finish at the school at Wiener-Neustadt. By reason of all this, he was then not friendly to the Hungarians. So, since he could not endure the Hungarians, he liked in his simple way to think of the Russians as those who in 1848 had “shown the Hungarians who were their masters.” This way of thinking manifested itself with extraordinary earnestness, and yet in the wonderfully lovable manner of my father toward his Turkophile friend in the person of the “substitute.” The tide of discussion rose oft times very high. I was greatly interested in the mutual outbursts of the two personalities, but scarcely at all in their political opinions. For me a much more vital need at that time was that of finding an answer to this question: To what extent is it possible to prove that in human thinking real spirit is the agent?

The Story of My Life

Chapter II

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA028/English/APC1928/GA028_c02.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA028_c02

My father had been promised by the management of the Southern Railway that he would be assigned to a small station near Vienna as soon as I should have finished at the Realschule and should need to attend the Technische Hochschule . In this way it would be possible for me to go to Vienna and return every day. So it happened that my family came to Inzersdorf am Wiener Berge. The station was at a distance from the town, very lonely, and in unlovely natural surroundings. My first visit to Vienna after we had moved to Inzersdorf was for the purpose of buying a greater number of philosophical books. What my heart was now especially devoted to was the first sketch of Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre . 1 Theory of Science. I had got so far with my reading of Kant that I could form a notion, even though immature, of the advance which Fichte wished to make beyond Kant. But this did not greatly interest me. What interested me then was to express the living weaving of the human mind in a sharply outlined mental picture. My strivings after conceptions in natural science had finally brought me to see in the activity of the human ego the sole starting-point for true knowledge. When the ego is active and itself perceives this activity, man has something spiritual in immediate presence in his consciousness – thus I said to myself. It seemed to me that what was thus perceived ought now to be expressed in clear, vivid concepts. In order to find a way to do this, I devoted myself to Fichte's Theory of Science . And yet I had my own opinions. So I took the volume and rewrote it, page by page. This made a lengthy manuscript. I had previously striven to find conceptions for the phenomena of nature from which one might derive a conception of the ego. Now I wished to do the opposite: from the ego to penetrate into the nature's process of becoming. Spirit and nature were present before my soul in their absolute contrast. There was for me a world of spiritual beings. That the ego, which itself is spirit, lives in a world of spirits was for me a matter of direct perception. But nature would not pass over into this spirit-world of my experience. From my study of the Theory of Science I conceived a special interest in Fichte's treatises Über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten 2 The Vocation of the Scholar. and über das Wesen des Gelehrten . 3 The Nature of the Scholar. In these writings I found a sort of ideal toward which I myself would strive. Along with these I read also the Reden an die Deutsche Nation . 4 Addresses to the German Nation. This took hold of me much less at that time than Fichte's other works. But I wished now to come also to a better understanding of Kant than I had yet been able to attain. In the Critique of Pure Reason this understanding refused to be revealed to me. So I attacked the problem with the Prolegomena zu einer jeden Künftigen Metaphysik . 5 Prolegomena to all Future Metaphysics Through this book I thought I recognized that a thorough penetration into all the questions which Kant had raised among thinkers was necessary for me. I now worked more consciously to the end that I might mould into the forms of thought the immediate vision of the spiritual world which I possessed. And while I was occupied with this inner work I sought to get my bearings with reference to the roads which had been taken by the thinkers of Kant's time and the succeeding epoch. I studied the dry, bald Transcendentalen Synthetismus 6 Transcendental Synthesism. of Traugott Krug just as eagerly as I entered into the tragedy of knowledge by which Fichte was possessed when he wrote his Bestimmung des Menschen . 7 Destiny of Man. The history of philosophy by Thilo of the school of Herbart broadened my view of the evolution of philosophical thought from the period of Kant onward. I fought my way through to Schelling, to Hegel. The opposition between the thought of Herbart and of Fichte passed before my mind in all its intensity. The summer months of 1879, from the end of my Realschule period until my entrance into the Technische Hochschule , I spent entirely in such philosophical studies. In the autumn I was to decide my choice of studies with reference to my future career. I decided to prepare to teach in a Realschule . The study of mathematics and descriptive geometry would have suited my inclination. But I should have to give up the latter; for the study of this subject required a great many practice hours during the day in geometrical drawings, but in order to earn some money I had to have leisure to devote to tutoring. This was possible while attending lectures whose subject-matter, when it was necessary to be absent from lectures, could afterwards be taken up in readings, but not possible when one had to spend hours assigned for drawing regularly in the school. So I had myself enrolled for mathematics, natural history, and chemistry. Of special import for me, however, were the lectures which Karl Julius Schröer gave at that time in the Hochschule on German literature. He lectured during my first year on “Literature since Goethe” and “Schiller's Life and Work.” From the very first lecture he impressed me. He developed a survey of the life of the spirit in Germany in the second half of the eighteenth century and placed in dramatic contrast with this Goethe's first appearance and its effect upon this spiritual life. The warmth of his manner of treating the subject, the inspiring way in which he entered into the selections read from the poets, introduced us through an inner process into the nature of poetry. In connection with these lectures he had the habit of requiring “practice in oral and written lectures.” The students had then to deliver orally or read what they themselves had prepared. Schröer would give informal suggestions during these student performances as to style, manner of delivery, and the like. My first discussion dealt with Lessing's Laokoon . Then I undertook a longer paper. I worked up the theme: “To what extent is man in his actions a free being?” In connection with this paper I drew much upon Herbart's philosophy. Schröer did not like this at all. He had not shared in the enthusiasm for Herbart which then prevailed in Austria both in philosophical circles and also in pedagogy. He was devoted completely to Goethe's type of mind. So everything which was derived from Herbart seemed to him pedantic and prosaic, although he recognized the discipline of thought to be had from this philosopher. I was now able to attend also certain lectures at the university. I took great satisfaction in the Herbartian, Robert Zimmermann. He lectured on “Practical Philosophy.” I attended that part of his lectures in which he developed the ground principles of ethics. I alternated, generally attending his lecture one day and the next that of Franz Brentano, who at the same period lectured on the same field. I could not keep this up very long, for I missed too much of the courses in the Hochschule . I was deeply impressed by learning philosophy in this way, not merely out of books, but from the lips of the philosophers themselves. Robert Zimmermann was a notable personality. He had an extraordinarily high forehead and a long philosopher's beard. With him everything was measured, reduced to style. When he entered through the door and mounted to his seat, his steps seemed to be studied, and all the more so because one felt: “With this man it is obviously natural to be like that.” In posture and movement he was as if he had formed himself thus through long discipline according to the aesthetic principles of Herbart. And yet one could entirely sympathize with all this. He then slowly sat down on the chair, cast a long glance through his spectacles over the auditorium, then slowly and precisely took off his glasses, looked once more for a long time without spectacles over the circle of auditors, and finally began to lecture, without manuscript but in carefully formed, artistically spoken sentences. There was something classic in his speech. Yet, owing to the long periods, one easily lost the thread of his discourse. He expounded Herbart's philosophy in a somewhat modified form. The close logic of his teaching impressed me. But it did not impress the other hearers. During the first three or four periods the great hall in which he lectured was full. “Practical Philosophy” was required for the law students in the first year. They needed the signature of the professor on their cards. From the fifth or sixth lecture on, most of them stayed away; while one listened to the classical philosopher, one was in a very small group of auditors on the farthest benches. To me these lectures afforded a powerful stimulus, and the difference between the views of Schröer and Zimmermann interested me deeply. The little time I did not spend in attendance at lectures or in tutoring I utilized either in the Hofbibliothek 8 The Public Library. or the library of the Hochschule . Then for the first time I read Goethe's Faust . In truth, until my nineteenth year, when I was inspired by Schröer, I had never been drawn to this work. Then, however, it won a strong claim upon my interest. Schröer had already begun his lectures on the first part. It happened that after only a few of the lectures I became better acquainted with Schröer. He then often took me to his home, told me this or that in amplification of his lectures, gladly answered my questions, and sent me away with a book from his library, which he lent me to read. In addition he said many things about the second part of Faust, an annotated edition of which he was already preparing. This part also I read at that time. In the library I spent my time on Herbart's metaphysics through Zimmermann's Aesthetic als Formwissenschaft 9 Ii>Aesthetics as the Science of Form. which was written from Herbart's point of view. Together with this I made a thorough study of Haeckel's Generelle Morphologie . 10 General Morphology. I may say that everything which I felt to be entering into me through the lectures of Schröer and Zimmermann, as well as the reading I have mentioned, became a matter of the deepest mental experience. Riddles of knowledge and of world conception shaped themselves within me from these things. Schröer was a spirit who cared nothing for system. He thought and spoke out of a certain intuition. Besides, he gave the greatest possible care to the manner in which he clothed his views in language. For this reason he almost never lectured without manuscript. He needed to write things down undisturbed in order himself to give the requisite attention to the bodying forth of this thought in appropriate words. Then he read a lecture in such a way as to bring into prominence its true inner meaning. Yet once he spoke extemporaneously about Anastasius Grün and Lenau. He had forgotten his manuscript. In the next period, however, he treated the whole topic again, reading from his manuscript. He was not satisfied with the form he had been able to give to the matter extemporé . From Schröer I learned to understand many concrete examples of beauty. Through Zimmermann there came to me a developed theory of beauty. The two did not agree well. Schröer, the intuitive personality with a certain scorn for the systematic, stood before my mind side by side with Zimmermann, the rigidly systematic theorist of beauty. Franz Brentano, whose lectures also on “Practical Philosophy” I attended, particularly interested me through his personality. He was a keen thinker and at the same time given to reverie. In his manner of lecturing there was something ceremonious. I listened to what he said, but I had also to observe every glance, every movement of his head, every gesture of his expressive hands. He was the perfect logician. Each thought must be absolutely complete and linked up with many other thoughts. The forms of these thought-series were determined by the most scrupulous attention to the requirements of logic. But I had the feeling that these thoughts did not come forth from the loom of his own mind; never did they penetrate into reality. And such also was the whole attitude of Brentano. He held the manuscript loosely in his hand as if at any moment it might slip from his fingers; with his glance he merely skimmed along the lines. And this was the action suited to a merely superficial touch upon reality, not for a firm grasp of it. I could understand his philosophy better from his “philosopher's hands” than from his words. The stimulus which came from Brentano worked strongly upon me. I soon began to study his writings, and in the course of the following years read most of what he had published. I felt in duty bound at that time to seek through philosophy for the truth. I had to study mathematics and natural science. I was convinced that I should find no relationship between these and myself unless I could place under them a solid foundation of philosophy. But I perceived a spiritual world, none the less, as a reality. In clear vision the spiritual individuality of every one revealed itself to me. This found in the physical body and in action in the physical world merely its manifestation. It united itself with that which came down as a physical germ from the parents. Dead men I followed farther on their way in the spiritual world. After the death of a schoolmate I wrote about this phase of my spiritual life to one of my former teachers, who had been a close friend of mine during my Realschule days. He wrote back to me with unusual affection; but he did not deign to say one word about what I had written regarding the dead schoolmate. And this is what happened to me always at that time in this manner of my perception of the spiritual world. No one would pay any attention to it. From all directions persons would come with all sorts of spiritistic stuff. With this I in turn would have nothing to do. It was distasteful to me to approach the spiritual in such a way. It then chanced that I became acquainted with a simple man of the plain people. Every week he went to Vienna by the same train that I took. He gathered medicinal plants in the country and sold them to apothecaries in Vienna. We became friends. With him it was possible to talk about the spiritual world as with one who had his own experience therein. He was a personality of inner piety. He was quite without schooling. He had read very many mystical books, but what he said was not at all influenced by this reading. It was the outflowing of a spiritual life which was marked by its own quite elementary creative wisdom. It was easy to perceive that he read these books only because he wished to find in others what he knew for himself. He revealed himself as if he, as a personality, were only the mouthpiece for a spiritual content which desired to utter itself out of hidden fountains. When one was with him one could get a glimpse deep into the secrets of nature. He carried on his back his bundle of medicinal plants; but in his heart he bore results which he had won from the spirituality of nature in the gathering of these herbs. I have seen many a man smile who now and then chanced to make a third party while I walked through the streets of Vienna with this “initiate.” No wonder; for his manner of expression was not to be understood at once. One had first in a certain sense to learn his spiritual dialect. To me also it was at first unintelligible. But from our first acquaintance I was in the deepest sympathy with him. And so I gradually came to feel as if I were in company with a soul of the most ancient times who – quite unaffected by the civilization, science, and general conceptions of the present age – brought to me an instinctive knowledge of earlier eras. According to the usual conception of “learning,” one might say that it would be impossible to “learn” anything from this man. But, if one possessed in oneself a perception of the spiritual world, one might obtain glimpses very deep into this world through another who had a firm footing there. Moreover, anything of the nature of mere dreams was utterly foreign to this personality. When one entered his home, one was in the midst of the most sober and simplest family of country folk. Above the entrance to his home were the words: “With the blessing of God, all things are good.” One was entertained just as by other village people. I always had to drink coffee there, not from a cup, but from a porridge bowl 11 THöferl. which held nearly a litre; with this I had to eat a piece of bread of enormous dimensions. Nor did the villagers by any means look upon the man as a dreamer. There was no occasion for jesting at his behaviour in his village. Besides, he possessed a sound, wholesome humour, and knew how to chat, whenever he met with young or old of the village folk, in such fashion that the people liked to hear him talk. There was no one who smiled like those persons that watched him and me going together through the streets of Vienna, and these persons simply perceived in him some thing quite foreign to themselves. This man always continued to be, even after life had taken me again far away from him, very close to me in soul. He appears in my mystery plays in the person of Felix Balde. It was no light matter for my mental life at that time that the philosophy which I learned from others could not in its thought be carried all the way to the perception of the spiritual world. Because of the difficulty that I experienced in this respect, I began to fashion a form of “theory of knowledge” within myself. The life of thought in men came gradually to seem to me the reflection radiated into physical man from that which I experienced in the spiritual world. Thought experience was to me the thing itself with a reality into which – as something actually experienced through and through – doubt could find no entrance. The world of the senses did not seem to me so completely a matter of experience. It is there; but one does not lay hold upon it as upon thought. In it or behind it there might be an unknown reality concealed. Yet man himself is set in the midst of this world. Therefore, the question arises: Is this world, then, a reality complete in itself? When man from within weaves into this world of the senses the thoughts which bring light into this world, does he then bring into this world something foreign to it? This does not accord at all with the experience that man has when the world of the senses stands before him and he breaks into it by means of his thought. Thought then appears to be that by means of which the world of the senses expresses its own nature. The further development of this reflection was at that time a weighty part of my inner life. But I wished to be prudent. To follow a course of thought too hastily to the extent of building up a philosophical view of one's own appeared to me a risky thing. This drove me to a thorough-going study of Hegel. The manner in which this philosopher set forth the reality of thought was distressing to me. That he made his way through only to a thought world, even though a living thought-world, and not to the perception of a world of concrete spirit – this repelled me. The assurance with which one philosophizes when one advances from thought to thought drew me on. I saw that many persons felt there was a difference between experience and thought. To me thought itself was experience, but of such a nature that one lived in it, not such that it entered from without into men. And so for a long time Hegel was very helpful to me. As to my required studies, which in the midst of these philosophical interests had naturally to be cramped for time, it was fortunate for me that I had already occupied myself a great deal with differential and integral calculus and with analytical geometry. Because of this I could remain away from many lectures in mathematics without losing my connection. Mathematics was very important for me as the foundation under all my strivings after knowledge. In mathematics there is afforded a system of percepts and concepts which have been reached independently of any external sense impressions. And yet, said I to myself constantly at that time, one carries over these perceptions and concepts into sense-reality and discovers its laws. Through mathematics one learns to understand the world, and yet in order to do this one must first evoke mathematics out of the human mind. A decisive experience came to me just at that time from the side of mathematics. The conception of space gave me the greatest inner difficulty. As the illimitable, all-encompassing vacuity – the form in which it lay at the basis of the dominant theories of natural science – it could not be conceived in any definite manner. Through the more recent (synthetic) geometry, which I learned by means of lectures and in private study, there came into my mind the perception that a line which should be prolonged endlessly toward the right hand would return again from the left to its starting-point. The infinitely distant point on the right is the same as the point infinitely distant on the left. It came over me that by means of such conceptions of the newer geometry one might form a conception of space, which otherwise remained fixed in vacuity. The straight line returning upon itself like a circle seemed to be a revelation. I left the lecture at which this had first passed before my mind as if a great load had fallen from me. A feeling of liberation came over me. Again, as in my early boyhood, something satisfying had come to me out of geometry. Behind the riddle of space stood at that period of my life the riddle of time. Might a conception be possible here also which would contain within itself in idea a return out of the past by way of an advance into the infinitely distant future? My happiness over the space conception caused a profound unrest over that of time. But there was then visible no way out. All efforts of thought led only to the realization that I must beware especially of applying the clear conception of space to the problem of time. All clarification which the striving for understanding could bring was frustrated by the riddle of time. The stimulus which I had received from Zimmermann toward the study of aesthetics led me to read the writings of the famous specialist in aesthetics of that time, Friedrich Theodor Vischer. I found in a passage of his work a reference to the fact that more recent scientific thought rendered necessary a change in the conception of time. There was always a sense of joy aroused in me when I found in others the recognition of any cognitional need which I had conceived. In this case it was like a confirmation in my struggle toward a satisfying concept of time. The lectures for which I was enrolled in the Technische Hochschule I always had to finish with a corresponding examination. For a scholarship had been granted me, and I could draw my allowance only when I showed each year the results of my studies. But my need for understanding, especially in the sphere of natural science, was but little aided by these required studies. It was possible then, however, in the technical institutes of Vienna both to attend lectures as a visitor and also to carry on practical courses. I found everywhere those who met me half-way when I sought thus to foster my scientific life, even so far as to the study of medicine. I may state positively that I never allowed my insight into the spiritual world to become a disturbing factor when I was engaged in the endeavour to understand science as it was then developed. I applied myself to what was taught, and only in the background of my thought did I have the hope that some day the blending of natural science with the knowledge of the spirit would be granted me. Only from two sides was I disturbed in this hope. The sciences of organic nature were then – wherever I could lay hold of them – steeped in Darwinian ideas. To me Darwinism appeared in its leading ideas as scientifically impossible. I had little by little reached the stage of forming for myself a conception of the inner man. This was of a spiritual sort. And this inner man I thought of as a member of the spiritual world. He was conceived as dipping down out of the spiritual world into nature, uniting with the organism of nature in order thereby to perceive and to act in the world of the senses. The fact that I felt a certain respect for the course of thought characterizing the evolutionary theory of organisms did not render it possible for me to sacrifice anything from the conception. The derivation of higher out of lower organisms seemed to me a fruitful idea, but the identification of this idea with that which I knew as the spiritual world appeared to me immeasurably difficult. The studies in physics were penetrated throughout by the mechanical theory of heat and the wave theory of the phenomena of light and colour. The study of the mechanical theory of heat had taken on for me the charm of a personal colouring because in this field of physics I attended lectures by a personality for whom I felt quite extraordinary respect. This was Edmund Reitlinger, the author of that beautiful book, Freie Blicke . 12 .Open Vistas This man was of the most captivating lovableness. When I became his student, he was already very seriously ill with tuberculosis. For two years I attended his lectures on the theory of heat, physics for chemists, and the history of physics. I worked under him in the physics laboratory in many fields, especially in that of spectrum-analysis. Of special importance for me were Reitlinger's lectures on the history of physics. He spoke in such a way that one felt that, on account of his illness, every word was a burden to him. And yet his lectures were in the best possible sense inspiring. He was a man of a strongly inductive method of research. For all methods in physics he liked to cite the book of Whewel on inductive science. Newton marked for him the climax of research in physics. The history of physics he set forth in two parts: the first from the earliest times to Newton; the second from Newton to recent times. He was an universal thinker. From the historical consideration of problems in physics he always passed over to the perspective of the general history of culture. Indeed, quite general philosophic ideas would appear in his discussions of physics. In this way he treated the problems of optimism and pessimism, and spoke most impressively about the legitimacy of setting up scientific hypotheses. His exposition of Keppler, his characterization of Julius Robert Mayers, were masterpieces of scientific discussion. I was then stimulated to read almost all the writings of Julius Robert Mayers, and I was able to experience the truly great pleasure of talking face to face with Reitlinger about the content of these. I was filled with a deep sorrow when, only a few weeks after I had passed my final examination on the mechanical theory of heat under Reitlinger, my beloved teacher succumbed to his grievous illness. Just a short while before his death he had given me as his legacy a testimonial of personal qualifications which would enable me to secure pupils for private tutoring. This had most fortunate results. No small part of what came to me in the following years as means of livelihood I owed to Reitlinger after his death. Through the mechanical theory of heat and the wave theory of light and of electric phenomena, I was impelled to a study of theories of cognition. At that time the external physical world was conceived as motion-events in matter. The sensations appeared to be only subjective experiences, as the effects of pure motion-events upon the senses of men. Out there in space occurred the motion-events in matter; if these events affected the human heat-sense, man experienced the sensation of heat. There are outside of man wave-events in the ether; if these affect the optic nerve, light and colour sensations are generated within man. These conceptions met me everywhere. They caused me unspeakable difficulties in my thinking. They banished all spirit from the objective external world. Before my mind there stood the idea that even if the observations of natural phenomena led to such opinions, one who possessed a perception of the spiritual world could not arrive at these opinions. I saw how seductive these assumptions were for the manner of thought of that time, educated in the natural sciences, and yet I could not then resolve to oppose a manner of thought of my own against that which then prevailed. But just this caused me bitter mental struggles. Again and again must the criticism I could easily frame against this manner of thinking be suppressed within me to await the time in which more comprehensive sources and ways of knowledge should give me a greater assurance. I was deeply stirred by the reading of Schiller's letters concerning the aesthetic education of man. His statement that human consciousness oscillates, as it were, back and forth between different states, afforded me a connection with the notion that I had formed of the inner working and weaving of the human soul. Schiller distinguished two states of consciousness in which man evolves his relationship to the world. When he surrenders himself to that which affects him through the senses, he lives under the compulsion of nature. The sensations and impulses determine his life. If he subjects himself to the logical laws and principles of reason then he is living under a rational compulsion. But he can evolve an intermediate state of consciousness. He can develop the “aesthetic mood,” which is not given over either on the one side to the compulsion of nature, or on the other to the necessities of the reason. In this aesthetic mood the soul lives through the senses; but into the sense-perception and into the action set on foot by sense-stimuli the soul brings over something spiritual. One perceives through the senses, but as if the spiritual had streamed over into the senses. In action one surrenders oneself to the gratification of the present desire; but one has so ennobled this desire that to him the good is pleasing and the evil displeasing. Reason has then entered into union with the sensible. The good becomes an instinct; instinct can safely direct itself, for it has taken on the character of the spiritual. Schiller sees in this state of consciousness that condition of the soul in which man can experience and produce works of beauty. In the evolution of this state he sees the coming to life in men of the true human being. These thoughts of Schiller's were to me very attractive. They implied that man must first have his consciousness in a certain condition before he can attain to a relationship to the phenomena of the world corresponding to man's own being. Something was here given to me which brought to greater clarity the questions which presented themselves before me out of my observation of nature and my spiritual experience. Schiller spoke of the state of consciousness which must be present in order that one may experience the beauty of the world. Might one not also think of a state of consciousness which would mediate to us the truth in the beings of things? If this is granted, then one must not, after the fashion of Kant, observe the present state of human consciousness and investigate whether this can enter into the true beings of things. But one must first seek to discover the state of consciousness through which man places himself in such a relationship to the world that things and facts reveal their being to him. And I believed that I knew that such a state of consciousness is reached up to a certain degree when man not only has thoughts which conceive external things and events, but such thoughts that he himself experiences them as thoughts . This living in thoughts revealed itself to me as quite different from that in which man ordinarily exists and also carries on ordinary scientific research. If one penetrates deeper and deeper into thought-life, one finds that spiritual reality comes to meet this thought life. One then takes the path of the soul into the spirit. But on this inner way of the soul one arrives at a spiritual reality which one also finds again within nature. One gains a deeper knowledge of nature when one then faces nature after having in living thoughts beheld the reality of the spirit. It became clearer and clearer to me how, through going forward beyond the customary abstract thoughts to these spiritual perceptions – which, however, the calmness and luminousness of the thought serve to confirm – man lives himself into a reality from which customary consciousness bars him out. This customary state has on one side the living quality of the sense-perception; on the other the abstractness of thought-conceiving. The spiritual vision perceives spirit as the senses perceive nature; but it does not stand apart in thought from the spiritual perception as the customary state of consciousness stands in its thoughts apart from the sense-perceptions. Spiritual vision thinks while it experiences spirit, and experiences while it sets to thinking the awakened spirituality of man. A spiritual perception formed itself before my mind which did not rest upon dark mystical feeling. It proceeded much more in a spiritual activity which in its thoroughness might be compared with mathematical thinking. I was approaching the state of soul in which I felt that I might consider that the perception of the spiritual world which I bore within me was confirmed before the forum of natural scientific thought. When these experiences passed through my mind I was in my twenty-second year.

The Story of My Life

Chapter III

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA028/English/APC1928/GA028_c03.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA028_c03

For the form of the experience of spirit which I then desired to establish upon a firm foundation within me, music came to have a critical significance. At that time there was proceeding in the most intense fashion in the spiritual environment in which I lived the “strife over Wagner.” During my boyhood and youth I had seized every opportunity to improve my knowledge of music. The attitude I held toward thinking required this by implication. For me, thought had content in itself. It possessed this not merely through the percept which it expressed. This, however, obviously led over into the experience of pure musical tone-forms as such. The world of tone in itself was to me the revelation of an essential side of reality. That music should “express” something else besides the tone-form, as was then maintained in every possible way by the followers of Wagner, seemed to me utterly “unmusical.” I was always of a social disposition. Because of this I had even in my school-days at Wiener-Neustadt, and then again in Vienna, formed many friendships. In opinions I seldom agreed with these friends. This, however, did not mean at all that there was not an inwardness and mutual stimulus in these friendships. One of these was with a young man pre-eminently idealistic. With his blond hair and frank blue eyes he was the very type of a young German. He was then quite absorbed in Wagnerism. Music that lived in itself, that would weave itself in tones alone, was to him a cast-off world of horrible Philistines. What revealed itself in the tones as in a kind of speech – that for him gave the tone-forms their value. We attended together many concerts and many operas. We always held opposite views. My limbs grew as heavy as lead when “oppressive music” inflamed him to ecstasy; and he was horribly bored by music which did not pretend to be anything else but music. The debates with this friend stretched out endlessly. In long walks together, in long sessions over our cups of coffee, he drew out his “proofs” expressed in animated fashion, that only with Wagner had true music been born, and that everything which had gone before was only a preparation for this “discoverer of music.” This led me to assert my own opinions in drastic fashion. I spoke of the barbarism of Wagner, the graveyard of all understanding of music. On special occasions the argument grew particularly animated. At one time my friend very noticeably formed the habit of directing our almost daily walk to a narrow little street, and passing up and down it many times discussing Wagner. I was so absorbed in our argument that only gradually did it dawn upon me how he had got this bent. At the window of one of the little houses on the narrow alley there sat at the time of our walk a charming girl. There was no relationship between him and the girl except that he saw her sitting at the window almost every day, and at times was aware that a glance she let fall on the street was meant for him. At first I only noticed that his championship of Wagner – which in any case was fierce enough – was fanned to a brilliant flame in this little alley. And when I became aware of what a current flowed from that vicinity into his inspired heart, he grew confidential in this matter also, and I came to share in the tenderest, most beautiful, most passionate young love. The relation between the two never went much beyond what I have described. My friend, who came of people not blessed with worldly goods, had soon after to take a petty journalistic job in a provincial city. He could not think of any nearer tie with the girl. But neither was he strong enough to overcome the existing relationship. I kept up a correspondence with him for a long time. A melancholy note of resignation marked his letters. That from which he had been forced to cut himself off was still living and strong in his heart. Long after life had brought to an end my correspondence with this friend of my youth, I chanced to meet a person from the same city in which he had found a place as a journalist. I had always been fond of him, and I asked about him. This person said to me: “Yes, things turned out very badly for him; he could scarcely earn his bread. Finally he became a writer in my employ, and then he died of tuberculosis.” This news stabbed me to the heart, for I knew that once the idealistic, fair-haired youth, under the compulsion of circumstances, had in his own feelings severed his relation with his young love, then it made no difference to him what life might further bring to him. He considered it of no value to lay the basis for a life which could not be that one which had floated before him as an ideal during our walks in that little street. In intercourse with this friend my anti-Wagnerism of that period came to realization in even more positive form. But, apart from this, it played any way a great rôle in my mental life at that time. I strove in all directions to find my way into music which had nothing to do with Wagnerism. My love for “pure music” increased with the passage of years; my horror at the “barbarism” of “music as expression” continued to increase. And in this matter it was my lot to get into a human environment in which there were scarcely any other persons than admirers of Wagner. This all contributed much toward the fact that only much later did I grudgingly fight my way to an understanding of Wagner, the obviously human attitude toward so significant a cultural phenomenon. This struggle, however, belongs to a later period of my life. In the period I am now describing, a performance of Tristan , for example, to which I had to accompany one of my pupils, was to me “mortally boring.” To this time belongs still another youthful friendship very significant for me. This was with a young man who was in every way the opposite of the fair-haired youth. He felt that he was a poet. With him, too, I spent a great deal of time in stimulating talk. He was very sensitive to everything poetic. At an early age he undertook important productions. When we became acquainted, he had already written a tragedy, Hannibal , and much lyric verse. I was with both these friends in the “practice in oral and written lectures” which Schröer conducted in the Hochschule . From this course we three, and many others, received the greatest inspiration. We young people could discuss what we had arrived at in our minds and Schröer talked over everything with us and elevated our souls by his dominant idealism and his noble capacity for imparting inspiration. My friend often accompanied me when I had the privilege of visiting Schröer. There he always grew animated, whereas elsewhere a note of burden was manifest in his life. Because of a certain discord he was not ready to face life. No calling was so attractive to him that he would gladly have entered upon it. He was altogether taken up with his poetic interest, and apart from this he found no satisfying relation with existence. At last he had to take a position quite unattractive to him. With him also I continued my connection by means of letters. The fact that even in his poetry he could not find real satisfaction preyed upon his spirit. Life for him was not filled with anything possessing worth. I had to observe to my sorrow, how little by little in his letters and also in his conversation the belief grew upon him that he was suffering from an incurable disease. Nothing sufficed to dispel this groundless obsession. So one day I had to receive the distressing news that the young man who was very near to me had made an end of himself. A real inward friendship I formed at this time also with a young man who had come from the German Transylvania to the Vienna Hochschule . Him also I had first met in Schröer's Seminar periods. There he had read a paper on pessimism. Everything which Schopenhauer had presented in favour of this conception of life was revived in that paper. In addition there was the personal, pessimistic temperament of the young man himself. I determined to oppose his views. I refuted pessimism with veritable words of thunder, even calling Schopenhauer narrow-minded, and wound up my exposition with the sentence: “If the gentleman who read the paper were correct in his position with respect to pessimism, then I had rather be the wooden board on which my feet now tread than be a man.” These words were for a long time repeated jestingly about me among my acquaintances. But they made of the young pessimist and me inwardly united friends. We now passed much time together. He also felt himself to be a poet, and many a time I sat for hours in his room and listened with pleasure to the reading of his poems. In my spiritual strivings of that time he also showed a warm interest, although he was moved to this less by the thing itself with which I was concerned than by his personal affection for me. He was bound up with many a delightful friendship, and also youthful love affairs. As a means of living he had to carry a truly heavy burden. At Hermannstadt he had gone through the school as a poor boy and even then had to make his living by tutoring. He then conceived the clever idea of continuing to instruct by correspondence from Vienna the pupils he had gained at Hermannstadt. The sciences in the Hochschule interested him very little. One day, however, he wished to pass an examination in chemistry. He had never attended a lecture or opened a single one of the required books. On the last night before the examination he had a friend read to him a digest of the whole subject-matter. He finally fell asleep over this. Yet he went with this friend to the examination. Both made “brilliant” failures. This young man had boundless faith in me. For a long time he treated me almost as his father-confessor. He opened up to my view an interesting, often melancholy, life sensitive to all that is beautiful. He gave to me so much friendship and love that it was really hard at times not to cause him bitter disappointment. This happened especially because he often felt that I did not show him enough attention. And yet this could not be otherwise when I had so many varieties of interests for which I found in him no real understanding. All this, however, only contributed to make the friendship a more inward relationship. He spent his summer vacation at Hermannstadt. There he sought for students in order to tutor them by correspondence the following year from Vienna. I always received long letters at these times from him. He was grieved because I seldom or never answered these. But, when he returned to Vienna in the autumn, he hurried to me like a boy, and the united life began again. I owed it to him at that time that I was able to mingle with many men. He liked to take me to meet all the people with whom he associated. And I was eager for companionship. This friend brought into my life much that gave me happiness and warmth. Our friendship remained the same till my friend died a few years ago. It stood the test of many storms of life, and I shall still have much to say of it. In retrospective consciousness much comes to mind of human and vital relationships which still continues to-day fully present in my mind, united with feelings of love and gratitude. Here I cannot relate all this in detail, but must leave quite unmentioned much which was indeed very near to me in my personal experience, and is near even now. My youthful friendships in the time of which I am here speaking had in the further course of my life a special import. They forced me into a sort of double mental life. The struggle with the riddle of cognition, which then filled my mind more than all else, aroused in my friends always, to be sure, a strong interest, but very little active participation. In the experience of this riddle I was always rather lonely. On the other hand, I myself shared completely in whatever arose in the existence of my friends. Thus there flowed along in me two parallel currents of life: one which I as a lone wanderer followed, the other which I shared in vital companionship with men bound to me by ties of affection. But this twofold life was on many occasions of profound and lasting significance for my development. In this connection I must mention especially a friend who had already been a schoolmate of mine at Wiener-Neustadt. During that time, however, we were far apart. First in Vienna, where he visited me often and where he later lived as an employee, he came very close to me. And yet even at Wiener-Neustadt, without any external relationship between us, he had already had a significance for my life. Once I was with him in a gymnasium period. While he was exercising and I had nothing to do, he left a book lying by me. It was Heine's book on the romantic school and the history of philosophy in Germany. I glanced into it. The result of this was that I read the whole book. I found many stimulating things in the book, but was vitally opposed to the manner in which Heine treated the content of life which was dear to me. In this perception of a way of thought and order of feeling which were utterly opposed to those shaping themselves in me, I received a powerful stimulus toward a self-consciousness in the orientation of the inner life which was a necessity of my very nature. I then talked with my schoolmate in opposition to the book. Through this the inner life of his soul came to the fore, which later led to the establishing of a lasting friendship. He was an uncommunicative man who confided very little. Most people thought him an odd character. With those few in whom he was willing to confide he became quite expressive, especially in letters. He considered himself called by his inner nature to be a poet. He was of the opinion that he bore a great treasure in his soul. Besides, he was inclined to imagine that he was in intimate relation with other persons, especially women, rather than actually to form these ties into objective fact. At times he was close to such a relation, but he could not bring it to actual experience. In conversation with me he would then live through his fancies with the same inwardness and enthusiasm as if they were actual. Therefore it was inevitable that he experienced bitter emotions when the dreams always went amiss. This produced in him a mental life that had not the slightest relation to his outward existence. And this life again was to him the subject of tormenting reflections about himself, which were mirrored for me in many letters and conversations. Thus he once wrote me a long exposition of the way in which the least or the greatest experience became to him a symbol and how he lived in such symbols. I loved this friend, and in my love for him I entered into his dreams, although I always had the feeling when with him: “We are moving about in the clouds and have no ground under our feet!” For me, who ceaselessly busied myself to find firm support for life just there – in knowledge – this was an unique experience. I always had to slip outside of my own being and leap across into another skin, as it were, when I was in company with this friend. He liked to share his life with me; at times he even set forth extensive theoretical reflections concerning the “difference between our two natures.” He was quite unaware how little our thoughts harmonized, because his friendly sentiments led him on in all his thinking. The case was similar in my relation with another Wiener-Neustadt schoolmate. He belonged to the next lower class in the Realschule , and we first came together when he entered the Hochschule in Vienna a year after me. Then, however, we were often together. He also entered but little into that which concerned me so inwardly, the problem of cognition. He studied chemistry. The natural scientific opinions in which he was then involved prevented him from showing himself in any other light than as a sceptic concerning the spiritual conceptions with which I was filled. Later on in life I found in the case of this friend how close to my state of mind he then stood in his innermost being; but at that time he never allowed this innermost being to show itself. Thus our lively and long arguments became for me a “battle against materialism.” He always opposed to my avowal of the spiritual substance of the world all the contradictory results which seemed to him to be given by natural science. Then I always had to array everything I possessed by way of insight in order to drive from the field his arguments, drawn from the materialistic orientation of his thought, against the knowledge of a spiritual world. Once we were arguing the question with great zeal. Every day after attending the lectures in Vienna my friend went back to his home, which was still at Wiener-Neustadt. I often accompanied him through the streets of Vienna to the station of the Southern Railway. One day we reached a sort of climax in the argument over materialism after we had already arrived at the station and the train was almost due. Then I put together what I still had to say in the following words: “So, then, you maintain that, when you say ‘I think,’ this is merely the necessary effect of the occurrences in your brain-nerve system. Only these occurrences are a reality. So it is, likewise, When you say ‘I am this or that,' ‘I go,’ and so forth. But observe this. You do not say, ‘My brain thinks,’ ‘My brain sees this or that,’ ‘My brain goes.’ If, however, you have really come to the opinion that what you theoretically maintain is actually true, you must correct your form of expression. When you continue to speak of ‘I,’ you are really lying. But you cannot do otherwise than follow your sound instinct against the suggestion of your theory. Experience offers you a different group of facts from that which your theory makes up. Your consciousness calls your theory a lie.” My friend shook his head. He had no time to reply. As I went back alone, I could not but think that opposing materialism in this crude fashion did not correspond with a particularly exact philosophy. But it did not then really concern me so much to furnish, five minutes before the train left, a philosophically convincing proof as to give expression to my certitude from inner experience of the reality of the human ego. To me this ego was an inwardly observable experience of a reality present in itself. This reality seemed to me no less certain than any known to materialism. But in it there is absolutely nothing material. This thorough-going perception of the reality and the spirituality of the ego has in the succeeding years helped me to overcome every temptation to materialism. I have always known “the ego is unshakable.” And it has been clear to me that no one really knows the ego who considers it as a form of phenomenon, as a result of other events. The fact that I possessed this perception inwardly and spiritually was what I wished to get my friend to understand. We fought together many times thereafter on this battlefield. But in general conceptions of life we had so many similar sentiments that the earnestness of our theoretical battling never resulted in the least disturbance of our personal relationship. During this time I got deeper into the student life in Vienna. I became a member of the “German Reading Club” in the Hochschule. In the assembly and in smaller gatherings the political and cultural phenomena of the time were thoroughly discussed. These discussions brought out all possible – and impossible – points of view, such as young people hold. Especially when officers were to be elected, opinions clashed against one another quite violently. Very exciting and stimulating was much that there found expression among the youth in connection with the events in the public life of Austria. It was the time when national parties were becoming more and more sharply defined. Everything which led later more and more to the disruption of the Empire, which appeared in its results after the World War, could then be experienced in germ. I was first chosen librarian of the reading-room. As such I found out all possible authors who had written books that I thought would be of value to the student library. To such authors I wrote “begging letters.” I often wrote in a single week a hundred such letters. Through this “work” of mine the library was very soon much enlarged. But the thing had a secondary effect for me. Through the work it was possible for me to become acquainted in a comprehensive fashion with the scientific, artistic, culture-historical, political literature of the time. I was an eager reader of the books given. Later I was chosen president of the Reading Club. This, however, was to me a burdensome office. For I faced a great number of the most diverse party view-points and saw in all of these their relative justification. Yet the adherents of the various parties would come to me. Each would seek to persuade me that his party alone was right. At the time when I was elected every party had favoured me. For until then they had only heard how in the assemblies I had taken the part of justice. After I had been president for a half-year, all turned against me. In that time they had found that I could not decide as positively for any party as that party wished. My craving for companionship found great satisfaction in the reading-room. And an interest was awakened in a broader field of the public life through its reflection in the occurrences in the common life of the students. In this way I came to be present at very interesting parliamentary debates, sitting in the gallery of the House of Delegates or of the Senate. Apart from the bills under discussion – which often affected life profoundly – I was especially interested in the personalities of the House of Delegates. There stood every year at the end of his bench, as the chief budget expositor, the keen philosopher, Bartolemäus Carneri. His words were a hailstorm of accusations against the Taaffe Ministry; they were a defence of Germanism in Austria. There stood Ernst von Plener, the dry speaker, the unexcelled authority in matters of finance. One was chilled while he criticized the statement of the Minister of Finance, Dunajewski, with the coldness of an accountant. There the Ruthenian Thomeszuck thundered against the politics of nationalities. One had the feeling that upon his discovery of an especially well-coined word for that moment depended the fostering of antipathy against the Minister. There argued, in peasant-theatrical fashion, always intelligently, the clerical Lienbacher. His head, bowed over a little, caused what he said to seem like the outflow of clarified perceptions. There argued in his cutting style the Young Czech Gregr. One felt in him a half-demagogue. There stood Rieger of the Old Czechs, altogether with the deeply characteristic sentiment of the organized Czechs as they had been built up during a long period and had come to self consciousness during the second half of the nineteenth century – a man seldom shut up to himself, a powerful mind and a steadfast will. There spoke on the right side of the Chamber in the midst of the Polish seats Otto Hausner – often only setting forth the results of reading spiritually rich; often sending well-aimed shafts to all sides of the House with a certain sense of satisfaction in himself. A thoroughly self-satisfied but intelligent eye sparkled behind a monocle; the other always seemed to say “Yes” to the sparkle. A speaker who, however, even then often spoke prophetic words as to the future of Austria. One ought to-day to read again what he then said; one would be amazed at the keenness of his vision. One then laughed, to be sure, over much which years later became bitter earnest.

The Story of My Life

Chapter IV

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA028/English/APC1928/GA028_c04.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA028_c04

I could not at that time bring myself to reflections concerning public life in Austria which might have taken a deeper hold in any way whatever upon my mind. I merely continued to observe the extraordinarily complicated relationships involved. Expressions which won my deeper interest I could find only in connection with Karl Julius Schröer. I had the pleasure of being with him often just at this time. His own fate was closely bound up with that of German Austria-Hungary. He was the son of Tobias Schröer, who conducted a German school in Presburg and wrote dramas as well as books on historical and aesthetic subjects. The last appeared under the name Christian Oeser , and they were favourite text-books. The poetic writings of Tobias Gottfried Schröer, although they are doubtless significant and received marked recognition within restricted circles, did not become widely known. The sentiment that breathes through them was opposed to the dominant political current in Hungary. They had to be published in part without the author's name in German regions outside of Hungary. Had the tendencies of the author's mind been known in Hungary, he would have risked, not only dismissal from his post, but also severe punishment. Karl Julius Schröer thus experienced the impulse toward Germanism even as a young man in his own home. Under this impulse he developed his intimate devotion to the German nature and German literature as well as a great devotion to everything belonging to Goethe or concerning him. The history of German poetry by Gervinus had a profound influence upon him. He went in the fortieth year of the nineteenth century to Germany to pursue his studies in the German language and literature at the universities of Leipzig, Halle, and Berlin. After his return he was occupied in teaching German literature in his father's school, and in conducting a Seminar . He now became acquainted with the Christmas folk-plays which were enacted every year by the German colonists in the region of Presburg. There he was face to face with Germanism in a form profoundly congenial to him. The roving Germans who had come from the west into Hungary hundreds of years before had brought with them these plays of the old home, and continued to perform them as they had done at the Christmas festival in regions which no doubt lay in the neighbourhood of the Rhine. The Paradise story, the birth of Christ, the coming of the three kings were alive in popular form in these plays. Schröer then published them, as he heard them, or as he read them in old manuscripts that he was able to see at peasants' homes, using the title Deutsche Weinachtspiele aus Ungarn . 1 German Christmas Plays from Hungary. The delightful experience of living in the German folk life took an even stronger hold upon Schröer's mind. He made journeys in order to study German dialects in the most widely separated parts of Austria. Wherever the German folk was scattered in the Slavic, Magyar, or Italian geographical regions, he wished to learn their individuality. Thus came into being his glossary and grammar of the Zipser dialect, which was native to the south of the Carpathians; of the Gottschze dialect, which survived with a little fragment of German folk in Krain; the language of the Heanzen, which was spoken in western Hungary. For Schröer these studies were never merely a scientific task. He lived with his whole soul in the revelation of the folk-life, and wished by word and writing to bring its nature to the consciousness of those men who have been uprooted from it by life. He was then a professor in Budapest. There he could not feel at home in the presence of the prevailing current of thought; so he removed to Vienna, where at first he was entrusted with the direction of the evangelical schools, and where he later became a professor of the German language and literature. When he already occupied this position, I had the privilege of knowing him and of becoming intimate with him. At the time when this occurred, his whole sentiment and life were directed toward Goethe. He was engaged in editing the second part of Faust , and writing an introduction for this, and had already published the first part. When I went to call at Schröer's little library, which was also his work-room, I felt that I was in a spiritual atmosphere in the highest degree beneficial to my mental life. I understood at once why Schröer was maligned by those who accepted the prevailing literary-historical methods on account of his writings, and especially on account of his Geschicte der Deutschen Dichtung im neunzehnten Jahrhundert . 2 History of German Poetry in the Nineteenth Century. He did not write at all like the members of the Scherer school, who treated literary phenomena after the fashion of investigators in natural science. He had certain sentiments and ideas concerning literary phenomena, and he spoke these out in frank, manly fashion without turning his eyes much at the moment of writing to the “sources.” It had even been said that he had written his exposition “from the wrist out.” This interested me very little. I experienced a spiritual warmth when I was with him. I could sit by his side for hours. Out of his inspired heart the Christmas plays lived on his lips, the spirit of the German dialect, the course of the life of literature. The relation between dialect and cultured speech became perceptible to me in a practical way. I experienced a real joy when he spoke to me, as he had already done in his lectures, of the poet of the Lower Austrian dialect, Joseph Misson, who wrote the splendid poem, Da Naaz, a niederösterreichischer Bauernbua, geht ind Fremd . 3 Ignatius, a peasant boy of Lower Austria, goes abroad. Schröer then constantly gave me books from his library in which I could pursue further what was the content of this conversation. I always had, in truth, when I sat there alone with Schröer, the feeling that still another was present – Goethe's spirit. For Schröer lived so strongly in the spirit and the work of Goethe that in every sentiment or idea which entered his soul he feelingly asked the question, “Would Goethe have felt or thought thus?” I listened in a spiritual sense with the greatest possible sympathy to everything that came from Schröer. Yet I could not do otherwise even in his presence than build up independently in my own mind that toward which I was striving in my innermost spirit. Schröer was an idealist, and the world of ideas as such was for him that which worked as a propulsive force in the creation of nature and of man. I then found it indeed difficult to express in words for myself the difference between Schröer's way of thinking and mine. He spoke of ideas as the propelling forces in history. He felt life in the idea itself. For me the life of the spirit was behind the ideas, and these were only the phenomena of that life in the human soul. I could then find no other terms for my way of thinking than “objective idealism.” I wished thereby to denote that for me the reality is not in the idea; that the idea appears in man as the subject, but that just as colour appears on a physical object, so the idea appears on the spiritual object , and that the human mind – the subject – perceives it there as the eye perceives colour on a living being. My conception, however, Schröer very largely satisfied in the form of expression he used when we talked about that which reveals itself as “folk-soul.” He spoke of this as of a real spiritual being which lives in the group of individual men who belong to a folk. In this matter his words took on a character which did not pertain merely to the designation of an idea abstractly held. And thus we both observed the texture of ancient Austria and the individualities of the several folk-souls active in Austria. From this side it was possible for me to conceive thoughts concerning the state of public life which penetrated more deeply into my mind. Thus my experience at that time was strongly bound up with my relationship to Karl Julius Schröer. What, however, were more remote from him, and in which I strove most of all for an inner explanation, were the natural sciences. I wished to know that my “objective idealism” was in harmony with the knowledge of nature. It was during the period of my most earnest intercourse with Schröer that the question of the relation between the spiritual and natural worlds came before my mind in a new form. This happened at first quite independently of Goethe's way of thought concerning the natural sciences. For even Schröer could tell me nothing distinctive concerning this realm of Goethe's creative work. He was happy whenever he found in one or another natural scientist a generous recognition of Goethe's observations concerning the beings of plants and animals. As regards Goethe's theory of colour, however, he was met on all sides by natural scientific conceptions utterly opposed. So in this direction he developed no special opinion. My relationship to natural science was not at this time of my life influenced from this side, in spite of the fact that in my intercourse with Schröer I came into close touch with Goethe's spiritual life. It was determined much more by the difficulties I experienced when I had to think out the facts of optics in the sense of the physicist. I found that light and sound were thought of in an analogy which is invalid. The expressions “sound in general” and “light in general” were used. The analogy lay in the following: The individual tones and sounds were viewed as specially modified air-vibrations; and objective sound, outside of the human perception, was viewed as a state of vibration of the air. Light was thought of similarly. That which occurs outside of man when he has a perception by means of phenomena caused by light was defined as vibration in ether. The colours, then, are especially formed ether-vibrations. These analogies became at that time an actual torment to my inner life. For I believed myself perfectly clear in the perception that the concept “sound” is merely an abstract union of the individual occurrences in the sphere of sound; whereas “light” signifies a concrete thing over against the phenomena in the sphere of illumination. “Sound” was for me a composite abstract concept; “light” a concrete reality. I said to myself that light is really not perceived by the senses; “colours” are perceived by means of light , which manifests itself everywhere in the perception of colours but is not itself sensibly perceived. “White” light is not light, but that also is a colour. Thus for me light became a reality in the sense-world, yet in itself not perceptible to the senses. Now there came before my mind the conflict between nominalism and realism as this was developed within scholasticism. The realists maintained that concepts were realities which lived in things and were simply reproduced out of these by human understanding. The nominalists maintained, on the contrary, that concepts were merely names formed by man which include together a complex of what is in the things, but names which have no existence themselves. It now seemed to me that the sound experience must be viewed in the nominalist manner and the experiences which proceed from light in the realist manner. I carried this orientation into the optics of the physicist. I had to reject much in this science. Then I arrived at perceptions which gave me a way to Goethe's colour theory. On this side the door opened before me through which to approach Goethe's writings on natural science. I first took to Schröer brief treatises I had written on the basis of my views in the field of natural science. He could make but little of them; for they were not yet worked out on the basis of Goethe's way of thinking, but I had merely attached at the end this remark: “When men come to the point of thinking about nature as I have here set forth, then only will Goethe's researches in science be confirmed.” Schröer felt an inner pleasure when I made such a statement, but beyond this nothing then came of the matter. The situation in which I then found myself comes out in the following: Schröer related to me one day that he had spoken with a colleague who was a physicist. But, said the man, Goethe opposed himself to Newton, and Newton was “such a genius”; to which Schröer replied: But Goethe “also was a genius.” Thus again I felt that I had a riddle to solve with which I struggled entirely alone. In the views at which I had arrived in the physics of optics there seemed to me to be a bridge between what is revealed to insight into the spiritual world and that which comes out of researches in the natural sciences. I felt then a need to prove to sense experience, by means of certain experiments in optics in a form of my own, the thoughts which I had formed concerning the nature of light and that of colour. It was not easy for me to buy the things needed for such experiments; for the means of living I derived from tutoring was little enough. Whatever was in any way possible for me I did in order to arrive at such plans of experimentation in the theory of light as would lead to an unprejudiced insight into the facts of nature in this field. With the physicist's usual arrangements for experiments I was familiar through my work in Reitlinger's physics laboratory. The mathematical treatment of optics was easy to me, for I had already pursued thorough courses in this field. In spite of all objections raised by the physicists against Goethe's theory of colour, I was driven by my own experiments farther and farther away from the customary attitude of the physicist toward Goethe. I became aware that all such experimentation is only the establishing of certain facts “about light” – to use an expression of Goethe's – and not experimentation with light itself. I said to myself: “The colours are not, in Newton's way of thinking, produced out of light; they come to manifestation when obstructions hinder the free unfolding of the light.” It seemed to me that this was the lesson to be learned directly from my experiments. Through this, however, light was for me removed from the properly physical realities. It took its place as a midway stage between the realities perceptible to the senses and those visible to the spirit. I was not inclined forthwith to engage in a merely philosophical course of thinking about these things. But I held strongly to this: to read the facts of nature aright . And then it became constantly clearer to me how light itself does not enter the realm of the sense-perceptible, but remains on the farther side of this, while colours appear when the sense perceptible is brought into the realm of light. I now felt myself compelled anew to press inward to the understanding of nature from the most diverse directions. I was led again to the study of anatomy and physiology. I observed the members of the human, animal, and plant organisms in their formations. In this study I came in my own way to Goethe's theory of metamorphosis. I became more and more aware how that conception of nature which is attainable through the senses penetrates through to that which was visible to me in spiritual fashion. If in this spiritual way I directed my look to the soul-activity of man, thinking, feeling, and willing, then the “spiritual man” took form for me, a clearly visible image. I could not linger in the abstractions in which men generally think when they speak of thinking, feeling, and willing. In these living manifestations I saw creative forces which set “the man as spirit” there before me. If I then turned my glance to the sense-manifestation of man, this became complete to my observation by means of the spirit-form which ruled in the sense-perceptible. I came upon the sensible-supersensible form of which Goethe speaks and which thrusts itself, both for the true natural vision and for the spiritual vision, between what the senses grasp and what the spirit perceives. Anatomy and physiology struggled through step by step to the sensible-supersensible form. And in this struggling I through my look fell, at first in a very imperfect way, upon the threefold organization of the human being, concerning which – after having pursued my studies regarding this for thirty years in silence – I first began to speak openly in my book Von Seelenrätzeln . 4 Riddles of the Soul. It then became clear to me that in that portion of the human organization in which the shaping is chiefly directed to the elements of the nerves and the senses, the sensible-supersensible form also stamps itself most strongly in the sense-perceptible. The head organization appeared to me as that in which the sensible-supersensible becomes most strongly visible in the sensible form. On the other hand, I was forced to look upon the organization consisting of the limbs as that in which the sensible-supersensible most completely submerges itself, so that in this organization the forces active in nature external to man pursue their work in the shaping of the human body. Between these poles of the human organization everything seemed to me to exist which expresses itself in a rhythmic manner, the processes of breathing, circulation, and the like. At that time I found no one to whom I could have spoken of these perceptions. If I referred here or there to something of this, then it was looked upon at once as the result of a philosophic idea, whereas I was certain that I had disclosed these things to myself by means of an understanding drawn from unbiased anatomical and physiological experimentation. For the mood which depressed my soul by reason of this isolation in my perceptions I found an inner release only when I read over and over the conversation which Goethe had with Schiller as the two went away from a meeting of the Society for Scientific Research in Jena. They were both agreed in the view that nature should not be observed in such piece-meal fashion as had been done in the paper of the botanist Batsch which they had heard read. And Goethe with a few strokes drew before Schiller's eyes his “archetypal plant.” This through a sensible-supersensible form represents the plant as a whole out of which leaf, blossom, etc., reproducing the whole in detail, shape themselves. Schiller, because he had not yet overcome his Kantian point of view, could see in this “whole” only an “idea” which human understanding formed through observation of the details. Goethe would not allow this to pass. He saw spiritually the whole as he saw with his senses the group of details, and he admitted no difference in principle between the spiritual and the sensible perception, but only a transition from the one to the other. To him it was clear that both had the right to a place in the reality of experience. Schiller, however, did not cease to maintain that the archetypal plant was no experience, but an idea. Then Goethe replied, in his way of thinking, that in this case he perceived his ideas with his eyes. There was for me a rest after a long struggle in my mind, in that which came to me out of the understanding of these words of Goethe, to which I believed I had penetrated Goethe's perception of nature revealed itself before my mind as a spiritual perception. Now, by reason of an inner necessity, I had to strive to work in detail through all of Goethe's scientific writings. At first I did not think of undertaking an interpretation of these writings, such as I soon afterward published in an introduction to them in Kürschner's Deutsche National Literatur . I thought much more of setting forth independently some field or other of natural science in the way in which this science now hovered before me as “spiritual.” My external life was at that time not so ordered that I could accomplish this. I had to do tutoring in the most diverse subjects. The “pedagogical” situations through which I had to find my way were complex enough. For example, there appeared in Vienna a Prussian officer who for some reason or other had been forced to leave the German military service. He wished to prepare himself to enter the Austrian army as an officer of engineers. Through a peculiar course of fate I became his teacher in mathematics and physical-scientific subjects. I found in this teaching the deepest satisfaction; for my “scholar” was an extraordinarily lovable man who formed a human relationship with me when we had put behind us the mathematical and scientific developments he needed for his preparation. In other cases also, as in those of students who had completed their work and who were preparing for doctoral examinations, I had to give the instruction, especially in mathematics and the physical sciences. Because of this necessity of working again and again through the physical sciences of that time, I had ample opportunity of immersing myself in the contemporary views in these fields. In teaching I could give out only these views; what was most important to me in relation to the knowledge of nature I had still to carry locked up within myself. My activity as a tutor, which afforded me at that time the sole means of a livelihood, preserved me from one-sidedness. I had to learn many things from the foundation up in order to be able to teach them. Thus I found my way into the “mysteries” of book-keeping, for I found opportunity to give instruction even in this subject. Moreover, in the matter of pedagogical thought, there came to me from Schröer the most fruitful stimulus. He had worked for years as director of the Evangelical schools in Vienna, and he had set forth his experiences in the charming little book, Unterrichtsfrage . 5 Questions on Teaching. What I read in this could then be discussed with him. In regard to education and instruction, he spoke often against the mere imparting of information, and in favour of the evolution of the full and entire human being.

The Story of My Life

Chapter V

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA028/English/APC1928/GA028_c05.html

Dornach

Sep 1922

GA028_c05