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Gentlemen, I said last time that we have several matters still to discuss. I would like to consider them today. Maybe during the Christmas holidays you could confer among yourselves and decide what should be brought up during the next lecture hour. The human being has his senses for perceiving the world. We have examined the eye and the ear, considered the sense of touch, which is spread out over the whole organism, and have discussed the senses of taste and smell. All these senses are significant only for man's becoming acquainted with his surroundings and, as I have already explained, for enabling him to shape his body. But man does not live by virtue of the senses; he lives through the process of breathing. If you ask why he is an erect being, why his nose is in the middle of his face, for example, you have to answer that it is because of his senses. But if you look for the reason why he is alive, you have to consider his breathing, because the breath is related to all aspects of life. In one respect, human beings breathe just as the higher animals do, although many animals do breathe differently. A fish, for instance, breathes while swimming and living under water. If we now look at human breathing we have first to consider the process of inhalation. The breathing process is initially one of inhalation. From the air around us we inhale the oxygen that is required for our existence. This then permeates our whole body, in which carbon in minute particles is deposited; or rather, in which it swims or floats. The carbon that we contain in our bodies is also found elsewhere in nature. As a matter of fact, carbon exists in a great many forms. For instance, carbon is found in coal and in every plant, which consists of carbon, mixed with water and so on, but carbon is the main component of the plant. The graphite in a pencil contains carbon, and the diamond, which is a valuable gem, is also carbon. The diamond is transparent carbon; hard coal is opaque carbon. It is rather interesting that something like coal exists in nature. It is certainly not elegant or attractive, yet is of the same substance as a valuable gem, which, depending on its size, for example, is fit for a crown. Coal and diamonds have the same substance in different forms. We, too, have in ourselves carbon of various forms. When we breathe in oxygen it spreads out everywhere in our body and combines with the carbon. When oxygen combines with solid coal, a new gas, carbon dioxide, arises. This is a combination of oxygen and carbon, and it is this gas that we then exhale. Our life involves incorporating our body into the rest of the world by inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide. If we inhaled only pure oxygen, however, we would have to contain an immense amount of carbon, and the carbon dioxide would have to remain in us. Yes, we would be forever expanding, finally becoming gigantic, as big as the earth itself. Then we could always be inhaling. But we do not possess that much carbon; it must be constantly renewed. We could not survive if we only inhaled. We have to exhale to acquire carbon anew, and the carbon dioxide we produce is lethal. Indeed, if oxygen is life for us, carbon dioxide is death. If this room were now filled with carbon dioxide, we would all perish. Our life alternates between the life-giving air of inhalation and the deadly air of exhalation. Life and death are constantly within us, and it is interesting to see how they initially enter into the human being. To comprehend this you must realize that bacteria and bacilli — microscopically small living beings — exist everywhere in nature. Whenever we move, multitudes of these little bacteria fly about us in the air. Countless tiny living beings exist within the muscles of animals. As I have already mentioned, they can rapidly increase in numbers. No sooner does one appear — particularly one of the smallest kind — then the next moment there are millions. The infectious diseases are based on their capacity for tremendous multiplication. These minute beings do not actually cause the illness, but a feeling of well-being is engendered in them when something is ailing in us. Like the plant in manure, these little beings feel well in the stricken organs of our body and like to remain there. Anyone who claims that they themselves cause disease is just as clever as one who states that rain comes from croaking frogs. Frogs croak when a rain shower comes because they feel it and stay in water that is stimulated by what is active in the rain, but they certainly do not cause the rain. Likewise, bacilli do not bring about a disease like the flu; they only appear whenever the flu appears, just as frogs mysteriously emerge whenever it rains. One must not say, however, that research with bacilli has no use. It is useful to know that man is exposed to a certain illness, just as one knows that frogs croak when it rains. One cannot pour the baby out with the bathwater and say that it is unnecessary to examine the bacilli, yet one must realize that they do not cause the illness. One never gives a proper explanation by merely stating that for cholera there are these bacilli, for flu there exist these other bacilli, and so on. That is only a lazy way out for people who do not want to examine the actual causes of illnesses. Now, if you take these infinitesimally small living creatures away from their habitat, they cannot continue to live. For example, cholera bacilli taken out of the human intestines die. This bacillus can survive only in the intestines of men or of animals like rats. All these microscopic creatures can live only in specific environments. Why? That these tiny beings need a specific environment is an important factor. You see, if you consider the cholera bacillus at the moment when it is within the human intestines, the force of gravity does not have as strong an effect on it as when it is outside. The force of gravity immediately ruins it when it is out of its element. Man, too, was initially a tiny living being just like these countless little creatures. As an egg, an ovum, the human being also was such a microscopic living being, such a miniature living creature. With this, gentlemen, we come to an important chapter. Compare a cholera bacillus, which can exist only in the human intestines, with the human being. All these bacilli need to live in a place where they are protected from the earth. What does this imply? It means that an effect other than that of the earth influences them. The moonlight that shines sometimes in one way, sometimes in another has its effects on the earth, and it is indeed so that the moon influences all these living creatures. It can be seen that these creatures must be protected from the earth so that they can surrender themselves to the cosmos, especially to the influence of the moon. Now, in its earliest stage the human egg also surrenders to the moon's influence. It gives itself up to the moon just before fertilization. Just as the cholera bacillus exists in the intestines, so this tiny human egg exists in the female and is initially protected there. The female organism is so constituted, however, that the human egg is protected only in the beginning. The moment it passes too far out of the body it becomes vulnerable; then the earth begins to affect it. Women discharge such human eggs every four weeks. At first they are given up to the moon's influence for a short time and are protected. But when the female organism dispatches the human egg during the course of the monthly period, it comes under the influence of the earth and is destroyed. The human organization is so marvellously arranged that it represents an opposite to the bacilli. Cholera bacilli, for example, remain in the intestines and are careful not to venture too far out. Left to their own devices, they remain where they can be protected from the earth's influence. The human egg also is initially protected from the earth's influence in the mother's body, but then it moves outward because of the blood circulation of the mother, and comes under the influence of the earth's gravity. With the occurrence of the monthly period, which is connected with the moon's course and influence, an ovum is destroyed; the human ovum is really destroyed. It is not an actual human egg yet, however, for it has not been protected from destruction through fertilization. What really happens through fertilization? If left only to the earth's influence, this human egg would perish. Through fertilization it is enfolded in a delicate, etheric substance and is protected from the earth. It is thus able to mature in the mother's body. Fertilization signifies the protection of the human egg from destruction by the earth's forces. What is destroyed in the infertile egg passes over into the environment; it does not just disappear. It dissolves in the totality of the earth's environment. Eggs that cannot be utilized for the earth disseminate in its atmosphere. This is a continual process. We can now look at something that people rarely consider. Let us draw our attention to the herrings in the ocean. They lay millions upon millions of eggs, but only a few are ever fertilized. Those that are fertilized become protected from the influence of the earth. It is a little different in man's case, because he isn't a herring — at least not always [Play on words. In German, “Hering” is a very skinny person.] — but all these herring eggs that are not fertilized and are cast off in the ocean extricate themselves from the earth's influence by evaporation. If you consider the herrings and all the other fishes, all the other animals and also human beings, you can say to yourselves, “My attention is directed to something that continually arises from the earth into cosmic space.” Gentlemen, not only does water evaporate, but also such infertile eggs are always volatilized upward from the earth. Much more happens in cosmic space than materialistic science assumes. If someone were sitting up there on Venus, for example, the vapours that arise and condense again as rain would hold little interest for him, but what I have just described to you, rising constantly into cosmic space, would be perceived up there as a greenish-yellow light. From this we may conclude that light emerges from the life of any given cosmic body. We will also be led to the realization that the sun, too, is not the physical body materialistic science pictures it to be but is rather the bearer of even greater, mightier life. It is as I have explained earlier; something that radiates light must be fertilized, just as the sun must be fertilized in order to radiate light through life. So then we have this difference: When a human egg is not fertilized it goes out, it evaporates into cosmic space; when it is fertilized it remains for awhile on the earth. What happens is like inhalation and exhalation. If I only exhaled, I would give my being up to cosmic space as does the infertile human egg. Consider how interesting it is that you exhale, and the air that you have exhaled contains your own carbon. It is a delicate process. Just imagine that today you have a tiny bit of carbon in your big toe. You inhale, and oxygen spreads out. The small amount of carbon that today is in your big toe combines with the oxygen, and tomorrow this little particle of carbon is somewhere out there in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. That is really what happens. During his lifetime man constantly has in himself the same substance that the human egg contains when it is fertilized. If we only exhaled and never inhaled we would always be dying; we would continually be dissolving into the atmosphere. By inhaling we guard ourselves against death. Every time we inhale we protect ourselves from death. The child that is still maturing in the mother's womb has come into being from the fertilized human egg and is protected from disintegration. The child takes its first breath only at the moment of birth when it comes into the world. Before that it must be supplied with oxygen from the mother's body. But now with birth something quite significant happens. At birth man for the first time receives from the outer world the capability to live. After all, man cannot live without oxygen. Although in the mother's womb he exists without oxygen from the outer air, he does get it from the body of the mother. Thus, one can say that when man emerges from his mother's body and comes into the world, he actually changes his whole life process. Something radically different happens to it. He now receives oxygen from outside, whereas before he was able to assimilate it in the body of his mother. Just ask yourselves if there is a machine anywhere in the world that can supply itself with heat first in one way and then in another? For nine or ten months man lives in the body of his mother before he appears in the external world. In the womb he is supplied with what life gives him in a completely different manner from the way he does after he has taken his first breath. Let us examine something else connected with this. Imagine that your sleep has been somewhat disturbed. You are awakened from a fitful sleep by a quite frightening dream in which you perhaps experience that you came home to a locked house and cannot get in. Someone in the house is expecting you so you struggle to unlock the door. You may have experienced something like this. In dreams we do indeed experience such conditions of anxiety. Now, if you examine what actually happens when the human being has such nightmares, you always discover that something is amiss with the breathing. You can even experimentally produce such nightmares. If you take a handkerchief and plug up your mouth or cover your nose, you will dream the nicest nightmares as nightmares go because you cannot inhale properly. It is rather strange that our having such conditions of anxiety depends simply on inhalation and exhalation, in other words, on oxygen and carbon. We can deduce from this that we live in the air with our soul element. We do not live in our muscles or in our bones with our soul element but rather in the air. It is really the case that our soul moves along with the air during inhalation and exhalation. Thus, we can say that the soul element seeks out the air in which it floats after the child has taken its first breath. Earlier, it had absorbed oxygen in a completely different way. Where does the human being get oxygen prior to birth? In the prenatal state an actual breathing process does not yet exist. There is no breathing while the human being is in the mother's womb; everything takes place through the circulation. Various vessels that are torn away at birth pass into the embryo from the mother's body, and with the blood and fluids oxygen also passes into the embryo. With birth man carries his basic life principle out of the watery element into the air. When he is born he transposes the life principle from the fluid element in which it existed before birth out into the air. From this you can conclude that before conception the human being is first an entity that, like the bacilli, is not fit for the earth at all. Initially he is a being alien to the earth. Later on, he is shielded from the earth's forces and can develop in the mother's body, but when he is actually born and emerges from the surroundings of the maternal womb, he is exposed to the forces of the earth. Then he becomes capable of life only by becoming accustomed to an activity that enables him to live in the air. Throughout his earthly life man protects himself against the forces of the earth by living not with the earth at all but by living with the air. Just imagine how hard it would be if you had to live with the earth! A man who steps on a scale finds that he weighs a certain amount — a thin one less, a fat one more. Now imagine that you had to grab yourself by the hair and carry your whole body all the time, constantly carry your own weight. Wouldn't that be an exhausting chore! Yet, although you do indeed carry it around with you, you do not feel this weight at all, nor are you aware of it. Why? Your breathing protects you from the heaviness of the earth. In fact, with your soul you do not live in the body at all but rather in the breathing process. You can now easily comprehend why materialistic science does not find the soul. Materialistic science looks for the soul in the body, which is heavy. In its research it dissects a dead body that no longer breathes. Well, science cannot discover the soul there, because the soul is not to be found in such a body. Materialistic science could find the soul only if our constitution were such that in walking around everywhere we would have to carry our own bodies, sweating profusely from the effort. Then it would make sense to seek for the soul with materialistic means. But the way things really stand, it makes no sense at all. We sweat for other reasons. When we emerge from the maternal womb, we do not live within our solid substances. As it is, we are only ten percent solid substance. Nor do we live in our fluid element, to which we bestow life. With our soul we actually live in our breathing. Gentlemen, please follow me now in a train of thought that belongs to the most significant matters of the present time. Let us picture to ourselves a human fetus. Through birth it emerges into the outside world and becomes a full-fledged human being who now inhales air with his lungs and exhales again through his nose. It should be quite self-evident to you that when a person is born, he actually lives with his soul in the breathing process. As long as he exists in the mother's womb, he lives in a watery element. In a sense, he emerges from the water into the air when he is born. As earthly man you can live only in the air, not in water. But before birth you lived in water, and up until the third week you were even shaped like a little fish to enable you to live there. You lived in water up to the time of birth, but the earth does not allow you to live in that element. What does it signify that before birth you lived in water? It means that your life cannot derive from the earth at all, that it must originate from beyond the earth because the earth does not permit you to live. We must lift ourselves up from the earth into the air to live. Because we have lived in water up to the moment of birth, we may conclude that our life is not bestowed by the earth. Our life of soul is not given us by the earth. It is impossible for the earth to bestow this life of the soul on you. Hence we may understand that it comes from beyond the earth. When we comprehend how life is actually contained in the breathing process, and how life already exists in the embryo but in a fluid element, we immediately realize that this life has descended from a spiritual world into the mother's ovum. People will frequently call such statements unscientific. Nevertheless, we can study a lot of science and reach the conclusion that what the illustrious scientists do in their science is much less logical than what I have just told you. What I have now told you is absolutely logical. Unfortunately, things are such in our age that children are already drilled in school to turn a deaf ear to something like this; or if they happen to hear it, they will say at most, “He's crazy. We've learned that everything grows out of the human egg.” Well, it is just as ridiculous as learning that the human head grows from a head of cabbage. A human head can grow from a cabbage no more than the human element, the whole human activity during life, can be derived from the human egg. But children are already taught these completely nonsensical things in school. I have already given you an example of this. Even the smallest children are told that once the earth, along with the whole planetary system, was one huge primeval nebula. Of course, the nebula does nothing when it is still, and so it is made to rotate. It starts to revolve quickly, and as it turns it becomes thinner and thinner. Eventually individual bodies split off, and a round one remains in the middle. The children are shown with a demonstration how this can be imitated. The teacher takes a piece of cardboard, sticks a needle through it, and puts a small drop of oil into a glass of water. He now turns the piece of cardboard and the oil drop, which floats on top of the water, begins to move. It starts to rotate, and tiny oil drops split off. A large drop of oil remains in the middle. This is a little planetary system with its sun. You see, children — so he says — we can do it on a small scale. So it is quite plausible that there once existed a nebula that revolved, and from this nebula celestial bodies gradually split off, leaving the large star remaining the middle. But now, gentlemen, what is the most important factor in this experiment? Why does the drop of oil rotate in the glass of water? Because the teacher turns the piece of cardboard. Likewise, a great cosmic teacher had to sit somewhere out there in the universe to turn things around, spinning off celestial bodies! Gentlemen, when from the beginning someone teaches children such things, they become “clever” as adults. When someone wants to be logical and expresses doubt, they call him a dreamer because they know how the world began! You see, such thoughts contain absolutely no reality. This rotating, primeval nebula thought up by Kant and Laplace has no reality at all; it is really quite foolish. To postulate such rotating nebulas is really rather stupid. The only grounds for it are the supposedly spiral nebulas observed through telescopes. Out in the wide cosmic spaces there are indeed such spiral nebulas; that is correct. But if by looking out there with a telescope and seeing these spiral nebula, a man should say, “Well, yes, our whole solar system was once such a nebula too,” then he is about as clever as one who takes a swarm of insects in the distance for a dust cloud. This can happen, but the swarm of gnats is alive while the dust cloud is lifeless. The spiral nebula out in space is alive; it has life within it. Likewise, the whole solar system had its own life and spirituality in earlier times, and this spirituality continues to work today. When the human egg is shielded in the body of the mother by fertilization, it can unite with the human spirit. When we gradually grow old, the heaviness slowly makes itself felt by the fact that our substances are seized by the earth's gravity. Suppose a person's digestion is amiss and, as a result, the life forces do not properly pass through it. Then all kinds of tiny solid particles form in the muscles. They become filled up with these small solid bodies, which are minute uric acid stones, and then we have gout. We begin to be conscious of heaviness, of gravity. When we are healthy and oxygen invigorates us through our breathing, such uric acid deposits are not formed, and we do not become afflicted with gout. Gout occurs only if oxygen does not pass through our body in a truly invigorating manner and does not assimilate carbon correctly. If oxygen does not pass through our organism in the right way, carbon will cause all kinds of problems; then there will be present everywhere such minute particles in our blood vessels. We feel that as an effect of the earth in moving around. In fact, we have to be shielded from the earth. We remain alive only because we are constantly protected from the earth and its influences by the breathing process. The earth is not damaging for us only because we are constantly being shielded from it. We would always be sick if we were always exposed to the earth. You see, in the middle of the nineteenth century, when natural science had its greatest materialistic successes, people were completely stunned by its accomplishments and scientists wanted to explain everything by way of what happens on the earth. These scientists were extremely clever, and they liberated man from much that had encumbered him. Nothing is to be said against them; they can even be praised but they were utterly stupefied by scientific progress and tried to explain the whole human being in such a way as if only the earth had an influence on him. They did not realize that when the earth's influences begin to take effect on man, he first becomes nervous and then becomes ill in some way. He is well only by virtue of being constantly shielded from earthly influences. Eventually, however, man is overcome by these earthly influences. How do they make themselves felt? The earthly influences assert themselves because man gradually loses the art of breathing. When he cannot breathe properly anymore, he returns to his condition before conception. He dissolves into the cosmic ether and returns to the world from which he came. With his last breath, man sinks back into the world from which he emerged. When we correctly understand breathing, we also comprehend birth and death. But nowhere in modern science do we find the right understanding of breathing. In sum, man first learns to live with the world through the female ovum, then learns to exist independently on the earth for a certain length of time by virtue of the male fertilization, and finally returns to the condition where he again can live on his own outside the earth. Gradually one learns to comprehend birth and death, and only then can one begin to have the right concept of what man is regarding his soul, of what is not born and does not die but comes from without, unites itself with the ovum in the mother, and eventually returns to the spiritual world. The situation today is such that we must comprehend the immortal soul element, which is not subject to birth and death. This applies especially to those who are active in science. This, indeed, is necessary for mankind today. For hundreds and thousands of years, men have had a faith in immortality that they cannot possibly retain today because they are told all kinds of things that actually are nothing and fall apart in the face of science. Everything that a man is asked to believe today must also be a matter of knowledge. We must learn to comprehend the spiritual out of science itself, the way we have done here in these lectures. That is the task of the Goetheanum and of anthroposophy in general: to correctly understand the spiritual out of natural science. You see, it is difficult to get people somehow to comprehend something new. It is Christmastime now, and people could say to themselves, “Well, we must find a new way to understand how the spirit lives in the human race.” If people would stop to think how the spirit lives in mankind, and if they would try to arrive at this understanding through real knowledge, we would find everything renewed. We could even celebrate Christmas anew, because we would observe this holiday in a manner appropriate for the modern age. Instead, on one hand, people continue to observe only what is dead in science and, on the other, they perpetuate the old traditions to which they can no longer attach any meaning. I would like to know what meaning those people who exchange gifts can still see in Christmas. None at all! They do it merely from an old custom. Side by side with this, a science is taught that is everywhere filled with contradictions. Nowhere does anyone wish to consider the fact that science presents something that can lead to the realization of the spiritual. Today, one can say that if Christianity is to have any meaning at all, one must once again embark on attaining a real knowledge of the spirit. This is the only thing possible; it is not enough just to perpetuate the old. For what does it imply to read the Bible to people on festive occasions, or even to children in school, if along with this one tells the child that there was once a primeval nebula that rotated? The head and the heart come completely to oppose one another. Then man forgets how to be a human being on the earth because he no longer even knows himself. Anyone is a fool who thinks that as human beings on the earth we consist only of what is heavy, of the body that is put on the scale and weighed. This part we do not need at all. It is nonsense to think that we consist of these material substances that can be weighed. In reality, we do not become aware of the body at all, because we shield ourselves from it in order to stay well. The curing of illness consists in expelling the earthly influences that are affecting the sick person. All healing is actually based on removing the human being from the earth's influence. If we cannot remove man from the earth and its influences, we cannot cure him. He then lies down in bed, allows himself to be supported by the bed and gives himself up to weight. When one lies down one does not carry one's own self. So we have the old customs on one hand and, on the other, a science that does not enlighten man as to what he really is as a human being. Nothing positive can come from all this. It is true that the World War, with all the consequences that still afflict us today, would not have occurred if human beings had known something of the inhumanity beforehand. Even now, they do not want to know. Even now, they still want to get together at congresses without any new thoughts and just repeat the same old things. Nowhere are they able to conceive new thoughts. What at first existed in mankind as confused ideas became a habit and then became our social order today. We are not going to get anywhere in the world again until from within we really feel what in fact the human being is. This is really what those who understand the aims of anthroposophy conceive of as Christmas. Christmas should remind us that once again a science of the spirit must be born. Anthroposophy is the best spiritual being that can be born. Mankind is much in need of a Christmas festival. Otherwise, it does away with the living Christ and retains only the cross of Christ. Ordinary science is only the cross, but once again we must arrive at what is living. We must strive for that. Well, gentlemen, that is what I wanted to mention on this particular day in addition to the other things. With this, I wish you all pleasant holidays!

Health and Illness, Volume I

Concerning the Soul Life in the Breathing Process

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA348/English/AP1981/19221223a01.html

Dornach

23 Dec 1922

GA348-8

Question: For many years I have suffered from hayfever. Now I have heard that it must be treated early in the year. If injections are administered as early as January or February before a person begins to suffer, they are supposed to be more effective. Should I go along with this remedy? Dr. Steiner : What you have said is correct, but there is one small catch. You see, the remedy that is in use here is meant to be applied prophylactically; that is, it is meant to work ahead of time. In fact, it should be used weeks before the symptoms of hayfever arise. The problem, however, is that patients come in only when they are already afflicted with the malady. Just today we received an interesting letter about another hayfever remedy. The inventor of this other remedy writes that his medication brings only a little relief to individual hayfever attacks. He believes that our remedy can permanently cure hayfever, especially if it is taken twice at wide intervals. Naturally, we would much prefer patients to be treated in January or February rather than in May or June. Understandably, however, people generally see a doctor only after an illness has been contracted. Yet, our hayfever remedy works in such a way that if given to the patient even during the external appearance of the illness, which is only the final result of an inner affliction, it protects him from a renewed attack. It is particularly effective if applied again a year later. After that, the application need not always be repeated. Even though the illness affects only one organ, this remedy treats its basis in the whole bodily organization. To explain this, I would like to go into more detail concerning the causes of internal illnesses and how they arise in the first place. Of course, it is quite simple to comprehend why one becomes indisposed if one breaks a leg or sustains a concussion due to a fall. In these cases the injury is external and the cause easily understood; the cause is externally visible. In the case of internal illnesses, however, one usually does not really consider where they come from and how they suddenly assert themselves. This pertains to another question raised earlier of why one may become infected when in contact with certain people. An external cause also seems to be present here. Ordinary science offers a simple explanation for this. Bacilli are transmitted from an ill person who has influenza, for example, and then these are inhaled and bring about the disease in another. It is like someone injuring a man by hitting him with a mattock. In this case the injury is caused by a patient bombarding another person with a multitude of bacilli. Matters are not at all that simple, however; they are much more complicated. You will understand this when you realize that in everyday life a man constantly becomes a bit indisposed and then must cure himself. The point is that all of us are really a bit sick when thirsty or hungry, and we cure ourselves by drinking and eating. Hunger is the beginning of an illness, and if it is allowed to continue we can die from it. After all, we can die of starvation and even sooner of thirst. So you see that even in our everyday lives we bear something like the beginning of a disease. Every act of drinking or eating is in truth an act of healing. We must make clear to ourselves now what in fact happens when we become hungry or thirsty. You see, our body is inwardly always active. Through the intake of food, the body receives nutrients. External substances are absorbed through the mouth and the intestinal passages into some part of the body. Now, you must understand that the human organization immediately rebels against these nutritional substances; it does not tolerate them in their original forms and destroys them. Food substances must actually be disintegrated. In fact, they are annihilated, and this begins in the mouth. The reason for this is that there is continuous, never-ceasing activity in our body. This activity must be observed in the same way as fingers or hands are. Ordinary science simply records how a piece of bread is eaten, dissolved in the mouth, and then distributed in the body, but we must also take into consideration that the human body is continually active. Even if nothing is put into it, if nothing goes into the body for five hours, say, still its activity does not cease. You may even be like an empty sack, but things have not quieted within. You remain in constant inward activity, and things are still bustling around. Only when this internal activity can become occupied with something is it content. That is especially the case after a meal when it can dissolve and disintegrate the food substances; then it is content. This internal activity that we possess is quite different from man in general, for the human being can become lazy. The internal activity is never lazy, it never ceases. If I don't eat anything, it is as if I had an empty flour sack in which there is activity even if I avoid all tangible substance. This activity — for reasons that I shall tell you later on — is identified in spiritual science as the astral body. It is never lazy, and if it can stay active destroying and dissolving the food substances, it is filled with inward comfort; it then has a feeling of inner well-being. But if I take in no food substances, then the astral body is not satisfied, and this dissatisfaction is expressed as hunger. Hunger is not something at rest within us; it is an activity, a soul-spiritual activity that cannot be stilled. We can truly say that this inner activity is in love with the food substances, and if it does not receive them it is just as dissatisfied as any jilted lover. This dissatisfaction is the hunger, and it is by all means something spiritual. So the activity that is executed internally consists of disintegrating food substances. What is useful is transmitted into the blood vessels, and the rest is eliminated through urine or feces. This is the healthy, normal and regular activity of the human being in which the astral body works properly to dissolve the food substances. It absorbs into the body what is useful and discharges what is not. We must assume, gentlemen, that this activity of man is no ordinary activity; rather, it contains something immensely wise. Now, dissolved and transformed food substances are constantly being transmitted through blood vessels to the inner organs, and the nourishment that goes into the lungs is completely different from what goes to the spleen. The astral body is much smarter than the human being. Man can only stuff the provisions into his mouth, but the astral body can distinguish them. It is like sorting two substances, throwing one in one direction to be used there and the other in another direction. This is what the astral body accomplishes. It selects certain substances to dispatch to the lungs, spleen, larynx and other organs. A wise distribution is at work within. The astral body is immensely wise, much wiser than we. The most educated person today would not know how to send the proper substances into the lungs, larynx or spleen; he would not even know what to say about it. But internally man can do this through his astral body. The astral body, however, can become stupid — not as stupid as the human being can become, but stupid in comparison to its own cleverness. Let us assume that it thus becomes stupid. Man is born with a certain predisposition and is inwardly endowed with certain forces. The activity that the astral body develops for food substances occurs even if somebody sits down all day, immobile like an Oriental idol. His astral body still remains active, but that is not enough. We must also do something externally, and if we have no work to do we must go for a stroll; the astral body demands that we at least walk around. This differs with each individual. One person needs more physical activity, another less. Let us suppose now that someone has certain predispositions from birth that make him into a sedentary person. It pleases his stupid head — or we could say his stupid ego — to sit around a lot. Now, if he is predisposed to sit around, but the astral body is predisposed to walk about, then his astral body will become stupid. This will also happen if somebody overexerts himself walking. In both cases the astral body will become stupid and will no longer accomplish things correctly. It will no longer properly sort out the food substances and transmit them to the appropriate organs; it will do all this clumsily instead. The astral body becomes too disorganized to send the right substances to the heart or larynx. Substances improperly transmitted to the heart, for example, will remain somewhere else in the body. They are not put in the organ where they belong but, since they are basically useful, neither are they eliminated with the feces. Instead, they are deposited somewhere else in the body. But a man cannot tolerate having something deposited in his body that is not part of its proper activity; he cannot stand that. So what happens with these improper deposits due to the malfunctioning astral body? What happens to us on account of that? Well, suppose we have in our body certain deposits that should have been directed to the larynx. Because someone's astral body does not function properly, “larynx refuse” is secreted everywhere in his body. The first thing that happens is that his larynx becomes weak. The organ does not receive sufficient sustenance, and thus the person suffers from a weakened larynx. But apart from that, his body contains larynx refuse, which is dispersed everywhere. As I have already told you, the human body is ninety percent water, and the refuse dissolves in this whole fluid organization. The pure, animated fluid that a man requires within him is now polluted. This is what happens so often within ourselves. Deposits meant for certain parts of the body dissolve in our fluid organization, contaminating it. Say that the refuse of the larynx is dissolved in us and comes into contact with the stomach. It cannot cause damage there, because the stomach has what it needs and was not deprived of anything. But the bodily fluids flow everywhere in the human organism and penetrate into the area of the larynx, which is already weakened. It receives this polluted fluid, this water in which the larynx refuse is dissolved, and specifically from this the organ becomes diseased. The larynx refuse does not affect the other organs, but it does cause the larynx to become afflicted. Let us now consider a simple phenomenon. A sensitive person finds it pleasant to listen to another person speak beautifully. But if someone crows like a rooster or grunts like a pig, he will not find this so pleasant to hear, even if he understands what is being said. It is not at all pleasant to listen to a person crowing or grunting. Listening to someone who is hoarse is a particularly uncomfortable and constricting experience. Why do we experience such sensations while listening to another? It is based on the fact that in reality we always inaudibly repeat whatever the other is saying. Listening consists not only in hearing but also in speaking faintly. We not only hear what another says but also imitate it with our speech organs. We always imitate everything that someone else does. Now imagine that you are near a person who is sick with flu, and though you may not be listening to him and inwardly imitating his speech, you feel sorry for him. This makes you quite susceptible and sensitive to him. The flu patient's fluid organization contains many dissolved substances, which contaminate the pure, living fluid I told you about and make it instead unhealthy for him. I even describe the nature of such a contaminated fluid organization. Imagine that you have a piece of ground where you plant various things. Not everything thrives in every kind of earth, but suppose you want to plant onions and garlic in this particular spot. Should the earth be unsuitable, the onions would be small and the garlic buds still smaller, so you should also add to this soil something that contains sulphur and phosphorus. Then you would have the healthiest onions and garlic buds, and they would smell strong, too! Now, when a man has influenza refuse within his body, the same substances are dissolved in his fluid organization that had to be added to the ground in order to produce the finest onion and garlic plants, and before long, the sick person begins to smell like these plants. Now, I associate with this, though I may not even be aware that I am sitting in this odour of onion or garlic, because it need not be strong. The odour exuded by a person who is sick with the flu causes the patient's head to feel dull, because a certain organ in the head, the “sensorium,” is not properly supplied with the substance it needs. As a result of having flu refuse within us, an organ in the mid-section of the head is not properly supplied. This odour is always like that of onions or garlic and can be detected by one with a sensitive nose. Just as we tune in on and imitate a shrill and rasping voice, so do we join in with what an ill person evaporates. As a consequence, our own astral body, our own activity, becomes disorganized. This disorder causes a chemical basis that in turn makes us contract the flu. It is like making soil suitable for onions and garlic. At first, then, the illness has nothing to do with bacteria but simply with the relation of one person to another. If you want to plant predominantly onions and garlic in a garden, and you add to the earth substances containing phosphorus and sulphur, you can now wait and say, “Well, I've done my duty. I want to harvest onions and garlic, and so with some kind of organic fertilizer I have added sulphur and phosphorus to the garden.” But it would be foolish to think that this is all it would take to grow the onions. You would first have to plant the bulbs! Likewise, it would be foolish to maintain that in man's interior, bacteria are already growing in the environment that is being prepared. They first have to be introduced into it. Just as the onion bulb thrives in soil rich in phosphorus and sulphur, so do the bacilli thrive within a sulphuric environment in the body. Bacilli are not even necessary for one person to catch the flu from another. Instead, by imitating with my fluid organization what is happening in the patient's fluid organism, I myself produce a favourable environment for the bacilli; I myself acquire them. The sick person need not bombard me with them at all. When we look at the whole matter, we must reply in quite a specific way to the question, “What is it that causes us to be stricken with a certain disease?” We become sick when something injures us, and even in the case of internal illnesses something is actually injuring us. The impure fluid, in which substances are dissolved that should have been digested, injures us; it injures us internally. Now we can turn our attention to illnesses like hayfever. The incidence of hayfever depends much more on the time of year than on the pollen in the air. More than anything else, what makes a man susceptible to catching hayfever is the fact that his astral body is not properly excreting; it is not properly executing its activity that is directed more to the external surface. As a result, when spring approaches and everything begins to thrive in water, a person makes his whole fluid organization more sensitive and thus susceptible to this illness by dissolving certain substances in it. By dissolving various substances in this fluid organization, the fluids in a man's body always become a little diluted. The fluid organization in a man who has a tendency toward hayfever is always somewhat too large. The fluids are being pushed aside in all directions by what is dissolved in them. That is how a person becomes sensitive to everything that makes its appearance in spring, especially to pollen, those particles from plants that are now particularly irritating. If the nose were not enclosed, hayfever could be induced by many other irritants. Pollen does enter the nose, however, and it cannot be well tolerated if one already has hayfever. Pollen does not cause hayfever but it aggravates it. Our hayfever remedy is based on drawing the extended fluid organization in the body together again so that it becomes a bit cloudy and once again secretes what it had initially dissolved. It is really quite simple and based on nothing more than contracting the fluid organism to its normal size. It first becomes a little cloudy, and you have to watch that what is secreted from the fluidity is not later retained in the body. That is why it is beneficial for a person to perspire somewhat after having been inoculated with the remedy; it is good if he can move about and do something that induces perspiration right after the inoculation. The inoculation is always somewhat problematic when given to a person who is suffering from constipation, and the patient should first be asked if he is constipated. Otherwise, if the fluid organization is contracted, things accumulate too much and are not eliminated right away. This, of course, is not good. A person who is constipated should be given a laxative along with the inoculation. Healing entails not only applying a medication but also adjusting life accordingly, so that the human body reacts in an appropriate manner to what has been given it. This naturally is of tremendous significance; otherwise, the person can be made even sicker. If you inoculate somebody with a remedy that is quite effective, even exceptionally good, but you do not see to it that the patient's digestion functions properly and that everything the remedy brings about is eliminated, you naturally drive him further into the illness. With truly effective remedies it is important that the doctor know not only what medicine cures what disease but also what questions to ask the patient. The greatest medical art lies in asking the right questions and in being familiar with the patient. This is extremely important. Yet it is strange, for example, that we meet doctors who frequently have not even asked the patient his age, though this is significant. While he may use the same remedies, a doctor can treat a fifty-year old in a manner completely different from the way he treats one who is forty, for example. They should not be so schematic as to say, “This medication is right for this illness.” For instance, it makes a great difference if you want to cure someone who is constantly afflicted with diarrhoea or someone who has chronic constipation. Such remedies could be tested, and here experiments with animals would be much less objectionable than they are in other areas. Regarding constipation or diarrhoea, you can easily learn how some remedy reacts in the general physical organism that men have in common with the animals by giving the same medicine to both a dog and a cat. The dog regularly suffers from constipation, and the cat from diarrhoea. You can acquire a wonderful knowledge by observing the degree of difference in the medication's effect in the dog or the cat. Scientific knowledge really is not attained by university training in how to do this or that with certain instruments. True science results, rather, when common sense is aroused a little; then people know how they must conduct their experiments. In sum, it is of prime importance to realize that an illness has its basis in the whole human organization. The individual organ becomes afflicted because the activity of the astral body directs substances to it that have been precipitated from within. The development of certain inner diseases like influenza, hayfever and even typhoid fever becomes comprehensible when we understand how substances improperly deposited in our bodies are dispersed in our fluid organism. We are hot only a “material man” but also a “water man,” and, as I have already explained to you, we are also an “air man,” whose form changes every moment. One moment the air is outside, and the next it is within. Just as the solid substances that we contain within our bodies as refuse dissolve in the water, so does that water itself constantly evaporate within us. Within the muscles of your little finger, for example, are minute evaporations of water. Water constantly evaporates throughout your whole body. Furthermore, what is evaporating in the fluid organism penetrates into what you inhale as oxygen, which is also a vapor or gas. When water on the ground evaporates, it rises up into the atmosphere, and when water constantly evaporates in delicate processes within the fluid man, it penetrates into the air that we inhale. We cannot tolerate solid substances being dispersed in the fluids, and neither can we tolerate fluids evaporating into the air organism. Take the case of a person whose lungs have become afflicted because something has occurred like the process that I have just described. This person can become afflicted with a lung disease, which can be cured if it arose from the wrong substances being deposited in the water man. But let us assume that the lung's affliction is not pronounced enough to become apparent. After all, the human organs are sensitive. The condition does not reach the point where the lungs become so strongly afflicted that they are inflamed, but they do become a little indisposed. The person can tolerate this slight indisposition, but substances now enter into his fluid organism that really should penetrate the lungs. In this case, the fluids within the lungs have the wrong kinds of substances dissolved in them; and these substances evaporate, especially if the lungs are not completely well. Thus, in the case of the quite obvious internal diseases, the water man receives something inappropriate from the solid substances, and in this case something inappropriate reaches the point of evaporation and mingles with the oxygen that is inhaled. The fact that water evaporates inappropriately and unites with oxygen damages the nervous system in particular, because the nerves require healthy oxygen, not oxygen that has evaporations in it from the contaminated fluid of the water man. Contaminated fluid evaporates into the lungs, and this fluid may be responsible for their slight indisposition. Something that should not evaporate does, and this is damaging to the nervous system. The person does not become radically ill, but he does become insane. It can be said that internal physical illnesses are based on something in man that causes improper substances to be dispersed in his fluid organism. But so-called mental illnesses are in reality not mental at all, because the mind or spirit does not become ill. Mental illnesses are based on body fluids evaporating improperly into oxygen and thereby disturbing the nervous system. This can happen when some organ is so slightly impaired or indisposed that it cannot be detected externally. You see, then, that man must continually process substances correctly so that nothing inappropriate disperses in his fluids and that his fluids in turn do not improperly evaporate. But even in everyday life there is a process that causes improper evaporation of water, and this becomes noticeable when we are thirsty. We cure the thirst by drinking; we free our water, so to speak, from what is inappropriately evaporating within it and wash away what is incorrect. So we can say that in hunger there is actually the tendency to physical illness, and in thirst there is the predisposition to mental illness. If a man does not properly nourish himself, he forms the basis for organic diseases, and if he does not quench his thirst rightly, he may bring about some form of mental illness. In some circumstances, the improper quenching of thirst is difficult to detect, especially if it occurs in infancy. At this stage one cannot clearly distinguish between assuaging thirst and hunger since both are satisfied by milk. Therefore, if through the mother's milk or that of a wet nurse something harmful comes into the organism, this can much later cause the fluid organism to evaporate incorrectly and thus lead to some mental disorder. Or let us say a person is wrongly inoculated. An ill-chosen inoculation with one or another cow lymph or diseased human lymph can afflict the organs that work upon the water, even though the water itself does not become directly diseased. As a result of an inappropriate inoculation, a person's evaporation processes may not function correctly, and later he may be disposed to some kind of mental illness. You will have noticed, gentlemen, that nowadays a great many people become afflicted with dementia praecox, so-called “youthful insanity,” which extends, however, quite far beyond the years of youth. This illness, in which people begin mentally to deteriorate in their youth, originates in great part from the wrong kind of feeding during the earliest years of childhood. It is not enough merely to examine chemically the baby's milk; one must look into completely different aspects. Because people have ceased to pay attention to feeding in our age, this illness arises with such vehemence. You will have realized from all this that it does not suffice simply to train doctors to know that a certain remedy is good for a certain illness. One must rather seek to make the totality of life healthier, and for that one must first discover all that is related to a healthy life. Anthroposophy can provide this understanding. It aims at being effective in the field of hygiene and seeks to comprehend correctly questions of health.

Health and Illness, Volume I

Why do We Become Sick? Influenza; Hayfever; Mental Illness

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA348/English/AP1981/19221227a01.html

Dornach

27 Dec 1922

GA348-9

Questions are raised concerning pregnancy and the possible effects of outer events during pregnancy. Dr. Steiner : Gentlemen, these are extremely important aspects of life. Generally, no significant influence can be exerted on the child during pregnancy except indirectly by way of the mother, since the child is connected with the mother, as I have said here already, by numerous delicate blood vessels. The unborn child receives everything it requires, including its nourishment, from its mother. Later, it acquires a completely different breathing process. We can best consider the matters that you have brought up if we deal further with the general basis of human states of illness and health. In pregnancy, it is even more difficult than in the case of common hunger and thirst to say where the inclination toward illness begins and where it ends. Other things also enter into pregnancy that prove beyond doubt that the mother's condition of soul has an extraordinary influence on the developing child. You only have to observe what happens, for example, if the mother, especially in the early months of pregnancy, is badly frightened. As a rule, the child will be affected for its whole life. Naturally, you cannot say that a physical change occurs in the child but only that the mother suffers a fright. How can a mother's fright affect the child? Modern science basically gives the most inadequate answers here, because it really knows nothing, or claims to know nothing, of what influences the human soul and spirit. We can best approach these difficult questions — and they are indeed complicated — if we focus on two phenomena of life that man experiences primarily in illness, that is, fever and shock. These are two opposite conditions that man undergoes, fever and shock. What is fever? You know that man's normal body temperature is 98.6°. If it rises any higher, we say that he has a fever. The fever is visible outwardly through a person becoming hotter. What is shock? Shock is actually the opposite condition. Shock occurs when a person is incapable of developing sufficient warmth within. If you take an overdose of a poison such as henbane ( Hyoscyamwus niger ), for example, which is also used as a remedy, you risk the danger of going into shock. The reaction is that, through the shock, all the membranes in the abdomen of the mother, where the child must also be developing — therefore, the membranes of the intestines but also those of the organ in which the child rests during pregnancy, the so-called uterus, the womb, in other words, all the membranes through which a substance is introduced into the body — become slack. It is as if a sack were stretched too far, becoming worn out and unable to hold anything any longer. With the introduction of henbane, undigested food backs up, and the proper functioning of the abdomen, which I described recently, is disrupted. A large amount of food accumulates in a man's abdomen that he cannot assimilate. In order to understand what is at work here, we must take a closer look at the human organism. What actually happens when the abdomen does not work properly? Although it is the abdomen that isn't working properly, you will find that something is actually wrong with the front portion of the brain. A very interesting relationship! Consider the human being — the abdomen, the chest, the diaphragm, which is about here (Rudolf Steiner sketched on the blackboard). There we have abdomen, chest, and head. If something is out of order in the abdomen, then something is not functioning properly also in the front part of the brain. The two therefore belong together. In the human being they belong inwardly together, the forebrain and abdomen. We can also say that the heart with its arteries, as I have described them to you, is connected with the midbrain. Finally, the chest with the lungs and the breathing process is related to the back portion of the brain. Every time something is amiss with the breathing, something is also wrong in the back part of the brain. Whenever a person has difficulty breathing and doesn't receive enough oxygen, one can observe that something is wrong with the back of the brain. When a person suffers from disorders of the heart, especially if the rhythm of the heart's activity is disrupted so that the pulse is irregular, then something is wrong in the midbrain. In a disorder of the abdomen, one always finds some irregularity in the forebrain. Everything is remarkably related in the human being. You see, people often don't want to believe these things, because in the formation of the forehead they see the noblest aspect of the human being and the less noble in the abdomen. And if one speaks the truth about these things, such people find it unworthy of man. You will have realized from my lectures, however, that the digestive system is in turn related to the limb system in such a way that it represents a most significant aspect of the human being. Once I knew a man who had quite an unusual forehead. A Greek forehead is different (sketching). In Greek statues we find foreheads that slope backward. This man actually had a pronounced bulge, and his forebrain was actually pushed out. I am convinced that this man, whose brain was pushed forward so much, possessed a particularly well-formed abdomen and never suffered from diarrhea or constipation, for example; he never suffered from stomach aches and the like. The man in question was, in fact, a person of unusual sensitivity, but this sensitivity depended on his always feeling inwardly comfortable. This indicates that his powerful, protruding forehead never permitted disorders of the abdomen. You can see from this that a man's forehead is related in a remarkable way to his abdomen. If I give someone too large a dose of henbane, he goes into shock. What causes this shock? Something goes wrong with the forebrain, because everything possible collects in his abdomen. Oddly, however, when a person complains of a stomach ache, caused perhaps by mild constipation, I can give him henbane in highly diluted form, and he will become healthy. He gets a slight fever and becomes well. Here you see a strange fact. If I give too much henbane to a perfectly healthy person, he goes into shock. He will suffer severe abdominal distress, his head will feel cold, his abdomen will swell, the intestines will slacken, and the abdominal functions will cease. What do you see from this? You see that I have introduced too much henbane into the stomach. The stomach should react with vastly increased digestive activity, because henbane is extremely difficult to digest. Being poisonous simply means that a substance is difficult to digest. The stomach therefore must become furiously active. The brain is not strong enough, the front part of the brain. These things thus are related in the human body. The brain is not strong enough to stimulate the stomach sufficiently; the brain becomes cold and the person goes into shock. What happens now if I give a person a minute, diluted dose of henbane? In this case, the stomach has less to do, and the brain is strong enough to regulate this minor task. Through introducing a minute amount of henbane, which the brain can manage, I have stimulated the brain into working harder than before. If the brain can overcome it, it is like asking a person to do a job that he can manage; then, he does it well. If I ask him to do a job in one day that actually requires ten, he would be ruined. This is the case with the brain. It contains, as it were, the workman in charge of the abdomen. If I ask too little of the brain, the workman remains lazy; if he is stimulated through his activity, he does well; if I ask too much of the abdomen, however, he refuses to participate and the person goes into shock. What is the cause of fever? Fever is actually the result of an over-activity of the brain, which penetrates the entire human being. Assume that a person suffers from a disorder in some organ, say the liver or the kidneys, or especially the lungs, in the way I discussed with you recently. The brain begins to rebel against it. If the lungs no longer function correctly, the back portion of the brain rebels and stimulates the front part into rebelling against this lung disease, and hence fever occurs. This shows that man becomes warmer from his head downward and colder from below upward. This is very interesting. The human being actually is warmed downward from above. With fever we are concerned with our head. If there is an inflammation in the big toe, we produce the ensuing fever with the head. It is interesting that what lies farthest down is regulated by the foremost parts of the brain. Just as in the case of the dog, whose tail is regulated by his nose, so it is with the human being. If he struggles with a fever in his big toe, the activity that begets this fever lies entirely in the front of his brain. It is no slight to his dignity that, if man has an infection in his big toe, the fever originates entirely from the front, from a point above his nose. The human being thus always becomes warmer from above and colder from below. This is related to why shock can be induced if excessively large doses of certain substances are administered to the human being but why a healing rise in temperature can be produced if we do not overtax the brain but stimulate its activity only with small doses. The activity of the brain, however, is stimulated all day not only by substances that we introduce into the brain; what we see and hear also stimulate it constantly. Also, when you eat, you not only fill your stomachs, but you taste your food as well. Taste is stimulated, as is the sense of smell, all of which stimulates the brain. Consider a woman who is pregnant. The child is in the first period of the pregnancy, which entails a tremendous increase in the mother's abdominal activity. Except during pregnancy, such activity in the abdomen is never necessary; in men, it doesn't occur at all. The abdominal activity thus is increased in an unprecedented way. When abdominal activity is increased, the sensory nerves above all are stimulated, because the abdomen and the forebrain belong together. What does it mean when a person is hungry? I have explained to you that here a certain activity that really should be continuous cannot be performed. When hungry, a person craves food, which means that at the same time he longs for the stimulation of his taste buds. He can alleviate this by eating. When a woman is pregnant, however, and must provide in her abdomen something for the growing child, much is stimulated also in the brain, particularly in the sensory nerves, the nerves of taste and smell. Eating does not satisfy these nerves of taste and smell, because the food doesn't go directly to the child but to the stomach. An excess of activity is required. The abdomen must work overtime in a certain way, and so the need arises in the head for beyond-normal smells and tastes. The best care for the unborn child naturally requires an understanding of these matters. Pregnant women thus often are not at all satisfied when they obtain what they momentarily crave; as soon as they have it, they crave another taste. Being also extremely moody, their taste is subject to abrupt change. One can appease them, however, by being kind to them and paying heed to what, in one's own opinion, is only a figment of their imagination. In the early months of pregnancy, women live in fantasies of tastes and smells. If you simply say to a pregnant woman, it is just your imagination, it is a real emotional slap to her. What is developing in her quite naturally due to the connection between the brain or head and the abdomen is repulsed. But if one cheers her up by being attentive, neither denying her wishes nor taking them literally, it is much easier to satisfy her. If, for example, one buys her something with vanilla flavor the second she craves it, by the time it is brought to her it may no longer be the right thing; she might say, “Yes, but now I want sauerkraut!” It is well that it should be so! You must realize that if something so extraordinary is to take place in her abdomen it is because the child's development must demand it, and the pregnant woman must therefore receive special consideration. Indeed, this shows us a lot more. It shows us that a powerful influence is exerted on the child by the environment of soul and spirit in which the mother lives. With some insight, the following can be understood. There are children who are born with “water on the brain,” that is, with hydrocephalus. In most cases this can be traced back to the fact that the mother, who perhaps rightly sought stimulation in life, was bored stiff during the first months of pregnancy, particularly the first few weeks. Perhaps her husband frequently went out alone to the local pub and she, being left at home, was extremely bored. The result was that she lacked the energy required to influence the brain cells. Boredom makes her head empty; the empty head, in turn, imparts emptiness to the abdomen. It does not develop sufficient strength to hold the forces of the child's head together properly. The head swells up, becoming hydrocephalous. Other children are born with abnormally small heads, particularly the upper portion of the head, that is, with acrocephaly. Most of these cases are connected with the fact that during the first weeks of pregnancy the mother engaged in too much diversion and amused herself excessively. If such matters are observed properly, a relationship can always be noted between the child's development and the mother's mood of soul during the early weeks of pregnancy. Naturally, much is accomplished with medicine, but regarding these questions we have as yet no real medicine today but only a kind of quackery, because the many relationships are not correctly discerned by a merely materialistic science. These relationships require individual observation in most instances, and during the embryonic life of the human being, and therefore during pregnancy, they can be observed particularly well. Consider the significantly increased abdominal activity during pregnancy; the abdomen must be terribly active. This, in turn, calls for the strongest possible activity of the forebrain. It is not surprising, therefore, that some mothers actually become a little crazy during the first stage of pregnancy. They become a little crazy, because the abdomen and the forebrain, which actually thinks, are closely related. One arrives at very remarkable and interesting results if one looks for the relationships between the abdomen and what humanity accomplishes spiritually. It is curious and funny that spiritual science must call attention to these matters, whereas materialistic science completely fails in this area. It would be extraordinarily interesting, for example, to consider the following. You see, there were a great many philosophers in England — Hobbes, Bacon, Locke, Hume. These philosophers, even including John Stuart Mill, led essentially to the great rise of materialism. These philosophers all had such heavy thoughts that they could not penetrate the spiritual with their thoughts. They clung to matter with their thoughts. It would be extraordinarily interesting to examine the digestions of all these philosophers, these many philosophers. I am convinced they all suffered from constipation! Starting with Hobbes in the seventeenth century, and proceeding all the way into the nineteenth, this whole philosophy that brought us materialism was actually caused by the constipation of individual philosophers! This materialism could have been prevented — what I say now is not in earnest, I only wish to make a joke! — if one had given Hobbes, Bacon, Locke, and the others regular laxatives in their youth. Then all this materialism most likely would not have arisen. It is indeed odd, you see, that something that people frequently call materialistic must be pointed out by spiritual science. But the reason for this is that when the human being is really observed, the spirit is revealed where others see only matter. Anthroposophy does not assume that the abdomen is only a chemical factory. I once told you that the liver is a wondrous organ, that the kidney with its functions is also a marvelous organ. Only by comprehending these organs will one find the spirit everywhere. If you stop finding the spirit in some area, if you think that digestion is a process that is too materialistic to be studied in a spiritual way, you then become a materialist. Indeed, materialism came into being through spiritual arrogance. I have told you this before, though it sounds remarkable: when the ancient Jews of the Old Testament had bad thoughts during the night, they did not blame the bad, unhealthy thoughts on their heads but on their kidneys. When they said, “This night God has affected my kidneys,” they were more correct than today's medicine. The ancient Jews also said that God reveals Himself to man not through man's head but directly through the activity of his kidneys and generally through his abdominal activity. Considering this viewpoint, it is most interesting, though I don't know if you gentlemen have seen it, to watch an Orthodox Jew pray. When a devout Orthodox Jew prays, he does not take his phylactery out of a pocket that he wears over his heart or that hangs over his head. He wears his phylactery over his abdomen and prays with it in this position. People today naturally no longer know what the relationship is here, but those who long ago gave the ancient Jews their commandments were aware of the relationship. In western regions of Europe, people don't have much opportunity anymore to see this, but in eastern European regions it makes quite a special impression to observe how the old Jews pray. When they prepare for prayer, they take the phylactery out of the slit in their trousers; it then hangs around them and they pray. This knowledge that humanity once possessed by means of various dreamlike, ancient clairvoyant forces has been lost, and humanity today is not advanced enough to rediscover the spirit in all matter. You can comprehend nothing if you simply take your ordinary thoughts into a laboratory and mechanically execute experiments, and so on. You are not thinking at all while doing this. You must experiment in such a way that something of the spirit emerges everywhere; for that to happen, your experiments must be arranged accordingly. And so one can say that it is funny that anthroposophy, the science of the spirit, has to point out how the human brain, the so-called noblest part, is connected with the lower abdomen, but it is simply so. Only a true science leads to these facts. Similarly, any number of things can cause a disorder of the heart, for example. It can come through an internal irregularity, but in most cases an irregular activity of the heart can be traced to some disorder in the midbrain, where the feelings are particularly based (see sketch, Diagram 1). It is interesting to discover that just as the abdomen is related to the forebrain, so this forebrain is related, from the viewpoint of the soul, to the will, and the midbrain is related to feeling. Actually, only the back part of the brain is related to thinking. If we look into the brain, we see that the hindbrain is related to breathing and to thinking. Breathing has, in fact, a pronounced relationship to thinking. Picture the following case. A person lacking the benefits of Waldorf education, in which these things are frequently discussed, develops in his youth in such a way that he turns out to be a scoundrel. His feelings are confused, causing him to be malicious. What does this mean? It means that the soul does not work correctly in the midbrain. If the soul is not properly nourished, the heart's rhythm becomes irregular. You can cause an irregular rhythm of the heart and all sorts of diseases of the heart by developing into an ill-tempered person. Naturally, if a woman in early pregnancy goes into a forest, let us say, and has the misfortune of discovering a person who has hanged himself from a tree and is already dead — if he is still twitching, it's even worse — she sustains a terrible shock. It becomes an image in her, and probably, unless other measures can be taken — usually by life itself, not by artificially induced means — she will give birth to a child who is pale, with a pointed chin and skinny limbs, and who is unable to move around properly. With a pregnant woman, just one such frightening sight suffices to affect the unborn child. In later life, when one is eighteen, nineteen, or twenty years old, to be a scoundrel only once won't hurt; one must become a habitual scoundrel, and that takes longer. With a pregnant woman, however, a single incident is enough. The results of such experiments can reach much further. Imagine a young mother-to-be who is busy with her work. She hasn't been told that army maneuvers are being held nearby. Cannons begin to thunder, and her ears are given a frightful shock. Since hearing is strongly connected with the hindbrain as well as with the breathing, such a fright can cause a disorder of the breathing system of her developing child. You might ask, “What is he saying? Why, he wants us to pay attention to every little detail in life!” Yes, gentlemen, if a healthy educational system and healthy social conditions existed, you wouldn't have to think at all about many of these things, since they would develop by force of habit like other routine matters. I don't believe that there are many men who, when they habitually beat their wives in the middle of every month, give it too much thought. They do it out of habit. There are such husbands. Why do they beat their wives? Because they have run out of money, they cannot go down to the local pub, so they amuse themselves at home by abusing their wives. These are habits that are formed. Well, gentlemen, if we had a sound educational system for everybody, we would acquire different habits. Were it known, for example, that army maneuvers would be held one morning and that there would be explosions, it should as a matter of course be called to the attention of any pregnant woman in the area. Something like this can become a habit. Sound education and socially acceptable conditions can give rise to a number of habits that need not be thought about any longer but simply carried out. This is something toward which we must work. Essentially, however, this can be accomplished only through proper education. This is why the science of the spirit in particular will be in a position to explain the material world correctly. Materialism only looks at the material realm but is ignorant of all that lives in the material. It observes fever but does not know that fever is called forth by tremendously expanded brain activity. Materialism is always greatly astonished by shock but does not rightly recognize that shock comes from a drop of body temperature, because the proper “internal combustion” [ Verbrennung ] can no longer continue. Thus we can say that the way the head of a pregnant woman is stimulated is strongly connected with the child's development. People pay no heed to what is contained in spiritual culture. A sound education will also gradually permeate everything we read and are told. Someday, for example, when people pay attention to what anthroposophy says, novels will perhaps be published for pregnant women. When pregnant women read them, they will receive impressions of ideal human beings. As a result, beautiful babies will be born who will grow to be strong, fine-looking human beings. What a woman does with her head during pregnancy becomes the source of the activity taking place in her abdomen. She shapes and forms the child with what she imagines, feels, and wills. Here, spiritual science becomes tangible to the point where one can no longer say that the spirit has no influence on the human being. For the rest of his life, unless education sets it right later on, a person is under the influence of what his mother did during the first months of pregnancy. The later months are not as particularly important, because man has already been shaped, and definite forms have become fixed, but the first months are of particular importance and are full of significance. When one sees the physical origin of the human being in the womb, something reveals itself that in every respect points to spiritual science. If one thinks reasonably, one can say to oneself that the warmth streaming down from above and the cold streaming up from below must always meet in the right way in the abdomen. One must care for the abdomen in the right way. This is something that must be seen, so that what comes from above can meet what comes from below in the right way. When we are clear that a person is so strongly influenced by his mother's experiences of soul and spirit that he can end up with a large or a small head, a ruined heart or breathing system, then we see that a person is, in fact, completely influenced by soul-spiritual considerations. It can also happen that a mother-to-be, in the first or second months of pregnancy, could run into somebody with an unusually crooked nose, the likes of which she has never seen before. Unless some corrective measure is taken, in most cases the child will receive a crooked nose. You will even be able to see that in most cases if the woman was startled by the sight of a person whose nose was twisted to the right, the child will be born with a nose twisted to the left. Just as a man's right hand is connected with the left speech center in the brain, just as everything is reversed in the human being, so the twist of the nose is also reversed. We can conclude that if someone has a crooked nose, he most likely has it because his mother was frightened by someone with a crooked nose. A person has many other features. Materialistic science, when it doesn't know something's origin, always talks of heredity. If one has a crooked nose — well, that's inherited; the red skin tone of another — that's inherited, too. Things are not like this, however. They arise from causes such as I have related. The concept of heredity is one of the most ambiguous held by modern science. If you look at a person and see a twisted nose or a birthmark, this does not necessarily indicate that the mother saw the same birthmark. She might have seen something else that caused the child's blood to flow in the wrong direction. These are all deviations from the normal human form, but there is indeed a normal human form. One cannot say simply that deviations from the normal human form do not come from bodily but from spiritual experiences while still maintaining that the entire human being comes merely from the belly of the mother, from that which is within the material realm! If one wishes to explain deviations spiritually, one must explain the entire human being spiritually. Naturally, the mother no more than the father can produce a human being spiritually. To do so would require the production of something impossible, that is, the art of being human, which is infinite. We are led to understand, therefore, that man already exists prior to birth as a spiritual being, and as soul he united with what is made available to him corporeally. Only regarding abnormal features can the embryo be influenced spiritually. It is much more remarkable, however, that I have a nose in the middle of my face or that I have two eyes! If I am born with a crooked nose, that is an abnormal feature, but recall the nose in the middle of the face with its marvelous normal form, which I recently explained to you, and the eye — what a wonder-filled thing! All this does not grow out of the mother's womb; it is something that already exists in the soul realm before the human being arises in the womb. Here, correctly understood, natural science points to what human life is like in the spiritual world before conception. Today's materialists will naturally say that this is fantasy. Why do they say this? All the ancient people who, in primordial human times, still possessed certain dreamlike perceptions, which we no longer have, knew that man exists before he appears on earth. Throughout the Middle Ages, however, it was forbidden by decree of the Church to think of so-called pre-existence, which means pre-earthly existence; the Church forbade it. When a materialist agitates today, the rostrum is only the continuation of the medieval pulpit, and though he no longer speaks the language of those preachers, using instead the words of an agitator, he only says what medieval sermons stated long ago. Materialism has simply taken over the medieval preachings, and, though they are not aware of. it, today's materialists basically elaborate on what the Church taught. Materialism stems basically from the Church of the Middle Ages. Then, no soul was permitted to have existed before its earthly life. The intention was to teach people that God creates the soul when conception takes place. If a couple were in the mood to let conception occur — we know that in many instances this can be a mood of the moment — the Good Lord had to move quickly and create a soul for them! This is what the Church edict really implied and what one was supposed to believe. It is not a sensible viewpoint, however, to make God the servant of the moods of human beings, so that he must hurriedly produce a soul when they happen to be in a mood to let conception take place. If you give this some thought, you discover what is actually contained in the materialistic viewpoint, which undermines human dignity. A real and true knowledge of the human being leads us instead to the realization that the soul is already there, has always lived. It descends to what is offered it through the human seed and its fertilization. Anthroposophy has not, therefore, arrived back at the spirit because of some arbitrary fantasy but simply because it must, because it takes scientific knowledge seriously, which the others do not. People study natural science, which would lead to the spirit, but they are too lazy to come through natural science to the spirit on their own. That would require a little effort on the part of their heads. Instead, they allow some old teachers to deprive them of the spirit, and yet they still manage to be religious! Then they are dishonest, however; it is like keeping two sets of books. A person who is consistent in his reckoning must ascend from nature to spirit, and matters such as those we have discussed today, for example, will lead us there.

Health and Illness, Volume II

Fever Versus Shock

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA348/English/AP1983/19221230a01.html

Dornach

30 Dec 1922

GA348-10

This was the first lecture given to the workmen after the burning of the Goetheanum. As a demonstration of their sympathy, all present stood when Rudolf Steiner entered. Dr. Steiner : It is difficult to put into words the sorrow I feel. I know of your deep sympathy, so let me be brief. May I take this opportunity to call attention to the fact that as early as January 23, 1921, here in this hall, I read from a brochure a statement made by an opponent, indeed, one can already say an enemy, that went like this: There are plenty of spiritual sparks of fire that strike like lightning against the wooden mouse trap. It will require quite a bit of cleverness on Steiner's part to work in a conciliatory manner so as to prevent a real spark of fire from bringing the Dornach grandeur to an inglorious end some day. You see, with such inflammatory talk it is not surprising when something like the fire occurs, and in view of such vehement hostility it was something that could easily be feared. You can understand why it was easy to fear. It is true, however, that even now one can see what certain groups think about the matter. We need only consider the antagonism contained in the poor taste of newspapers, which now, after the Goetheanum has been destroyed, ask, “Didn't that `clairvoyant' Steiner foresee this fire?” That such attitudes are also evidence of a great stupidity is something I don't wish to talk about now. It points to a malicious degree of hostility, however, that some people find it at all necessary to publish such statements! One learns from this what people think and how crude things are today. It is indeed crude! You can be sure, however, that I will never let anything divert me from my path, come what may. As long as I live, I shall represent my cause and will continue in the same way as I have done up to now. Also, I naturally hope that there will be no interruption here in any area, so that in the future we can work together here at this location in the same way as we have before; at least, that is my intention. Come what may, my thought is that the building will have to be reconstructed in some form; to be sure, no effort will be spared toward that end. We must therefore go on in the same way as before; this is simply an inner commitment. Today, I wish to make use of our time by saying a few things to you that relate to the subject we discussed a little before this sad event. I tried to show you that a true science must work toward recognizing again the soul-spiritual aspects of the human being. I don't believe you have any idea of how emotionally charged is the reaction that this matter calls forth today within scientific circles. These scientific circles, as they call themselves today, which are taken to be something special by the layman, are the very ones that stand ready to make common cause with all existing hostile forces when it is a matter of proceeding against the anthroposophical movement. You must see that the hatred against the anthroposophical movement is by no means a slight matter. During the days when the tragedy took place, a report reached me, for example, of the formation of an association that calls itself “The Association of Non-Anthroposophical Experts on Anthroposophy.” They are people who naturally have nothing to do with the accident here but who are part of the whole opposition. The report concludes with the words, “This calls for a life-or-death struggle. The side that has the Holy Spirit will gain victory.” It is obvious from the idiotic things said by these people, who want a life-or-death struggle, that the spirit — leaving the Holy Spirit completely aside — is not with these people. That is evident at once from the minutes of their meeting. Nevertheless, the spirit of hatred that exists is expressed in the sentence, “This calls for a life-or-death struggle.” People do wage this struggle, and the number of opponents is indeed not small. So-called scientific groups participate in these affairs today and in a most intensive way at that. You see, I must continue to stress this, because the authority of science is so strong today. In order to know something, one turns to a so-called scientific expert, because this is the way things are arranged. Laymen don't know the means by which such persons become “experts” and that one can be the greatest idiot and yet be an “expert” with certifications, etc. These matters must be fully comprehended, and it is therefore important to get to the bottom of things and understand what really lies at their foundation. The very first sentences taught little children in school today — not directly, but indirectly — are mostly rubbish! Things that are considered self-evident today are in fact rubbish. One is attacked from all sides today if one says, it is nonsense that the brain thinks, for it is agreed everywhere that the brain thinks and that where there is no brain, there can be no thinking, that there are no thoughts where no brain exists. Well, from my lectures you will have seen that the brain naturally plays its part in, and has a significance for, thinking. But if those people, who in fact make little use of their brains, claim that the brain is a sort of machine with which one thinks, then this is mere thoughtlessness. It is not surprising when a simple, uneducated person believes this, because he is not in possession of all the facts and so he adheres to the voice of the authority. No logic and real thinking, however, are contained in the statement that the brain thinks, and today I shall give you a number of examples to prove it. If you look at a small beetle, you can easily see that it has a small head. If you dissect the head of such a beetle — the burying beetle, for instance — you discover nothing like a brain, which is supposed to be the thinking apparatus. Naturally, the tiny beetle has no brain in this sense but only a little lump, a lump of nerves, you could say. It does not have even the beginnings of a complete brain. Now, I will relate a scene to you as an example, but before I give you this example I must tell you that these burying beetles always follow the lifelong habit of laying their eggs, and maggots hatch from them that only later change into beetles. As soon as they have emerged from the eggs, these tiny maggots require meat for their nourishment. They could not live without it. So, what does the burying beetle do? It searches in the field for a dead mouse or a dead bird or a mole, and having discovered one — a dead mouse, for example — it runs home again, only to return not alone but with a number of other beetles. These beetles that it has returned with run all around the mouse. Picture the mouse here (sketching); the beetle has discovered it; it runs off and then returns with a number of other burying-beetles. You see them run all around it. Occasionally, you notice that they all run away. At other times, you will see the beetles arrive, run around the dead mouse, and then start digging. First, they dig the ground under the mouse and then all around it. The mouse gradually sinks deeper and deeper into the earth as they continue digging. They dig until the mouse finally falls into the ground. They then fetch the females, who lay their eggs in it. Finally, they cover the hole completely so that passersby wouldn't notice it. I mentioned earlier that sometimes you can observe the beetles leave without returning. When you look into this, you find that the ground is too hard to dig. The beetles seem to have realized that here they could do nothing. Whenever they stay and begin digging, the ground is soft. It is unbelievably strange but true that only ten or twelve beetles return with the one that makes the discovery, never forty or fifty. Only as many beetles return as are required to do the work. The first beetle doesn't bring more helpers than it needs, nor does it bring fewer. It arrives with just the right number to do the job. This sounds unbelievable, but what I am telling you is not a fairy tale. People have been able to demonstrate this phenomenon with all kinds of experiments. It's absolutely true. The person who first described the activity of these beetles wasn't a superstitious person but one who had sound judgment. He was a friend of the botanist, Gleditsch, and was a scientist in the first half of the nineteenth century, an age when science was still on a sounder basis. He was involved in experimental work and once used toads in his experiments. These tests were intended for something completely different — you know that electricity was first discovered through work on a frog's thigh — and he needed to dry a dead toad. What did this natural scientist do? He took it outside and pinned the dead toad to a small piece of wood to let the sun dry it quickly. After a while he returned to check it and found a number of beetles around it hard at work. He decided to leave the dead toad alone and watch what these fellows, the beetles, were up to. What did they do? They continued digging until the wood fell and the toad had a place in the ground, in the hole; then the females were allowed to lay their eggs in it. That done, the beetles covered the toad and the wood it was pinned to with earth. Now, if a human being were to do that, one would think he also buried the stick in order to hide every trace. So you see, the burying beetles do exactly what a clever human being would do; indeed, I am convinced that a number of stupid people wouldn't do any — where near as well. You see, therefore, that what is called cleverness, intelligence, is present without the beetles possessing it. One might call this nonsense and say that it need not be looked upon as intelligence, that it is stupid to say it is intelligence since it is simply instinct. Of course, I consider it stupid for a person to use the word “instinct” in this case, thus getting on the wrong track. One needs a word, however, and “instinct” is used for everything, so that one need not think at all. I must learn to know the issue itself — it is all the same what I call it — I must learn to know the issue. Still, one might object by saying, “All right, but what he has told, us is still nonsense. The beetles are born with this ability; they pass it on genetically; one need not think of intelligence here. It is inherent in their physical nature, and there is no need to think that these beetles possess intelligence.” Now I shall tell you another story that was told by a person of incontestable authority, a story that has also been reported by others but above all by Darwin, an incontestable source; after all, people swear by Darwin, don't they? He observed this activity in wasps, not beetles. Wasps have brains that are no larger than those of beetles. Their larvae also require meat as soon as they hatch. Now, these wasps are weaker than beetles, even when they band together, so they cannot handle moles or dead toads but prefer smaller creatures that they can handle without help. This is why such wasps gather little animals like flies and such for their young. Darwin, who is considered to be the greatest natural scientist of the nineteenth century, observed a wasp who needed such an animal, a female wasp, heavy with eggs, looking for an insect into which to lay them. Finding a fly, a dead fly, on the ground, she tried to fly away with it, but it was too difficult for her. What did the wasp do? It bit off the fly's head and hind quarters and flew off with the breast and wings, which it could manage. Without the head and hind quarters of the fly, the wasp could now fly. Now — as I said, Darwin watched all this — a strong breeze was blowing and the wasp could not fly forward because the fly's wings caught the wind. The two wings caught the wind, and it could not fly forward. Again, what did the wasp do, laden with the fly? It landed on the ground, bit off the two wings, and flew away with the fly's breast without the wings. In this case it is impossible to say that this is anything else but deliberate, since the wasp, after all, accommodated itself to the wind. This cannot be inherent in the wasp, to bite off the wings. It must be what is called intelligence that motivates the insect. The wasp tells itself that if the wings are discarded, the wind won't catch in them. It is impossible for this to be inherited; what exists there is what one calls deliberation; consequently, one must admit that intelligence is really at work here. Here intelligence is at work. Now you can see how scientists proceeded in the nineteenth century. I purposely mentioned to you Darwin, who observed this. What was his conclusion, however? Darwin said that everything that confronts us in animals is produced only through heredity and through natural selection, and so forth. In order to set up theories, people simply suppress what they themselves know. This is the essential point, that people suppress what they know to set up convenient theories. Such theories are by no means scientific and only throw sand in the eyes of the public. Darwin was certainly a great man, and nobody has acknowledged his positive accomplishments in a more kindly way than I. I have written everything possible in Darwin's favor, but, oddly enough, we must realize that even those who have made significant contributions have suffered from the malady of having no eyes for facts. In spite of the great scientific triumphs made in the external world, it is characteristic of scientists of the nineteenth century that people completely lost their sense for facts, and the facts were simply suppressed. Now, let's go further. Let's consider other insects. In these matters one must study insects, because they can illuminate our subject particularly well; we can be quite sure that in their case they do not owe their intelligence to having a large brain, because this they certainly don't have. Therefore, one must study insects in this matter. Indeed, not only are they able to illuminate the things I have just described but many others as well. Insects lay their eggs, and a mature insect never emerges from them but only little worms. With butterflies, which are insects, it is even more complicated. First, a little worm appears, a caterpillar; it pupates, and finally from the chrysalis emerges the butterfly. This is certainly quite a transformation, but this transformation actually occurs with all insects. You see, there are some insects that, when they are fully mature, feed only on plants. I am not agitating for vegetarianism, as you know, gentlemen, but these insects are vegetarians. They eat only plants. The strange thing is that their larvae, the maggots, require meat when they hatch. These insects therefore have a great peculiarity, that they are born with a completely different food preference from that which they later acquire. They convert to plant food only when they are fully developed insects. When they are still little children and look completely different — like maggots or worms — they feed on meat. What do these mature insects do? They seek out other insects, mostly caterpillars, and lay their eggs on their backs. They themselves no longer have an appetite for meat, but they know that maggots requiring meat will hatch from their eggs. Therefore, they lay their eggs in the body of such a caterpillar or some such animal. Though one can marvel at this cleverness, there is much more. One can even say that these newly hatched maggots are already clever. Consider that some maggot species depend on living flesh for food. When it is time to lay the eggs, this insect, which has a stinger, punctures another living insect that is larger and lays many eggs within it. Sometimes numerous eggs are thus deposited, filling the caterpillar's body, and from which the maggots hatch. The maggots are then within the body of this other insect. These eggs are only deposited in live insects, because if the animal in which the eggs are laid were to die, the eggs would be lost, since the maggots can only survive on living flesh. Consider, therefore, that if a maggot were to destroy a vital organ in the host insect, thus causing its death, all the other maggots hatching from the eggs would perish. These little creatures are so clever, however, that nothing is ever eaten in the living caterpillar except those parts not needed for its survival. All vital organs are spared, and the caterpillar stays alive. Regardless of how many eggs are deposited, only so much is consumed as to ensure the host insect's life. You see, these things are known but are simply suppressed. People know it but suppress it, and it isn't well received, naturally, when one points them out, because this not only shows up the incapability but the downright dishonesty of official science. In the case of animals and insects you can see that it is possible to say that they certainly do not possess intelligence, because they have no apparatus for intelligence, that is, brains. Nevertheless, intelligence is working in what they do, and it must be admitted that intelligence is there. The animals do not deliberate; deliberation would require a brain; animals don't deliberate, but what takes place in their activities is intelligent. Indeed, it happens that animals even have something similar to memory. They have no recollection but something akin to it. You can observe this, for instance, if you are a bee keeper. Here stands a beehive. The bees hatch. For the sake of an experiment, you move the hive to a nearby spot. The bees return to the first location; naturally, this is “instinct,” and there is no need to be surprised about it; they fly in the direction from which they flew away. Now, however, they begin to look everywhere for the hive and fly around seeking it. They arrive at the new location but do not enter the hive immediately. Instead, they swarm around it for a long time, and one can definitely conclude that they are examining it to see if it is their own! The burying beetle does the same when it examines the ground to see if it is hard or soft. While bees have no recollection, the above incident shows that they nevertheless possess something similar to memory; namely, they must determine whether it is the same beehive. We do this with our memory; bees do it with something similar. You see, what works as intelligence through the human head is at work everywhere. Intelligence is at work everywhere; even in insects there is marvelous intelligence. Picture the wonderful intelligence at work when the larvae that hatch inside the caterpillar's body do not feed immediately on its stomach. If they did, all the maggots would perish. Compared with the tactics employed by humans during war, the intelligence ruling the insect arouses respect and exposes the foolishness of human beings. In this regard, human beings have no reason to claim sole possession of intelligence. I'll tell you something else now. You are all familiar with paper. You all know that the paper we have today was invented no earlier than four or five hundred years ago. Before this, parchment and all sorts of materials were used for writing. Civilized man discovered so-called rag paper just four or five centuries ago. Before this, man wrote on leather and so on. How was paper discovered? One had to discover how to mix together certain substances in a specific way. Perhaps one of you has been in a paper factory. At first, the paper is liquid; it is then solidified, etc. It is produced in a purely artificial way through various chemical and mechanical means. Perhaps you've not only seen paper but also now and then a wasps' nest. A wasps' nest is built like this (sketching). It is attached to something and formed so the wasps can fly into it. It is grey, not white — but paper can be grey, too — and this wasps' nest is real paper. If one asks, what is a wasps' nest made of chemically, chemically it is identical with paper. It is real paper. Wasps, however, have been building their nests for thousands and thousands of years, not just four or five hundred. You can see, therefore, that wasps manufactured paper much earlier than humans. That's simply a fact: the wasps' nest is made of paper. If, thousands of years ago, people had been clever enough to examine the substance of a wasps' nest, they would have discovered paper then. Chemistry was not that advanced, however; neither was writing, through which some things have also come about that do not exactly serve man. In any case, the wasp has made paper for an immeasurably longer time than the human being has. Naturally, I could go on, not for hours but for days, to speak of how intelligence pervades everything and is found everywhere. Man simply gathers this intelligence that is spread out in the world and puts it to use. Owing to his well-developed brain, he can put to his own use what permeates the world. Thanks to his brain, he can utilize the intelligence contained in all things for his own benefit. Our brain is not given us for the purpose of producing intelligence. It is sheer nonsense to believe that we produce intelligence. It is as stupid as saying, “I went to the pond with a water pitcher to fetch water. Look, it contains water now; a minute ago there was none; the water, therefore, materialized from the walls of the pitcher!” Everybody will say that is nonsense. The water came from the pond; it was not produced by the pitcher. The experts, however, point to the brain, which simply collects intelligence because it is present in everything, like the water, and claim that intelligence emerges from within it. It is as foolish as saying that water is produced by the pitcher. After all, intelligence is even present where there is no brain, just as the pond does not depend on the water pitcher. Intelligence exists everywhere, and man can take hold of it. Just as the water from the pitcher can be put to use, so man can make use of his brain when he gathers the intelligence that is present everywhere in the world. To this day, however, he is not making use of it in a particularly outstanding manner. You can see that it is a matter of correct thinking. But those who never think correctly — for they show that they cannot think correctly — claim that intelligence is produced by the brain. This is as foolish as claiming that water from a pond is produced by its container. Such foolishness, however, is science today. Actually, these matters should be obvious; one should simply realize that intelligence is something that must be gathered together. Now, you can take your brain and resolve to gather intelligence somewhere. It doesn't collect intelligence any more than the empty water pitcher, which, when you put it away, remains empty. By itself the water pitcher cannot fetch water, nor does the brain collect intelligence by itself. You cannot leave the brain to its own devices and expect it to function any more than the water pitcher. What must be present so that the brain can gather intelligence? The empty water pitcher alone can be compared to the belief that man consists only of blood, nerves, and brain. Something else must be present that does the collecting and that gathers intelligence by means of the brain. It is the soul — spiritual element of man that does the collecting. It enters man as I described recently in the lecture on embryonic development. It has previously existed in the soul — spiritual world and only makes use of the physical. If the facts are not suppressed, if one sees that intelligence, like water, pervades everything and, like water in a pitcher, must be gathered together, then — if one is a serious scientist and not a charlatan — one must search for the gatherer. This is simply what follows from the use of clear reason. It is not true that the anthroposophical science of the spirit is less scientific than ordinary science; it is much more scientific, much more scientific. The day before yesterday, one could see the kind of logic people employ. As you know, a natural scientific course was recently held here. I have already told you of experiments conducted in Stuttgart concerning the task of the spleen. We confirmed that the spleen has the task of serving as a sort of regulator of the digestive rhythm. The blood circulation has a definite rhythm, as found in the pulse with its seventy — two beats per minute. These are related to the intake of food. People also pay a little heed to a rhythmic intake of food; they are not too good at it, however, and frequently have no set mealtime. Worse yet, people indiscriminately partake of foods that are useful for them and those that are not. There is no regularity here as there is in the blood. If, for example, I eat at one o'clock instead of two o'clock, this is an irregularity. The blood circulation, after all, doesn't work that way and doesn't produce a different pulse when it requires nourishment. This is where the spleen takes over. We have tried to demonstrate this with experiments and have been successful to a degree. More experiments are needed and must be done soon, but we have been able to show to some extent that the spleen is a regulator. Though we might have irregular eating habits, the spleen keeps food in the intestines as long as the blood needs it. If we don't starve ourselves too much — if we starve ourselves too much even the spleen would be unable to function properly — the spleen supplies the blood with fat taken from our own body. You see, because we were completely honest, Dr. Kolisko quite honestly stated in her book that in my medical course I indicated that the spleen has this task, and she then proceeded with experiments to confirm this. Then a professor in Munich said that this was easy; she had already received the indications from anthroposophy and so had them in her pocket. It is not supposed to be hypothetical-deductive science if one starts with indications and then conducts experiments. He therefore said that this isn't hypothetical-deductive science. Why does the professor say that? Because people do not wish to work with a thought as their guideline. Instead, they want a lot of material delivered to their laboratories, and they blindly begin to experiment until they happen on some result. They call this hypothetical-deductive science, but there is no hypothesis in it at all. Occasionally, the most significant discoveries are made by chance. Then, well — even a blind dog sometimes finds a morsel! How could we progress, however, if in our laboratories our work did not follow our ideas? The professor in Munich says that it is not hypothetical-deductive science for one to work with indications. Now, imagine that somewhere experiments had been conducted that proved the spleen's function but that a fire had destroyed the reports of the work. Only the final result would be known. Couldn't somebody come along and say that he would repeat these experiments? It would not be any different from our starting out with these indications. The same professor would also have to object to that as being unscientific. Now, wouldn't that be absurd? The only difference here is that I have made my indications by tracing the spiritual course of the matter, but I have done it in such a way that it can readily be followed according to anatomical science. Then, through experiments, another person seeks affirmation of what had been precisely indicated. Our task here was simply to show correct physical proof for what I had said. There is no logical difference between my knowledge acquired by spiritual scientific means and what another person has already found earlier by means of experiments. What does it indicate when someone considers it to be hypothetical-deductive science when something has been discovered by physical means, though the descriptions of the tests may have been burned, while anything done by anthroposophy is not considered hypothetical-deductive science? It indicates that one is not honest and that from the first one denounces anything coming from anthroposophy. People aren't really concerned about hypothetical-deductive science; they are so foolish that they don't notice that this is logical nonsense. They say that ours is not hypothetical-deductive science not because it would be logical to say so but only because it derives from anthroposophy. People are too foolish to comprehend what comes from anthroposophy. Naturally, their lack of comprehension makes them angry, and therefore they denounce it. The real reason anthroposophy is considered heresy is that those who are engaged in so-called science do not think and cannot understand anthroposophy. This is an aspect of our entire civilization. It is possible today to be a great scientist or scholar without being able really to think. In the future, one must truly cultivate honesty, an honesty that takes into account all the facts, not only those that conveniently fit one's pet theory, thus throwing sand in the eyes of the public. The hatred of anthroposophy is based in large part on anthroposophy's honesty, something people don't want to grant it. If people had a keener sense for truth, they would often stop writing after the first sentence. Since all their arguments against anthroposophy would collapse, however, if anthroposophy were properly studied, they invent all kinds of fabrications concerning it. People inventing fabrications about anthroposophy don't care about truth, and once they start telling lies, they go further. The serious defamations of anthroposophy thus arise. What is the result? A person who cannot see through all this believes that anthroposophists engage in devilry. Such a person cannot see through this, because he naturally believes the authorities, who do not speak the truth. Anthroposophy suffers most of all from these lies that are circulated about it, whereas its one aim is t focus on the facts and be a real science. In view of the painful tragedy that has struck here, we must at least look into the real state of affairs and realize how anthroposophy is being slandered out of a spirit of pure falsehood. I myself am absolutely opposed to any agitation coming from our side. Naturally, I cannot stop everything, but when I speak to you, I am strictly pointing out facts. This is all I have done today, and from these facts I have drawn a general characterization of scientific life. You must admit to yourselves that where such facts are ignored there is no desire to create real science but only a desire to throw sand in the eyes of the public, even if in a quite unconscious way. People would have to be much more clever to see through this. We shall continue on Monday. If you have something to ask, I would like you to speak entirely from your hearts. I, for one, don't wish to be deterred by the great tragedy that has struck here. This is why I didn't want to waste my time lamenting but wanted to tell you something useful.

Health and Illness, Volume II

The Brain and Thinking

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA348/English/AP1983/19230105p01.html

Dornach

5 Jan 1923

GA348-11

Dr. Steiner : Does anyone have a question on his mind? A question is asked concerning alcohol, its negative effects, etc. Do you mean the extent to which alcohol generally is detrimental to health? Well, alcohol's initial effect is quite obvious, because it influences what we have been describing in man all along, that is, the entire constitution of the soul. In the first place, through alcohol, a person suffers a form of spiritual confusion so strong that he becomes subject to passions that otherwise are weak in him and can easily be suppressed by his reason. A person thus appears more sensible if he has had no alcohol than if he drinks. To begin with, alcohol has a stimulating influence on the blood, causing an increased circulation of the blood. This, in turn, arouses a person's passions; for example, he may more readily become furious, whereas otherwise he can control his anger more easily. So you can see that the first effect of alcohol is exercised on man's reason — indeed, on his whole life of soul. After alcohol has remained for a certain length of time in the organism, it causes another symptom that you know well, called a hangover; the appearance of a hangover shows you that the entire organism objects to the initial effect of alcohol. What does it mean for a person to have a hangover? As a rule, it appears in the morning after an evening of too much drinking. Due to the drinking the night before, the circulation of a person's blood is strongly agitated. The increased movement that otherwise would have taken its course at a much slower pace uses up a lot of energy. Pay close attention to this! Let us assume that the body accomplishes a certain activity within twenty-four hours. When somebody consumes a goodly amount of alcohol, the same activity is completed in perhaps twelve or even six hours. The body thus deprives itself of inner activity. People who are in the habit of drinking every once in a while, therefore, instinctively do something before the hangover appears: they eat heartily. Why do they do this? They eat heartily either to avoid a hangover altogether or so that its effects the next day are at least milder so that they can work. What happens, say, if a person has drunk himself into a visible state of intoxication and then consumes, let us say, a large hotdog? He stimulates again what has been used up by the previous excessive activity. But if, because he is not a habitual drinker, he doesn't do this — habitual drinkers do eat — and he forgets to eat that hotdog, he then will suffer the hangover, basically because his body is no longer able to engage in increased inner activity. When the body does not function correctly, however, waste products, in particular uric acid, are deposited everywhere. Since the head is the most difficult to supply, the waste products are deposited there. If a person has, through alcohol consumption, depleted the inner activity of the body during the night, he walks around the next morning with his head in the condition that is normal for his intestines, that is, filled with refuse. An immediate revolt by the body is brought about when, through the intake of alcohol, too much activity is demanded of it. As I have mentioned to you before in these lectures, man has a much higher tolerance — I don't mean only regarding alcohol but generally — and can take much more abuse than is normally assumed. He is capable of readjustment for a long time. Some people even make use of a most deceptive, most questionable antidote against a hangover. When they come home or arise the next morning with a powerful hangover, what do they do? Surely, you have seen this; they continue drinking, making the morning pint into a special cure. What does this continued drinking signify? During the night, through the agitation of the blood, the body has been deprived of activity. This activity is now missing in the morning. Through renewed drinking, the body is stimulated once again, so that the last remnants of activity are consumed. Since these last remnants dispose of the major part of the refuse, the hangover disappears to a degree from the head but remains that much more in the rest of the body. People are, however, less aware of that. Additional drinking in the morning thus unconsciously transfers the hangover to the rest of the organism. Only now, when this occurs, does the real misery for the body begin. Those alcoholics who drive away a hangover with more drinking are in the worst shape, because gradually, as this is repeated, the entire body is ruined. Still, however, because man can endure a good deal, it is almost impossible to ruin the body that quickly. Therefore, the first thing that happens to a real alcoholic is that he suffers from a form of delirium. This does not as yet indicate total ruin. When delirium tremens, as it is called in medicine, sets in, people see certain kinds of animals, mice and the like, running all over the place. They suffer a form of persecution complex. Delirium tremens is connected with the phenomenon of people seeing themselves surrounded and attacked from all sides by small animals, especially mice. This is something that even has a historical background. There are structures called “mice towers” ( Mäusetürme ). Usually, they have come by their name through somebody in some earlier time having been incarcerated in them who suffered from delirium tremens, and, though some real mice might well have been there too, this person was plagued by thousands upon thousands of mice that he merely imagined all around himself. You can see, therefore, that the ruinous effects of alcohol can only slowly be driven into the body; the body resists these effects that are produced by alcohol for a long time. What happens when people who have been drinking heavily for some time are suddenly bothered by their conscience and, having some energy left, stop drinking? It is an interesting fact that if they had not suffered from delirium tremens before, now, after abstaining from alcohol, they sometimes get it. Here we find something of interest, when people's consciences suddenly stir. They have been drinking for a while, let us say, drinking since early in the morning, and then suddenly the conscience stirs and they stop drinking. What happens then? If they had not had delirium tremens earlier, they struggle with it now. This is the interesting fact, that sometimes those who have been drinking for a long time begin suffering from delirium tremens when they stop drinking. This is one of the most important signs that man must be viewed in such a way that the head is seen to work differently from the rest of the body. In the last lectures I mentioned many aspects of this to you. As long as a person suffers only in his head from the side effects of drinking, his overall condition is still tolerable; the effects have not yet permeated the entire body. When they have penetrated, however, and the person leaves off alcohol, the rest of the body really revolts by way of the brain and he suffers from delirium tremens just because he discontinued drinking. One thus can say that the bodily counterpart for the most important functions of the soul is found in human blood. You probably know that some people suffer from persecution complexes, seeing all sorts of figures that are not there. Particularly in earlier times, such persons were bled — not a bad remedy, really. You must not believe that all people in the past were as superstitious as is generally assumed today. Blood-letting was not something derived from superstition. People were bled primarily by applying leeches somewhere on the body that drew off blood. The blood thus was less active. Not necessarily in the case of alcoholics, but for other attacks of insanity blood was less active, and the person fared better. As I have mentioned, the nervous system is very closely related to the foundations of the properties of the soul, but it is much less important for the human will. The nervous system is important for reason, but for the human will it has much less significance than the blood. Now, when you see that alcohol pre-eminently attacks the blood, it is clear from the body's strong reaction against alcohol's effects that the blood is well protected against alcohol. The blood is extraordinarily well protected against the assault of alcohol in human beings. By what means is the blood so strongly protected against this assault? We must ask further, then, where do the most important ingredients of the blood actually originate? Remember that I told you that blood consists of red corpuscles containing iron, which swim around in the so-called blood serum, and it also consists of white corpuscles. I have told you that the most significant components of blood are the red and white corpuscles. We shall now disregard the corpuscles connected with the spleen's activity, which, in our tests in Stuttgart, we termed the “regulators.” There are many components in the blood, but we want now to focus only on the red and white corpuscles, asking where in the body these corpuscles originate. These corpuscles originate in a most special place. If you examine the thigh bone from the hip to the knee, if you think of the bone in the arm, or any long bone, you will find in these bones the so-called bone marrow. The marrow is in there, the bone marrow. And you see, gentlemen, the red and white corpuscles originate in this bone marrow and migrate from it first into the arteries. The human body is arranged in such a way that the blood, at least the most important part of it, is produced in the inner hollows of the bones. If this is the case, you can say to yourself: in so far as its production is concerned, the blood is indeed well protected from harm. In fact, alcohol must be consumed for a long time and in large quantities to damage the bone to the point of penetrating it to the innermost part, to the bone marrow, and destroying the bone marrow so that no more red and white corpuscles are produced. Only then, after the effects of drinking alcohol have reached the bone marrow, does the really ruinous process begin for the human being. Now, it is true that regarding their intellects and soul qualities, humans are in many ways alike; regarding the blood, however, there is a marked difference between man and woman. It is a difference that one is not always aware of but that is nevertheless clearly evident. This is that the influence on human beings of the red and white corpuscles that are produced within the hollows of the bone is such that the red corpuscles are more important for the woman and the white are more important for the man. This is very important: the red corpuscles are more important with the woman and the white with the man. This is because the woman, as you know, every four weeks has her menstrual period, which is actually an activity that the human body undertakes to eliminate something that must be eliminated, red corpuscles. A man, however, does not have menstrual periods, and you also know that his semen is not derived directly from red blood. It has its origin in white corpuscles. Although considerably transformed, in the end they turn into the main ingredient of semen. Thus, regarding what affects human reproduction, we must go to the protected bone marrow to investigate the means by which the human reproductive capacity can be influenced physically. Indeed, the human reproductive capacity can be physically affected precisely through the bone marrow within the bone. After having been produced in the bone marrow, the red and white corpuscles naturally enter the blood stream. When a woman now drinks alcohol, it is the red corpuscles that are particularly affected. The red corpuscles contain iron, are somewhat heavy, and possess something of the earth's heaviness. When a woman drinks, it affects her in such a way that there is too much heaviness in her. When a pregnant woman drinks, therefore, her developing child becomes too heavy and cannot inwardly form its organs properly. It does not develop properly inwardly, and its inner organs are not in order. In this round-about-way, gentlemen, the harmful influence of alcohol is expressed in the woman. In men, alcohol primarily affects the white corpuscles. If conception takes place when a man is under the influence of alcohol, or when his system is generally contaminated by the effects of alcoholism, a man's semen is ruined in a way, becoming too restless. When conception takes place, the tiny egg is released from the mother's organism. This can only be seen with a microscope. From the male, a great number of microscopic sperm are released, each one of which has something resembling a tail attached to it. The seminal fluid contains countless numbers of such sperm. This tail, which is like a fine hair, gives the sperm great restlessness. They make the most complicated movements, and naturally one sperm must reach the egg first. The one that reaches the egg first penetrates it. The sperm is much smaller than the egg. Although the egg can be perceived only with a microscope, the sperm is still smaller. As soon as the egg has received it, a membrane forms around the egg, thereby preventing penetration by the rest of the sperm cells. Generally, only one sperm can enter the egg. As soon as one has penetrated, a membrane is formed around the egg, and the others must retreat. You see, therefore, it is most ingeniously arranged. Now, the sperm's restlessness is greatly increased through alcohol, so that conception occurs under the influence of semen that is extraordinarily lively. If the father is a heavy drinker when conception occurs, the child's nerve-sense system will be affected. The woman's drinking harms the child's inner organs because of the heaviness that ensues. The man's drinking harms the child's nervous system. All the activities are damaged that should be present in the right way as the child grows up. We therefore can say that if a woman drinks, the earthly element in the human being is ruined; if a man drinks, the element of movement, the airy element that fills the earth's surroundings and that man carries within himself, is ruined. When both parents drink, therefore, the embryo is harmed from two different sides. Naturally, this is not a proper conception; while conception is possible, however, proper growth of the embryo is not. On the one hand, the egg's tendency toward heaviness tries to prevail; on the other, everything in it is in restless motion, and one tendency contradicts the other. If both parents are alcoholics and conception occurs, the masculine element contradicts the feminine. To those who understand the entire relationship, it becomes quite clear that in the case of habitual drinkers exceedingly harmful elements actually arise in their offspring. People do not wish to believe this, because the effects of heavy drinking in men and women are not so obvious, relatively speaking. This is only because the blood is so well protected, however, being produced, after all, in the bone marrow, and because people must do a lot if they are to affect their offspring strongly. Weak effects are simply not admitted by people today. As a rule, if a child is born with water on the brain, one does not investigate whether or not, on the night conception occurred, the mother was at a dinner party where she drank red wine. If that were done, it would often be found to be the case, because wine causes an inclination toward heaviness, so that the child is born with hydrocephalus. If, however, the baby has a congenital twitch in a facial muscle, one normally does not check to find out if the father had perhaps been drinking too much the evening conception occurred. Seemingly insignificant matters are not investigated; people therefore assume that they have no effect. Actually, alcohol always has an effect. The really disastrous effects, however, occur with habitual drinkers. Here, too, a striking, a very remarkable thing can be noted. You see, the children of a father who drinks can develop a weakness somewhere in their nervous systems and thus have a tendency toward tuberculosis, for example. What is inherited by the children need not be connected with the effects felt by the alcoholic father. The children need not have a tendency toward mental confusion, for example, but instead, toward tuberculosis, stomach ailments, and the like. This is what is so insidious about the effects of alcohol, that they are communicated to totally different organs in the human being. In these matters, the great effect on human development of minute amounts of substances must always be taken into consideration. Not only that, but in each instance, one must consider how these substances are introduced into the human being. Consider the following example. Our bones contain a certain amount of calcium phosphate. Our brain also contains some phosphorus, and you will recall from earlier lectures that phosphorus is most useful since without phosphorus the brain actually could not be used for thinking. We therefore have phosphorus in us. I have already told you that phosphorus has a beneficial effect when the proper amount is consumed in food so that it is digested at a normal rate. If too large an amount of phosphorus is introduced too quickly into the human stomach, it is not useful but rather harmful. Something else must also be considered, however. You know that in earlier days, matches were made with heads of phosphorus, but they are rarely seen anymore. If one has had an opportunity to observe something like what I did as a boy, the following can be experienced. When I was thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen years old, I had an hour's walk from our home to school every day. There was a match factory about halfway where phosphorus matches were manufactured by workmen. At any time, one could see that a number of these workmen had corroded jaws — this was in the 1870s — and, radiating out from the jaw, their bodies were gradually destroyed. Beginning with the upper and lower jaws — especially the upper — the bones were eaten away. Knowing the harmful effect that phosphorus can have on humans, one realizes that such a match factory is actually about the most murderous place one can have. In matters pertaining to the progress of human civilization, it is always necessary to look at the numerous harmful effects that man can suffer in this way. I always saw a number of these workmen going into this match factory with bandaged jaws. That is where it started, and then it spread. Of course, phosphorus obviously was already contained in the upper jawbone, but what kind of phosphorus was it? You see, the phosphorus that first enters the stomach along with food and then travels internally through the body into the jaws is not harmful, provided the amount is not too large. Matches, however, are manufactured first by cutting long wooden strips into tiny sticks; these are then fitted into frames so that one end sticks out. They are dipped first into a sulphur solution and then into a phosphorus solution. The workman who dipped the matches simply held the frame in his hand and always got splattered. Just think how often in a day a person who cannot wash his splattered hands might touch his face during working hours. Though the amounts of phosphorus with which the person comes in contact in this way are minute, they nevertheless penetrate his skin. This is a mystery of human nature: a substance that is often extraordinarily useful when taken internally and assimilated first through the body can have the most poisonous effect when it comes in contact with the body from outside. The human organism is so wisely arranged inwardly that an overdose of phosphorus is eliminated in the urine or feces; only the small amount required is allowed to penetrate the bones; the rest is eliminated. There are, however, no provisions for the elimination of externally absorbed influences. This problem could, of course, have been alleviated. Remember that in the last century little thought was given to humanitarian considerations. It would have helped if bathing facilities had been made available so that every workman could have had a hot bath before leaving work. A great deal could naturally have been accomplished by such an arrangement, but it simply was not done. I only mention this to you to illustrate how the human body works. Minute, detrimental influences from outside, even substances that the body otherwise needs to sustain itself, can undermine human health, indeed, can undermine generally the entire organization of the human being. Man can withstand a good deal, but beyond a certain point the organism fails. In the case of drinking alcohol, the organism fails at the point at which alcohol prevents the correct functioning of the life-sustaining activities, the invisible life-sustaining activities. When a person is exposed to phosphorus poisoning, the inner activity that otherwise would assimilate phosphorus is undermined. It is undermined from outside. It is actually quite similar in the case of alcohol. When a person drinks too much alcohol, drinking always more and more, so that imbibing alcohol is no longer merely acute but has become chronic, the alcohol works directly as alcohol in the human being. What is the direct effect of alcohol? Remember that I once told you that man himself produced the amount of alcohol he requires. I told you that in the substances contained in the intestines, a certain amount of alcohol is constantly produced by ordinary food simply because man needs this small amount of alcohol. What do we need it for? Remember that in an anatomy, lab specimens are preserved in alcohol, because otherwise they would decompose. The alcohol prevents what was a living body from decaying. The alcohol produced in the human being works in the same way in the human organism; that is, it prevents decay of certain substances needed by man. Man through his inner organization really prescribes how much alcohol he should have, because he has certain substances that would otherwise decay and must be conserved. Take now the case of a person who drinks too much alcohol. Substances that should be eliminated are retained in the body; too much is preserved. If a person repeatedly exposes blood that circulates in the body to alcohol, he conserves this blood in his body. What is the consequence? This blood, having a counteracting influence, blocks the canals in the bones; it is not eliminated quickly enough through the pores and so forth. It remains too long in the body. The marrow in the hollows of the bone is consequently stimulated too little to make new blood, and it becomes weak. It so happens that, in the so-called chronic alcoholic, the bone marrow in time becomes weakened and no longer produces either the proper red corpuscles in the woman nor the proper white corpuscles in the man. Now, at a point such as this, I always have to make the following observation. Certainly, it is very nice when people come up with social reforms such as the prohibition of alcohol and so forth. It certainly sounds fine. But even such a learned man as Professor Benedict — I told you about his collection of skulls of criminals and how Hungarian convicts objected to having their skulls sent to Vienna because they would be missing from the rest of their bones on Judgment Day — even Professor Benedict said, and rightly so, “Here people speak against alcohol, but many more have perished from water than from alcohol.” Generally, that is quite correct, because water, if it is contaminated, can be present in much larger quantities. Considered simply from a statistical point of view one can naturally say that many more people have died from water than from alcohol. Something else must be taken into consideration, however. I would like to put it like this. The situation with alcohol is like the story contained in Heinrich Seidel's Leberecht Hühnchen . I don't know whether you are familiar with it, but it is the tale of a poor wretch, a poor devil who only has enough money to buy one egg. He also has a great imagination, however, and so he thinks, “If this egg had not been sold in the store but instead had been allowed to hatch, a hen would have developed from it. Now, when I eat this egg, I am actually eating a whole hen.” And so he imagines, “Why, I, who have a whole hen to eat, am really a rich fellow!” But his imagination is not satisfied there, so he continues, “Yes, but the hen I am now eating could have laid any number of eggs from which hens again would hatch, and I am eating all these hens.” Finally, he calculates how many millions and millions of hens that would amount to, and he asks himself, “Shouldn't that be called gorging myself with food?” You see, this is the case with alcohol, not in a funny sense as in this story but in all seriousness. Certainly, if you take the time from 1870 to 1880, and you investigate how many people died throughout the world from water and from alcohol, statistics would show that more people died from impure water. In those days, people died more frequently from typhoid fever and related illnesses than today, and typhoid can, in many instances, be traced to contamination of the water. So, in this way, gentlemen, it is easy to conclude that more people die from drinking water. One must think differently, however. One must know that alcohol gradually penetrates the bone marrow and ruins the blood. By harming the offspring, all the descendants are thus harmed. If an alcoholic has three children, for example, these three are harmed only a little; their descendants, however, are significantly hurt. Alcohol has a long-term negative effect that manifests in many generations. Much of the weakness that exists in humanity today is simply due to ancestors who drank too much. One must indeed picture it like this: here is a man and a woman, the man drinks too much, and the bodies of their descendants are weakened. Now think for a moment what this implies in a hundred, and worse, in several hundred years! It serves no purpose to examine only a decade, say from 1870 to 1880, and to conclude that more people died from water than from alcohol. Much longer periods of time must be considered. This is something that people don't like to do nowadays, except in jest as did the author of Leberecht Hühnchen , who naturally was looking over a long span of time when picturing how to wallow in so much food. If this matter is examined from the social viewpoint, consideration must go beyond what is nearest at hand. Now, it is my opinion that the use of alcohol can be prohibited, but when it is, strange phenomena appear. You know, for example, that in many parts of the world the sale of alcohol has been restricted or even completely prohibited. But I call your attention to another evil that has recently made its appearance in Europe, that is, the use of cocaine by people who wish to drug themselves. In comparison to what the use of cocaine will do, particularly in damage to the human reproductive forces, alcohol is benign! Those individuals who take cocaine do not hold cocaine responsible for the damage it does, but you can see from the external symptoms that its use is much worse than that of alcohol. When a person suffers from delirium tremens, it becomes manifest in a form of persecution complex. He sees mice everywhere that pursue him. A cocaine user, however, imagines snakes emerging everywhere from his body. First, such a person seeks an escape through cocaine, and for a while he feels good inside, because it brings about a feeling of sensual pleasure. When he has not had any cocaine for some time, however, and he looks at himself, he sees snakes emerge everywhere from his body. Then he runs to have another dose of cocaine so that the snakes will leave him alone for a while. The fear he has of these snakes is much greater than the fear of mice that is experienced by an alcoholic suffering from delirium tremens. Certainly, one can prohibit this or that, but people then hit on something else, which, as a rule, is not better but much worse. I therefore believe that enlightening explanations, like the one we presented today regarding the effects of alcohol, for example, can be much more effective and will gradually bring human beings to refrain from alcohol on their own. This does not infringe on human freedom, but understanding causes a person to say to himself, “Why, this is shocking! I am harmed right into my bones!” This becomes effective as feeling, whereas laws work only on the intellect. The real truths, the real insights, are those that work all the way into feeling. It is therefore my conviction that we can arrive at an effective social reform — and in other spheres it is much the same — only if true enlightenment in the widest circles of people is made our concern. This enlightenment, however, can come about only when there is something with which one can enlighten people. When a lecture is given nowadays on the detrimental effects of alcohol, these things are not presented as I have done today — though that should not be so difficult, because people know the facts. But they do not know how to think correctly about these facts that are familiar to them. The listeners come away from a lecture given by some dime-a-dozen professor, and they do not know quite what to make of it. If they are particularly good-natured, they might say, “Well, we don't have the background to comprehend everything he said. The educated gentleman knows it all. A simple person can't understand everything!” The fact is that the lecturer himself doesn't fully comprehend what he is talking about. If one has a science that really goes to the bottom of things and considers their foundations, however, it is possible to make it comprehensible even to simple people. If science is so unreal today, it is because true humanness was excluded from it when it originated. An individual rises from lecturer to assistant professor [in German, “extraordinary professor”] to full professor. The students are in the habit of saying, “The full professor knows nothing extraordinary, and the assistant professor knows nothing fully.” [“ Ein ordentlicher Professor Weiß nichts Außerordentliches, und ein außerordentlicher Professor, der weiß nichts Ordentliches .”] The students sense this in their feelings, gentlemen; the sorry state of affairs thus continues. Regarding social reforms, science essentially accomplishes nothing, whereas it could be effective in the most active way. A person who is sincerely concerned about social life therefore must emphasize again and again that dry laws on paper are much less important — though naturally they too are needed — but they are much less important than thorough enlightenment. The public needs this enlightenment; then we would have real progress. Particularly facts like those that can be studied in the case of alcohol can be made comprehensible everywhere. One then arrives at what I always tell people. People come and ask, “Is it better not to drink alcohol, or is it better to drink it? Is it better to be a vegetarian or to eat meat?” I never tell anyone whether or not he should abstain from alcohol, or whether he should eat vegetables or meat. Instead, I explain how alcohol works. I simply describe how it works; then the person may decide to drink or not as he pleases. I do the same regarding vegetarian or meat diets. I simply say, this is how meat works and this is how plants work. The result is that a person can then decide for himself. Above all else, science must have respect for human freedom, so that a person never has the feeling of being given orders or forbidden to do something. He is only told the facts. Once he knows how alcohol works, he will discover on his own what is right. This way we shall accomplish the most. We will come to the point where free human beings can choose their own directions. We must strive for this. Then only will we have real social reforms. If I am here on Wednesday, we will be able to have the next lecture.

Health and Illness, Volume II

The Effects of Alcohol on Man

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA348/English/AP1983/19230108p01.html

Dornach

8 Jan 1923

GA348-12

Dr. Steiner : Much knowledge is required really to answer a question like the one posed last time, and we have already considered it from a number of different angles. Because anything relating to reproduction of living beings must be thoroughly understood, I wish to make use of the time today to speak a bit more about this question from a completely different perspective. There's something peculiar about a remark recently made by an American who came to the conclusion, based on statistics — a favorite innovation of our time that is increasingly pursued in America — that the people who acquire the greatest intelligence are always born in the winter months. Naturally, these statistics should not be taken to mean that a person born in the summer months would have to be stupid. The statistics refer only to the majority. In any case, this American made the statement that, according to statistics, those born between December and the middle of March grow up to be the smartest people. Something is indicated here that is difficult to study in humans, because with human beings everything possible can interfere. It does indicate, however, that living beings in general — and man is first of all a living being — depend in a certain respect on the course of the year and its influence on them. Statements like the one made by this American surprise people today only because they know far too little about the real processes of nature. Perhaps this American will meet the same fate as that of a certain professor who once measured human brains; he drew up statistics and found in every instance that women's brains are smaller than those of men. Since, in his opinion, a smaller brain indicates less intelligence, he concluded that all women have less intelligence than men — now he was a famous man! He became famous for finding that the brains of women are smaller than those of men. Now, sometimes autopsies are performed on famous people after death, just because they are famous, and this happened to the professor. His brain was removed, and it turned out that the brain of this man was much smaller than all the women's brains he had examined! Similarly, if he were not embarrassed to make it known, it might turn out that this American was himself born in the summer. If he were born in the summer, one would have to say that according to his own theory he could not be too clever; therefore, his theory could not be particularly valuable. But you see, there is something behind all these matters after all, and this something can lead to the most significant issues when studied in the right way. I wish to tell you something today that definitely pertains to the question posed by Mr. R. You see, the conditions relating to reproduction can actually be studied only in animals and plants, because in humans they depend on so many other factors that they cannot be studied properly. If you take what I told you the day before yesterday, that is, that humans, women as well as men, influence the egg cell or semen through drinking, you will see that this alone makes it impossible to study their reproduction correctly. Now, animals are rarely in the habit of getting drunk. In them, conditions thus remain much more pure, and one can study the matter more purely. The most important aspects of the problem are such that dissection of animals for the purpose of such study is quite unnecessary. Through dissection one really discovers the least of all. To begin with, I shall tell you something that is not based on dissection but on positive results that were obtained by men who did not work according to theories but with practical experience. What I will relate to you has to do especially with the beavers in Canada. These beavers can be encountered around here only in zoos or, stuffed, in laboratories, and they actually appear to be rather clumsy. Such a beaver has a rather clumsy head and body, the front legs are quite thick, and the hind feet are webbed so he can swim. Its strangest feature is its tail, which looks almost like an instrument; it is quite flat and is, in fact, the beaver's most ingenious aspect. What he has behind him is his most ingenious tool. People who have observed beavers do not know at first what they use these tails for, and they have thought up all sorts of incorrect ways of explaining them. The beaver is a most unusual animal. When one becomes acquainted with a beaver in his own habitat, it is found to be an extremely phlegmatic animal, something that is also evident in those in our zoos. It is so phlegmatic that one cannot really do anything with it. You can attack a beaver, grab for it, but it will not defend itself. The beaver itself will never attack no matter how much it is provoked. It is a completely phlegmatic creature. These beavers live mainly in such areas as large swamps or short rivers, and they live in a most remarkable way. When spring arrives, a beaver looks for a spot near a lake or river, digs a burrow in the mud, and spends the entire summer living like a true recluse alone in this burrow. This beaver sits the whole summer in this reclusive summer dwelling like a phlegmatic monk passing the time in his summer house! It is only a hole that he digs in the earth, but he does it in total isolation. When winter approaches — already when late fall comes — the beavers emerge from their burrows and congregate in groups of two to three hundred. They come in all their “phlegmatic-ness” (“ Phlegmatischheit ”) and form communities. Naturally, those that had mated earlier are among them. A female beaver had prepared her isolated home so that it was suitable for children; the male lived nearby in his own burrow. Now, all these families gather together. In their slow, phlegmatic way, the beavers proceed to look for a suitable locality. Though it is sometimes difficult to observe because of their phlegmatic temperament, one group will prefer a lake, another a short river, which they follow downstream to a point that appears particularly suited to their purposes. After they have investigated the area, the whole group gathers together again. Near the lake or river, there are usually trees. It is really remarkable how these clumsy beavers now suddenly become extraordinarily skillful. They make use of their front feet — not their hind feet, which are webbed so they can swim — more cleverly than a man handles his tools. Using their front paws and sharp teeth, they gnaw branches off trees and even cut through tree trunks. Then, when a group of them has enough branches and felled trees, they drag them either into the lake they have chosen or into the river. These animals then push the branches and trees in the lake to the selected spot. Those who have dragged their trees into the river know full well that the river itself will carry them. They only steer the branches so that they won't drift to the side. In this way, all the branches and trees are transported to the spot they have chosen either on the lake's shore or alongside the stream. Having arrived there, those who have chosen a lake — having transported the trees to the shore — immediately begin constructing so-called lodges. The others, who have picked a river, do not begin with the building of lodges; they first proceed to construct a network of branches. These are interlaced with each other (sketching) until they form a proper network. When the beavers have built up such a wall, they add a second by fetching more branches, all of the same length; in this way, they make a wall two meters or more thick. Thus, you see, the animals dam up the river; the water must flow over it, and underneath it they have free space. Only now, having finished their dam, this wall, do they build their lodge into the wall so that the river flows over it. When the beavers have accumulated enough branches, and their wall appears thick enough to them, they haul in other material such as ordinary chunks of earth. They fashion a kind of loam from it and putty up the dam on all sides. The beavers first erect a wall, just like real architects. Those who select the lake site, however, don't need a dam and therefore don't try to build one. After this wall is built — in the case of those who choose the lake, it begins immediately — the beavers begin constructing little lodges from the same material. They look like clay barrels (sketching), but they are real little houses, constructed like braided mats. They are puttied up so well that the small amount of water that seeps into the space can do the beavers no harm. Such a beaver lodge is never constructed in a part of the stream where the water freezes. Imagine how ingenious this is! As you know, water only freezes on its surface; if one dives deep enough, one comes to still or flowing water, neither of which freezes at that depth. Precisely at the level where the water never freezes, these beavers build their dwellings. Each of these lodges has two floors. There is a floor built in here (sketching), and below it is the entrance. The beavers can run up and down in the lodge; they live upstairs and keep their winter supplies downstairs. They haul in the food they need for the winter, and when it is all stored, the beaver family moves into this lodge, remaining always near the other families. There the beaver families live until spring, when they once again move to their solitary dwellings. During the winter, the food supplies are brought up from the lower floor, and in this way the beavers sustain themselves. As I said, when summer comes, they seek out their solitary burrows, but during the winter they are together. They lead their social life in beaver villages on the bottom of lakes or in streams by the side of the dam they have so skillfully constructed. From all that has been observed, even beavers in zoos work solely with their teeth and front paws, never with their tails. Although it is formed most ingeniously, the tail is never used for work. There are many descriptions that claim that beavers employ their tails in working on their constructions, but that is a delusion; it is simply not true. Beavers do possess especially well-developed front legs and teeth, and they use them more cleverly than a man uses his tools. You know that natural history classifies the various animal species, and among the mammals are the beasts of prey, bats, the ruminants, and so forth. Among the mammals are also the so-called rodents. Our rats, for example, are rodents. The beaver's structure actually puts it in the rodent family. In any book on natural history, you will find that the rodents are described as the most stupid of mammals; hence, the beaver as individual animal is reckoned among the least intelligent mammals. One can say that the beaver, when studied as a single animal, appears above all as a terribly phlegmatic little rascal. Its phlegmatic temperament is so great that it can appear about as clever as phlegmatic humans appear: they show no interest in anything. The beaver is therefore awfully stupid, but it also accomplishes all these extraordinarily clever feats! For beavers, then, one can say that Rosegger's saying concerning man does not apply: “One is a human being, two are folks, if there are more, they are dumb animals.” 1 Note by translator: In the German text, this saying by the Austrian poet, Peter Rosegger, is rendered in untranslatable Austrian dialect: “ Oaner is a Mensch, zwoa san Leit, san's mehra, san's Viecher. ” Rosegger said this not about beavers but about human beings. He means that when many people meet together, they become stupid. There is something true in this. In a crowd, people become confused and do make stupid impressions, though there certainly are intelligent people among them! We can say that the opposite is the case with beavers. One is stupid, but several are a little cleverer. 2 Here Rudolf Steiner mimics the same Austrian dialect and says, “ Oaner is dumm, und mehra san a bissel gescheiter. ” When two or three hundred gather together in the autumn, they become most clever, they become real architects. Though we humans do not tend to be particularly sensitive to the special beauty of the constructions of beavers, this is due to our human taste, but the beaver lodge is really as trim as the beaver is clumsy. Now, much research can be done on why the beavers are so clever when they congregate. An important indication lies in the fact that the beavers begin their activity in the fall; by day, however, one sees little of this activity. The construction of such a dam and beaver village — it is really an entire village that they lay out — takes place very quickly and is often finished in a matter of days. They are seen doing little during the day, extraordinarily little, but they work feverishly at night. Thus, the beaver's cleverness is brought about first by winter and second by night. Here lie the real clues for the study of this whole matter. When people study, however, the first principle should be to avoid too much speculative thinking. This might sound strange, but you will understand what I mean. Man does not become especially intelligent through speculation. As a rule, if he ponders over something that he has observed, nothing particularly clever will result. If one wishes to understand the phenomena of the world, therefore, one should not rely too much on speculation; one's speculation is not at all the important thing. Should the facts call for it, one should think, but one's main attention should not be directed toward brooding over something one has observed as a means of figuring it out. Instead, other facts should be looked at, compared with the problem at hand, and a connection sought between them. The more one connects various facts, the more one learns to recognize in nature. People who have only brooded over nature have really not discovered anything more weighty than what they knew in the first place. When a person becomes a materialist, he speaks materialistically about nature, because that is what he is to begin with. He does not discover anything new. When a man speaks idealistically about nature, he does so because he is an idealist to begin with. In almost all instances, it can be proven that through speculation people discover only what is made evident through what they had already become. Correct thinking only results when one simply allows the facts to guide one. Now I will add another group of facts to those concerning the beaver, facts that will lead you to the correct clues, not through speculation but simply through a comparison of the facts. I have already referred to the wasps and told you of an observation about wasps made by Darwin. Today, I would like to point this out again. The wasps make ingenious nests for themselves. Though faintly resembling beehives, the walls of these wasps' nests do not consist of wax but of actual paper. Secondly, the whole process differs from that of the bees. There are wasps' nests, for example, that are built first by digging up the ground; then something resembling a pouch is made. It is constructed somewhat like a beaver lodge, but it is put together with tiny twigs or whatever wood the wasps can find, which they work and shape in the right way so that they end up with a covering, a pouch-like covering that is somewhat thick. It is in this that they build their little nest. There they build their different floors. The cells are hexagonal, just like the bee's honeycomb, and are enveloped by a paper covering. They are like the floors in a building, and there are sometimes many of them, one above the other. Everything inside the nest is fashioned of paper. The pouch-like outer covering, however, is not made of paper but of other materials, that is, of tiny twigs or bits of wood that are first split before being used. All this is woven into a network and then puttied up. That is what the outer covering consists of, and it is either built in a hole in the ground or fastened with putty to something up in the air. Within the pouch are the individual cells, into each of which an egg will be laid. This is the story, then, with wasps. You can imagine that wasps are extraordinarily susceptible to the weather. Only some of one year's wasps survive until the following spring, but it doesn't matter if the others don't survive as long as one or two females from a nest remain. In winter they seek out a sheltered little nook where they as females can live scantily, and they hibernate there. In spring, these females emerge from their hiding places and are ready to lay their eggs. Interestingly enough, a special variety of wasps hatches from all these eggs in spring. These wasps that are hatched in spring, growing very quickly and not yet having cells, proceed immediately to construct such cells. Flying around in whole swarms, they look everywhere for materials with which to build a nest properly. This work continues all summer long. These wasps construct the cells there. The wasps that hatch from eggs laid in spring have a specific characteristic; that is, they are all sterile and cannot reproduce. With these wasps there is no reproduction. Their reproductive organs are so stunted that reproduction is out of the question. So, the first thing the wasp does in spring is to produce an army of workers for itself that are sexless and terrible drudges; they toil throughout the summer. I have known natural scientists who considered it a goal worth striving for to manipulate humans so as to produce sexless individuals. They would not have families and would only toil, leaving reproduction to a select few as with the wasps. Well, the fact is that the sexless wasps toil away all summer. When summer is over, the female begins to lay eggs that produce males and females. As a rule, it is the same female that laid the sexless eggs earlier. Now she lays eggs from which, in autumn, males and females emerge. The males develop into rather puny creatures. By comparison, the sexless wasps are quite robust workers. The males turn out to be stunted and cannot do much of anything. They have just enough time to feed for a while, mate, and then die. Truly, these male wasps play a rather sorry role. They are hastily hatched in fall, they must feed a little, and then they impregnate the females; after that, having accomplished their goal, they die. That is the last thing they do. Among some types of wasps, the males are a bit hardier. Here things are really curious. Though it is only an exception, it resembles the behavior of certain spiders. With certain spiders, something remarkable is the case. You see, the female spiders consider the males good for nothing but fertilizing them. The males are permitted to approach the females only when they are ready for fertilization, never before. Before, the females generally don't permit the males to come near them; first they must be mature enough for the fertilization. Now, as I said, the following also occurs occasionally, as an exception, among wasps. Among spiders, which are, after all, lower creatures, when a female notices a greedy little male approaching, she places herself in a spot that is not easily accessible to him and even more difficult for him to leave. There the female waits for him, lets fertilization occur, and then lets him try to leave. When he comes up against an obstacle, the female quickly pursues him and bites him until he's dead. Here, the female spider herself sees to it that the male dies. Such is the case with some spiders. Just imagine, when the male has carried out his function, he must be killed, because he no longer serves a purpose. Among wasps, however, the males die as a rule by themselves, because they have expended so much energy during their mating activity that they have no strength left and so perish. The sexless wasps die at the same time. After toiling all summer, they all die in the fall. The sexless and the male wasps die, and only the females remain. Of these, many also succumb to the cold of winter. Only those few survive that have found a secure shelter. They make it through to spring, lay eggs, and the whole cycle starts anew. So, in spring and summer only sexless wasps are born. Not until late fall, approaching winter, can the sexually active wasps be born. These are the facts, you see, that must be observed. It is very important to connect these with other facts, since this shows us how much the sex life of animals is connected with the seasons of the year. The sex life of animals is very strongly connected with the course of the year. Let us assume that it is summer. The earth is extraordinarily exposed to the sun's effects. The sun sends down light and warmth to the earth. Direct exposure to sunlight causes one to sweat; one notices the sun's effects by one's own condition. Neither the beaver nor the female wasp expose themselves directly to sunlight; they are always in some cave-like dwelling. In their holes they benefit from the sun's light and heat only indirectly through the earth. Thereby, as winter approaches they receive quite definite qualities. Just think, toward winter the wasps receive a quality that makes them capable of producing sexually active offspring. What does this signify? The female wasp is exposed throughout the summer to the sun's heat and light and produces sexless wasps. You can therefore say that the effects of the sun are such that they actually destroy the sexuality of the wasps. It is quite obvious from this fact that the sun with its light and heat, which are reflected by the earth, has the effect of destroying the reproductive tendencies. This is why, when spring comes and warmth and sunlight prevail, the wasps produce sexless offspring. Only when winter approaches, when therefore the sun's heat and light no longer have the same intensity, do the wasps gain the strength to produce offspring with reproductive organs. This clearly demonstrates that the seasons of the year have a definite influence. Now, if we turn from the wasps to the beavers, we must say to ourselves, the beaver is an extremely stupid, phlegmatic animal! It is stupid and phlegmatic to the highest degree. Wonderful. But where does it spend the summer? It stays in the ground in its solitary burrow, allowing heat and light that comes into the burrow to penetrate its body, so that it actually absorbs all the summer sunlight and warmth. When this absorption is completed in the fall, the beaver begins to look for other beavers, and together they become clever. It employs a cleverness that it does not possess as a single animal. Now, suddenly, as they gather together, the beavers become clever. Naturally, as single animals they could never construct all those beaver villages. The first step of choosing a suitable site is already clever. This clearly illustrates what I pointed out last time: the cleverness that is in a creature must first be gathered, just as water is collected in pitchers. What does the beaver do while as a single animal it lives like a hermit in its summer house? The beaver gathers sunlight and the sun's warmth for itself — or so we say, because all we can perceive is the sun's light and warmth. In truth, the beaver gathers its intelligence. Along with sunlight and warmth, intelligence streams from the cosmos down upon the earth, and the beaver gathers it for itself; now the beaver has it, and it builds. With the beaver you can see in reality what I recently presented to you as a picture. Something else now becomes comprehensible: the beaver's tail. Compare it with what I said about the dog's tail, the dog's tail being its organ of pleasure and therefore the soul organ of the dog. The dog wags its tail when it is happy. In the beaver's case it is so that within its tail, which the animal does not use as a tool but which is formed most ingeniously, the beaver has its accumulated intelligence. With it the animal directs itself. This means that the beaver is really directed by the sun's warmth and light. They are contained in the tail and have become intelligence. This is really the communal brain of this beaver colony. These tails are the means by which the sunlight and warmth produce cleverness. The beaver does not employ its tail as a physical instrument; it uses its front paws and teeth as physical instruments. The tail, however, is something that has an effect; it has an effect just as when a group is being driven forward by somebody from behind. In that case, it is somebody driving them. Here it is the sun, which, through the beavers' tails, still has an aftereffect in winter and constructs the beaver village. It is the intelligence that comes down from the sun to the earth with light and warmth that does the building. Naturally, what descends here as soul and spirit from the universe affects all the other creatures, including the wasps. How does it affect the wasps? When the female is exposed to the sun — meaning the sun's earthly effect, which it enjoys in its earthen hole — the force in the wasp's offspring that can bring forth more offspring is destroyed. The wasp can produce only sexless insects under the sun's influence. Only when the wasp is not so strongly exposed to the sun's heat, in autumn, and is still full of vitality — not subdued as in winter — does the force develop in it to bring forth sexually active wasps. This once again demonstrates plainly that what comes from the earth produces the sexual forces, whereas that which comes from the universe produces intelligence and kills the sexual forces. In this way a balance is brought about. When the wasp is more exposed to the earth, it develops sexual forces; when the wasp is exposed more to heaven — if I may use this word here — it does not develop sexual forces but produces sexless wasps instead. These sexless insects have in themselves the cleverness to construct a whole wasps' nest. Who, in fact, builds this nest? The sun builds it through the sexless wasps! This is a most important point, gentlemen. In truth, the wasps' nests, as well as all the beavers' construction, are built by the cleverness that flows to earth from the sun. This is plain to see when all the facts are brought together. That is why I said to you that all speculation indulged in after something has been observed doesn't do a bit of good. Only when facts are compared and related to each other is a sound opinion gained. People simply look at the isolated facts; this is why there is so much that is not to the point. They think to themselves, “Now, when one observes beavers, one observes beavers, and afterward one speculates about beavers. When one observes beavers, what does one care about wasps?” But one discovers nothing if one fails to observe something that is seemingly so far removed from the beaver as the wasp. If one were to look at the wasp, one would see that wasps' nests are also constructed through the cleverness that comes to us from the sun. The sun's effects can still be observed in a tame beaver in a cage, although the animal need not be tame, because it is so phlegmatic, but needs only to be in captivity. When the sun's effects cease to be so strong and instead the earth influences it, even the caged beaver begins its winter activities. It tries to bite through the wires of its cage. This is said to be the beaver's instinct. Anybody can say “instinct”; that is just a word. Such words are like empty containers into which everything is poured that one knows nothing about. If one wishes to explain something like instinct, however, one reaches the point where one must say: it is indeed the sun! Gentlemen, it really is so. In this manner, through the pure facts, one comes to recognize how the cosmic surroundings of the earth affect living beings. Now it is no longer so surprising that some American comes to say that those humans born in the months from December to March most readily acquire intelligence. In the case of human beings, matters have become quite complicated. Everything in man tends toward his becoming independent from all that animals are still dependent upon. You must therefore consider the following. Persons born between December and March were conceived between March and May. Their births date back to conceptions that took place in the spring nine months earlier, between March and May, and hence to a time approaching summer. According to everything I have explained today, the sun's effects are always stronger then. So, what does the sun do? It subdues human sexual forces just a little — not completely, because man is more independent than the animals — and these subdued sexual forces become forces of intelligence. That is why such a person has an easier time of it, while those born in summer must work somewhat more at acquiring their cleverness. That can happen, but it is true that humans have different predispositions. Those conceived in spring and born the following winter tend to acquire forces of intelligence more easily than those born at other times. All this must be known so that these differences can be compensated for through education. In man, this can be done. Wasps, however, cannot be educated to produce sexless offspring that build nests in winter, nor can beavers be educated to overcome nature, as we say, to a certain degree. You can see from this that to overcome something is different for man from what it is for animals. In the animals, the soul-spiritual element depends completely on cosmic development. It simply depends on the sun for wasps' nests and beaver lodges to be built. Something else can be seen in the beaver. In fall, these beaver hermits that have spent the entire summer in seclusion come together in groups of two and three hundred, and only then, as groups, can they employ the intelligence bestowed by the sun. They can use it as groups, not individuals. Individually, they could never accomplish this; it must be the work of the group. With human beings much can be accomplished by the individual that animals can only accomplish in groups. This is why in anthroposophy we say that with animals the soul life exists only in groups — hence, group souls. Man, however, has his individual soul. Now, this is most interesting. I once told you what the human thigh bone looks like, for example. In the beaver, it really is not the same, but a human thigh bone looks like an extraordinarily delicate, beautiful work of art. In it there are beams, quite ingeniously constructed. A human being is actually built up in such a way that, when observing him correctly, one can say: he builds everything in himself that the beaver builds outwardly. By nature, he builds everything in himself that the beaver builds outwardly. The question then arises: where does all that is so wisely and ingeniously constructed within a human being originate? If the beaver construction originates from the sun and its surroundings, the human organization also originates from the sun. We are, indeed, not earthly beings but sun beings and have only been placed on the earth. What for? You can see when you consider this matter. From the earth the wasps have the power to produce sexual offspring. Man must be on the earth in order to have his reproductive force. By comparison, he has another force that is more rational, which he gets from the cosmic surroundings. We can see quite clearly that man gets his intelligence from the cosmic surroundings, and the reproductive force he gets from the earth. One could go further and show how the moon is related to the earth, but there is no more time today. We can go into that another time. You can see, however, that if facts are viewed correctly they lead you to realize that the world is really a unity and that we are dependent also upon the earth's surroundings, which consist not merely of a shining, warming sun but also of a clever sun, an intelligent sun. This is extremely important, because the individual questions that you pose can be answered better in this way. You see that the reproductive force, which I described to you last time, is related to drinking. Why are they related in such a way that a little drinking does not make such a difference but heavy drinking does? You can figure this out from the following. What is alcohol? Wine demonstrates what alcohol actually is, because wine, which only wealthy people can afford to drink, has the most harmful effect. Beer is less harmful for the reproductive organs than wine. Beer affects other organs more — the heart, kidneys, and so forth — but the alcohol in wine and, of course, especially the alcohol in hard liquor, affects the reproductive organs. Where does the substance contained in wine and hard liquor originate? It originates through the influence of the sun's forces! This substance needs the whole summer to mature. Now you can see why it becomes harmful to the reproductive organs. When one drinks, the reproductive organs are subjected to what has been absorbed inwardly in the way food is, to what should be absorbed solely by way of the sun itself, the sun's shining. This takes its toll. Man drinks something that the sun produces outside of him. It becomes a poison through this. When the warmth of the sun is taken into the system in the right way, however, the organism itself produces the small quantity of alcohol it. needs, as I have explained. In drinking alcohol, man really admits an enemy into his system, because what is introduced in the right way from outside turns into a poison when it is consumed inwardly, and vice versa. I have demonstrated this to you in the case of phosphorus. So, what works in alcohol is what the sun has produced in it, because the sun has matured it. When the sun shines on us, it is the other way around; then we must absorb warmth and light from outside. When we consume alcohol, however, we warm ourselves inwardly. The same force that is our friend when we make use of it outwardly becomes our enemy when we use it internally. The same is also true in nature. There are forces in nature that work beneficially from one direction, but when they work from the opposite direction they work as poisons. We can gain comprehension only when we examine this in the right way. I wanted to add this so that you could understand better everything that relates to Mr. E's question. Now think all this over. Should you wish to ask further questions, I hope to be here next Saturday.

Health and Illness, Volume II

The Power of Intelligence as the Effect of the Sun — Beaver Lodges and Wasps' Nests

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA348/English/AP1983/19230110p01.html

Dornach

10 Jan 1923

GA348-13

A question is raised concerning the effects of vegetarian and meat diets, and of nicotine. Concerning conception, how is it possible that women bear sons if none of the ancestors had sons? How can the birth of two sets of twins be explained? What influence does absinthe have on semen? What is the difference between the ages of wasps and bees? Dr. Steiner : The matters I have discussed regarding bees naturally refer only to bees and not to wasps. Bees differ from wasps, so my statements refer to bees, not wasps. Now we shall try to go into these questions. The first asked about the influence of nicotine and therefore of the poison that is introduced into the human body through smoking and through tobacco in general. First, we must be clear how the effect of nicotine shows itself. The effect of nicotine shows itself above all in the activity of the heart. Through nicotine, an increased, stronger activity of the heart is called forth. The heart is not a pump, however, but only indicates what goes on in the body: the heart beats faster when the blood circulates faster. Nicotine therefore actually affects the blood circulation, animating it. One must therefore be clear that through the introduction of nicotine into the human body, the blood circulation is stimulated. This, in turn, calls forth a stronger activity of the heart. Now, this whole process in the human organism must be traced. You must be clear that everything occurring in the human organism is actually strictly regulated. One of the most important points regarding the human organism, for example, is the fact that the pulse rate of the adult is 72 beats a minute, and this holds true even into old age. By comparison, as I have mentioned to you before, man takes about 18 breaths a minute. When you multiply 18 by 4, you get 72. This means that on the average the blood substance pulses four times as quickly through the body as does the breath. Of course, these are average figures; they differ slightly in each human being. The fact that this ratio varies in people accounts for the differences between them, but on the average it is 1:4; that is, the blood circulation is four times stronger than that of the breathing rhythm. If I now introduce nicotine into the human organism, I can do it for two reasons — first, because of a strong liking for tobacco, and second, as a remedy. Every substance that is poisonous is also a remedy. Everything, one can say, is both poisonous and healing. If, for example, you drink several buckets of water, they naturally have a poisonous effect, whereas the proper amount is a means of sustenance, and when it is introduced in unusually small amounts, it can even be a remedy. As a matter of fact, water is generally a potent remedy when certain methods are employed. It can therefore be said that even the most commonplace substances can be poisons as well as remedies. This is why the effect that a given substance has on the human organism must be known. If I introduce tobacco into the human organism, it first stimulates the blood circulation. The blood becomes more active, circulating more vigorously. Breathing, however, is not stimulated to the same degree by tobacco; the breathing rhythm remains the same. The blood circulation is therefore no longer synchronized with the breathing. If man were to introduce nicotine into his body, he would need a blood circulation different from the one he ordinarily has. Let us say, for example, that there were a person whose system was adjusted to the exact average of 18 breaths and 72 pulse beats (there aren't any such persons, but let's assume there were one). Now, nicotine causes his pulse rate to increase to, let us say, 76 beats. The correct ratio between the pulse and the respiration thus is altered. The result is that the blood doesn't receive enough oxygen, since a certain amount is supposed to be absorbed into the blood with each pulse beat. The consequence of nicotine poisoning, therefore, is that the blood demands too much oxygen. The breathing process does not supply enough oxygen, and a slight shortness of breath occurs. This shortness of breath is, of course, so negligible that it escapes notice; after all, as I have told you, the human body can take a lot of abuse. Nevertheless, the use of nicotine always calls forth a definite, very slight shortness of breath. This slight shortness of breath causes with each breath a feeling of anxiety. Every shortness of breath causes a feeling of anxiety. It is easier to control a normal sensation of anxiety than this terribly slight anxiety, of which one is completely unconscious. When something like anxiety, fear, or shock remains unnoticed, it is a direct source of illness. Such a source of illness is constantly present in a person who is a heavy smoker because, without realizing it, he is always filled with a certain anxiety. Now, you know that if you suffer from anxiety, your heart pumps more quickly. This leads you to realize that the heart of a person who constantly poisons himself with nicotine continuously beats somewhat too fast. When it beats too quickly, however, the heart thickens, just as the muscle of the upper arm, the biceps, grows thicker when it is constantly strained. Under some circumstances, this is not so bad, as long as the inner tissue doesn't tear. If the heart muscle — it is also a muscle — becomes too thick from over-exertion, however, it exerts pressure on all the other organs with the result, as a rule, that beginning from the heart the blood circulation becomes disturbed. The circulation of the blood cannot be initiated by the heart, but it can be disturbed when the heart is thickened. The next consequence of a thickened heart is that the kidneys become ill, since it is due to the harmonious activities of heart and kidneys that the entire human bodily organization is kept functioning properly. The heart and kidneys must always work in harmony. Naturally, everything in the human being must harmonize, but the heart and kidneys are directly connected. It quickly becomes apparent that when something is amiss in the heart, the kidneys no longer function properly. Urinary elimination no longer works in the right way with the result that man develops a much too rapid tempo of life and comes to wear himself out too quickly. A person who takes into his body too much nicotine in relation to his bodily proportions therefore will slowly but surely deteriorate. Actually, he gradually perishes from a variety of inner conditions of anxiety that influence the heart. The effects of states of anxiety on the activities of the soul can easily be determined. In people who have introduced too much nicotine into their bodies, it becomes noticeable that gradually their power of thought is also impaired. The power of thought is impaired, because man can no longer think properly when he lives in anxiety. Nicotine poisoning, therefore, can be recognized by the fact that such people's thoughts are no longer quite in order. They usually jump to conclusions much too quickly. They sometimes intensify this overly rapid judgment to paranoid thoughts. We can therefore say that the use of nicotine for pleasure actually undermines human health. In all such matters, however, you must consider the other side. Smoking is something that has only come about in humanity's recent evolution. Originally, human beings did not smoke, and it is only recently that the use of tobacco has become fashionable. Now let us look at the other side of the coin. Let us assume that a person's pulse beats only 68 instead of 72 times per minute. Such a person, whose blood circulation is not animated enough, now begins to smoke. You see, then, his blood circulation is stimulated in the right direction, from 68 to 72, so that his blood circulation and breathing harmonize. If, therefore, a doctor notices that an illness is caused by weak blood circulation, he may even advise his patient to smoke. As was said before, when the blood circulation is too rapid relative to breathing, one is dealing with terrible conditions of anxiety, which, however, do not become conscious. If for some reason a person's blood circulation is too weak, however, this makes itself felt by the fact that he goes around wanting to do something but not knowing what. This is also a characteristic phenomenon of illness; there are people who go around wanting something, but they do not know what it is that they want. Just think how many people go around without knowing what they want! One commonly says that they are dissatisfied with life. They are the people, who, for example, somehow drift into some profession, which then does not suit them, and so forth. This is really due to a blood circulation that is too weak. With such a person one can actually say that it is beneficial to administer nicotine to cure him. If smoking is agreeable to him, one need not prescribe nicotine in medicinal form, but one can advise him to smoke, if previously he wasn't a smoker. It is actually true that in recent times people who really do not know what they want have become more and more numerous. It is indeed easy in our modern age for people not to know what they want, because, since about three or four centuries ago, the majority of them have become unaccustomed to occupying themselves with something spiritual. They go to their offices and busy themselves with something they actually dislike but that brings in money. They sit through their office hours, are even quite industrious, but they have no real interests except going to the theater or reading newspapers. Gradually, things have been reduced to this. Even reading books, for example, has become a rarity today. That this has all come about is due to the fact that people don't know at all what they want. They must be told what they want. Reading newspapers or going to the theater stimulates the senses and the intellect but not the blood. When one must sit down and read some difficult book, the blood is stimulated. As soon as an effort has to be made to understand something, the blood is stimulated, but people do not want that anymore. They quite dislike having to exert themselves to understand something. That is something quite repugnant to people. They do not want to understand anything! This unwillingness to understand causes their blood to thicken. Such thick blood circulates more slowly. As a result, a remedy is constantly required to bring this increasingly thick blood into motion. It is brought into motion when they stick a cigarette into the mouth. The blood doesn't become thinner, but the blood circulation becomes ever more difficult. This can cause people to become afflicted with various signs of old age at a time in life when this needn't yet occur. This shows how extraordinarily delicate the human body's activity is. Diagnostic results are obtained not only when the blood is examined but also when the manner in which a person behaves — whether he thinks slowly or quickly — is studied. You therefore can see, gentlemen, that if you wish to know something about the effect of nicotine, you must be thoroughly familiar with the entire circulatory and breathing processes. Now, remember what I recently told you about how the blood is produced in the bone marrow. Essentially it comes from there. If the blood is produced in the bone marrow and the blood is made to circulate too quickly, then the bone marrow must also work faster than it should. As a result, the bones cannot keep up with their work, and then those creatures develop within the bones, those little creatures that devour us. Doctors such as Metchnikoff believed that these osteoclasts, as such little fellows are called, are the cause of human death. Metchnikoff said that if there were no osteoclasts, we would live forever. He held that they literally devour us. The fact is that the older we get, the more osteoclasts are present. It is true that our bones are gradually eaten by the osteoclasts, but from the other side it is like fertilizing a field well — more will grow on it than if it were badly fertilized. For man, the introduction of nicotine into the body has a detrimental effect on the bones, but for these cannibalistic bone-devourers, the osteoclasts, it creates the best environment possible. This is how it is in the world. A lazy thinker assumes that the world is fashioned by the Good Lord and so all must be well. Then one can ask why God allowed the osteoclasts to grow alongside the bones? If He had not allowed the osteoclasts to grow, we would not be slowly devoured throughout life. Instead, we could abuse our bones so terribly that something else would finally make them deteriorate. In any case, they could last for centuries if these little beasts were not contained within them. It serves no purpose, however, to think lazily this way. The only useful thing is to go truly into the facts, to know that the delicate forces instrumental in building up the bones have their adversaries. These osteoclasts, too, are part of creation, and we have them within us by the millions. The older you get, the more of these osteoclasts you have. You have cannibals, though they are minute, always within you. Actual cannibals are not the most clever; the cleverest are those that we carry around within us in this way, and they find fertile ground when nicotine is introduced into the body. You can recognize the extraordinary importance of thoroughly understanding the entire human being in order to determine how a given substance works in the human body. Now, man constantly eats. He eats animal substances and he eats those of plants. I have told you before that I have no intention of promoting one or another form of diet. I only point out the effects. Vegetarians have frequently come to me saying they are prone to slight fainting spells, and so on. I have told them that it is because they don't eat meat. These matters must be viewed quite objectively; one must not desire to force something. What is the “objective view,” however, regarding eating plants and eating meat? Consider the plant. A plant manages to develop the seed that is planted in the earth all the way to green leaves and colorful flower petals. Now, you either receive your nourishment directly from grains, or you pluck a cabbage and make soup or something. Compare what you get from the plant with what is present in meat, usually an animal's muscle. Meat is a completely different substance from the plant. What is the relationship between these two substances? You know that there are some animals that are simply gentle vegetarian beings. There are animals that do not eat meat. Cows, for example, eat no meat. Neither are horses keen on meat; they also eat only plants. Now, you must be clear that an animal not only absorbs food but is also constantly shedding what is inside its body. Among birds you know that there is something called moulting. The birds lose their feathers and must replace them with new ones. You know that deer drop their antlers. You cut your nails, and they grow back. What appears outwardly so visible here is part of a continuous process. We constantly shed our skins. I have explained this to you once before. During a period of approximately seven to eight years, our entire bodies are shed and replaced with new ones. This is also the case with animals. Consider a cow or an ox. After some years the flesh within it has been entirely replaced. With oxen the exchange takes place even faster than with human beings. A new flesh is therefore made. From what did this flesh originate, however? You must ask yourselves this. The ox itself has produced the flesh in its body from plant substances. This is the most important point to consider. This animal's body is therefore capable of producing meat from plants. Now, you can cook cabbage as long as you like, but you won't turn it into meat! You do not produce meat in your frying pan or your stew pot, and nobody has ever baked a cake that became meat. This cannot be done with outer skills, but, taken fundamentally, the animal's body can accomplish inwardly what one can't do outwardly. Flesh is produced in the animal's body, and to do this, forces must first be present in the body. With all our technological forces, we have none by which we can simply produce meat from plants. We don't have that, but in our bodies and in animal bodies there are forces that can make meat substance from plant substance. Now, this is a plant (sketching) that is still in a, meadow or field. The forces that have been active up to this point have brought forth green leaves, berries, and so forth. Imagine a cow devours this plant. When the cow devours this plant, it becomes flesh in her. This means that the cow possesses the forces that can make this plant into meat. Now imagine that an ox suddenly decided that it was too tiresome to graze and nibble plants, that it would let another animal eat them and do the work for it, and then it would eat the animal. In other words, the ox would begin to eat meat, though it could produce the meat by itself. It has the inner forces to do so. What would happen if the ox were to eat meat directly instead of plants? It would leave all the forces unused that can produce the flesh in him. Think of the tremendous amount of energy that is lost when the machines in a factory in which something or other is manufactured are all turned on without producing anything. There is a tremendous loss of energy. But the unused energy in the ox's body cannot simply be lost, so the ox is finally filled with it, and this pent-up force does something in him other than produce flesh from plant substances. It does something else in him. After all, the energy remains; it is present in the animal, and so it produces waste products. Instead of flesh, harmful substances are produced. Therefore, if an ox were suddenly to turn into a meat eater, it would fill itself with all kinds of harmful substances such as uric acid and urates. Now urates have their specific effects. The specific effects of urates are expressed in a particular affinity for the nervous system and the brain. The result is that if an ox were to consume meat directly, large amounts of urates would be secreted; they would enter the brain, and the ox would go crazy. If an experiment could be made in which a herd of oxen were suddenly fed with pigeons, it would produce a completely mad herd of oxen. That is what would happen. In spite of the gentleness of the pigeons, the oxen would go mad. You see, such a matter naturally testifies against materialism, because if oxen only ate pigeons and if only the material element were effective, they would have to become as gentle as the pigeons. That would not be the case at all, however. Instead, the oxen would turn into terribly wild, furious creatures. This is proved by the fact that horses become extremely violent when fed a little meat. They begin to grow wild, because they are not accustomed to eating meat. This, of course, applies also to human beings. It is very interesting that historically a part of Asia's peoples is strictly vegetarian. These are gentle people who rarely wage war. In the Near East, people began to eat meat and thus brought about the madness of war. The peoples of the Asian nations transform plants into flesh by making use of the forces that otherwise are left unused, unconscious. Consequently, these people remain gentle whereas the meat eaters of other nations do not remain so gentle. We must be clear that people have only gradually become mature enough for such deliberations as we are presenting here. When people began to eat meat, it could not be considered in the way we have just done; it all arose from feeling and instinct. You see, the lion continually devours meat; he is no plant eater. The lion also has very short intestines, unlike the plant-eating animals whose intestines are very long. This is also the case in humans. If a person is born into a certain race or people whose ancestors ate meat, then his intestines will already be shorter. They will be too short for pure vegetarianism. If, in spite of that, he eats only plants, he will have to practice all sorts of measures to remain healthy. It is certainly possible to be a vegetarian today, and it has many points in its favor. One of the main advantages of eating only vegetables is that one does not tire as quickly. Since no uric acid and urates are secreted, one does not tire as quickly but will retain a clearer head and think more easily — if one is in the habit of thinking! A person who cannot think does not gain anything by freeing his brain from urates, because it is necessary for the whole human organization to harmonize. In any case, through self-control, a person can become a vegetarian today. Then he uses those forces that, in people who eat meat, are simply left unused. Now, I wish to call your attention to a strange phenomenon. If you look around in the world, you will find that there is an illness that quickly undermines human health. It is so-called diabetes, the sugar sickness. First, sugar is discovered in the urine, and man soon succumbs to the body's deterioration, which is caused by an over-abundance of sugar. It is a truly fatal illness. Sugar is also what keeps the human being inwardly strong, when taken in the right way. This can even be verified by statistics. Much less sugar is consumed in Russia than in England. This really accounts for the entire difference between the Russian people and the English. The English are self-conscious and egotistical; the Russians are unselfish and physically not as vigorous. This is related to the lower sugar consumption in Russia than in England, where a large amount of sugar is eaten in the food. The human body, however, requires the assimilation of an amount of sugar. Just as the bones support a human being, so the amounts of sugar circulating in his body sustain him. If, then, too much sugar is eliminated in the urine, too little is taken up by the body and the health is undermined. This is diabetes. Diabetes is today more prevalent among Jews. Certainly others also have diabetes, but it occurs with particular frequency today among Jews. These people have a tendency to diabetes. The Jew has more difficulty absorbing sugar, yet on the other hand he requires it. The Jewish diet should therefore actually tend to make it as easy as possible for the human body to make use of sugar and not to eliminate it. If you read the Old Testament, you will find a variety of dietary rules that to this day are observed in restaurants that serve kosher food. Kosher cooking follows the ancient Mosaic dietary laws. If you study these, you will find the essence lies in the fact that Jews should eat food that allows the greatest assimilation of sugar, since this people has difficulty absorbing it. Pork makes the assimilation of sugar extremely difficult — pork aggravates diabetes unusually in the human being — so the prohibition of pork was calculated particularly to prevent diabetes. You see, you must read the Old Testament even from a medical standpoint; then it becomes terribly interesting. It is fascinating to trace what the various prohibitions and kosher preparations of foods are intended to accomplish. Even the so-called “ Schächten ,” the special way of butchering and killing poultry, for example, is intended to retain just the right amount of blood in the meat a Jew consumes so he can assimilate from it the right amount of sugar. In recent times, Jews have gradually neglected their dietary laws, although they still remain within their racial relationships. Since the dietary rules are really rules for a specific racial group, to abandon them is detrimental, and they therefore succumb more readily to diabetes than other people. That is how it is. We therefore can say that a meat diet produces unused forces in the human being that work in the human body improperly to produce waste. Naturally, this waste can then be eliminated again, but it is often a quite complicated task. One can say that when some matters are rightly expressed, they look quite peculiar. Some people work in their own particular way all winter long and eat in their own way, too. They consume with pleasure just enough food to give them a slight stomach upset every day, which they keep under control by drinking the necessary amount of alcohol. Come April or May they are ready for Karlsbad or some other health spa, since by that time they have accumulated a goodly amount of waste in their organisms, in their bodies. What they really need now is a thorough cleansing. The system must be cleaned out. They go to Karlsbad. You know that the waters of Karlsbad cause vigorous diarrhea, which purges the system. This done, they can return home and begin all over again. As a rule, no more is necessary than to go to Karlsbad every year, but if they are kept from going once, they suffer from something like diabetes or some related problem. From the standpoint of an affluent society, it does not sound too bad to say that so-and-so is going to Karlsbad. In reality, it means using manure buckets to put one's body back in order; this is what drinking the waters and taking the baths at Karlsbad accomplish. The system is thoroughly purged and is then all right for a while. Naturally, this is no way to raise the level of national health. Ultimately, the quality of all foods processed and sold on the market is geared to the eating habits of a person who can afford to go to Karlsbad or a similar spa. One who cannot afford to go to Karlsbad also has to eat, but he can't be purged without the money. No other foods are available to him. Therefore, a start must be made in medicine to set social life on the right course. Naturally, one could expound on this subject much longer. If I have forgotten something today, however, I shall try to tell you about it in the course of time. Concerning absinthe, I only wish to add that it actually works quite similarly to the alcohol in wine, for example. The difference is that while wine directly ruins the physical substance — sleep evens matters out somewhat — absinthe also ruins the sleep. With absinthe, a person gets a hangover during sleep, and he is therefore prevented from sleeping well. One must sleep, however, if one drinks alcohol. Ordinarily, too much drink must be slept off — this is testified to by the expression, “to sleep it off.” Sleep has a beneficial effect on alcohol intake and evens matters out. For this reason, absinthe is more damaging than ordinary alcohol, because even sleep is ruined. Now you need to consider how our hair, for example, grows more rapidly during sleep. A person who shaves knows that when he sleeps particularly late on a given day, he is more in need of a shave when he wakes. Have you noticed this? (Answer: “Oh yes!”) When the soul activity is absent from the body, whiskers grow very quickly. Sleep is there to stimulate the growth forces in the physical body. Absinthe, however, extends its effects even into sleep, and with absinthe-drinkers sleep does not neutralize these effects. The red corpuscles of the blood are even ruined in sleep in women who drink absinthe, and in men the white corpuscles are ruined. Something else comes in here. Since absinthe works all the way into sleep, a woman's monthly period is very strongly influenced. Irregularities then occur that become even more pronounced in her descendants. The result is that ovulation, which should occur every four weeks, takes place irregularly. The main thing that. can be said about absinthe is, therefore, that it works similarly to the ordinary alcohol in wine, beer, or cognac, but it even ruins sleep. Though one could go into more detail, I wish to say something concerning the other question that was asked about twins. In identical twin births, fertilization occurs just as it does for single births. A male sperm penetrates the female egg cell, which then closes itself off; all the other processes take place within it. The number of offspring derived from this egg is determined by something quite other than the number of male sperm. Only one sperm enters the egg, whereas the whole world has an influence on the offspring. They are created by the forces of the entire universe. What I have to say now sounds somewhat curious, but it is the truth. It can happen that shortly after fertilization the woman is subjected again to the same influences from the cosmos. This is what I mean: let us assume that fertilization occurs during the time of the waning moon. The woman is then exposed to certain forces in the cosmos that originate from a certain segment of the moon. Now, in the first three weeks after fertilization the initial processes are completely indefinite. Nothing can yet be determined. After three weeks, the human being is just a minute little fish-like thing. Before that, everything is indefinite. The three weeks run their course, always in such a way that almost anything can develop from the human germ, and if things are just right and the woman now comes under the influence of the waxing moon, then the same influences are again present externally. Some effects have already been present from the waning moon; now the waxing moon also has an influence, and the birth of twins can come about. It can also be possible that a woman might consciously be eager to have a child, but subconsciously she harbors a certain antipathy, perhaps a totally unconscious antipathy, toward bearing children. She need only have a certain antipathy toward the man she has married. Such antipathies also exist. Then she herself holds back the rapid development of the so-called embryo, the human germ. The influences that should have an effect once work several times from the cosmos, and thus triplets can result. Even quadruplets have been born. All this is never caused by the fertilization, however, but by the other influences, the outer influences. If identical twin births were to occur at fertilization, the twins would certainly turn out to be different from each other since they would have had to originate from different sperm. Twins can indeed also come from two eggs rather than one. But the striking feature of identical twins is that they are alike even in unusual characteristics; even what comes about at a later age, for instance, develops in the same way in twins. The reason is that they emerge from one egg. So you must realize that fertilization is not different in the case of identical twin births, but rather outer influences play their part here.

Health and Illness, Volume II

The Effect of Nicotine — Vegetarian and Meat Diets — On Taking Absinthe — Twin Births

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA348/English/AP1983/19230113a01.html

Dornach

13 Jan 1923

GA348-14

A question is raised concerning why, in one family, four mute children were born along with normal children. In his youth, the father of the children tore the tongues out of birds. Could the four mute children be his punishment? Another question: Influenza, in which people suffer from double vision, is so frequent now. What is the cause of this? Dr. Steiner : Were the children who cannot speak born one after the other in this family, or were the children who could speak born in-between? The Questioner : The mute children were born one after the other. Dr. Steiner : It is difficult to speak about such a case when one is not thoroughly familiar with it. We shall take up the question about influenza later. This first case, however, is difficult to judge when one is not familiar with the details. Much depends, for example, on whether a speaking child was born between the mute children; whether, after a certain moment in time, the speaking children were born and the mute children after, or whether the mute children were born first and the normal children after, or whether they were born alternately. Muteness in children naturally can be caused by any number of factors. If these children can hear and are only mute, not deaf — mute — something about which one can sometimes be in error of course — if they truly hear, and the problem therefore lies in the speech apparatus, then one must figure out how the father or mother could have influenced it. Without thoroughly knowing this case, however, it is really risky to talk about it. One would have to know the age of both parents. Much depends on whether both parents were already old when they had the children or whether they are still young. Another factor is whether the mother or the father is the older. Much depends on all this. Then, the character of both parents also plays a part. Whether or not it is important that the father tore out the tongues of birds in his youth, as you say, can be determined only after all the other questions have been answered. Such a consideration depends on whether the man was perhaps cruel in his youth. The characteristic of cruelty as such does come into consideration. To speak of a punishment, however, is out of the question here. First, punishments do not exist and second, if they did, this certainly would not be a punishment for the father! To say that the children were born mute to punish the father for his cruelty reminds me of the story of the boy whose hands froze and who said, “This serves my father right for not buying me gloves!” When somebody is as terribly afflicted as these four children, it is not a punishment for the father; he is much less affected than the four children, although his cruelty must be considered. Again, certain other definite matters must be considered here. In relation to children's age you can see that if a person develops a quality as a youth — let us say one develops a quality of cruelty or something similar at age eleven, for example — the onset of such a tendency always recurs after about three and a half years. This individual would then express cruel tendencies again at fourteen and a half or fifteen, then again at eighteen, at twenty — one and a half, and so forth. Imagine, if conception occurs during the period when such a tendency recurs, the conception itself can be a kind of cruelty and naturally can work harmfully. In this roundabout way, all such matters naturally can come under consideration. A connection can only be claimed, however, if all other factors have been excluded. I have told you what a difference there is between winter births and summer births. One would have to determine from the ages of these children whether the earlier births perhaps occurred in the summer or in the winter, and so forth. This is why I say that to approach the problem conscientiously, one must know all the details. When you become acquainted with the whole case, we can talk about it. I would be glad to do so. You do not know, for example, whether the four mute children were the older or the younger ones. It must definitely be established whether or not this tendency to bring forth mute children was later cured or whether it appeared only after the four speaking children were born, in which case, the reason would have to be discovered somewhere after the birth of the fourth child. So, we would first have to be familiar with all the factors. Regarding the question about the flu, it is related to all the diseases, such as bronchitis, that can afflict the human head or the organs of the upper chest, but I will refer particularly to illnesses such as diphtheria and influenza that are so widely prevalent just now. These diseases afflict the upper part of the human body, and they have a definite peculiarity. They can best be studied by examining diphtheria; here one really can learn the most. You know well that those who study medicine in the ordinary sense today do not know much about the flu; therefore, the descriptions given by doctors of the symptoms that appear with the flu are quite inexact. When I see people suffering from influenza, I must always turn my attention to something other than the symptoms that the doctors pay heed to, because the flu is actually a kind of brain illness. The flu is really an illness of the brain! I shall say more about this later. The following points especially must be taken into consideration regarding diphtheria. First, if you look at a child suffering from diphtheria — adults can also suffer from it, you know — you can see a membrane in the throat. This membrane, this formation of tissue, is usually what can cause suffocation in diphtheria. This formation of tissue is thus the first important factor. The second thing one notices in diphtheria is that the heart of a diphtheria patient is always assaulted. The heart does not function properly. The third aspect of diphtheria is that even if the patient is not strongly afflicted by the membrane in his throat, he nevertheless has a hard time swallowing because of a kind of paralysis of the throat that occurs in addition to the membrane. Finally, the same symptom that is nowadays observed in those suffering from influenza also appears in diphtheria patients: their eyes begin to cross and they see double. These are the most important symptoms of diphtheria that can be noted in the upper part of the body. A form of kidney ailment, unobserved in those who suffocate and die, appears as an aftereffect in the diphtheria patients who recover. What does diphtheria really consist of? Diphtheria can be understood only when one knows that man is actually kept alive from two directions — from the outside in and from the inside out. Man lives first from within his skin. The skin is a tremendously important organ, and man really lives within the skin, within his surroundings. It is like this (sketching). Diagram 1. Here is the skin; I have already talked about it. The skin is constantly in contact with the outer air, with the external world, which causes it to become calloused. In humans it only becomes a little calloused and then sloughs off. The skin all over man's body constantly sloughs off. Man is continuously sloughing off his entire body. He is continuously exchanging his physical body because of outside influences. You can imagine what a tremendous influence the air has on the living body when you consider the following. Think of a being that lives entirely in water. The skin it forms will be quite soft. The water itself causes it to form skin that is quite soft. Particularly through the influence of sunlight, the soft skin is pulled forward, and the being in the water becomes a fish. You can hardly see the jaw of a fish, because it is entirely covered with skin. Now imagine that this creature does not live in water but in the air. If this being lives in the air, it cannot form the soft skin. If this being who has lived in the water could not form the soft skin, his jaw would no longer be inside; the whole inner jaw would lie outside, and he would be a bird. The jaw of the fish in the water is simply covered with soft skin. By virtue of living in the air, the bird is equipped with an exposed jaw, a jaw lying completely outside. Thus you see the influence exerted on a creature from outside. Man, however, can form soft skin with other organs, but this soft skin is always being sloughed off, worked off. Diagram 2. Aside from this life proceeding from the outside in, there is also a life going from inside out, particularly from the kidneys. Both must be active in the human being. Activity both from the skin inward and from the kidneys outward must be at work. The heart occupies a position in between and is highly sensitive to too much activity from outside or inside. The heart can sense when the kidneys begin to be overly active, and it also senses when the skin's activity begins to be too strong or too weak. Now, what happens in the case of diphtheria? In diphtheria, the skin suddenly becomes weak and subdued. The activity of the skin is too weak, so a person with diphtheria suffers from too little exchange of air through the skin. Indeed, this is the main problem. The skin, including the skin of the nose exposed to the external surroundings, does not breathe enough, and it becomes too weak. The in-streaming activity, indicated in my sketch by the arrows, no longer functions properly, and the heart senses this. The heart also senses that the kidneys work upward. What is it that the kidneys are doing? The heart can no longer restrain the activity of the kidneys, which shoots upward. Long before inflammation of the kidneys, that is, nephritis, sets in, the activity of the kidneys is already shooting upward. Because the skin activity is no longer working effectively from outside, superfluous skin forms on the inside. Because the, skin's activity from the outside is not working properly, a superfluous skin is formed, filling everything out, because the kidneys' activity is too strong. When a person becomes afflicted with shrunken kidneys, which can occur when the kidneys' activity is deficient, you can see an indentation here on the head. There is a connection between the kidneys and this section of the head. As soon as the kidneys' activity is not working properly, this indentation occurs. You can see in every person who has kidney disease this indentation in the head. Beneath it lie the optic nerves. When the indentation occurs, the optic nerves become inactive. In the case of ordinary kidney shrinkage, the patient begins to see unclearly. When shrinkage does not occur but nephritis sets in instead, the kidney activity shoots up into the head and exerts an influence on the optic nerves. Diagram 3. Now, you see, the optic nerves are such that when the head is viewed from above, they proceed back from the eyes. They cross in the brain, the two optic nerves, and continue on to the hindbrain. The optic nerves must be in good condition if we are to see well, because we see with both eyes. The moment these optic nerves that cross are not working properly, we see double. The optic nerves only need to be a little numbed and the crossing not made properly for us to see double. You know how a person who enjoys drinking can tell whether or not he is still functioning when he gets home: he places his hat at the foot of the bed, gets in bed, and if he sees one hat he is still all right, but if he sees two, he is not! This is easily done. So, because the blood circulates too fast, too much alcohol numbs the optic nerves, with the result that a person who has drunk too much has double vision. The kidneys' activity also has a stimulating effect on the optic nerves. If the optic nerves do not interact properly at the point where they cross, man will see double. This is the case, for example, in diphtheria. You can see, therefore, that diphtheria is caused by a disorder in the skin's activity. Therefore, a future, more successful cure for diphtheria will consist above all of treating the patient in the right way with baths; he will have to be given such baths that will immediately stimulate vigorously the skin's activity. Then the formation of membranes will cease, and the patient's skin will begin to function properly again. Treatment with modified virus vaccine is effective in the case of diphtheria, because the body is thus given a strong impulse to become active, but it has unfavorable aftereffects. Particularly if a child is treated with vaccine, it will later suffer a hardening of its organization. One therefore must strive actually to replace treatment with vaccine with that of bathing, especially in the case of diphtheria, which is based primarily on the defective activity of the skin. One can see how skin actually must receive special consideration. It is indeed true that diphtheria is more frequent now than in former times. Of course, one must consider centuries, not decades. According to all that is known of earlier ages, however — though many diseases naturally existed then that were much worse; people were afflicted with bubonic plague and cholera — diphtheria was more rare. This is connected with the fact that, in general, the European way of life increasingly leads in a direction in which the skin's activity is no longer supported. Certainly, people who have money bathe a lot, and so forth. The point, however, is what a person bathes in. Here you can see the ill effect of civilization in the fact that bald-headed people are much more numerous today than in former days. The growth of hair is also an outer activity. Just as plants grow from the soil, so the growth of hair is affected from outside. Not enough attention is paid today to the skin's activity. Do not assume that bathing with cold water, as practiced by Englishmen nowadays, has such good effects. What counts is what a person bathes in. Of course, it is also wrong for a person to cause too strong an activity of the skin by superfluous bathing. At any rate, in the case of diphtheria, one must try above all to bring about a proper activity of the skin. This is also connected with a factor that affects people's offspring. Take a mother or father whose skin is too sluggish and doesn't slough off easily enough. This is most difficult to determine and takes a very sensitive insight into human peculiarities. The average layman cannot easily judge whether or not a person has callous skin, but some people do possess a much tougher skin than others. This is difficult to determine, because the skin is actually transparent. As it sloughs off, it appears to be colored differently because of what is underneath. Our skin is really transparent. If the father has a skin that is much tougher than it should be, the activity of the bones is also influenced thereby. As you know from what I have recently explained, the production of the blood depends on the activity of the bones. If the father has such callous skin that it reminds you of hippopotamus hide, he will produce white corpuscles that are too weak. This, in turn, influences his sperm, and his children will be weak from the beginning. So, one can say that if the father is a “hippopotamus,” it is possible for his children to be born with rickets — an English illness — for the children to be born weak and to be susceptible to tuberculosis. This is how these things are related. If the father's skin is too soft, something that can be noted particularly when anxiety and so on easily cause blushing, then his bones become too hard, but this has little ill-effect. If, however, the mother's skin is too soft, alternating between blushing and paling, her bones become too hard and she does not produce red corpuscles properly. Her child will acquire already at an early age, tendencies to all kinds of ailments such as rheumatism and particularly illnesses like measles, scarlet fever, and so on, diseases that are related to the metabolic system. These facts are all related. Diagram 4. Now, as for the flu, it really comes from a brain ailment. The lower part of the brain, located under the optic nerves, suffers a form of paralysis. The flu consists of a paralysis of that portion of the brain that lies quite near the optic nerves. Since this is a very significant part of the brain, an influence is actually exerted on the entire body. Proceeding from this paralysis in the brain, something in the human being becomes ill in the case of ordinary flu. Above all, the spinal cord is affected, since this part of the brain goes right into the spine, from which the nerves extend to all the limbs. The person thus gets aches and pains in his limbs, and so on. Recently, an interesting case of flu occurred that is most instructive. I have told you that the brain not only consists of solid substances but that it is also surrounded by cranial fluid. Particularly in the vicinity of this part here (pointing to sketch), which is incapacitated during flu, much cranial fluid is present. This recent case of flu was extraordinarily interesting, because the patient had one illness after another as aftereffects: pneumonia with high fever, then a fall in temperature, followed by pleurisy with high fever, and then again a drop in temperature. This was followed by peritonitis with high fever that finally fell, then a kind of general paralysis, and so on. This case of flu took a different direction from that of the usual flu. What happened here? You see, when studying this with the ordinary means available to medicine, it is extraordinarily difficult to figure out. The patient, a seventeen-year-old girl, was asked when she recuperated to tell what went through her mind during the time of her illnesses. Quite strangely, the following was determined. Her parents and the doctor freely discussed her condition in the room in which she was resting, thinking it was all right to do so since she was constantly delirious. Indeed, during her delirium she did not appear to be aware of anything, but when she became well, she could repeat everything that had been discussed in her room. She knew and could relate it. This could be confirmed. Comprehension was therefore absent while she suffered from this severe case of flu and the subsequent illnesses; the conversations, however, remained in her memory. Much is retained in the memory after all, that at the moment may not be comprehended. This shows that it was not the solid part of the brain that was affected but the surrounding fluid. This influenced the rest of the body even more, because, when the solid part is partially numbed, the ensuing symptoms must be brought about through the working of the solid part of the brain on the spinal cord. The fluid, however, constantly flows up and down through the spinal canal here (see sketch on p. 103). Hence, if the fluid in the brain is afflicted, afflicted fluid also appears in the spinal canal, and from here it passes into all the limbs. It thereby gradually causes inflammation everywhere. Because it was the cranial fluid that was inflamed, and not the solid part of the brain, however, a more counteractive, healing force was present and — though in this case it was almost like a miracle — the girl recuperated in spite of having suffered from every possible illness. Although various remedies must also be administered, in such illnesses it is essential that the body be given adequate rest and quiet. The patient must therefore lie in bed, and care should be taken to keep the room at a constant temperature and with even lighting, because rest is brought about not only by stretching out on a bed. One is also made restless by being hot one moment and frozen the next. But if the body is left totally to its own devices with steady warmth and light, it can itself endure even the worst attacks of pneumonia, pleurisy, and peritonitis. The human being is capable of that. Even with the worst illnesses that display the symptoms mentioned, it is more a matter of proper nursing care than of remedies. In general, proper care has great value. You can recognize the significance of proper care from the following. When a limb is inflamed or injured, the best thing to do is simply to put a ligature on it somewhere above the affected area; it must be done correctly, however. In this way, the more delicate activity of the body, the etheric activity, is brought into play, and healing begins. So, when a hand or finger is ulcerated, a ligature is applied between it and the body, and then it heals quickly. The forces of healing must be summoned everywhere within the body itself. Naturally, cases vary. One must always consider the individual and know him well if one wishes to cure him; one must have insight into how a person is. In dealing with a patient suffering from diphtheria, for instance, it is under certain conditions best to place him in a rosemary bath so he can smell the rosemary. Repeated long rosemary baths will strengthen the activity of his skin. Sufficient rosemary must be added to the water, however, so that the patient constantly smells it during the bath. The activity of the skin is stimulated, and the patient will improve without being treated with vaccine. It really depends upon being able to arouse in the right way with the remedies the patient's own bodily resistance. Of course, if a remedy isn't effective one time, people immediately consider it to be a bad remedy. You must realize, however, that with some people there is nothing to be done. Often, the remedy is used when it is too late to do anything, or else the dose would have to be increased so much that it would be enough for a horse; the patient wouldn't be able to tolerate it and would die of the remedy. One must remember that the flu actually has its origin in an ailment of the brain. You will have perceived that a flu patient is always in a kind of doze, because the most important areas of the brain under the optic nerve are numbed. Thus he comes to doze. Now you can also grasp that when paralysis is located in the upper sections of the brain, the point of the intersection of the optic nerves is affected and the person sees double. All this shows you that double vision can come about quite naturally in influenza. This should by no means be taken lightly. I once had a friend who at that time was thirty years old, ten years younger than me. He was cross-eyed, but here you have the opposite problem. In flu or diphtheria, a person becomes temporarily cross-eyed because something is internally out of order, but my friend was permanently cross-eyed and, of course, was unhappy about it because not everyone is totally without vanity. There was something in his body that caused his left and right sides to work inharmoniously. This is what caused his crossed eyes; his eyes were crossed, and he also stammered. Both afflictions had the same origin. On some occasions he overcame his crossed eyes and stammer quite well, but there are those who have little compassion for such people and complain about their afflictions. Once, for example, a person who was not too tactful said to my friend, “Tell me, Doctor, do you always stammer, or only occasionally?” The man could barely come out with, “N-n-not always, o-o-only w-when I m-meet a p-person, whom I find t-t-t-totally d-disagreeable!” This same man could recite long poems without stammering, and he didn't stammer when he was full of enthusiasm about something. The stammering is not the point, however; I only mention it because it is connected with this man's crossed eyes. Now, my friend was a bit vain and wished to correct his condition. As you know, that leads to an operation, because crossed eyes are corrected by cutting one of the eye muscles. Crossed eyes are eliminated by this operation. Since, in my friend's case, his crossed eyes were so deeply rooted in his organism that he also stammered, I was terribly concerned when he decided to be operated on. I knew that when some brain ailment occurs a person can be temporarily cross-eyed, but when a person is permanently cross-eyed, as was my friend, his brain has become adjusted to this condition. If an eye muscle is cut when the problem is so deep-seated that a stammer is also present, then the opposite effect is brought about. By trying to correct the crossed eyes with an operation, a brain ailment is produced by that part of the brain being ruined where the optic nerves intersect. Well, my friend was not to be deterred, and so he underwent the operation. If I had expressed my reservations concerning such an operation, those who imagine themselves to be real medical authorities would have been ready to call me an idiot, since one who asserts something that is not found in their books is called an idiot. As you can imagine, I naturally tried in some way to deter my friend from having this operation, but I could not come right out and say, “If you go through with this operation, you may possibly suffer a brain ailment.” He would not have believed me since all the doctors had told him it was a simple operation. Since he knew that I was not really happy about his intention to have the operation, he told me nothing about it. One day, he visited me with a black patch on his eyes, which he removed and said, “Now look, aren't my eyes straight now?” They were, but I remained apprehensive. Well, two weeks hadn't passed before he fell ill with a brain ailment. Naturally, this brain ailment was not diagnosed as such by the doctor; what do ordinary doctors know of these relationships! How did the brain ailment manifest itself? There was some blood in his feces indicating that it made its appearance in the guise of an intestinal illness. The man became afflicted with an intestinal illness, but it was none other than the brain ailment because, as I have explained, the intestines and the brain are connected. When this happened, I knew it was caused by the operation, and I lost hope for him. The most famous doctor in town was called. He diagnosed typhoid. What else could he say, when the contents of the intestines showed blood and had the peculiar consistency of pea soup? If he has blood in his feces and intestinal contents with the consistency of pea soup, he must have typhoid! It was not typhoid, however; it was the illness — really of the brain — that was the result of the inappropriate operation for his crossed eyes. So here the opposite case occurred. This man died soon afterward. The doctor who had treated him for typhoid fever had admitted him to the hospital. I went there after his death and met his medical attendant. As such people are wont to do, he immediately greeted me with, “The Professor wrote `typhoid' on the chart. He is supposed to have had typhoid? Well, that's how much our doctors know!” After all, the attending personnel believe what the doctors proclaim least of all! It really is quite upsetting to see the human organism treated in such a one-sided manner. If I were to tell a doctor what I have just told you concerning the appearance of an illness resembling typhoid that was a masked ailment of the brain and the result of an operation for crossed eyes, he would consider it pure nonsense. He wouldn't believe it, because he doesn't truly know the relationships within the body but is only familiar with theoretical relationships. As a result, such things will happen as in this anecdote I'll tell you. It is only an anecdote, but it has truth in it. A person is brought to the hospital. The doctor who is chief of staff examines him, assigns him to a certain ward, and gives an order concerning treatment to his assistants, saying, “When I return tomorrow, this patient will be dead.” He no longer concerns himself with this case until a few days later. Then he says, “There is still a patient in Room 15; he must be dead.” “No,” he is told, “that patient feels better and is getting well.” The doctor replies, “Then you've treated him the wrong way!” Of course, this is a joke. But it is like this when theory is put in the place of true practice. Practice means learning to judge each case on an individual basis. The moment a question is raised concerning the connection between double vision, which is always a form of crossed eyes, and the flu, attention must be drawn to how, on the one hand, a form of double vision is caused by flu, which is a kind of brain ailment and, on the other, how the brain ailment can come about when a person is cross-eyed and the problem is so deeply rooted that left and right do not fit together. All processes in the human being proceed outward from within and inward from without. If a person is crossed-eyed for internal reasons and this condition is externally corrected, he can become ill inwardly; in man, one never deals with a single activity but with two activities that meet in the heart. The heart is in-between and is affected when one does away with crossed eyes externally. The heart is also affected if something is not working properly inside. The heart is not a pump but a most delicate apparatus, which really perceives everything that is out of order, as it were. Let us assume that I injure my knee externally or that by some circumstance, perhaps through drinking, I become afflicted with rheumatism. Then, internal activities are out of order, and inflammation results in that area. The processes that begin within are out of order. In such cases the heart is always influenced and doesn't work properly. Therefore, the heart's function can be influenced from within as well as from without. In all illnesses in which this is the case — that is, when something is wrong with a process that keeps it from running its course outward from within or inward from without — it will be noted that it comes to expression in the heart. One must know the correct relationship, however, between what is an outer process and what is an inner process when a person is cross-eyed or stammers, if one wishes to weigh the consequences of eliminating the condition. Operations for crossed eyes must always be weighed as to whether one should or should not do them. That is the important point.

Health and Illness, Volume II

Diphtheria and Influenza — Crossed Eyes

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA348/English/AP1983/19230120p01.html

Dornach

20 Jan 1923

GA348-15

Dr. Steiner : Good morning, gentlemen. Have you thought of something else you would like to ask me? A question is asked concerning the relationship between human breathing and the pulse. Wouldn't this have been completely different in earlier times? Dr. Steiner : You mean in the human being himself? Well, let's quickly review how things stand today. We have on the one hand the breathing. Man is connected to the outer world through breathing, because he is constantly inhaling and exhaling air. It can thus be said that man today is constituted in such a way that he absorbs the healthy air and expels the air that would make him ill. The expelled air contains carbon dioxide. The circulation of the blood, on the other hand, is an internal process in which the blood flows through the body itself. I shall not discuss whether it is accurate to say that the blood circulates in the body, but the force of the blood circulates through the body. Now, although it varies slightly in each individual, a person takes approximately eighteen breaths per minute. As for the blood, the pulse rate is seventy-two beats per minute. So, one can say that breathing is related to blood circulation in an adult today in such a way that his pulse is four times faster than his breathing. Now, we must be clear what is really involved in the human being when breathing is considered in relation to his blood circulation. First, we must be clear that man breathes chiefly through the lungs — the nose, mouth, and lungs — but this is only his primary way of breathing. Indeed, with the human being, functions primarily carried out by one part of his body are also actually carried out to a lesser degree by his whole body. Hence, air, or particularly the oxygen in the air, is constantly absorbed through the surface of his skin. Man therefore also breathes through his skin, and along with the ordinary breathing process of his lungs one can also speak of his skin's breathing. If, for example, the holes of his skin, called pores, are clogged, the skin absorbs too little air. Something is not right with the skin's breathing. Man's skin must always be in such shape that he can breathe through it. Now, in the case of human beings, all outer processes can, as it were, also be found to exist inwardly. Making a sketch of a human being, we can say that breathing occurs through the entire surface of the skin but most particularly through the lungs in eighteen breaths per minute. All this, however, requires a counterbalance in the human being, and something quite interesting makes its appearance. Man cannot breathe properly through his lungs nor through his skin, but especially not through his skin, if this counterbalance is not present. You know that a magnet has not only a north pole, a positive pole, but also a south pole, a negative pole. If man has his lungs and skin for breathing, then he also needs an opposite, and that opposite is located in the liver. We have already familiarized ourselves with the liver from various standpoints; now we must learn to view it as the opposite of the skin-lung activity; the liver and the skin-lung activity balance each other. One could say that the liver's constant purpose is to bring into order internally what man acquires through breathing in his relation with the outer world. That is what the liver is for. Consider a disorder of the liver that may occur at any time, even in older people. It is quite difficult to diagnose when the liver is not in order, and frequently one is unaware of it because the liver is the organ, the single organ, that doesn't hurt when something is wrong with it. Man can suffer for a long time from a liver ailment without knowing of it. No one can diagnose it, because there is no pain. This is because the liver is related to the most outer aspects of the human being, the skin and lungs. Internally, the liver is really something like an outer world. Man does not sense it within when a chair is broken, nor does he sense it when the liver is being destroyed. It is as if the liver were a segment of the outer world. In spite of this, it is of terrible importance to the human being. Now imagine that the liver malfunctions. When this happens, all the activity of the lungs and skin is also thrown out of balance, and then a specific problem arises. You see, from the heart, the veins reach everywhere into the lungs and the skin. Through quite delicate blood vessels, the blood circulation reaches everywhere into the skin, into the lungs, and also into the liver. The following now takes place. If the liver's function is impaired, the blood cannot flow properly in and out of the liver. If, because of a liver problem, the blood flows into it too strongly and the liver becomes overactive, too much bile is produced and the person becomes jaundiced. Jaundice occurs in man when too much bile is produced, when, therefore, the activity of the liver is too strong. Jaundice therefore results when overactivity of the liver pervades the body. What happens, however, when the liver's activity is too weak? The blood's activity on the surface of the skin is not compensated for. The blood, which flows everywhere, wishes to be compensated, and the blood in the liver investigates, as it were, whether or not the liver is behaving properly. If the liver isn't behaving properly, the blood rushes to the surface of the body to replenish itself there. What happens? Smallpox is the result. This is the connection between smallpox and the blood circulation, which, due to a defective liver, has something wrong with it. The blood reaches everywhere where I have drawn a line in blue (see sketch); there is also a red line signifying that oxygen from the air reaches everywhere. The circulation of the blood rightly makes a point of contact there with the breathing, and whether this occurs in the lungs or the skin really does not matter, because it balances itself out. If the air that enters through the breathing process does not make contact with the blood in the correct way, however, smallpox results. What is smallpox? Smallpox is really the result of the development of too much respiratory activity on the body's surface or in the lungs. A person becomes too active on his surface area, and this activity causes inflammation everywhere. What can be done under these circumstances? Well, people already do the only thing that can be done in such cases. They vaccinate with cowpox vaccine. What is really accomplished through cowpox vaccine? The vaccine inwardly permeates the body, because the blood circulates everywhere. Whereas the blood is otherwise compensated for on the body's surface, it now has to cope with the vaccine. The overactivity on the surface thus is prevented. Smallpox inoculation does indeed have a certain significance. The blood, which is not properly engaged by the liver, is now busy with the vaccine. Generally, there is good reason for all methods of inoculation. You have perhaps heard that a large part of our healing is based on inoculation, because an activity occurring in the wrong place can thereby be directed to another part of the human body. Inoculation against rabies is especially interesting. Though rabies comes from something altogether different, it is basically the same response as that I explained concerning smallpox. Imagine that a person is bitten by a rabid dog or wolf. Such an animal has actual poison in its saliva. This poison now enters the victim through the bite, and the person becomes involved in detoxifying the poison. He may be too weak to do it, and he might succumb to the poison, but something else is really the basis for death. You know that a man first develops rabies before he succumbs to the poison. What is the reason for this? Let us assume that I am bitten by a rabid dog. Now I must direct all my inner activities to this spot, and I must let them flow here to use up the poison. This surge of activity is sensed by my spinal cord as though I had received a shock. This is how it affects my spinal cord. Since my body must suddenly develop such extreme activity because of the dog's bite, my spinal cord suffers a shock through which I become ill. What must now be done to offset this shock? You know that when a person freezes in horror, he can be brought to his senses by being slapped a few times. The spinal cord also needs to be slapped, but one must first get to the spine. This can be accomplished by giving a rabbit rabies. It is then killed and its spinal cord removed and dried for approximately twenty minutes at about 20° C. This substance is then injected into the rabid person. Now, oddly enough, all substances have a way of going to specific parts of the body. The dried spinal cord of the rabbit, which retains the rabies poison for a short time — about fifteen minutes — before becoming ineffective, is quickly injected into the human being. It goes into his own spinal cord, which thereby suffers a countershock. It is just as if you shake a person who is paralyzed with fear and he snaps out of it. In the case of rabies, man's spinal cord recovers from the shock by means of an inoculation with the rabid rabbit's dehydrated spinal cord. You see, therefore, that when an activity develops in the human being in the wrong place and he becomes ill, he can be cured if almost the same process is developed in a different place. These are some of the complicated relationships of the human organism. Now, if you consider respiration and the activity of the blood, these two processes are related in today's adult in a ratio of one breath to four pulse beats. The blood stream flows faster; after three pulsations man inhales, and after three more, he inhales again. This is how air goes through his body. The blood moves through the body: one, two, three, and with the fourth we inhale; one, two, three, and with the fourth we inhale again. This goes on throughout our body. All this produces carbon dioxide. Now, most of this carbon dioxide is exhaled, but if all of it were exhaled, we would be the worst dopes. A part of the carbon dioxide must continuously enter our nervous system, which needs carbon dioxide, because it must be continuously deadened. The nervous system requires this deadening carbon dioxide. Through inhaling air it therefore rises up continuously in me and supplies my nervous system. What does this mean? Nothing other than this, that since carbon dioxide is a poison, I continually require a poison in my system for my thinking. This is a most interesting point. Unless a continuous poisoning process took place in me, with which I must continuously struggle, I could not use my nervous system. I would be unable to think. Man is really in the position of having constantly to poison himself by inhaling air, and by means of the poison in the breath, he thinks. Carbon dioxide constantly streams into my head, and with this poisonous air I think. Today, man simply breathes air. The air contains oxygen and nitrogen. Man absorbs the oxygen, omitting the nitrogen. When we study man today, the following is discovered. The human head today requires carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a combination of carbon that is produced in the human body and oxygen. Man omits the nitrogen contained in the air. If one studies the human head today, one discovers that this human head is so organized that it can think quite well because of the absorption of carbon dioxide and therefore of carbon and oxygen. This human head, through the carbon dioxide, which is a poison and rises fleetingly to the human head from the organs, is constantly exposed to damage. It is as if we were always to inhale a bit of carbon dioxide instead of oxygen. You really always inhale a bit of carbon dioxide into your head. This is of great significance, because we constantly take in something that actually destroys life. This is also the reason that we must sleep, that we require a time during which the head does not absorb this minute amount of carbon dioxide as vigorously and thereby is able to restore its organs. Studies of the head show that in its present condition it can make use of this poison, carbon dioxide, by repeatedly sustaining a little damage and then restoring itself through sleep, then again being damaged, again restoring itself, and so on. In very ancient times, however, man did not as yet have a head. It came about through evolution. Man would never have acquired a head if he had inhaled only carbon dioxide. The fully evolved head can tolerate carbon dioxide, but if man had always inhaled carbon dioxide, he would never have acquired a head. Therefore, he must have breathed something else long ago. Now we must ask ourselves what man used to breathe. If all human evolution is studied in detail, one discovers that during embryonic development in the womb, the human being uses something other than mere carbon dioxide. It is an interesting fact that in the mother's womb man is almost all head. The rest of the embryo, if you study it in the early stages, is minute (see sketch) and still is almost all part of the head; the rest is terribly small. The whole embryo is then surrounded by the walls of the womb. You see, man is almost all head, but he must still develop, and for that he requires nitrogen. He requires nitrogen, and this is supplied by the mother's body. If man did not have access to nitrogen in the womb, a substance he later rejects in the air, not allowing it to enter him, it would be impossible for him to develop. We would not acquire a proper head if it were not for nitrogen. In an early stage of evolution, when his head was only beginning to develop, man must not have absorbed oxygen but nitrogen. The essential elements for man must, therefore, have been carbon and nitrogen instead of today's carbon and oxygen. Just as man inhales oxygen today, he once must have inhaled carbon combined with nitrogen — in other words, he must have absorbed nitrogen. But what is carbon plus nitrogen? It is cyanogen, and when it is present as an acid, it is hydrocyanic acid. This means that conditions must have been such at one time that man did not absorb oxygen from the air but nitrogen, with which he internally produced cyanogen, an even stronger poison. This even stronger poison is what has enabled man to think today with carbon dioxide. At that time he fashioned the organs with an even stronger poison. Going back in time, we come to a point in ancient evolution when, unlike today, man produced cyanogen, and instead of exhaling carbon dioxide as he does today, he exhaled hydrocyanic acid, a much stronger poison. Thus, from man and his present-day respiration, we go back to an ancient condition in which the air was filled with hydrocyanic acid just as it is today permeated with carbon dioxide. In 1906, I gave lectures in Paris, and because of various suggestions from the listeners I was prompted to tell them that even today there are cosmic bodies that possess the ancient cyanogen atmosphere rather than that of the earth. If the earth were viewed from the moon or particularly from Mars, one would be able to perceive traces of carbon dioxide everywhere in the earth's atmosphere by means of the spectroscope. Had the ancient earth been viewed from space when man was only beginning to acquire his head, however, one would have perceived traces of hydrocyanic acid instead of carbon dioxide. To this day there are cosmic bodies that have retained the earth's condition of former ages; these are the comets. The comets are what the earth was like when man acquired his head. Hence, they must contain cyanogen. I said in 1906 that the main characteristic of comets is that they contain cyanogen; if one studies a comet with a spectroscope, one must see lines of cyanogen. Soon after this a comet appeared; they only appear rarely. I was in Norway at the time, and there was much talk about it — curiously enough, people actually observed the cyanogen line. People always say that when anthroposophy becomes aware of something that is based on spiritual insight, one should be able to prove it afterward. There are indeed numerous things that have later been proved. When proof arises, however, people overlook or suppress it. The truth is that, on the basis of this change in the breathing process, I stated prior to its having been observed with the spectroscope that comets contain cyanogen. This is the same substance that man needed in order to acquire his head at a time when the earth was still in a comet-like condition. Now, imagine for a moment that I were to breathe nitrogen instead of oxygen; something other than human blood would naturally arise. As you know, the blood that has become blue combines in the lungs with oxygen and becomes red. Now, when man inhales oxygen he absorbs oxygen into his blood; when he inhales nitrogen, he absorbs the nitrogen into his blood. The way our blood functions today in a healthy person, it never contains uric acid, but if even a little nitrogen is absorbed into the blood, if something is only slightly amiss with the human being, uric acid appears in the blood. In the age when man acquired his head, his blood consisted completely of uric acid, since nitrogen continuously combined with the blood instead of oxygen. His blood was only uric acid. As an embryo today, the human being swims in the amniotic fluid and thus has uric acid readily accessible. Uric acid is everywhere in his environment. In this early state the embryo needs uric acid for its development. In the past, when man was acquiring his head and exhaled hydrocyanic acid, he swam around in uric acid. In other words, he made use of cyanic acid, combining nitrogen and carbon and inwardly producing uric acid. Hydrocyanic acid surrounded him everywhere. The world was once in a condition in which uric and hydrocyanic acids actually played as big a role as water and air do today. Even today, living creatures exist that can survive on something other than oxygen. There are, for example, creatures that are minute, since everything that was formerly large has become small today. The tiniest, smallest living creatures were once giants. But there are living creatures that cannot tolerate oxygen at all. They avoid oxygen and absorb sulphur instead. They are the sulphur bacteria that live by means of sulphur. This shows that oxygen is not the only necessity for life. Likewise, man didn't need oxygen to stay alive in earlier ages but instead required nitrogen, and through that he was formed. Man was fashioned during a comet-like formation of the earth, and the relationship between breathing and the blood was completely different in those earlier ages. Let's now consider what we have learned in connection with the world itself. If we focus on the fact that we take one breath to four pulse beats — one, two, three, breath of air; one, two, three, breath of air — the same rhythm can also be found in nature: spring, summer, fall, winter . One: spring; two: summer; three: fall; four: winter . Here we have the correlation between what's outside in the universe and what you have within man. So we can say, if we behold the entire earth, that our inner rhythm can be found outside on earth as well. People pay no heed at all to these circumstances regarding the earth. You see, there is snow outside now. In summer there is no snow. What does that really mean? What is outside as snow now you find at other times as water. Water is completely dependent on the earth, and man must certainly sense that. The water around here in the Jura mountains contains calcium. Everything within the earth is also in the water. People who are especially sensitive to this develop goiters from what is contained in the water in the Jura region. The water is dependent on the earth. In spring, it begins to become dependent, it is most dependent in summer, and it ceases somewhat to be dependent in fall. In winter — well, gentlemen, the earth does not form the snow! The snow, consisting of myriads of delicate crystals, is formed by the universe, from out of the cosmos. Unlike in summer, the earth in winter doesn't abandon itself to the warmth of the world but rather to the formative forces. The water turns away from the earth in winter and receives the coldness of universal space. So we have discovered an interesting rhythm in the universe. One: spring; two: summer; three: fall; four: winter , and the water no longer directs itself to the earth but to the universe. Again, one, two three — spring, summer, fall; then four: the water follows the universe, no longer the earth. Now compare this rhythm with the blood and the breathing process. One, two, three pulse beats, the blood is directed to the body's interior; four : breath of air, the blood is directed to what is outside. Here you have the same activity with the earth as in the human being. If you compare the blood with the earth's water, the blood directs itself accordingly. The first three pulse beats are inwardly a little like spring, summer, and fall; four , now comes earthly winter, and aha, we breathe, now comes the breath, just as with the earth itself. Inwardly, man is attuned completely to the earth's breathing process. It can therefore be said that what runs its course in one year in the earth takes place quickly, eighteen times in one minute, in man. What takes a year for the earth takes place eighteen times in one minute in man. Man actually is always filled with this rhythm, but it is much faster than with the earth. When we consider the earth in the light of our discussion today, we realize that the condition of the earth was formerly quite different, and it comes to acquire for us a certain similarity to the comets. Now, when a comet disintegrates, the pieces, which contain iron, fall to earth as meteors. An entire comet, which falls to earth when it splinters, therefore contains iron. This is also something that we still contain within ourselves. When our corpses disintegrate, the iron from our blood is left behind. Here we have retained something of our ancient comet nature, and we actually act as comets do. We have iron in our blood through developing the ancient cyanogen activity in ourselves — that is, our external bodies, the blood of which it may no longer enter though it was once allowed to. This means nothing more than that today we withdraw our inner spring, summer, fall, and winter from the outer spring, summer, fall, and winter. Our dependency on the outer seasons has become minimal. You need not go terribly far back into the past, however, to find that things had a totally different character then. Although things are changing now, if one grew up in a country village as I did, one knows that there used to be people who were very dependent on spring, summer, fall, and winter; there are fewer now because everything is becoming more uniform in the world. One could even notice it in their whole life of soul. They were in a totally different mood in summer than in winter. When they encountered you in winter they were always a little outside their beings; they were much more like apparitions than people. They came into their own only in summer and then were really themselves. This means that they were dependent upon the outer spring, summer, fall, and winter. This demonstrates to us what man was like in earlier ages. When he breathed nitrogen instead of oxygen, he was completely dependent on the outer surroundings; he participated in the pulse beat and breathing of his comet body, which in my book, An Outline of Occult Science , I called the ancient Moon. The ancient Moon was a sort of comet-like body, and, as a participant in it, man was a part of a large organism that also breathed. It was as if man today were suddenly to have one pulse beat in spring, one in summer, one in fall, and would then take a breath in winter, and so on. This is the way man was when he breathed nitrogen; he was a member of the entire earthly organism. So, you see, we come from a completely different direction and again reach the point we arrived at earlier when we considered the megatheria, sauria, and so forth. We arrive at the same point by a different path. This is the remarkable thing about spiritual science. Ordinary present-day scientific activity begins at some point and proceeds step by step, trotting along in a straight line without knowing where it is going. That is not the case with anthroposophical science. It can proceed in one or another direction from various points of departure, but just as a hiker always reaches the same summit regardless of where he starts at the foot of a mountain, so anthroposophy always arrives at the same goal. This is what is so remarkable. The more one honestly examines the world, the more the individual considerations fit together into a unity. We have an example of this in exploring your question today. We proceeded from matters quite different from the earlier subjects, yet once again we arrived at the conclusion that man had his rhythm within the entire earthly organism when it was still comet-like; only now has he made it his own. Man existed as part of the earth just as he does today when he is still a germ within his mother. There he also takes part in her pulse and breathing activity. Can it be proven that man today takes part in his mother's pulse and breathing activity? This is proven by what I said before, that smallpox develops from the blood's activity coming into connection with the breathing activity. This is interesting. If man does share the maternal blood and breathing activities while in the womb, a child in the womb should contract smallpox if the mother has it, and it does. When a pregnant woman contracts smallpox, her unborn child already has smallpox in the womb, because the child takes part in everything. In the same way, when the earth was still the mother of the human being — although the earth was then a kind of comet — he participated in all that the earth underwent. His pulse beat and breathing were that of the earth's pulse beat and breathing. It therefore can be said that it is most remarkable when, if we go back into ancient times when human beings knew instinctively and were not clever as they are today, they always called the earth “mother” — Mother Earth and so forth. They spoke of Uranus, meaning the universe, and Gaea, the earth, and they viewed Uranus as the father in the universe outside an11 the earth as the mother. So one can say that the part of the human organism in which the child develops, the womb, is really like a miniature earth that has remained behind and is still in the ancient comet-like state. In that ancient comet-like state, man's breathing and that of the earth were together a breathing in the great universe. Not only did man absorb nitrogen, but the whole comet-earth received the nitrogen from the universe. Breathing in that age was also a form of fertilization. Only the process of fertilization in humans and animals remains of that today. In fertilization, therefore, something of the nitrogen breathing process still takes place, because the most important element in the human sperm is nitrogen. This is transmitted to the female organism and, as a nitrogen stimulus, brings about what oxygen could never accomplish, that is, the formation of the organs that must be present later when man is exposed to oxygen. So you see that we actually receive our breathing from the universe. Now, let's try exploring something else. You see, the year's course is followed somewhat in the course of the day: 18 breaths per minute; 60 times that much per hour = 1,080; in 24 hours, one day, we have 24 times that much = 25,920. Hence, we take 25,920 breaths per day. Now let me figure something else for you — the number of days in an average human life. As you know, the year has about 360 days. The average number of years a man lives is between 71 and 72. 72 times 360 makes 25,920. We take as many breaths per day as we have days in our human life. But a day, too, is in a certain sense a breathing. One day is also a breathing. When I go to sleep, I exhale my soul, and I draw it back in again when I awake: exhalation, inhalation. I exhale the spiritual and inhale it again. This rhythm in my breathing I therefore have throughout my life on earth in sleeping and waking. This is most interesting: 25,920 breaths per day, 25,920 days in the average human life. Now we turn and look at the sun. When you observe the sun in spring today, it rises in the sign of Pisces, but it does not rise every year in spring in exactly the same spot. On March 21 in the spring of next year the sun will have moved a fraction. Year by year it moves a little. The point where it rises moves constantly and eventually comes full circle. Therefore, if the sun rises in the constellation of Pisces today — the astronomers think it is still in Aries where it was formerly, because they have not yet caught up with their notations — then it must have risen in primordial times in Pisces, too! When the number of years that it takes the sun to come full circle is calculated, the result is 25,920 years. It is the same ratio. Even the cosmic rhythm harmonizes with the faster rhythms of breathing and blood circulation. Just imagine how man stands with the cosmos! He is born completely from out the universe. His father and mother are originally in the universe. One arrives at a completely different way of viewing man in relation to the universe than when one simply says that God created the world and man — a concept that doesn't require much thinking. But anthroposophy wishes to begin to think something in every instance. This is held against it. Why? Well, it takes no effort to say words that don't require thinking. In anthroposophy, however, one must exert oneself, and this makes people angry. One needn't strain oneself in today's science. All of a sudden here comes this upstart, anthroposophy, and one cannot sit as if in the cinema thoughtlessly watching a movie. People would even like to introduce movies into schools so that children wouldn't have to make an effort to learn. I am surprised that arithmetic has not been made into movies yet! Then along comes anthroposophy demanding that you don't sit around so idly but put your confounded skulls to use! And, that, no one wants to do.

Health and Illness, Volume II

The Relationship Between the Breathing and the Circulation of the Blood — Jaundice — Smallpox — Rabies

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA348/English/AP1983/19230127a01.html

Dornach

27 Jan 1923

GA348-16

Dr. Steiner : Good morning, gentlemen! Have you thought of something to ask me since the last time? More detailed questions are raised concerning the effect of absinthe and also concerning bees and wasps. Dr. Steiner : Well, we have already discussed the question of the effect of absinthe, which, as I told you, is similar to the general effect of alcohol. If we are to go further into these questions, I would like to say something about some broader influences on the human body. We must be clear that we cannot speak only about the solid components of the human organism, of the human body, since they amount to at most ten to twelve percent of the whole. When we find the human body sketched in a book, the sketch can, of course, only be made by outlining the solid components. So it is believed that man consists only of his brain, lungs, heart, and so on, that is, that he is really composed only of such solid components. As I have told you, however, the human body is approximately eighty-five percent fluid, a watery fluid. It is therefore only partially correct to say that we drink water, for example, and the water, along with a number of dissolved substances, enters the stomach and from there the intestines, and so forth. This is only partly true. When a small glass of water is drunk, we can picture what I just said to be the case. With the second glass of water, however, what is in the water is absorbed by the body's fluid elements and does not pass first through all the organs in the way I described. Now, it is a fact that the solid components in man are least exposed to the entire surroundings. Naturally, when the heart, for example, is observed, it expands and contracts with the pulse beats, but as a whole it retains the same size and remains as it is. If we consider that we are filled with fluids, we recognize that these fluids are open to any number of influences from the outside world. Even a small amount of fluid assumes the shape of a drop, since the world is round and affects each individual drop. Because we are fluid, the whole world affects us, and because modern science no longer takes into consideration the fact that man is really a column of fluid, it has simply forgotten that the whole world with all its stars has this influence on the human being. When one recognizes that man is a mixture of fluids, one is not too far from realizing that he is air as well. I constantly draw in the air and then exhale it again; hence, I am also air. Owing to the constant motion of air within myself, I am truly a human being. It is only due to man's being composed in this way that it is possible for man really to be a soul-spiritual being. If we were only solid, we really could not be soul-spiritual beings at all. Now, everything exerts a specific influence on the human being. We have already mentioned various poisons, and you will no doubt have heard of so-called lead poisoning. When too much lead is introduced into a person's body — such an overdose need only be a small amount, which, however, may be proportionately too much for the body — he becomes too hard. Then these solid components become calcareous, as it were. When man introduces a minute amount of lead into the body — and in lead poisoning it only takes a minute amount — the body becomes too solid. If one sees that a person is beginning to become too solid-man even ages due to lead poisoning, hence signs of aging are noted — then silver in some form must be given as a remedy. That will make man fluid again so that he can experience the effects of outer influences. Lead poisoning, therefore, can be counteracted by silver compounds, which must be chosen to fit the specific case. All manner of things thus have an effect on the human being. As you know, the feminine and masculine natures differ greatly from one another. The feminine nature contains more of the fluid element, as it were, so one can say that the feminine nature is more susceptible to outer influences, because it is more fluid. The masculine nature is less open to outer influences, because it places more weight on man's solid element. One can therefore say that certain illnesses, like lead poisoning, can be more readily controlled in the feminine nature with the administration of less silver, whereas more silver must be prescribed for the masculine nature, because that constitution is not readily made fluid. You see, one must put great weight on everything in the human being, because only in this way is a true understanding of him reached. You see, every substance has a profound influence on the human being. All this is connected in turn with that relationship of the masculine and feminine that is expressed in hereditary conditions. These hereditary conditions are extraordinarily complicated. You can see how complicated these hereditary conditions are in hemophilia; the blood in those afflicted with this illness doesn't coagulate immediately. In a normal person, the blood within the body coagulates immediately, as soon as it is exposed on the surface. The blood is liquid within the body; as soon as it reaches the surface it becomes compact, solid, it coagulates. In hemophiliacs, or bleeders as they are sometimes called, the blood does not coagulate immediately. It flows readily even from a small wound and sometimes even ruptures the skin. It is difficult to perform operations on bleeders. Whereas in normal people the blood immediately begins to coagulate as soon as an incision is made, with bleeders it pours out. Whereas as with others the blood becomes hard immediately, with hemophiliacs it remains fluid so that they can easily bleed to death during an operation, making such an undertaking extraordinarily difficult. Hemophiliacs are forever subject to hemorrhage. Now, it is very strange that a man who is a hemophiliac can marry a woman who is not, and they will have healthy children without hemophilia. If they have sons, the hereditary conditions will not exhibit any detrimental effects in them. Should they have a daughter, however, she herself will not be a hemophiliac, but if she should marry even a perfectly healthy man they might have children who would be hemophiliacs. The odd thing about this affliction is that it doesn't surface in the feminine sex; the daughters don't get hemophilia, but the children of these daughters do, even if their fathers are completely healthy. Hence, hemophilia passes to the descendants by way of the woman, without the woman getting it herself. Here we see the complicated ways in which the conditions in the human body become mixed with hereditary conditions. It is therefore the greatest risk for the daughter of a hemophiliac to marry, because hemophilia will then pass on to some of her children even if she is completely healthy. This shows you how important it is to take such conditions into consideration. Now, such problems could be coped with if medicine were placed on a sound basis. What measures would it be proper to take with the daughter of a hemophiliac? Before she has any children, some remedy containing lead can be given prophylactically, as it is called in medicine. The husband should also receive this lead-containing medication. Then the children will be protected from getting hemophilia. Naturally, if medical thinking is so muddled that one takes the stand of waiting until a person exhibits the symptoms of the illness before beginning a cure, then this will do no good. Medicine must develop a social conscience. It must change so that steps are taken to prevent threatening illnesses from occurring. This cannot be done, of course, as long as today's conceptions prevail. Naturally, people do not seek a cure for an illness that they do not as yet have but could contract due to hereditary conditions. It is especially important in pregnancy to administer a lead remedy if there is any possibility at all of hemophilia. All this cannot be understood if one does not know that only the solid body of man is really physical and material. Only that portion is material. As soon as one comes to the fluid element, one finds a much more delicate substance at work. Since time immemorial this delicate substance has been called “ether.” Ether is present everywhere. It is more delicate than all other substances — more delicate than water, air, and even warmth. As little as ether can penetrate the solid components of the human being, however, the more active it is in his fluid element. Just as man possesses the ether in his fluid element, so he has the actual soul element in the aeriform. He has the actual soul element in the air he carries within him. When this is understood, that in the air one has the soul element, it becomes clear that man exhales the soul element with each breath, and with each inhalation he takes it into himself again. He really lives with the universe by means of this soul element, but because no consideration is given by modern science to the fact that he also possesses an aeriform organism, people lose sight altogether of the soul element and even believe it doesn't exist. The soul element must be considered entirely by itself. Then, the effects of fluid substances, such as absinthe, can be discerned. You see, when I take a drink of absinthe, it is, of course, liquid at first and then it merges with the large quantity of the body's fluids. How does absinthe deal with these fluids, however? It makes these fluids rebellious against absorbing the aeriform in the right way. So, when I take absinthe into the body, the aeriform element can no longer penetrate all my parts in the right way. At the same time, something else happens. When I prevent the aeriform element from penetrating all the parts of my body, this aeriform element reacts in a most peculiar way. I will make clear to you how this aeriform element works by making a comparison. Imagine, for example, a person who is employed in an office and works hard from morning till night. He goes in in the morning and he goes home in the evening. His co-workers say of him that he is simply somebody who comes and goes along with them. Now imagine another person who also works in the office, but this fellow is a clown. He doesn't work much but plays around with everybody from morning till night. He is quite popular with all the employees, who think of him as one of them and are always glad to see him. Of course, his superiors are not so overjoyed with him because the work suffers, but his colleagues enjoy his clowning. Similarly, this is what happens when we block out the air with absinthe. It then rolls around the organs instead of properly penetrating them and filling the body. It remains distinct, stopping here, there, and everywhere. It is just like the funny fellow in the office. It causes pleasant feelings everywhere because it needn't do too much work. If the air is to penetrate the fluids correctly, it has work to do; otherwise, it doesn't supply the body correctly. When absinthe blocks out the air, however, it rolls around everywhere, and the person gradually comes to feel as jolly as a pig. A peculiarity of pigs is that they constantly fill themselves with air that is not properly absorbed. The pig is easily made short of breath. Just as the ether is present everywhere in the fluid substances, so the soul element is present everywhere in the air; we also call it the astral element, because it is called forth by the influence of the stars. Man absorbs the soul element everywhere and feels a pleasant warmth or coolness in himself. Now when the air is rolling around in him, he feels good through and through. The soul element in the body is not there, however, merely for the purpose of serving man's pleasure. It is supposed to work on the organs in the right way so that the heart and all the other organs are correctly cared for. If instead, however, man blocks the soul element so that it amuses him in his body, then, although he feels “piggishly well,” [“ sauwohl ”] his organs are not cared for in the right way. In particular, those organs are shortchanged that contribute most to his having healthy offspring. Here we have a strange phenomenon. People who care for themselves with absinthe actually strive to feel “piggishly well” within, to have this feeling of sensual pleasure inside, but in doing so, they do not provide humanity with healthy descendants. This is the objection to absinthe. Now you can also ask why the desire to drink absinthe actually arises in people in the first place. If you study the history of humanity, you will note that such vices occur most often in those whose development is declining and who are no longer in the full prime of life, that is, those whose bodies are inwardly already somewhat disintegrated. Then people let themselves be amused inwardly by the soul element. This is particularly the case in nations that are in a process of decline. In earlier times, when the Asians and Orientals were still on the ascent, they abhorred all this drinking. They only began to do things such as drink absinthe when they had already begun to decline. This is also the case when we note what goes on today in instances in which these vices get out of hand, when people want to introduce all possible substances into the body. People even seek these effects with cocaine, as I told you recently. With cocaine, the soul element has the effect of pressing the body out, and I have described how such addicts experience something like snakes emerging everywhere from their bodies. The reason a person uses these poisons in this way is because the whole human being is no longer healthy, and he would like to enjoy the soul element as much as possible. In the decadent nations, those people who have the least to do are those who will seek this sensual experience of the body. This is connected with all the historical processes of the human race. It is strange how, if we go west, people permit themselves to be enslaved, as it were, by proclaiming all kinds of laws against alcohol, absinthe, and the like. Even so, people try in any number of ways to get their hands on these sub stances. This demonstrates that today we stand amidst the greatest confusion in human life. on-the one hand, human beings want to live indulgently; on the other, as nations, they do not want to deteriorate completely. This lack of in sight is the cause of the really insane muddle created by the craving of individuals to subject their bodies to all kinds of substances and then again, the laws created to prohibit them from doing so. People need to gain some insight again. I have explained before that the feminine is connected more with the influences of the universe, whereas the masculine closes itself off from these influences. When men become addicted to absinthe, therefore, they ruin those organs that normally produce offspring who would become people of inwardly firm and strong character. Absinthe will cause people to become weaklings. So, if absinthe is increasingly drunk by men, their children will turn out to be weaklings; they will become a weak race, they will have weak descendants. The males will become effeminate. If women become addicted to absinthe, things will reach a point where children will be born who will be extremely susceptible to all kinds of disease. Such matters must be viewed in relation to the whole world. I would like to tell you something extraordinarily interesting. You can ask from whence much of what we know today is really derived. No attention is ordinarily paid to how much wisdom humanity possesses in the most simple, everyday aspects of life. As you know, we name the days of the week: Sunday after the sun; Monday after the moon; Tuesday after Mars — mardi in French is definitely named after Mars. While in German Wednesday [Note by translator: The English Wednesday is derived from Wotan's Day; Wotan is the Germanic name for the being called Mercury in Latin.] is Mittwoch , or mid-week, you only have to take the French mercredi and you have Mercury Day, after the planet Mercury. Thursday is after Thor, the thunderer, in German Donnerstag from Donor, but Donor (Thor) is none other than Jupiter. In French we still have jeudi , Jupiter Day. Friday is named after the German goddess Freia, who is the same as Venus; this is vendredi in French. [ Mention of Saturday was omitted by Rudolf Steiner. It is especially obvious in English that the day is named after Saturn.] Hence, the days of the week are named after the planets. Why is that? Because these names originated in a time when it was still known that man is dependent on the universe. Because man lives, all the planets have an influence on him. The days of the week were named accordingly. Today this is called superstition, but calling it superstition is nothing but ignorance. Actually, tremendous wisdom is contained in the naming of the days of the week. Yes, gentlemen, in all these matters there lies a tremendous wisdom! Now, if we ask from whence this naming of the days of the week came, we go to Asia and find that two or three thousand years before the birth of Christ, extraordinarily clever people lived there. Among the Babylonians and Assyrians were very clever people who were able to observe the influence of the stars; they were the first to name the days of the week. Others than translated them into their own languages. We owe the names of the days of the week to the East, to the Babylonians and the Assyrians, where people were already clever, extremely clever, at a time when Europe looked entirely different. Let us ask what Europe was like around four thousand years ago in Asia, in Assyria and Babylonia, when there were people who really were much cleverer than we are. They were cleverer because they possessed a much greater wealth of knowledge. It is not true that humanity merely progresses smoothly forward. From time to time, humanity also takes steps backward. Now, these people had a great wealth of knowledge. If people simply abandon their souls to such knowledge, however, it does not agree with them any more than money does. As funny as this comparison might sound, it is true. Too much money does people no good; neither does too much knowledge, if it is not counterbalanced by correctly employing it in the service of humanity and the world. The Asians had gradually accumulated a tremendous knowledge, but they didn't know what to do with it. What Europe was like at that time, when the Asians still possessed such great knowledge, can best be seen here in these regions of Switzerland, for example. If you look at the rocks that have been brought down into the valleys by glaciers, you can tell from the appearance of these rocks that the glaciers have worked on them. These are glacial rocks. We can tell from their appearance that they have come down from the heights and that the flowing ice of the glaciers has affected them. From the way all the rocks around here look, we know that this whole region was once covered with ice. Indeed, the very ground we walk and feel most comfortable on was once covered with glaciers. Again, if we go further north in Prussia and large parts of Germany, one can tell by the forms of certain rocks that all those areas were covered with glacial ice that flowed down from the far north. Just as the glaciers descend today to a certain level, so the glaciers moved from the far northern regions all the way into Germany, covering everything with ice. Not so long ago, people had a special preference for large numbers, and so they said, “Oh, certainly Europe was once covered with glaciers, but that was twenty or thirty million years ago.” This is nonsense. It came about through a calculation that I shall illustrate for you with the following example. Imagine that I observe a human heart today. This human heart constantly undergoes minute changes. If I observe it a year hence, it will have become a little less resilient, still less in two years, and I can now calculate how much less resilient it has become. Now, by adding it all up, I can calculate how much less resilient the heart will be in a hundred years and from this know also what it was like a century ago. I can certainly figure that out. I can take, say, a seven-year-old person; three hundred years ago, his heart was in such and such shape. There is only the one small matter of his not having been alive then. Similarly, if I figure out how his heart will have changed three hundred years hence, there again is that small matter of his not being alive then. Such calculations have been made in order to figure out how it looked here in Europe, for example, twenty to thirty thousand years ago. The glacial period thus was pushed far back, but one cannot calculate like that. One must have a science that can show regarding the earth what one already knows regarding the human being, that in three hundred years he will no longer be living as a physical, earthly being. In recent years the learned scientists have become more reasonable, and those with reason have realized that it was not so long ago that everything here was covered with glaciers; in fact, all of Europe was still iced over when people in Asia were as clever as I have described when the Babylonian and Assyrian cultures flourished. We need only go back a few thousand years — four or five thousand — to find that in Europe everything was still iced over. Only gradually, as the ice diminished, did human beings migrate here. Well, these people did not have it as easy as people today. It was much harder on them, since they came from warmer regions where they were not constantly subjected to the cold and where they really fared better. Nevertheless, these people did move into regions that only recently had been covered with ice. Through this they were prevented from experiencing the sensual pleasure of wisdom that would gradually have been theirs in Asia. Because an influence was exerted on Europe from the universe, causing it to be covered with ice when the Asian culture enjoyed a warm climate, a better, more energetic culture developed in Europe than could have evolved in Asia. You see, entire civilizations depend on influences from the universe. Moreover, when one thinks of a glass of ocean water, one sees it simply as water to which a little salt was added: sea water is salty, so when I add salt to plain water I get sea water. It is not as simple as that, however, if you look at the ocean — the Atlantic, for instance — if you could look at it from beneath the surface — here's the surface (sketching) and here's the water — then this is not merely salt water; a curious phenomenon would be observed. When summer comes, something reminiscent of falling snow would pass through the sea. Looking at this gigantic expanse of the ocean from below the surface, one would not say that it was just filled with sea water; indeed, one would see it snowing, as it were. What causes this? The sea contains countless minute creatures, all possessing tiny calcareous shells. These creatures are called foraminifera. As long as these creatures are alive, they swim around in the water fairly close to the surface. Now, when the time of year approaches in which they can no longer live, these creatures die, and their shells begin to sink. These shells are constantly falling, and it is truly like a snow storm. It is really like snow in the air. The entire ocean experiences a snowfall made by these foraminifera. When these foraminifera shells are finally deposited here on the bottom (sketching), their substance is altered and they turn into red clay. This is the ocean floor. These little creatures receive their life from the universe and then build up the ocean floor. It is exactly the same with us in this part of the world. We don't live in the ocean, we live in the air. And when it snows in winter, what is in the snow is what makes our ground as it is, for if there weren't the right snowfall, the plants couldn't grow. The ground is made by what is in the snow. Gentlemen, it is not the solid components nor even the fluid components in our bodies that absorb the right influences, but only the aeriform components. This influence is absorbed by our breathing when it snows in winter. What the world of the stars sends down to us when it snows in winter, we absorb into ourselves and mold in the right way. To do this, however, our souls need to work in the right way on our organs; otherwise our organs atrophy. Now, when we load down our bodies with absinthe, we close ourselves off from the starry world. We can no longer absorb the influences of the starry world. The result is that we ruin our bodies by thus exposing them only to the earth's influence. You can see how tremendously significant it is, if we are to bring about the right kind of human evolution, that we not ruin our bodies with absinthe. We must realize that! Now, you can easily picture how civilization progressed. In Asia there existed tremendously clever people who possessed strong soul natures. Gradually, however, they wanted to experience the soul element only as an inner coloring, an inner sensual feeling. Some of them migrated into the regions that earlier had been covered with ice. There they weaned themselves away from this inner sensual feeling and again strengthened their bodies. This is how the civilization of the Occident was added to that of the Orient. Even today, you can see from the glacial formations here on the mountain tops that the earth was once thoroughly cooled in this region, through which the people who moved here were thus able to strengthen their bodies. You also find the reasons for the decline of the Roman Empire in these things. This dates back to the age when Christianity was first beginning to spread. Yes, gentlemen, if Christianity had spread only among the Romans, the result would have been pretty bad! The Romans, who possessed only the remnants of the Oriental, Asian culture, had become so effeminate that they could not accomplish anything. Then, the peoples of the northern, ice-covered regions arrived with their more sturdy bodies, and the Roman Empire consequently perished. These northern people with their more sturdy bodies then took over the spiritual life. History describes this as the barbarian invasions in which the Romans perished when the Germanic tribes arrived. These are really today's Europeans — the Germans, French, and English — because they are all basically Germanic peoples. The French have only absorbed a little more of the Roman element than the Germans, for example. All this is based on the fact that these people came from regions where they could absorb the influences of the universe, whereas the other people with their wisdom lived only on the earth. These people that came from the north renewed the whole civilization. So you see, this is how nature is related to everything that takes place in history. You also know, however, what a strong influence the Roman element still retained. Remember, for example, that not a word of German could be spoken in the universities of Central Europe until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The professors lectured in Latin. Of course, it had gradually become an odd form of Latin, but everybody knew and understood Latin. Lecturing in the native language came about only slowly, but this tendency to hold on to what was declining because one felt more comfortable with it, even with the speech, continued for a long time. Just think how long people who wished to give themselves airs chattered in French in all the German regions. This was for no other reason than that they wished to perpetuate the old Latin-Roman element, at least in the language. It is true that what continued on in the language was also perpetuated in other vices. The Romans began this craving to experience a sensual feeling within the body, to enjoy the soul element rather than to make use of it to build up the body. The legacy of this is still present in the craving to drink absinthe, indeed, even to enjoy cocaine and so on. These things will produce a weak race, weak descendants, and will gradually lead those who succumb to such vices to decline. You can enact all the social reforms you like; nothing will result from these social reforms if true insight is not achieved. Such insight can come about only when the materialism in science and religion is replaced by beginning to grasp something spiritual. When human beings begin to grasp the spiritual, they will perceive much of what is not only quite clear outwardly but that can then be penetrated if the spiritual can be contemplated in the right way. The question of one of you gentlemen, who is an expert on bees, pointed to the distinction between the lives of bees and the lives of wasps. There is much that is similar. I recently described to you the life of wasps, and it is quite similar to that of the bees. The life of the beehive, however, is a remarkably strange one. What is its basis? You see, you cannot explain this if you don't have the possibility of looking into it spiritually. The life in a beehive is extraordinarily wise in its arrangement. Anybody who has observed the bees' life would agree to that. Naturally, one cannot say that bees have a science such as humans have, because they have nothing approaching the brain apparatus that man has. Bees thus cannot assimilate the overall universal wisdom into their bodies as human beings do, but the influences from the universal surroundings of the earth work powerfully on beehives. If all that lives in the surroundings of the earth, which has a very strong influence on the beehive, were taken into consideration, one could arrive at a correct comprehension of what the life of the bees is really like. Much more so than among ants and wasps, life in the beehive is based on the bees' cooperating with each other and accomplishing their tasks harmoniously. To figure out what causes this, one must conclude that bees have a life in which the element that expresses itself in other animals in their sexual life is suppressed to an extraordinary degree. In bees this impulse is extraordinarily suppressed. You see, reproduction is actually taken care of among bees by a few select females, the queen bees. The sexual life of the others is really more or less suppressed. In sexual life, however, there is also the life of love. The life of love is an element of the soul. Only because certain organs in the body are affected by this soul element do they reveal and become expressions of this love life. Inasmuch as the love life is suppressed in bees and concentrated in only one queen bee, what would otherwise be sexual life in the beehive is transferred to the other activities that the bees develop. This is why the wise men of old, who knew of these matters in a way differing from that of today, associated this whole wondrous bustle of the beehive with the love life that is connected with the planet Venus. So we can say that when one describes the wasps or the ants, they are creatures that withhold themselves from the influence of the planet Venus. The bees are completely given up to the influence of the planet Venus, developing a love life throughout their entire hive. It therefore becomes a wise life, and you can imagine how wise that must be. I have described something of the way successive generations of bees are produced. It contains an unconscious wisdom. This unconscious wisdom the bees develop in their outer activity. Therefore, the element that arises in us only when our hearts love can actually be found throughout the beehive as a substance. The entire beehive is actually permeated by a life of love. In most instances the individual bees renounce love and develop the love in the entire beehive. One can begin to understand their life when one becomes clear that the bees live as if in an atmosphere that is pervaded through and through with love. It is most beneficial to the bee that it sustains itself actually by those parts of the plant that are completely permeated by the plant's love life. The bee sucks its nourishment, which it then turns into honey, out of those parts of the plant that are integral aspects of its love life. The bee thus carries the love life of the flowers into the hive. This is why the life of the bee must be studied from the standpoint of the soul. This is much less necessary with ants and wasps. When their lives are traced, one will see that, instead of what I have described for bees, they tend to have more of a sex life. With the exception of the queen bee, the bee is really the one being that, in a manner of speaking, says, “We shall renounce an individual sex life and instead become bearers of the life of love.” They have indeed carried into their accomplishments in the hive what lives in flowers. If you really begin to think this through, you uncover the entire mystery of the beehive. The life of this sprouting, thriving love that is spread out over the flowers is then also contained in the honey. You can investigate this further and ask what effect honey has on you when you eat it. What does honey do? Well, absinthe unites with the fluidity of man, driving out the air and with it the soul element, so that man experiences sensual pleasure. Honey generates sensual pleasure on the tongue. The moment the honey is eaten, it furthers the right relationship between the air element and the fluid element in man. Nothing is better for the human being than to add the right amount of honey to his food. In a marvelous way, the bee really sees to it that man learns to work on his organs with his soul element. By means of honey, the beehive gives back to man what he needs for energy of soul in his body. When man drinks quantities of absinthe, he wishes to enjoy his soul. When man adds honey to his meal, he prepares his soul element in such a way that it works and breathes properly in his body. Beekeeping is therefore something that really contributes significantly to civilization, because it makes man strong, whereas to indulge in absinthe is something that will gradually drive the human race to extinction. When you consider that bees receive the greatest influence from the world of the stars, you realize that through the bees the right element can enter the human being. All living things work together in the right way when they are combined in the right way. When a person looks at a beehive, he should say to himself with something akin to exaltation that, by way of the beehive, the whole universe draws into human beings and makes them capable people. Drinking absinthe, however, produces incapable human beings. The knowledge of man thus becomes knowledge of the universe.

Health and Illness, Volume II

The Effect of Absinthe — Hemophilia — The Ice Age — The Declining Oriental and the Rising European Cultures — On Bees

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA348/English/AP1983/19230203p02.html

Dornach

3 Feb 1923

GA348-17

Dr. Steiner : Do any of you gentlemen have a question you would like to have discussed? Question : I would like to ask what the world was like in primeval times. Had the planets Venus, Mercury, and so on deposited various metallic substances? Dr. Steiner : If this is considered simply in the way it is frequently stated in old books — in the new ones nothing is said about it, except in our anthroposophical books — that the planet Venus has something to do with the copper deposited in the earth, for example, then this is merely a matter of belief. People gain nothing but a mental image of it by being told that though it was once known by men of old nothing is really known about it today. When something like this is to be discussed, one must really go into it in detail. I would like to call your attention to the fact that modern medicine also no longer knows much about these things. Only a few centuries ago when symptoms of illness appeared in people, the great majority of remedies were based on the use of a metal or one of the plant substances. Nothing has remained of this knowledge except that for certain symptoms, which appear particularly in syphilis, quicksilver, or mercury, must be employed as a remedy. One therefore makes use of mercury. Please note that nobody in medicine today can really explain why mercury is effective; it is used simply because it has been seen to be effective. Regarding this effect of mercury on syphilitic diseases, one must also mention that in recent times a number of other medications have replaced mercury. The not entirely irreproachable effectiveness of the famous new remedies that have replaced mercury today has already been recognized, and medicine will soon return to the mercuric remedies. You can be convinced in a remarkable way that the instinct for healing — not today's science but the instinct for healing — works in mercury in a very strong way. There are certain regions in which people who were not doctors but acted out of their instinct for healing treated a syphilitic illness in the following way (today this rarely happens, but three or four decades ago it still occurred). They took animals that live partly underground and that therefore take in some dirt along with their food, animals such as salamanders, toads, and similar creatures. People took these animals, dehydrated and pulverized them, and then gave this preparation to syphilitic patients. This was a kind of remedy. Now, on the face of it, this is completely incomprehensible. It becomes comprehensible only when one knows that in some regions these toad remedies do not help syphilitics while in other regions they are most effective. When one investigates these regions where it is effective, mercury mines are found in them. It is curious that in regions where mercury is present, the animals absorb it with their food, and it is the mercury that effects the cure. It is not the toad but the mercury that the toad has consumed and assimilated into its body that has the healing effect. You become aware of two things from this. First, that a remarkable instinct for healing is present in people who are not as yet spoiled by ordinary science; second, that if a living creature absorbs something — and a toad is indeed a living creature — it permeates its whole body, it spreads through its whole body. This is true to an even greater extent in the case of humans. Since we used the example of mercury-based remedies, I would like to mention the following. Only in the last few decades have matters terribly declined in medicine as they have today. It was better when I was a little boy. In Vienna, there lived a splendid professor of anatomy, Joseph Hyrtl, who still knew a little — not very much, but still a little — of the more ancient medicine. When, in his clinic, he had the corpses of people available who at one time had undergone mercury treatments, he would break their bones open and show his students that little drops of mercury were deposited in them. This is how a substance that a person absorbs spreads throughout his body. It is the same in other living creatures, and so toads that had assimilated mercury into their whole bodies could be pulverized and used as a remedy against syphilis. Now I will tell you how men hit on the idea of using mercury. for such illnesses in earlier times when science had a totally different character. When you observe the planetary system the way we know it from school, the sun is here in the center; near to the sun, the planet Mercury, a somewhat small planet, circles the sun. A little farther out, Venus circles the sun. Mercury is a small planet, and its orbit around the sun takes place in a short time, about ninety days. Then comes Venus, and it circles the sun more slowly. The next planet circling the sun is the earth. Beyond the earth is Mars. Then come a great number of tiny, miniature planets in orbit beyond Mars. There are hundreds and hundreds of these tiny little planets; they are in orbit. I would have to sketch a lot of planets, but they are not that important and lack the great significance of the larger planets. After these planets come Jupiter, circling the sun, and still farther out, Saturn. Then come Uranus and Neptune, but these two planets were discovered most recently. I need not sketch them, since they circle much farther out and their orbits exhibit such irregularities that in reality they cannot be counted among the planets even today. This is how the planets circle the sun, just as our moon circles the earth. It circles the earth just as the other planets circle the sun. Now, astronomy today looks at such a planetary system without paying much attention to the influences that these planets have on the beings living on the earth. One calculates the position of a planet for a given time so that a telescope can be turned toward it. This can be calculated. One can also figure out how fast a planet moves. One can calculate all this. It is with these calculations that people are concerned today. You see, however, that in the evolution of an entire universal system, a few millennia are not a long time, and it was only twenty-five to thirty-five hundred years ago that people looked upon the planets in a completely different scientific way. At that time the following was done. Illnesses, for example, appeared in which, due to thickened blood — I shall tell you why directly — people were afflicted with problems of the intestines. I can't go into detail concerning these critical illnesses now, because when these observations were made in ancient times, they were not as extensive as they are today. But in an illness of which observations were made in Babylonia, Assyria, Nineveh, and so on, even in Egypt, people became afflicted with an intestinal disorder that was due to thickened blood, to abnormal processes in the blood. Blood was present in the stools; typhoid-like diseases were after all much more common in ancient times than they are nowadays. Let's assume that the ancient doctors, who were also philosophers, had to study such diseases. They didn't wait until the patient was dead, because they knew that once a person had died, the cure was not applicable. So they did not examine those who had died of typhoid but proceeded differently. They noticed that patients suffering from cholera, typhoid, dysentery, or such felt better at certain times, and at others their overall condition took a turn for the worse. So they concluded that typhoid sometimes take? a good and sometimes a fatal course. There are some people who, when they fall ill with typhoid or cholera, occasionally undergo terrible attacks of dizziness almost to the point of losing consciousness; then events take a most critical turn. Some patients retain consciousness, however, and their heads remain clear. These patients can be helped. Now, the ancient doctors maintained that man not only lives and depends on the earth but is also dependent on the entire universe. They therefore made the following observations. We can use here the planetary system taught us in school. Here is the earth with the sun's rays shining on it. The sun's rays fall on the earth. As you know, man depends much on sunlight, and we have always used this as a basis of our studies here. Now, these ancient doctors didn't put such great emphasis on the sun, because they felt that its effects were quite obvious, but they observed people who had severe diarrhea, for example, and they noted that some of them suffered attacks of dizziness at certain times; their heads became foggy. The heads of others who suffered from severe diarrhea remained clear, and they only became a little dizzy. These doctors realized that this difference was related to the time the illness occurred. At certain times, nothing could really be done for these patients; without fail, they became very dizzy and then died. At other times, the diarrhea took a lighter course. So these doctors began to observe the stars and found that in those times when these typhoid-like illnesses took a good course, the planet Venus always stood in such a position that it was blocked by the earth. If the earth is there (see sketch on left), Venus can be located here. If a person is located there on the far side of the earth, no rays from Venus reach him. Since the light of Venus can't pass through the earth, the earth covers Venus for him. The ancients, of course, recognized this, since they could not see Venus, as it was blocked by the earth. Now, they continued their observations and discovered that the prognosis was good for a person ill with typhoid in the times when Venus was blocked by the earth. When Venus was not blocked, however, the typhoid patient was subject to Venus's light in addition to sunlight (see sketch on right). Then the prognosis was bad; the head became dizzy, and the typhoid could not be cured. Having learned this, these doctors said that since Venus' shining rays pass through the earth, something must be contained in the earth that alters Venus' rays. Now they began to experiment, not with dead people but with patients who were still alive. Nothing happened to those ill with typhoid when lead was given. Regardless of Venus' position, remedies of iron also made no difference. When a typhoid patient was given copper, however, it had a remarkable effect. It offset the dizziness, and the patient began to recover. Aha, said these ancient doctors, copper must be contained within the earth somehow. This copper works within the earth and influences the course of typhoid in a way opposite to that of the detrimental influence of Venus' rays. When these rays hit a typhoid patient directly, they aggravate the effects of the disease, but when copper is given to them, it impedes the progress of typhoid. They now concluded that Venus in a certain way is connected with copper. It was not as if they had held seances and a medium had told them to use copper in cases of typhoid. Instead, they made observations of a kind no longer made today, which were based on an ancient instinct and functioned just as scientifically. So they concluded that in the earth there is copper. This copper is related to the force emanating from Venus. This is seen in the special effect it has on this illness. They made other observations as well. Take, for example, the case of a patient with problems of vision, a disturbance in the eyes. People can get ailments of the eyes in which vision can become blurred; the pupils can contract. One can have any number of eye ailments. Now, the ancients again experimented and discovered that when the earth blocks Jupiter, eye problems improve more than if Jupiter shines directly on the earth. They explored further and asked what it is that is in the earth that counteracts Jupiter, and they found that it was tin, particularly when tin was extracted from plants. Gradually, based on the effects on the human being, they thus discovered the correspondence between the planets and the metals contained in the earth. They found that Venus is connected with copper, Jupiter with tin, and Saturn with lead. They found that cases of bone diseases, which can also appear in lead poisoning, have something to do with the rays from Saturn; so, for Saturn, they discovered the effects of lead. For Mars, which has something to do with ailments of the blood, it was easier to find the corresponding metal, iron. Therefore, Mars = iron. For the moon, which stands in a completely different relation since it orbits the earth, they discovered something similar, namely, silver: moon = silver. Now, this way of looking at things was completely abandoned later on. Do not assume, however, that it was long ago that such observations were abandoned; it was only three or four hundred years ago that these observations were no longer made. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries these observations were still made. What was the conclusion? People told themselves that everything that is now separated into the different planets was once contained within one primordial mash [ Urbrei ], one universal mist. This concept is quite accurate; it is only wrong to picture that everything can develop out of such a universal mist without spiritual influences. Otherwise one imagines the great universal schoolmaster who controls everything, as I have told you earlier! No, but it was once known that everything was at one time dissolved in a kind of primordial mash. p here was no sun, moon, or earth; they were all dissolved in the primordial mash and separated only later. Through the copper contained within the earth, the planet Venus still exerts an influence. When Venus was still dissolved in the primordial mash, it had a special affinity with copper. It was at that time that this bond between them arose. When the moon was still dissolved in everything, silver stood in a special relation to the moon. This knowledge was not a divine revelation, however, nor was it based on arbitrary, authoritarian dictation. Rather, it was founded on ancient observations. It was due to special circumstances that syphilitic illnesses came into being; in modern centuries, the so-called civilized peoples came into contact with primitive peoples, and there was an interbreeding, a sexual interbreeding of the civilized with the primitive peoples. These syphilitic illnesses were less prevalent when the peoples of the earth were more segregated into races. The way illnesses have arisen, as with syphilitic illnesses, is that something first causes them, but then they reproduce themselves. They become contagious. Something originally must have caused them to arise. The syphilitic illnesses arose through individuals of different races interbreeding sexually with one another. A syphilitic infection cannot occur, for example, except through a small, concealed lesion or worn tissue through which the contagious substance may enter the blood stream. The contagious syphilitic substance can be smeared on the skin, but if the skin is completely impermeable an infection can't occur. An infection can arise only when the skin is so worn or broken in some spot that the infectious substance can enter through it. You can understand that the infectious substance of syphilis must first have originated where contrasting foreign bloods intermingled. After that, the poison naturally reproduced, but it arose originally when a great interbreeding increasingly occurred among different peoples. It would probably be interesting to explore the statistics of case histories of this illness in a certain part of Europe that employs various exotic peoples, since the occurrences of sexual excesses with them cannot always be prevented. You see, isolated cases of syphilis have also occurred in the past, but the more numerous incidents are of recent date. They also occurred, however, in that age when something was still known of the ancient science. Observations then showed that syphilitic patients improve when Mercury is blocked by the earth. So it was discovered that quicksilver, or mercury, is related to the planet Mercury. In this way the metals were gradually assigned to the planets: Mercury — quicksilver, or mercury Venus — copper Jupiter — tin Saturn — lead Mars — iron Moon — silver People told themselves that when everything was dissolved in the primordial mash, it was the Venus substance that caused copper to be deposited in the earth, and it was the moon that caused silver to be deposited in the earth. You see, such observations can be extended. It is remarkable how, at a certain time, it became fashionable in particular circles to make a secret of this ancient science. To this day there are books that a person without knowledge of anthroposophy cannot really read, because he wouldn't be able to make anything of them. All kinds of things are written in them, but people no longer know how to read them today. A Swedish scientist, for example, obtained such a book by Basilius Valentinus, which is rather old, and, in writing about it from the standpoint of today's chemistry, he said that what Valentinus had stated was the purest nonsense. He is right to say this, of course, because chemists today use the terms mercury, iron, and so forth, in such a way that they have no reference at all to the human being. A chemist, therefore, though he may be a genius, cannot make anything of what is written in books such as those by Basilius Valentinus. He cannot help thinking that he is quite right in saying that it is complete nonsense. This is not really so, however, because Valentinus still wrote in an age when, for example, it was known that a woman's period occurs every twenty-eight days, as does the full moon. The ancients were certainly clever enough not to attribute a woman's flow of blood to the moon's influence. They told themselves, however, that its rhythm was the same, so there must have been a connection somehow in earlier times. Now man has freed himself from this connection. This is something they knew, but they realized that a woman had a similar rhythm to that which the universe has in the moonlight. They also knew that when a woman who is having difficulty giving birth and has been in labor for a long time is given a medication containing silver, the labor pains become less severe. This was known. It was also known that if there were no visible moon, it being blocked by the earth, as it were, a woman who might have a difficult time giving birth would not have such a painful labor. The influence of silver thus was seen to be connected with the moon. In Basilius Valentinus' books, “moon” is often written in the place of “silver,” and “silver” instead of “moon.” When this Swedish scientist reads that, he obviously can make nothing of it, regardless of how well informed he is about silver and how it works in a chemical process. It is a complicated matter. You see, the one who wrote the works of Basilius Valentinus was a Benedictine monk. Such things as this science were nurtured to a significant degree in Benedictine monasteries in past times, and Benedictine monks were extraordinarily clever in such things. Today, a Father Mager, who is also a Benedictine monk, travels from one German city to another giving everywhere the same lecture against anthroposophy. Everywhere in the German cities this Father Mager harangues against anthroposophy. Just recently he was in Cologne. The enemies of anthroposophy differ greatly from one another. When the Jesuits speak against anthroposophy, it differs from what the Benedictine monks say against anthroposophy. Indeed, this is how it is today. The Church suppresses a science that reaches beyond the earth. Gentlemen, do you know what began in a particular time? In a particular time, the Church authorities began to conceal and gradually suppress this science that had flourished in the monasteries. Such a science requires a great deal of time, but the monks had this time; they cultivated this science and thereby were quite useful to humanity in the past. Gradually this was suppressed, however. This suppression of the spiritual science often came about in this way. Today's secular scientists now condemn this ancient science without realizing that a direct line leads from such monks of the Church to them. When monists stand up against anthroposophy, they naturally also object to the Church, but they do not realize that they are its proper pupils. Today's scientists are, in a certain sense, truly Benedictine or Jesuit pupils. They never attended Jesuitical seminars, because such thinking really can be absorbed in the outside world. This is naturally something that must also be taken into consideration. From what has been said, you can see that the earth on which we live and that yields its various metals to us was crystallized from the primordial mash. What we behold outwardly as the planets, however, has remained behind as metals in the earth. What the earth once did together with Venus has remained in the metal copper. To heal with copper — this is what is accomplished specifically through Venus. Metals extracted from plants today are especially effective in healing. A metal deposited in the earth has hardened and has lost some of its potency, although it is still effective against head ailments. But copper from the leaves of a plant known to contain quite a bit of it — the amounts are always small, but one can say “quite a bit” — is especially effective. There are such plants in the leaves of which copper is dissolved. If remedies are then made from such plants, they are particularly useful in intestinal disturbances that are due to a thickening of the blood and that lead to typhoid, dysentery, and the like. This is how healing is related to what can be known about plants. You can see that today things are no longer in order when even the thickest book on botany, although containing all kinds of information, nevertheless lacks the most important instruction medical men should have; that is, there is no mention in these books of the metals that are dissolved in blossoms or roots. If at all, they are noted only in passing. This is a most important point, however, because it shows us that a plant that still contains copper today, for example, is related in its growth process to the planet Venus; it actually opposes the force of Venus and develops its own Venus force by absorbing copper into itself. We can thus say that once there was a connection between the earth and all the planets that circle the sun today, and this influence has remained behind in the metals. This is what can be said first in reference to this question. From the foregoing, you can see how important it is to refer back to observations of this kind that existed in the past. We are no longer in the same position, however, that they were in then, because we no longer possess the instincts for healing they once had. Only oxen, cows, sheep, and other animals, not human beings, have really retained a marvelous healing instinct, and they avoid eating harmful things and pass up anything that wouldn't be good for them. This is no longer possible for a human being, since he no longer has the healing instinct. Today, by the roundabout way of a spiritual science, we must once again learn to recognize how everything in the planetary system and in the universe, is connected with the earthly plane. Here one must begin at the beginning, one must truly begin at the very beginning. One must realize the following, for example. One must begin with illnesses that take hold of the human abdomen. If one has such an abdominal illness, one comes to know that the substances present in the blossoms or the highest leaves of plants are especially helpful. Good remedies can be produced for illnesses of the abdominal organs by extracting certain substances from the blossoms and leaves of plants. Substances taken from the roots of plants, however, provide especially beneficial remedies for everything connected with the human head. Matters are reversed with plants and with the human being. With plants, the roots are at the bottom and the blossoms are at the top. Man, however, is an upside-down plant. What is root element in the plant is actually in the head of the human being, and the blossom element is more in his abdominal region. You can see this even in the external forms. Man has his head at the top, and his reproductive organs are below. The plant has its roots below, while the blossoms, containing the organs of reproduction, are above. This drawing will help you to understand this. Here is the human being; here at the head I draw the root of a correspondingly large plant; here are the stems and leaves. Then, with the blossoms, I come to the abdominal organs. An entire plant is contained within man. The only difference is that it grows from the top downward in him. In a certain sense, man is also a plant. Isn't this apparent? It really is so obvious that everyone must see it. The animal, however, is between the two; in it, the plant is in a horizontal position. This is really not just a picture; the plant is truly contained within man. Of course, it develops in accordance with the human form. But imagine that I were to draw this plant in detail, sketching a real bulbous root and the various branches — in other words, a real tree. It would be inverted, however. Here it would have its branches, and the outermost tips would wither a little here and there; there you have the nervous system! The nervous system is truly an inverted plant within man that is continuously dying a little. Now, we know that plants grow out of the earth. First, there is winter, then come spring and summer that coax the plants from the earth. Within the earth is the winter's force. Through this the plant forms its bulbous root and has its root force. Then comes the summer's force, and the plant is coaxed upward; it is from the earth's circumference that the plants are drawn forth. Within are the metals — copper, let us say. The sun cannot do anything but coax forth a plant from the earth. Then, once the plant has emerged, it defends itself against the Venus forces. The force of winter from the earth and the summer's force from the universe together make the plant grow. The human being, however, must have this winter force within his head in order that this root of the nervous system grow downward throughout the year. Since a baby, for example, can be born at any time of year, this force must be present in man's head in summer as well as winter. In our day he cannot in summer receive from outside the winter force in his head. This really implies that in primeval times, when the earth was still one with the other planets in the primordial mash, the human being must have absorbed this winter force, which has been handed down to this day. Man owes the winter force in his head to those most ancient times. The head of man was really made in ancient times and today remains the same. So we again find that man's head must be related to what arose on earth in ancient times and today has become completely solidified. Go out into the primal mountains of central Switzerland and you will find granite and gneiss to be especially prevalent. The most active element in granite and gneiss is silicic acid, which is present in quartz in pure form as silicic acid, or silica. It is also the oldest substance on the earth and must be related to the human head forces. This is why illnesses of the head can be most readily cured with remedies made of silica; one can approach the human head thereby. In the age when silica still played a particular role on earth within the primordial mash and was not as hard as it is today in granite and gneiss, rather flowing like a liquid, the force present in the human head was formed — the winter force — and it has been preserved ever since. So one must really present information about the human being taking into consideration the natural history of the whole earth. This is still connected with the question you asked, gentlemen, and with what I wanted to tell you about it. So long!

Health and Illness, Volume II

The Relationship of the Planets to the Metals and their Healing Effects

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA348/English/AP1983/19230210p01.html

Dornach

10 Feb 1923

GA348-18

(Questions were asked about Colours and Primeval Rock.) DR. STEINER: I will first deal with the question about rock, as that can very well be brought into connection with the things we have been considering lately. Now you know that when a building is put up on the earth, great attention has to be paid to the laws of weight, gravity and many others — the laws of elasticity, for instance, of which we shall speak presently. Imagine that one builds a tower, a tower, let us say, like the one on Cologne Cathedral, or that one builds something like the Eiffel Tower. It is clear, of course, that it must be built in such a way that it does not fall. If one has accurate knowledge of the laws of gravity there is no need for the whole thing to fall down. Still, the highest towers on earth can only be built on a base, and if you carry upwards to a height about ten times the base — that is, one to ten, you can get the highest towers. So with the ratio of one to ten the highest towers can be built — otherwise the motion of the earth, wind storms, etc., would make them fall. But in addition one must take care that the towers are in themselves somewhat elastic. The top always rocks to and fro slightly. Attention must be paid to what is called the force of gravity. The tower will always rock, but as soon as it rocks too violently it collapses. The Eiffel Tower rocks quite considerably at the summit. But care must be taken that it does not get thrown out of its base. Now if you look at — let us say — a blade of wheat, you find at once that these laws are not observed at all. A blade of wheat is really nothing but a tower, yet it has a tiny base. A wheat blade with its tiny base goes up high aloft, and if we reckon out the ratio it is certainly not one to ten, which must always be used in mechanical building. The ratio is much more like one to four hundred, and in many cases one to five hundred. By the mechanistic laws we use on earth, such a tower would quite definitely have to fall down. For when it is shaken by the wind its elasticity forces cannot be understood at all by the laws that a mechanist must obey. If you tried to set up something else quite heavy on the Eiffel Tower, you would find that it simply could not be done! But at the top of this tower, this blade or stalk, there is still the ear, and it moves to and fro in the wind. That, you see, contradicts all the laws of the builders. Now when one investigates the substances of which this blade consists, one first finds wood, that is to say, one gets a woody substance which you all know as bast. You see it in trees. And next you find in it a real building material: silica, quartz, real silicic acid. But it is harder quartz than is found in the Alps, in granite, for instance, or gneiss. This quartz, then, forms a scaffolding. Besides these it contains a fourth substance — water. Thus this mortar made from wood, bast, water and quartz enables the stalk to contradict all terrestrial laws. A blade of grass is also a tower built entirely of substances. It can be tossed in the wind, does not break, rights itself when the wind ceases or the weather is favourable and calmly stands upright again, as of course you know. But forces such as these, forces which can build something like this out from the ground, are not to be found on earth, assuredly not. And if you ask: Well, where do they come from? — this answer must be given: The Eiffel Tower is dead, the blade of wheat is alive . But it does not get life from the earth, its life comes from the whole surrounding universe. [See Fundamentals of Therapy , by Rudolf Steiner and Dr. Ita Wegman. Chapter III, “The Phenomena of Life.”] On the Eiffel Tower, gravity works purely downwards, drawing it down. The blade, however, does not grow by supporting itself on what is below. If we build the Eiffel Tower we must lay one material upon another and what is beneath will always be the support of what is above. With the blade this is not the case; the blade is in fact drawn out towards universal space. So if you picture the earth ( a sketch was made on the blackboard ) and there the blades of wheat, then because the universe is filled by a very fine substance called ether which lives in the plant, [See Etheric Formative Forces in Cosmos, Earth and Man , by Dr. G. Wachsmuth.] the wheat blades are all drawn out towards the universe. But life does not come from the earth, it comes from cosmic spaces, and we can say: life simply comes out of the universe. In the same way, when the egg is formed in the body of the mother (I have spoken of this before) this body only provides the substance. It is the whole cosmos that works upon the egg and gives it life. In all that lives, you see, the whole of universal space is working. Now if you consider the plant, it grows, to begin with, under the earth. ( A sketch is made .) If that is the earth, the plant is growing within it. But the earth is not some sort of neutral lump, it is really miraculous. It contains all sorts of substances, but three were of quite special importance in ancient times. One of the three is a substance which we call mica . Only a small amount is to be found in plants to-day, but even so it is extraordinarily important. If you have already seen mica, you can perhaps remember that it is formed of thin plates, so thin that they sometimes look transparent. And once upon a time the earth was interwoven by such little mica plates. They went in this direction ( sketch ). As long as the earth was soft, such forces were still in it. Opposing them were other forces: they went so ( sketch ) and thus there was a real grating of lattice-work in the earth. These other forces are to-day contained in quartz . And in between is yet another substance — clay. This clay unites the two, it fills in the lattice-work, so to speak. As a rock it is called feldspar . Thus at one time the earth was composed in the main of these three kinds of primeval rock. But it was all soft, like pulp. There was the mica, which was really at pains to have the earth formed of thin plates in a horizontal direction. Then there was the quartz, radiating in this direction, and then the feldspar cementing the two together. We find these most essential constituents to-day when we take the clay soil that is everywhere in the fields. At one time they were all intermingled inside the earth, now they are to be found outside in the mountains. If we take a piece of granite, it is quite granular, simply composed of little scales. These scales are the thin places of mica broken into splinters. Then there are very hard grains in it — that is the quartz; and then combining grains — the feldspar. These three bodies are broken down, made granular and are to be found outside in the mountains. They form the base of the hardest mountain ranges. Thus since the earth was soft they have been pounded and broken to bits by all manner of forces which work in the earth. But remains of these old substances, particularly remains of their forces , are still to be found everywhere in the earth and the plants are built up from them by the universe. We can say therefore that when they are working to-day out there in the mountains, they can create nothing more. These rocks are broken up, crumbled away, crushed into grains and are too hard to become plant. But since the plant always gives its essential substances and forces to the seed, what is within the earth can still be used for building up the plant out of the universe. Such a view as this, where one takes into account how the whole of cosmic space works together to produce life, is not found at all in modern science. You may have read of the lecture recently delivered in Basle where an explanation was given of how life must actually have arisen on earth. The lecturer said: Yes, it is difficult to imagine that through mere intermixing or chemical combinations of substances, life comes about on earth. Then it must have come out of the universe — but how? Now it is interesting to see how a modern scientist pictures to himself the way in which life can have come out of the universe. He says to himself: Well now, if it is not on the earth it must have come from other stars. The nearest star which perhaps once threw off substances that then flew towards the earth is so far away that what was split off would take forty thousand years to reach the earth. One has to imagine that the earth was once a fiery-fluid body. There could be no life on it or else of course it would have been burnt up. But it cooled down and then it was able to absorb life if it had flown to it from the nearest star. Now one cannot imagine — said the lecturer — that a life germ, a little germ of life wandered for forty thousand years through cosmic space, especially as this has a coldness — not warmth — of minus 220 deg. C. This germ then would arrive at the earth and then life on earth would originate. Earlier, no matter how many germs had flown into it, they would have been burnt up. And when the earth had sufficiently cooled down they would have thriven. But this simply could not have come about, said the lecturer. Therefore we don't know where life comes from! But one can see quite clearly that life comes out of the universe. One sees in reality that in everything living, not only earth-forces are at work. We use only the forces of the earth for the Eiffel Tower and so on. But in such a tower as this (blade of wheat) there work indeed not only the earth's forces but the forces of the whole universe. And when the earth was still soft, when mica, feldspar and quartz or silica, swam through each other in the fluid condition, then the whole earth was under cosmic influences; it was a giant plant. When you go out to the mountains to-day and find granite there, or gneiss — which differs from granite in being more rich in mica — they are the remains of this ancient giant plant. And just as when to-day the plant decays and gives over its mineral constituents to the earth, so, later on, the whole earth body as plant gave over its mineral constituents. And thus to-day you have the mountain ranges. For our hardest mountains originated from the plant nature, when the whole earth was a kind of plant. I have already told you how the earth looked when this primeval rock had ceased to be in a plant condition, but all was still soft. Our present animals and men were not then in existence, but the Megatherion and all the creatures I described to you. But before all this came about, the earth was a giant plant in cosmic space. And if you observe a plant to-day and enlarge it, you find even now that it resembles the mountain formations outside. For the universe only acts on the plant as a whole; its minutest parts are already stone. Thus, briefly, the earth has once been alive and what we find to-day in the hardest mountain rocks is the remains of a living earth. But the earth's solid, mineral matter has originated in yet another way. If you go out on the ocean you find island formations. Here is the sea ( sketch ) and at a certain depth under the sea there live tiny creatures in real colonies — the coral-insects or polyps. These coral polyps have the characteristic of continuously secreting chalk. The chalk remains there and the island is finally covered by their deposited chalk secretions. And then sometimes the ground sinks in here , is submerged and a lake is formed. There is a ring of chalk which the coral insects have left behind. Now the earth as a whole is continually sinking in the very regions where these polyps are depositing their chalk. They can only live in the sea itself, so they go down deeper and deeper, while the chalk is left behind up above. Thus one can still find in the sea chalk deposits which are derived from living creatures, namely, the coral polyps. Formerly there was animal life where now in the Juras we find limestone or chalk. The limestone is the deposit of former animal life. If you go into the central Alpine region where the hardest rocks are, there you have the deposited plants. If you go into the Juras, there you have what is deposited by animals. The whole earth has once been living; originally it was a plant, then an animal. What we have to-day as rock is the remains of life . It is simply nonsense to imagine that life is built up from dead substances through chemical combination. Life comes out of the ether-filled universe. It is nonsense to say that dead substances could unite and come to life — what is called “original creation.” No, it is precisely the dead substances that are derived from the living, are deposited by the living. As our bones are separated out — in the mother's body they are not there at first — so is everything, our bony structure, etc., formed out of the living. The living exists first and only afterwards comes the dead. The ether surrounds us and it draws everything upwards just as the earth's gravity draws everything down. It draws upwards but it does not bring death, as gravity does. The more you inhale gravity, the more you become gouty or diabetic or something of the sort. To that extent we become dead. And the more the upward forces prevail in us, the more living we become. HEALING FORCES IN HUMAN NATURE I now come to a part of the question which Herr B. has asked. Let us imagine then that I have someone before me who is ill, and I can say to myself: What is wrong with him is that he has not enough of the forces that work outside in the universe. He has too much of the forces of gravity — everything imaginable is deposited in him. Now I remember! Yes, I say to myself, it was quartz, silica, that at one time let forces stream out into the universe. If I prepare silica in such a way that the original forces become active again, that is, if I make a preparation from silica, mix it with other substances by which the silica element gets etheric force again and give this as a remedy, then I may be able to make a cure. Very good results can come from a silica preparation. And so in medicine one can make use again of forces which at one time existed in silica in living form. Great achievements in medicine can be secured if one reflects upon the condition of the earth when it was fully alive, when the silica was still under the influence of the universe. Therefore when too little is living in a patient and he needs a connection with the universe, i.e. gives him substances which lie hardened outside and which one can very well employ as medicaments. The head projects most of all into the cosmos, therefore it is most easily healed with silica; the abdomen tends most towards the earth, hence it is most easily healed with mica. And that which lies more in the centre — lungs, etc. — that one heals very well with feldspar when one prepares it in the right way. So now you see that when one understands nature, one also really understands what are healing forces in human nature. But one must have a real feeling for the fact that the universe acts upon our earth. Now it is always only possible to explain certain things at certain times. And so I can explain to you the flight of birds from another aspect than the one I took before, when we were not so advanced. Our modern science thinks very abstractly about the flight of birds in autumn and spring. In spring the birds leave their warmer haunts and in autumn, when it gets colder, they desert the more northerly regions. But there are birds which fly over the ocean in a south-easterly direction and they fly very fast and make no halt in between. One can prove this because it can be shown that there are no islands at all on the routes such birds sometimes take. Moreover they fly very high and it is not possible, on the lines of ordinary science, to answer the question: what do they breathe up there! For one could only think that so high up they would be stifled. Nor can people make out how these birds find their direction. It is sometimes said: Oh, well, that is an inherited faculty; the young ones have always inherited it from the older ones, and the old birds instruct the young and then it works very well — the young ones can also do it. So when autumn comes, the older swallows organise a school, the young ones are instructed, the old ones fly in front, the young ones behind and copy them. This is what people have imagined. But not all birds of passage do this. In the case of migratory birds in South Africa, for instance, when spring comes here with us, the older birds fly away first and come back here. The young ones can hold out longer there because they are still strong. The old birds get away earlier from the dust and leave the young ones behind. They don't instruct them at all, don't act as guides; the young have to find their way quite alone. Some people have said: Oh, well, birds see to a great distance. In fact if it is a case of Africa they would even have to see through the earth! One doesn't get very far with these things. But I will give you an example by which you can see how the matter really lies. There is something else about which one can wonder how it makes its way — namely, a ship. How does a ship find its direction if it is to sail from Europe to America? It takes its direction from the compass. When as yet there were no compasses it went rather badly with the ships; they had to find their direction from the stars. So they steer their course by the compass, that is to say, by forces which are invisible, which are present in the ether. These are the very forces by which the birds find their direction! Only we men have no longer a sense for these invisible forces. The birds, however, have a sense for them, they have an inner compass. What we only learn laboriously, by observing the etheric forces with compass, magnet, etc., a bird has within itself. It flies by the ether, by what is working in universal space. And so we can say: the earth is everywhere surrounded by ether and the ether contains life-forces . They come from the universe, take hold of earthly substances and from them bring about the living. But something always remains within as remains of life . When, for instance, you take coral chalk, there is always something left that a little recalls life, something that has branched off from the living. So it is possible to find all sorts of things within it still, which can be administered as quite a good remedy. And if, as I said, you take silica, which has already become terribly hard, and make use of it as a medicament, you can heal head ailments very effectively. Thus life is still within it. The whole of it has once been alive. We cannot say that minerals are still living to-day, but they have lived once. They were once constituents of life. There is a remnant left in them which we can extract by all sorts of means and through which they can serve very well as remedies. So this question as to whether there is also life in stone has been answered. If people only calculate with the forces acting on earth, then they proclaim that the earth looked different millions of years ago. They take no account in this of heavenly space. I said to you lately that if one takes into account what comes from the heavens one does not arrive at anything like such vast numbers of years. One discovers, however, that here in our regions everything was still frozen and covered with ice, while over in Asia there was already quite a high degree of civilisation with much wisdom spread among the inhabitants. But one comes to see that in a certain way our earthly life depends on the life outside, the life in the universe. When one goes back six, seven, eight thousand years, the earth with its mineral rocks was quite different from what it is to-day; not so much externally, but internally quite different. And then one goes back farther and farther to the soft condition of the earth. If we want to direct ourselves by the cosmos, we must observe it in the right way. Now one can observe the cosmos by observing the position of the sun's rising. At the present day the sun in spring rises on the morning of 21st March with the constellation of Pisces behind it. But if one goes farther back — for instance, into the times before the Birth of Christ, the sun rose, not in Pisces, but in the constellation of Aries. That means the vernal point has moved along. If the sun rises in spring on 21st March in Pisces, then about 2,160 years ago it rose in Aries, still earlier in Taurus, still earlier in Gemini. There are twelve such constellations. Thus the rising position of the sun is always moving in a backward direction; it moves round a whole circle, so that the vernal point goes quite round the earth. Is that understandable? It is always moving farther round from west to east. One therefore arrives at the fact that formerly the sun rose in Aries, earlier in Taurus, still earlier in Gemini, then in Cancer, Leo, Virgo, then in Libra, in Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and then, as to-day, in Pisces. So when we go back 2,160 years it rose in Aries, another 2,160 years in Taurus, another 2,160 in Gemini, still another in Cancer, another in Leo. Then we come round again until at one time it was rising in Pisces. We come right round. ( Sketch .) In 25,920 years the sun makes a revolution round the whole universe. That is very interesting, and by such a course of the stars one can see how everything on earth changes. With the conditions brought by our present vernal point, we have our high mountains with the dead granite masses , containing feldspar, quartz and mica. It is all dried up, devastated. So it was, too, 25,920 years ago: similar conditions then prevailed on earth. But in between it was all different. For instance, the sun rose at one time in spring in Libra, between Virgo and Scorpio. Then the whole earth was alive, soft, was in fact a kind of plant. We need not go back more than 15,000 years at most, then through the quite different position of the sun the earth had a plant nature, and later an animal nature. We should be able to follow from the sun's course how the influences coming in from cosmic space have altered conditions on the earth. You must think to yourselves, as you go back in time: the rock in the primeval Alps which is quite hard and solid to-day begins to flow, somewhat as iron flows in an iron foundry. It is naturally not quite the same, for when we go back the flow is reversed, as it were, it is in process of becoming solid. And if we go forward into the future, we shall again have the sun in Libra — for now it rises in Pisces, after 2,160 years in Aquarius, then in Capricorn, Sagittarius and once more in Libra, the Scales. At this future time when the sun rises once more in the Scales, the whole primeval Alpine range will have dissolved. The dense quartzes will have become fluid again, the earth will once more be plant-like and men and animals return to the condition in which they formerly were. In the meanwhile, however, they have absorbed all that they could take in on the earth. So everything really goes in a circle. We look back to an earlier time when the earth and its hardest formations were fluid. Then the cosmos above brought forth such creatures as I once described to you; they arose through the in-working of heavenly forces and died out. Then all cooled down, solid formations arose and gradually there came the life of to-day. But it all goes back again. The granular quartz and granite, etc., are dissolved and former conditions return, but at a higher stage of evolution. If you take in your hand a piece of granite containing quartz, you can say: This piece of granite with its quartz will at a future time be alive again. It has lived in former ages and to-day it is dead. It has formed solid ground upon which we can walk about. When we did not need to walk, the solid ground was not there. But one day it will come to life again. In fact we can say that the earth sleeps as regards cosmic space — only the sleep is long, 15,000 years at least. When the earth was alive it was awake, it was in connection with the whole universe and the life forces of the universe brought forth upon it the great beasts. Later, as solidity was reached, these forces brought forth the human beings. Human beings nowadays have a pleasant time of it on earth — of course in regard to the universe too — they can go about on solid ground. But this solid ground will wake up again — it is really only asleep — it will wake up again and become active life. If we take a piece of chalk, limestone, just an ordinary bit from the Juras, it is the remains of a portion of life. It is deposited from life, but someday it will be alive again, it is between life and life and is really only asleep. Now we can use chalk, or calcium, very well as a medical preparation when, for instance, we find that children cannot absorb proper nourishment. This is particularly the case in Germany to-day — it is dreadful there now. When I recently went to Stuttgart to inspect the Waldorf School again, I visited the first Class. We have twenty-eight children in this Class, of whom only nineteen were present, the others were all ill. In another Class, fifteen were ill. And when one goes into it one finds terrible conditions. They brought a little boy into my consulting room and asked: What is to be done with him? He can no longer eat and the doctor has given him up. Through persistent undernourishment, the digestive organs gradually form the habit of not being able to digest and they refuse everything. People can no longer eat, no matter how much one gives them. You can give them Quaker meals (The Society of Friends supplied the Waldorf School with food gifts) and everything possible, but nothing can help the child because his organs have ceased to act. He looks rather fat and greyish-yellow. What is to be done? The organs must first be made fit again to take in nourishment. Here one is well served by the little bit of life that is in calcium. When calcium is rightly used as a remedy, one can reawaken these sleeping digestive forces so that the child can live. One must give a mixture of calcium with other substances as it does not work by itself alone; it must be made to pass over into the organism. The calcium is absorbed if it is given in 5 per cent dilution. But what is one using in giving calcium in this dilution? One is using the forces which once, in earlier times, were life forces in the chalk. They are still in it and can be used to reawaken life. But if one uses calcium in high dilution, in homeopathic doses, as one says, not 5 per cent but 5/10,000 — not even 5 per 1,000 but 5/10,000 — this, mixed with the other substances, acts on the head. It immediately becomes a remedy for the head. If one gives the calcium allopathically it acts on the digestive organs, but in a quite high dilution it acts on the head and one can vary one's treatment in this way. It is also possible to ask: what is one using in the high dilutions of calcium? Here one is using the forces of the future which are still in it and will come into existence again in future ages. You see, we must know nature in this way and then it can give us remedies. For there was once life everywhere and will be so again; death only stands between two lives. From primeval rock it is possible to use both past and future life forces in the right way. This makes us realise something else. We find in our modern world both allopaths and homeopaths. The allopaths cure allopathically and the homeopaths, homeopathically. Well, but as a matter of fact many illnesses cannot be cured homeopathically, many must be cured allopathically. Remedies must be prepared differently. One cannot be a fanatic who swears by words, one must administer the remedies out of a full knowledge — sometimes so, sometimes so. Anthroposophy does not go in for catchwords — allopathic — homeopathic — but it studies the matter and says: the allopath works principally on the stomach, intestines, kidneys; there he is successful. Homeopathy is successful when the source of the illness is in the head, as in influenza. Many illnesses have their origin in the head. One must know how things really take their course in nature. People invent catchwords to-day as they no longer have real knowledge. Catchwords are always invented when things have ceased to be understood. It is naturally not easy to arrive at the truth, for the allopath says: I have often cured such and such ... and the homeopath says: I have often cured such and such. ... Of course they always leave out the diseases they have not cured! But take a man like Professor Virchow of Berlin, a doctor and professor who certainly could not be accused of not standing completely in modern medicine, who has even been called a genuine Liberal by the Free Thought Party. Yet with regard to cures he has been obliged to admit the following: “When a doctor in our modern medical world can show that he has cured one hundred people, the truth really is that fifty of these would have got well without him, and 20 per cent would have recovered even if he had used quite different remedies. So 70 per cent of cures are not to be attributed to modern medicine — 30 per cent at most.” This is what Virchow calculated and he stood fully within the world of modern medicine. It can definitely be stated that the right remedy, rightly employed, is effective; everyone can convince himself of that. Quicksilver, for instance, although it has after-effects, is nevertheless efficacious. And so one must just find the right thing. Sometimes it is terribly complicated, sometimes the organism has even become too brittle to stand the cure. But in a certain sense, through a real knowledge of what exists in nature, we can see how the various substances work. As dead substances they are really only in the middle between two periods of life and we can see their effect on man. But it is essential to have a real knowledge concerning their life. Now the peculiar thing is that if one wants to understand anything, one must always start from life . Even in regard to colours we must take our start from life. Sometimes when one sees modern pictures one has the feeling that there is no flesh behind, but that wood has simply been smeared with colour. Modern painters are quite unable to reproduce the tint of flesh-colour, because they have no living feeling that flesh colour is created out of the human being . Nowhere does it appear on any other material. One has to understand flesh colour and then the other colours can be understood. I will speak more about this on another occasion. The child that they brought to me in the Waldorf School and who had been treated with calcium by the school doctor had completely lost the flesh colour and had become yellow from within outwards ... let us hope that people don't say that a proper remedy was not used! Living activity is inherent in colour and we are therefore experimenting in using the less dead for colours. So when we painted the Goetheanum we used plant colours as they come more from the living. In colour too you must go to life. You see, the question as to whether rocks also have life was not so foolish, in fact it is quite intelligent. It has given us the opportunity of considering how the rocks are alive in the course of the earth's evolution, become dead again, and so on, and how human life is related to this.

Cosmic Workings In Earth and Man

Life on Earth in Past and Future

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/CosmicWorks/19230217p01.html

Dornach

17 Feb 1923

GA349-1

In order, gentlemen that the last question may be thoroughly answered. I will, as far as possible, say something about colors. One cannot really understand colors if one does not understand the human eye, for man perceives colors entirely through the eye. Picture to yourselves, for instance, a blind person. A blind person feels differently in a room that is lighted and in a room that is dark. Though it is so weak a matter that he does not perceive it, yet it has a great significance for him. Even a blind person could not live perpetually in a cellar, he would need the light. And there is a difference if one brings a blind man into a bright room with yellow windows, or into a dark room, or into a fairly light room which has blue windows. That acts quite differently on his life. Yellow color and blue color influence life quite differently. But these are things which one learns to understand only when one has grasped how the eye is affected by color. Now from what I have hitherto put before you, you will perhaps have realized that two things are most important in man. The first is the blood, for if man were not to have blood he would have to die at once. He would not be able to renew his life every moment and life must be every moment renewed. So if you think away the blood from the body, man is a dead object. Now think away the nerves too: man would no doubt look just the same, but he would have no consciousness; he could form no ideas, could will nothing, would not be able to move. We must therefore say to ourselves: For man to be a conscious human being he needs nerves. For man to be able to live at all he needs blood. Thus blood is the organ of life, the nerves are the organ of consciousness. But every organ has nerves and has blood. The human eye is in fact really like a complete human being and has nerves and blood. Imagine that here [a drawing was made] the eye protrudes, and in the eye little blood-arteries, many blood-arteries spread out. And many nerves too spread out. You see, what you have in the hand, that is, nerves and blood, you have also in the head. Now think: the external world which is illumined works upon the eye. By day at any rate the world in which you go about is illumined, but it is difficult to form an idea of this wholly-lighted outer world. You get a true idea when you imagine the half-lighted world in the morning and evening, when you see the red of dawn and evening. Dawn and the sunset glow are particularly instructive. For what is actually there in the glow of dawn and evening? Picture to yourselves the sunrise. The sun comes up, but it cannot shine on you direct as yet. The sun comes when the earth is like this — I am now drawing the apparent path, but that does not matter (in reality the earth moves and the sun stands still, but how we see this makes no difference). The sun sends its rays here [drawing] and then here. So if first you stand there, you do not see the sun at dawn, you see the litÖ¾up clouds. These are the clouds and the light falls actually on them. What is that actually? This is very instructive. Because the sun has not quite risen, it is still dark around you and there in the distance are the clouds lit up by the sun. Can one understand that? If you stand there you are seeing the illumined clouds through the darkness that is around you. You see light through darkness. So that we can say it is the same thing at dawn and sunset — one sees light through darkness. And light seen through darkness — as you can see in the morning and evening glow — looks red. Light seen through darkness looks red. Now I will say something different. Imagine that dawn has gone by and it is daytime. You see freely up into the air, as it is today. What do you see? You see the so-called blue sky. To be sure, it is not there, but you see it all the same. That certainly does not continue into all infinity, but you see the blue sky as if it were surrounding the earth like a blue shell. Why is that? Now you have only to think of how it is out there in distant universal space. It is in fact dark. For universal space is dark. The sun shines only on the earth and because there is air round the earth the sunbeams are caught and make it light here, especially when they shine through watery air. But out there in universal space it is absolutely black darkness. So that if one stands here by day one looks into darkness, and one should actually see darkness. But one does not see it black, but blue, because all round there is light from the sun. The air and the moisture in the air are illumined. So you see quite clearly darkness through the light. You look through the light, through the illumined air into darkness. And therefore we can say: Darkness through light is blue. There you have the two principles of the color-theory which you can simply get from observation of the surroundings. If you thoroughly understand the red of dawn and evening glow you say to yourself: Light seen through darkness or obscurity is red. When by day you look out into the black heavens, you say to yourself: Darkness or obscurity seen through light — since it is light around you — is blue. You see, men have always had this quite natural view until they became “clever.” This perception of light seen through darkness being red, and darkness through light being blue, was possessed by ancient peoples over in Asia when they still had the knowledge which I have lately described to you. The ancient Greeks still had this concept, and it lasted through the whole Middle Ages until the 14th. 15th, 16th, 17th centuries when people became clever. And as they became clever, they began not to look at nature but to think out all sorts of artificial sciences. One of those who devised a particularly artificial science about color was the Englishman Newton. Out of cleverness — you know how I am now using the word, namely quite in earnest — out of special cleverness Newton said something like this: Let us look at the rainbow — for when one is clever one does not look at something happening naturally every day: dawn, sunset, one looks at the specially unusual and rare, something to be understood only when one has gone further. However. Newton said: Let us look at the rainbow. In the rainbow one sees seven colors, namely, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. One sees them next to each other in the rainbow: Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet When you look at a rainbow you can distinguish these seven colors quite plainly. Now Newton made an artificial rainbow by darkening the room, covering the window with black paper, and in the paper he made a tiny hole. That gave him a very small streak of light. Then he put in this streak of light something that one calls a prism. It is a glass that looks like this [drawing], a sort of three-cornered glass, and behind this he set up a screen. So he then had the window with the hole, this tiny beam of light, the prism and behind it the screen. Then the rainbow appeared with the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet colors. What did Newton then say? Newton said to himself: The white light comes in; with the prism I get the seven colors of the rainbow. Therefore they are already contained in the white light and I only need to draw them out. You see, that is a very simple explanation. One explains something by saying: It is already there and I draw it out. In reality he ought to have said: Since I set up a prism — that is. a glass with a cornered surface, not a regular glass plate — when I look through it like this, there is light made red through darkness, and on the other side darkness made blue through light — the blue color appears. And in between lie in fact gradations. That is what he ought to have told himself. But at that time the aim in the world was to explain everything by seeking to find everything already inside that from which one was really to explain it. That is the simplest method, is it not? If, for example, one is to describe how the human being arises, then one says: Oh well, he is already in the ovum of the mother, he only develops out of it. That is a fine explanation! We don't find things as easy as that, as you have seen. We have to take the whole universe to our aid, which first forms the egg in the mother. But natural science is concerned with throwing everything inside, which is the simplest possible way. Newton said that the sun already contained all the colors and we had only to draw them out. But that is not it at all. If the sun is to produce red at dawn, it must first shine on the clouds and we must see the red through darkness; and if the sky is to appear blue, that is not at all through the sun. The sun does not shine into the heavens: it is all black there, dark, and we see the blue through the illumined air of the earth. We see darkness through light, and that is blue. The point is to make a proper physics where it could then be seen how in the prism on the one side light is seen through darkness and on the other darkness through light. But that is too tiresome for people. They find it best to say that everything is within light and one only draws it out. Then one can say too that once there was a giant egg in the world, the whole world was inside, and we draw everything out of it. That is what Newton did with the colors. But in reality one can always see the secret of the colors if one understands in the right way the morning and evening glow and the blue of the heavens. Now we must consider further the whole matter in relation to our eye and to the whole of human life altogether. You see, you all know that there is a being which is especially excited through red — that is, where light works through darkness — and that is the bull. The bull is well known to be frightfully enraged by red. That you know. And so man too has a little of the bull-nature. He is not of course directly excited through red, but if man lived continually in a red light, you would at once perceive that he gets a little stimulation from it. He gets a little bull-like. I have even known poets who could not write poetry if they were in their ordinary frame of mind, so then they always went to a room where they put a red lampshade over the light. They were then stimulated and were able to write poetry. The bull becomes savage: man by exposing himself to the red becomes poetic! The stimulation to poetry is only a matter of whether it comes from inside or from outside. This is one side of the case. On the other hand you will also be aware that when people who understand such things want to be thoroughly meek and humble, they use blue, or black — deep black. That is so beautiful to see in Catholicism: when Advent comes and people are supposed to become humble, the Church is made blue; above all the vestments are blue. People get quietened, humble; they feel themselves inwardly connected with the subdued mood — especially if a man has previously exhausted his fury, like a bull, as for instance at Shrove Tuesday's carnival. Then one has the proper time of fasting afterwards, not only dark raiment, black raiment. Then men become tamed down after their violence is over. Only, where one has two carnivals, two carnival Sundays, one should let the time of fasting be twice as long! I do not know if that is done. But you see from this that it has quite a different effect on man whether he sees light through dark that is red, or darkness through light, that is blue. Now consider the eye. Within it you have nerves and blood. When the eye looks at red, let us say at the dawn or at something red, what does it experience? You see, when the eye looks at red then these quite fine little blood-arteries become permeated by the red light, and this light has the peculiarity of always destroying the blood a little. It therefore destroys the nerve at the same time, for the nerve can live only when it is permeated by blood. So that when the eye confronts red, when red comes into the eye, then the blood in the eye is always somewhat destroyed and the nerve with it. When the bull is faced with red it simply feels: Good gracious — all the blood in my head is destroyed! I must defend myself! — Then it becomes savage because it will not let its blood be destroyed. Well, but this is very good — not only in the bull, but in man and in other animals. For if we look at red and our blood becomes somewhat destroyed, then on the other hand our whole body works to bring oxygen into the eye so that the blood can be re-established. Just think what a wonderful process takes place there. When light is seen through darkness — that is, red — then the blood is destroyed, oxygen is absorbed from the body and the eye vitalized through the oxygen. And now we know through the renewal of life in our eye: There is red outside. But in order that we may perceive this red, the blood and the nerve in the eye must be a little destroyed. We must send life, that is, oxygen, into the eye. And by our own vitalizing of the eye, by this waking up of the eye we notice: there is red outside. Now you see, man's health too actually depends on his perceiving rightly the reddened light, on his always being able to take in reddened light properly. For the oxygen which is drawn out of the body vitalizes then the whole body and man gets a healthy color in the face. He can really reanimate himself. This refers not only to a person who is healthy and able to see, it applies as well to one whose eyes are not healthy and who does not see: When the light works through the bright color then he is vitalized in the head, and this vitalizing acts again on the whole body and gives him a healthy color. So when we live in the light and can take in the light properly we get a healthy color. It is very important tor people not to be brought up in dark places where they can become lifeless and submissive. People should be brought up in light, bright places with yellowish-reddish light, where they also properly assimilate the oxygen in them through the light. But you see from this that everything connected with the element of red is actually connected with the development of man's blood. When we look at red the nerve is actually destroyed. Now just think: We see darkness through light, that is, blue. Darkness does not destroy our blood, it leaves our blood unharmed. The nerve too is undestroyed since our blood is in order. The result is for man to feel himself thoroughly well inwardly. Since blood and nerve are not attacked by blue, man feels thoroughly well inside. And there is really something subtly refined in creating submissive meekness. When, let us say, the priests there above at the altar are in their blue or their black vestments, and the people sit below and gaze at them, the blood-arteries and nerves in the eye are not destroyed and naturally the people feel very well. It is actually directed to the feeling of well-being of the people. Do not imagine that that is not known! For they still have their ancient science. The more modern science has only arisen with the men of the Enlightenment, in such men as, for instance. Newton. Thus we can say: Blue is what sends through man a feeling of well-being, when he says to himself (it is all unconscious, but he says it inwardly): There alone I can live — in the blue. There man feels inwardly himself; in red, on the other hand, he feels as if something were to penetrate into him. One can say that with blue the nerve remains undestroyed and the body sends the feeling of well-being into the eye and hence into the whole body. That is the difference between the color blue and the color red. And yellow is only a gradation of red, and green is a gradation of blue. So that one can say: according to whether nerve or blood is active, the more sensitive is man to red or to blue. Now you see, one can apply that to substances. If I want to look for a red for painting, to produce a red color which contains the substances that stimulate man to develop oxygen inwardly, then I gradually arrive at the fact that to get red color for painting I must test the substances of the outer world to find how much carbon they contain. If I combine carbon in the right way with other substances, I discover the secret of making a red for my painting. If I use plants for getting colors for paints then above all it is a matter of so organizing my processes, diminishing, consuming, and so on, that I obtain the carbon in the paint in the right way. If I have the carbon in it in the right way, then I get the bright, the reddish color. If on the other hand I have substances which contain much oxygen — not carbon but oxygen — then I obtain the darker colors, such as blue. When I know the living element in the plant then I can really create my colors. Imagine that I take a sunflower: that is quite yellow, a bright color. Yellow is near to red, that is, light seen through darkness. If I now treat the sunflower in such a way as somehow to gel into my paint-color the right process that lies in the flower, then I have a good yellow. Even the outer light cannot have much against it, because the blossom of the sunflower has already taken from the sun the secret of creating yellow. If I therefore get the same process into my artist's color as there is in the blossom, then if I get it thick enough, I can use it normally as paint. But let me take another plant, the chicory, for instance, the blue flower that grows on the wayside — it grows here too. If I have this blue plant and want to prepare a paint from the flower, I cannot do it, I get nothing from it. On the other hand, if I treat the root in the right way, there is a process in it which actually makes the blossom blue. When the blossom is yellow then something goes on in the blossom itself which makes yellow; when the blossom is blue, however, the process lies in the root and it only presses upwards towards the flower. So if I want to produce a blue paint from the indigo-plant, where I get a darker blue, or from the chicory, this blue flower, I must use the root. I must treat it chemically till it yields me the blue color. In this way, through real study, I can find out how to obtain paints from the plant. I cannot do so in Newton's way; he simply says that everything is in the sunlight and one has only to draw it out. (One can apply that at most to one's purse; what I spend for a day I must have in the purse in the morning.) That is how the quite clever people picture it, like a sack in which everything is lying. That, however, is not the case. We must know, for instance, how the yellow is in the sunflower or in the dandelion. We must know how the blue is in chicory. The processes which make the chicory or the indigo׳ plant blue lie in the root, whereas the processes that make the sunflower or the dandelion yellow lie in the flower. And so I must imitate chemically, in a chemistry become living, the flower-process of the plant and get the bright, light color. I must imitate the root process of the plant and there obtain the dark color. You see, what I have related here is plain to the real human understanding; whereas as a matter of fact this business (in the rainbow) with the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, is a rarity. Now when Goethe lived the affair had got to the point where people generally believed in what Newton had taught, namely, the sun is the great sack in which lie the so-called seven colors. One need only tempt them out, then they come to light. Everyone believed that; it was taught and in fact is still taught today. Goethe's nature was not one to believe everything immediately. He wanted to convince himself a little about things that were taught everywhere. People generally say that they do not believe anything on authority. But when it comes to the point of crediting what is taught from the professorial chair, then people are today frightfully credulous, they believe everything that is taught. Goethe did not want to believe everything straightaway, so he borrowed from the university in Jena the apparatus, the prisms and so on which provide the proof. He thought: Now I will do exactly what the professors do in order to see how it actually is. Well, Goethe did not get down to it immediately and had the apparatus rather a long time without doing anything. He just did something else. So the time became too long for the Hofrat Büttner who needed the apparatus and wanted to have it fetched back. Goethe said: Now I must do the thing quickly — and at least, as he was already packing up, looked through a prism. He said to himself: The rainbow must look beautiful on the white wall if I look through there; instead of white, red, yellow, green and so on must appear. He therefore peered through, anticipating with delight that he would now see the white wall in these beautiful colors, — but he saw nothing: white as before, simply white. Naturally he was extremely surprised and asked himself what was behind it. And his whole theory of color arose out of this. Goethe said: One must now control the whole affair again. The ancients have said light seen through darkness = red, darkness through light = blue. If I gradate the red somewhat it becomes yellow. If I make the blue go up to red, then it becomes green on the one side and violet on the other. These are gradations. And he then worked out his color theory and in fact better than it existed in the Middle Ages. Now today we have a physicist's color-theory with the sack from which the seven colors come, which is taught everywhere. And we have a Goethean color-theory which understands the blue of the heavens rightly, understands rightly the morning and evening glow as I have been explaining to you. But there is a certain difference between the Newtonian and the Goethean theory. For the most part other people do not notice it, for other people look on the one hand to the physicists: there the Newtonian theory of color is taught which stands in the books everywhere. One can very clearly picture to oneself what appears there in the rainbow as red, orange, yellow, green and so on. Well, but there is no prism there! However, one does not reflect further. The Newtonians certainly know, but they do not admit, that when one looks through the rainbow on the one side, then one sees darkness through the sun-illumined rainbow; sees on the other side the blue. But then one also sees in front the surface where one sees light through darkness, and on the other side the red. One must explain everything therefore by the simple principle: light through darkness is red; darkness through light is blue. But as I have said, people on the one hand see everything as the logicians explain it to them: on the other hand they look at pictures where the colors are used. Well, they do not ask further about the red and the yellow and so on; they do not bring the two things together. But the painter must bring them together: one who wants to paint must connect them. He must not merely know: There is a sack and the colors are within it — for he has not got the sack anywhere. He must obtain the right thing from the living plant, or living substances, so that he can mix his colors in the right way. So this is the position today: painters really reflect (— there even are painters who reflect, who do not simply buy their colors): but those painters who reflect upon how they are to obtain these colors and how they should use them, they say: Yes, with the Goethean color-theory one can do something; that tells us something. With the Newtonian color-theory, the theory of the physicists, we painters can do nothing. The public does not bring painting and the physicists' theory of color together, but the painter does! He therefore likes the Goethean color-theory. He says to himself: Goodness! We don't bother about the physicists: they say something in their own field. They may do what they like; we keep to the Goethean color-theory. The painters look on themselves as artists and not as having to encroach on the teaching of the physicists. That is in fact uncomfortable, enmities arise, and so on. But that is how things stand today between what is in the books about color and what is true. With Goethe it was simply the defense of truth which impelled him to oppose the Newtonians and the whole modern physics. And we cannot really understand nature without coming to Goethe's color-theory. Hence it is quite natural that in a Goetheanum Goethe's theory of color should also be vindicated. But then if one does not remain in some religious or moral sphere but also intervenes in the smallest single part of Physics, then one has the physicists' whole pack of hounds upon one. So, you see, the defense of truth is extraordinarily difficult in modern times. But you should just know in what a complicated way the physicists explain the blue of the sky. Naturally, if I start from a false principle and want to explain the simple thing that the blackness of universal space appears blue through light, then I must make a frightfully complicated explanation of it. And then the red of dawn and sunset! These chapters mostly begin like this; the blue sky — one cannot actually explain that properly today, one could imagine this or that. — Yes, with all that the physicists have, their little hole which so much amused Goethe — the little hole through which they let the light come into the room, in order with the darkness to investigate the light — with all this they cannot explain the simplest facts. And so it comes to the point that color is no longer understood at all. If one understands, however, that the destruction of the blood calls forth the vitalizing process — for when I have destroyed my blood then I call up all the oxygen in me and renew myself, bring about health — then one also understands the healthy rosy color in man. If I have darkness round me or continual blueness, well, then I shall not continually reanimate myself, or else I should create too much life in me. And so on the one hand one can understand the healthy rosy countenance from the intake of' oxygen, when one is thoroughly exposed to the light, and one can understand paleness from the perpetual intake of carbonic acid. Carbonic acid, the counterpart of oxygen, wants to go into my head. That makes me quite pale. Today, for instance in Germany, the children are almost all pale. But one must understand that that comes from too much carbonic acid. And if man develops too much carbonic acid — carbonic acid consists of a combination of carbon and oxygen — then he uses the carbon which he has in him too much for forming carbonic acid. Thus in such a pale child you have all the carbon in him continuously changed into carbonic acid. So he becomes pale. What must I do? I must administer something to him through which this eternal development of carbonic acid inside him is hindered, through which the carbon is held back. I can do that if I give him some carbonate of lime. In this way the functions are again stimulated, as I have told you from quite a different standpoint, and man keeps the carbon that he needs, does not continually change it into carbonic acid. And since carbonic acid consists of carbon and oxygen, the oxygen comes up into the head and animates the head processes, the life processes. But when the oxygen is given up to the carbonic acid, the life processes are suppressed. If I therefore bring a pale person into a region where he has a good deal of light, he becomes stimulated not to give up his carbon continually to carbonic acid, because the light sucks the oxygen up into the head. Then he will get a healthy color again. In the same way I can stimulate that through the carbonate of lime, inasmuch as I keep back the oxygen and the person has it at his disposal. So everything must be interconnected. One must be able to understand health and illness from the theory of color. One can do that only from Goethe's theory, for that rests simply on nature in a natural manner. It can never be done from Newton's color-theory which is merely devised, does not rest on nature at all, and actually cannot explain the simplest phenomena, the red at dawn and sunset and the blue sky. Now, gentlemen, may I still say something else to you. Think of the old pastoral peoples who drove out their flocks and herds and slept in the open air. During their sleep they were not exposed to the blue sky but to the dark sky. And up there upon it [drawing] are the unnumbered shining stars. Now picture the dark sky with these countless shining stars and there below the sleeping men. From the heavens there streams out a calming force, the inner feeling of well-being in sleep. The whole human being is permeated by the darkness, so that he becomes inwardly quiet. Sleep proceeds from the darkness, but nevertheless these stars shine down. And wherever a star-beam shines the human being becomes inwardly a little stirred up. An oxygen ray goes out from the body. Pure oxygen rays go to meet the rays from the stars and the man becomes entirely permeated inwardly by the oxygen rays: he becomes inwardly an oxygen reflection of the whole starry heavens. Thus the ancient shepherd folk took into their quietened bodies the whole star heavens in pictures, pictures which the course of the oxygen engraved into them. Then they woke up and they had the dream of these pictures. From this they had their star knowledge, their wonderful knowledge of the stars. Their dream was not merely that Aries, the Ram, had so-and-so-many stars, but they really saw the animal, the Ram, the Bull, and so on, and felt the whole starry heavens in themselves in pictures. That is what has remained to us from the ancient shepherd folk as a poetic wisdom which sometimes has extraordinarily much that can still be instructive today. One can understand it when one knows that the human being lets an oxygen ray radiate to each beam of light from the stars, that he becomes wholly sky, an inner oxygen sky. Man's inner life is as we know an astral body, for during sleep he experiences the whole heavens. It would go badly with us if we were not descended from these ancient pastoral peoples. All men in fact are descended from ancient shepherd folk. We still have, purely through heredity, the knowledge of an inner star-heaven. We still unfold that, although not so well as the ancients. In sleep, when we lie in bed, we have still a sort of recollection of how once the shepherd of old lay in the fields and drew the oxygen into him. We are no longer shepherds and herdsmen but something is still given to us, we still receive something, only we cannot express it so beautifully as it has already become pale and dim. But the whole of mankind today is indeed interconnected, all belong to each other, — and if one would know what man still bears in him today, one must go back to ancient times. Everywhere, all men on earth have proceeded from this shepherd-stage and have actually inherited in their bodies what could descend from these pastoral peoples.

Colour and the Human Races

The Nature of Color

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA349/English/UNK1969/19230221p01.html

Dornach

21 Feb 1923

GA349-2

Now, Gentlemen, I have not yet fully answered the last question about colors. We will take it a little further or complete it. First of all, today we have to consider a most interesting question, namely, the human color itself. You know, of course, that over the face of the earth are people showing skins differing in color. The Europeans to whom we belong are called the “White Race.” Well, we know indeed that a man in Europe is not quite healthy when he is cheese-white. He is healthy when he shows his natural, fresh color, created by himself inwardly, through the white. But now besides this European coloring we have four other principal colors of the skin. We will consider this a little today because one actually understands the whole of history and the whole social life, even modern social life, only if one can turn to the race-characteristics of humanity [see drawings]. Only then can one rightly understand the spiritual element if one first studies how the spirit works in man precisely through the skin-color. I should now like to put the racial color before you in this way. Let us start from Europe where we ourselves are living. Here we have therefore — I can draw it for you only roughly — first Europe; bordering on Europe: Asia, England, Ireland; here Japan, China; further India, India proper, Arabia; here we have Africa. Thus: Europe, Asia, Africa [see scheme at end]. Now we will sketch in the men as they are in the corresponding regions. We call ourselves in Europe the white race. If we go over to Asia we have the yellow race, principally in Asia. And when we go over to Africa there we have the black race. Those are the original races. All others living in these regions are the consequence of migration. So if we ask: What races belong to these parts of the earth? — Then we must say: To Asia belongs the yellow race, the Mongolian; to Europe belongs the white race or the Caucasian race, and to Africa belongs the black or Negro race. The Negro race does not belong to Europe and it is naturally only mischievous that it now plays so great a role in Europe. These races are, as it were, at home in these three parts of the earth. Now we will consider the color of these three races. I have already told you that color has to do with light. When one sees the black of universal space through the illumined universe, then it appears blue. When one sees light, illumination through the dark air, it appears reddish, as in the glow of morning and evening. Let us just simply consider colors on ordinary objects. You first distinguish — let us say — black and white. These are the most striking colors, black and white. What is the position then with a black body? A black body assimilates in itself all the light that falls upon it and mirrors back none at all. So if you have a black body, it takes the light that falls on it, absorbs everything into itself, and gives none back. It therefore appears black because it reflects no light. When you have a white body it says: I do not need the light, I will only use what is in myself, I send all the light back. It is therefore white. Thus a white body sends back all light and we see its surface light, white. A dark body absorbs all the light and also all the warmth and throws back no light, no warmth at all, and therefore appears black. You can study that more closely if you consider the following. Suppose there is some object on the earth which takes up all light. In the first place it gives back a little light and so appears bright. But it allows itself time and takes up the most light possible. When it can take up no more and one brings it into the light, then it appears black. Now, suppose there is a tree. It stands at first on the earth's surface and takes up a certain amount of light. But it absorbs a good deal of both light and warmth. That goes on until the time when it falls below the earth. When, for a length of time, — but that means thousands or millions of years — it has remained beneath the earth, what does it become? Black coal. It becomes black because it took up light and warmth into itself when it was a tree. It does not give that out unless we destroy it. If we burn it then it yields it, but if we only bring it into the air for a time it keeps it. It has taken up so much light and warmth that it gives nothing out — we must destroy it. That is the condition of coal. Let us suppose that the object does not take up further light, it sends all back again, then something of such a nature will be white. That is the snow in winter. It reflects all light, it takes up no light and no warmth and thus becomes white. You see by this difference between coal and snow the relation that exists between objects on earth and universal space. Let us apply that to man in universal space. Let us look just at the blacks in Africa. These blacks in Africa have the characteristic of absorbing from the universe all light and all warmth. They take it up. Now this light and this warmth in the universe cannot go through the whole body because a human being is always a human being even if he is a black one. It does not go through the whole body but stops short on the surface of the skin, and therefore the skin itself becomes black. Thus a black man in Africa is one who absorbs the most possible warmth and light from the universe and assimilates it in himself. Through the fact that he does this the forces of the cosmos work over the whole man like this [see drawing]. He takes up light and warmth everywhere and uses it in himself. Now there must be something which helps him in this assimilation. Well, you see, what helps him in particular is his posterior brain. In the Negro the posterior brain is specially developed. That goes through the spinal cord and can work over all the light and warmth that is in him. Hence alt that is connected with the body and metabolism is strongly developed in the Negro. He has, as one says, a strong desire-life, instinctive life [see drawing]. And since he actually has the sun-like, light and warmth, on the surface of his skin, his whole metabolism proceeds as if there were a cooking by the sun itself in his interior. Hence comes his desire-life. There is really a continuous cooking going on within him, and what stokes the fire is the posterior brain. Sometimes man's organization throws off further byproducts. That is to be seen just in the Negro. The Negro not only has this cooking in his organism, it not only boils there, but he also has a frightfully crafty and observant eye. He peers craftily and very observantly. You can easily take this as a contradiction. But it is like this: If there in front is the nerve of the eye [see drawing], the nerves go just into the posterior brain; they cross there [see drawing]. The nerve goes into the posterior brain, and since that is specially developed in the Negro therefore he peeps out so craftily, is such a sly observer of the world. If one begins to understand the matter, it all becomes clear. But modern science does not make such studies as we do and so it knows nothing about these things. Let us now pass over from the black to the yellow man. Yellow is already related to the red, and so light is reflected to some extent but much is absorbed. However, the yellow man throws back more light than a black. The black man is an egoist, he takes up all light and all warmth. The yellow Mongolian gives indeed some light back, but he absorbs a great deal. That makes him what he is [see drawing]. Thus he takes up much light but gives some back. He contents himself with less. This less amount of light cannot work in the whole metabolism, and so the metabolism must be referred to its own force. That works chiefly in the breathing and blood-circulation. Thus in the yellow race — Japanese, Chinese — the light and warmth work principally in breathing and blood-circulation. If you have ever met a Japanese, you will have noticed how he pays attention to his breathing. When he talks to you he keeps himself under restraint so that his breathing may be in good order. He has a certain feeling of well-being in breathing. This means that less is worked over in his interior, it is principally worked upon in the breast [see drawing]. This causes the yellow man to develop strongly, not the posterior brain, but the middle brain. It is there that his breath and blood-circulation are maintained. The yellow Asiatic lives rather less in the metabolism. You can notice that too by his walking. He has a less energetic walk. He does not work so strongly with the limbs and the metabolism. The Negro is more to the fore in racing and outer movement that is governed by desires. The Asiatic, yellow man, develops more an inner dream life and therefore the whole Asiatic civilization has this dreamer-element. Thus he is not only living more in himself; he absorbs something from the universe. And so it comes about that the Asians have such wonderful poems about the whole universe. The Negro has not got this quality. He takes everything into his metabolism and really he only digests the universe. The Asiatic breathes it into himself, has it in his blood-circulation. And so he can also give it out from himself when awake. For speech is in fact only a metamorphosed breathing. Yes. Gentlemen, they are beautiful, wonderful poems. The Asians are altogether an inward people. They scorn the European today because they say: They are external people. We shall see why immediately. That then is the yellow race [see drawing] and it is connected with color in the way I have told you. Now let us look at ourselves in Europe. We are a white race in regard to the universe, for we must give back all external light. We give back all light and. in fact, all warmth too. The warmth has to be very powerful if we want to take it into us. And when it is not there we are stunted, as we see by the Eskimos. There is the human being [see drawing] of such a nature that he throws back all light and warmth. He absorbs them only when they become powerful. He throws them back and develops only the light and warmth that arise in his inner being through his own inner activity. Yes, neither breathing nor blood-circulation comes to help him, nor the creation of warmth; but he must himself work out light and warmth through his brain, that is, through his head. We actually throw back all external light and warmth. We ourselves must give the color to our blood. That then presses through the white and so we obtain the human color of the Europeans. It is from within. And so indeed we are such a white body as assimilates everything within and throws back all light and warmth. And whereas the Mongolian mainly needs the middle brain, we Europeans use the frontal brain, the anterior brain. Through this fact the following is shown. The man with the posterior brain has mainly the desire-life, life of instinct: the one here with the middle brain has the feeling life, situated in the breast; and we Europeans, we poor Europeans, have the thought-life that sits in the head. Thereby, as it were, we do not feel our inner man at all. For we feel the head only when it is ill. Otherwise we do not feel it. But this makes us aware of the whole outer world and we easily become materialists. The Negro becomes no materialist, he remains man inwardly, only he develops the inner desire-life. Nor does the Asiatic become materialist, he remains at the feeling-life, he does not bother about external life as the European does. Of the latter he says: He is only an engineer, concerning himself only with outer life. — He is, in fact, since he must develop his frontal brain, assigned to the outer world, and everything is connected with that. Thus we are the white race, inwardly the white is colored through our blood. Then there is the Mongolian, the yellow race; and then there is the black race. And we can understand that quite well when we start from the colors — then the whole thing is explained. Now you only need to consider how that is. The Negroes live on a part of the earth where the sun oppresses them very much indeed, penetrates into them. So they give themselves up to it, absorb it fully into their bodies, become friendly with it, reject nothing. With the Asians — more comes to them from the heat of the earth. They do not give so much back. They are no longer so friendly with the sun. And with the Europeans — here the fact is that they would actually obtain nothing from the sun if they did not evolve their own human element. Europe has therefore always been the starting point for all that develops the human element in connection with the outside world. Inventions have very seldom been made in Asia. They can be assimilated, but inventions themselves, by which the Asians can apply what is produced through practical experience with the outer world — these the Asians cannot make. For instance, this is what once happened with a screw-steamer. Some Japanese had learnt about it through stealthily watching Europeans, and they also wanted to manage it alone. Previously the Europeans had always been in charge and directed things. Now the Japanese wanted to manage the steamer alone. The English remained behind on the shore. Suddenly the Japanese who were on board fell into evident despair, for the steamer continually revolved round itself. They could not make out how to bring the proper forward motion to the revolving movement. The Europeans who knew how to do it naturally grinned tremendously on the shore. This independent thought which the European develops in familiarity with the environment is not possessed by the Asiatic peoples. The Japanese will therefore develop all European inventions, but they will not think out something by themselves. As regards the human race, men all over the earth are actually dependent on one another. They must help each other. That is a consequence of their natural ability. That is connected, you see, with the whole of man's development. Think for a moment of a black man; his desire-life is especially evolved, all that boils in the interior. This gives much ash, and the ash is deposited in the bones. He is therefore more developed in his bones than a man of the white race. The latter rather directs to the blood what he has inwardly and his bones are more finely developed. Thus the Negro has coarsely developed bones, the European has more finely developed bones. And the Asiatics, the yellow race, stand in between. You can observe by the manner in which a Japanese stands and walks that in his bone-structure he stands between the European and the African. The Africans have these strong bones continuously in movement. The European has more the blood system. The Japanese has all that acts on the breathing and from the breath on the blood-circulation. But now, Gentlemen, men on earth do not simply remain where they are. If one were to go back into ancient times, one would already find that the yellow race belonged to Asia, the white race to Europe and the black race to Africa. But it has also always happened that people have wandered out. And it can happen that either the yellow wander to the East or the blacks wander to the West. And that was once done. The yellow have always wandered eastwards. There they have come to those islands which lie between Asia and Australia [see scheme]. When the yellow wander over to the East they become brown. There arose the Malayans who became brown. Why? Yes, why do they become brown? What does it mean to become brown? Well, when they are yellow they throw back a definite degree of light; the rest they absorb. When they become brown through the different way in which they now live in the sun — for they come from another part of the earth — then they throw back, reflect, less light. They take more light into themselves. So these brown Malayans are migrated Mongolians, but who now, since the sun works on them differently, accustom themselves to absorb more light and more warmth. But consider how they have not the nature tor this. They have already accustomed themselves to have a bony structure which limits them to a definite degree of warmth. They have not the right nature for taking up so much warmth as they now take up as Malayans. The result of this is that they begin to become unusable people, people who break to pieces in the body, whose body dies away. This is in fact the case with the Malayan population. They die of the sun. They die of the Fast. One can say that whereas the yellow, the Mongolians, are still men in full strength, the Malayans are already a dying race. They are dying out. In ancient times the Negroes wandered over to the West — today circumstances are different, they can do it less — but they wandered westwards in ancient times; there had always been a ship passage, and there were still islands over the whole Atlantic Ocean, for earlier this was in fact a continent. Now when the blacks wandered west they could no longer absorb so much light and warmth as in their native Africa. Less light and warmth reaches them. What is the result? Their nature is organized to take up as much as possible of light and warmth and actually in that way to become black. Now they do not get as much light and warmth as they need in order to become black. So they become copper-red, become Indians. That comes from the fact that they are obliged to reflect something of light and warmth. That gleams a copper-red. Copper is itself a body which must reflect a little light and warmth. They cannot hold out against this and so die in the West as Indians. They are again a race that is going under, they die from their own nature which gets too little light and warmth. They die from the earthly, and the earthly element of their nature is their desire-life. They can no longer develop that properly, whereas they still get strong bones. Since much ash goes into their bones these Indians can no longer hold out against it. Their bones become frightfully strong, but so strong that the whole man goes to pieces by reason of his bones. You see, this is how things have developed, so that these five races have come about. One might say: Black, yellow, white in the center: as a side-branch of the black the copper-red, and as a side-branch of the yellow the brown: those are always the dying-out parts. The whites are actually those who evolve the human element and so they are assigned to themselves. When they migrate they somewhat take on the characteristics of the other regions, yet they do not go to pieces as a race, but rather as individuals. But instead they do something else altogether. You see, all that I have been describing to you are things that go on in man's body, and the soul and spirit are more independent of it. And so soul and spirit can be most active in the European, since they make most claim on him. He can more easily bear going into different parts of the earth. Hence it also once came about that starting from up above there [see scheme] a great migration of people went over as far as India. A stream of white people struck into a region where the population was yellow. Thus arose the Hindus, a mixture of Mongolian and Caucasian. Hence came the very beautiful Indian poetry, the most beautiful in existence. But again at the same time something of which one notes that it has already become inert, because the white element is not in its own territory. And so one can say that the white man can go everywhere, today even lo America — and all the white inhabitants of America have come from Europe. The white element therefore comes into American regions, but something happens to man when he comes to America from the Europe for which he is naturally constituted. It means that some demand must be made on the posterior brain. As European in Europe he has made demands chiefly on his frontal brain. Now in America there flourish those people who were once actually decadent Negroes — that is to say, they do not flourish, they are going to pieces — the Red Indians. When one comes there a conflict always arises in the head between the anterior and the posterior brain. It is found that if a family moves to America and settles there, then the descendants have the peculiarity of acquiring somewhat longer arms. The arms and legs grow rather more when the European settles in America — not in himself, of course, but in his descendants. That comes from the fact that things move over through the middle brain to the posterior brain when as European one comes to America. But at the same time something very peculiar comes about in the American. Now the European lives entirely in his inner being, does he not — especially if he is a thinker. If he is no thinker, he barely reflects at all, but that produces a life which is not quite filled up. But as soon as the European settles in America he no longer is such a brooder. So the following arises: When you read a European book, things are always proved. One cannot get away from the proving. One reads through a whole book, reads through 400 pages, only proofs. Even if it is a novel there is always proving. For the most part, nothing is proved at the end on the 400th page. The American does not do that. When you read an American book everything is put forward as a statement. There again it is a going-back, nourished by the instinct. The animal proves nothing; the lion does not prove that he will devour another animal, he will devour it. If the European wants to do anything, it must first be proved. Today that is the great difference between the European and the American. Europeans prove, Americans affirm. But that is not to say that what they affirm cannot be just as true, it is even realized more through the whole man. The Americans have that in advance of the European. On the one hand they approach decadence — the American Indian is decadent — but when one begins to go to pieces one becomes clever. So the Europeans become clever when they go over: they disaccustom themselves from the proving. This wanting to prove is not exactly a quality to bring one forward. If one is to do something in the morning, one can begin with proving, and at night on going to sleep one can still not do it, because one still must prove. The American will not do that, because he has not been trained at all to prove. And so it comes that America will quite certainly go ahead of Germany in some things. One can make quite interesting observations. If one takes up a European book it proves somewhat as follows — let us say it is a book about the digestive system of the cockchafer — such books are indeed written. It begins by proving: “The animal species of the cockchafer contains also digestive organs, they only withdraw from ordinary observation, one must penetrate deeper into the whole organization of the cockchafer.” — Well, so it goes on. One has to prove everything. The American begins with: “When one dismembers a cockchafer then one finds in it that and that” — he affirms as he observes. And so you see in the case of the Europeans: they no longer develop their racial character on behalf of their whole organization. They develop rather the qualities of soul and spirit. For this reason they can penetrate into all other parts of the world. The process of becoming decadent is naturally a slow one. The sun always sends more or less of warmth and light down to the earth. Now we have the Vernal Point in the Fishes, as I have told you. Previously it was in the Ram, Aries. After some time it will be in Aquarius: only then will the true American civilization come. Before then civilization will go more and more over to America. One who will, can already see today how powerful the Americans are becoming and how Europe is getting increasingly impotent. And the reason why no kind of peace can now come to Europe is because Europe no longer actually understands its own land. Now all civilization moves over to America; it will take a long time, but when the sun's vernal point has entered the Sign of Aquarius then it will send down its rays to earth just in such a favorable way that the American culture and civilization will be especially powerful. That is already to be seen today. It is very remarkable: In Europe over here what we call Anthroposophy can be developed. It must be developed out of the Spirit — that does not come at all out of racial characteristics. It must be developed out of the Spirit. And the men who are unwilling to approach the Spirit will plunge Europe into disaster. The Americans do not yet need it, especially those who travel over there. For they can still maintain themselves on racial characteristics. And so over in America, curiously enough, arises something remarkable. Anyone who reads American books really attentively, who reads parliamentary speeches, one who takes a general interest in what goes on in America today, will say to himself: Good gracious! That is very remarkable. We in Europe develop Anthroposophy out of the Spirit. Over there they develop something that is a kind of wooden doll of Anthroposophy. Everything becomes materialistic. But for one who is not a fanatic, there is something similar in American culture to what is anthroposophical science in Europe. Only everything there is wooden, it is not yet alive. We can make it alive in Europe out of the Spirit: those over there take it out of instinct. You see, one cart notice that in all detail. The time will one day come when this American “wooden man” — which actually everyone is still — when he will begin to speak. Then he will have something to say very similar to European Anthroposophy. One can say that we in Europe develop Anthroposophy in a spiritual way; the American develops it in a natural way. Therefore when I explain anthroposophical matters I can so often point out: Well, that is how it is anthroposophically, and that is the American caricature of it [sketch]. That is the caricature of it. But if someone is a fanatic and has come to Anthroposophy not through the inner life but through fanaticism, then he finds the very sharpest invectives for Americanism because — well, man abuses the apes chiefly — since the ape is like himself — as a caricature. And so it is really such a remarkable affair as between North and South Pole, between what we achieve spiritually in Europe and what is gained over there in America in a natural way. Books on natural science in America do not look at all as they do in Europe. They really talk continually of Spirit, but they represent it to themselves in the crudest, most material way. Hence Spiritism has also arisen in America in recent times. For what does Spiritism do? It wants to talk of the Spirit and imagines it as cloud-phenomena, would prefer everything to be like cloud-phenomena. And so Spiritism is an American product, it aims at the Spirit but in a materialistic way. It is in fact so interesting that in America materialism simply flourishes, but actually on the way to the Spirit; while in Europe if someone becomes a materialist he dies as human being. The American is a young materialist. In fact, all children are at first materialistic, and then grow to what is not materialism. So too will the American blatant materialism sprout to a spiritual element. That will be when the sun rises in the Sign of Aquarius. Now, you see, in this way we can realize what we as Europeans have as a task. Our task as Europeans is not at all always to abuse the Americans, but naturally we must found over the whole earth a civilization which is put together from the best. If one thinks about things as the Prince of Baden does who has been taken in by the American European Wilson, then it does not do. For Wilson was not a true American. He had actually taken all his theories from Europe and therefore made things so dreadfully theoretic. But genuine Americanism will one day unite with Europeanism which will have taken a more spiritual path. When one studies something in this way one sees the attitude one should take in the world. And so it is really quite interesting: On the one hand we have the black race, which is most of all earthly. When they go westwards, they die out. We have the yellow race, which is between earth and cosmos. When they go to the East they become brown, connect too much with the cosmos, die out. The while race is the future one, is the race creating in the Spirit. When they moved over to India they developed the inward, poetical and spiritual Indian culture. When they now go to the West they will develop a spirituality which does not so much grasp man's inner being, but turns to the spirituality of the outer world. And so in the future, purely out of the racial characterization those things will emerge which one must know in life so that one takes the right stand. Men are getting less and less adjustment in life. They want indeed to have everything fall from the skies and not actually to learn. This has come about through the fact that in the last third of the 19th century nothing more of a human element was provided in education, particularly in scientific education. Knowledge of man is so difficult to present nowadays. Materialistic scholars themselves realize this, they get no farther. It was very interesting at the last Natural Science Conference. One of these scientists had especially realized it — one does not advance, one learns nothing of the human being through science today. — But he did not go on to say: “We must develop towards Anthroposophy:” he said: “Give us corpses so that we may dismember them.” You see, that was all he could say: Give us corpses! People want to have more corpses, they want to study the dead man. That was a right catchword: Give us corpses! — Whereas we here can do without corpses, for we want to observe and study the livin g man. For that it is only necessary to open one's eyes and through one's eyes somewhat the soul, for one finds the living man everywhere. One meets nothing but living men. Only one must be able to live with them, so that they may make known to one what a human being is. But the learned scholars of today have really quite weak eyes; they do not see man. And then they fervently beg “Give us corpses!” Then they can study them. Give us corpses! This was the position in educational centers in recent years, recent decades. People have taken in nothing there pertaining to man. And so knowledge of man has disappeared from all science. That is why I dealt with this question in the first chapter of my “Threefold Commonwealth.” I had to show how those who had not been occupied with science but with work had advanced and now naturally wanted science. But the others, the bourgeois, could not give them this, which they appeared to have. And thus arose the great calamity in civilization. The workers demanded science and it was not there, because only a science was there that is devoid of man. I have shown that in the first chapter of the “Threefold Commonwealth” because that must first be understood if one talks of the social question. So that it was in fact necessary for the “Threefold Commonwealth” to begin with it in the first chapter. Now, we have dealt with colors somewhat further today.

Colour and the Human Races

Color and the Human Races

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA349/English/UNK1969/19230303v01.html

Dornach

3 Mar 1923

GA349-3

I have been given a question about the colours and asked to say some more about them. First of all let me consider the question that was asked before that. It concerns the way Dante 15 Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). saw the world. The gentleman has been reading Dante. And when one reads Dante, this medieval writer, one finds that his picture of the world was very different from our own. Let me ask you to consider the following. People think — I have told you this a number of times — that only the things people know today really make sense. And when they hear of the different ways in which people thought in earlier times they think: 'Ah well, that was in the past.' And so one had to wait until one was able to learn things about the world that made sense. You see, the things people learn at school today, things about the world that become second nature to them, have really only been like this since Copernicus 16 Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543), canon of Frauenburg Cathedral, founder of modern astronomy. first thought it up. Following this sixteenth-century idea, people thought the sun was at the centre of our whole planetary system. The heavenly bodies orbiting around the earth are first of all Mercury, then Venus, then the earth [Fig. 11]. The moon orbits around the earth. Then follows Mars, orbiting the sun. Then there are a large number of planets which relative to cosmic space are absolutely tiny and are called planetoids, -oid meaning 'like' planets. Then comes Jupiter, and then Saturn. And then still Uranus and Neptune — I don't need to draw them. That is how people see it today, how it is taught at school — that the sun is standing still at the centre. The lines followed by the planets are really a bit elongated. But this does not matter for us today. People think, therefore, that Mercury orbits the sun, then Venus does, and then the earth. As you know, the earth takes a year to move around the sun, 365 days, 6 hours and so on. Saturn goes all the way round once in 30 years, which is much slower than the earth. Jupiter for example takes 12 years, which is also slower than the earth. Mercury moves fairly quickly. The nearer the sun the planets are, therefore, the faster they move. As you know, that is believed to be the correct view today, and it is taught in the schools. But we only need to go back as far as the fourteenth century, about the year 1300, to find that an extraordinarily great mind like Dante had quite a different idea. So that was a few centuries earlier than Copernicus. And the greatest human being, Dante, the greatest in mind, then had quite a different idea. We won't decide right away if the one idea or the other is the right one. Let us now look at the way Dante, one of the most important thinkers of his time, saw the matter at that time — it's 1900 now, then it was 1300 — so it was only 600 years ago. Let us not think the one is right and the other wrong, but try and enter into the way Dante saw things. He thought [Fig. 12] that the earth was at the centre of the universe. And this earth is not only such that the moon, for instance, reflects the light it receives from the sun onto the earth, but the earth is not only orbited but is wholly enveloped by the moon sphere. Dante therefore saw the moon as something much bigger than the earth. He saw it as a very subtle, very fine body that is much larger than the earth. It is subtle, therefore, but much bigger. And the object we see is just a little bit of the moon, the solid bit. And this solid bit orbits the earth. Can you visualize this? For Dante the idea was that the earth was inside the moon, and the bit we see of the moon is only a tiny, solid part of it. That moves in orbit. But in reality we are all of us inside the powers of the moon. I have drawn this in red. And the way Dante saw things was like this: if the earth were not within those powers of the moon, human beings might one day come to the earth by some kind of miracle, but they would not be able to procreate. The reproductive powers are in the sphere I have drawn in red. They also stream through the human being, and make human beings capable of reproducing themselves. Dante therefore imagined the earth to be a small, solid body; the moon he thought was a subtle body — much more subtle than air — a large subtle body, with the earth inside it like a kernel. You can imagine the earth like a plum stone in the soft fruit pulp of the plum. And out there is the solid bit; this moves in orbit. But this [Fig. 12, moon sphere] is also always present, and it is because of this that human beings are able to reproduce themselves, and animals, too, are able to reproduce themselves. He also considered the following. The earth is not only inside the moon powers but it is also inside other powers — I'll make them yellow here — and they penetrate all the rest of it. So you have the moon powers in there, and earth and moon are both inside this yellow sphere. And again we have a solid part. This solid part is the planet Mercury which orbits out there. And if human beings did not have the powers of Mercury in them all the time they would not be able to digest. Dante therefore thought the powers of the moon made reproduction possible, the powers of Mercury — and we are also always inside them, only they are more subtle than the moon powers — make it possible for us to digest our food, and for animals to digest their food. Otherwise we would just have a chemical laboratory in our bodies, he thought. It is due to the powers of Mercury that things go differently in our bodies than they do in a chemical laboratory where substances are merely mixed together and then separated again. This is due to the powers of Mercury. Mercury is thus larger than the earth and larger than the moon. And now everything is inside another sphere, as Dante called it, which is even bigger. So we are also within the powers that come from this planet, from Venus. We are thus inside all those powers, and they enter into us. Because we have Venus forces in us we are able not only to digest but also to take anything we have digested into the blood. Venus powers live in our blood. Everything that has to do with the blood in us comes from the powers of Venus. That is how Dante saw it. And these Venus powers create any feelings of love human beings have in their blood — hence the name Venus. The next sphere is one we are also inside, and here the sun moves around us as a solid part of it. We are thus completely within the sun. For Dante in the year 1300, the sun was not just the body that rises and goes down; his sun was present everywhere. Standing here I am inside the sun. For the body that rises and sets, and moves along over there is only part of the sun. That is how he saw it. And the powers of the sun are above all active in the human heart. So there you have it. Moon, human and also animal reproduction; Mercury, human digestion; Venus, development of human blood; sun, human heart. And Dante then thought that all of this was inside the vast Mars sphere. There is Mars. And just as the sun is connected with the human heart, so Mars — and we are also inside this — is connected with everything to do with speech and everything we have by way of breathing organs. That is in Mars. Mars, then — breathing organs. And there is more of it. The next sphere is the Jupiter sphere. We are also inside the Jupiter powers. Jupiter is, of course, very important; it has to do with everything that is our brain, really our sense organs, our brain with the sense organs. Jupiter is thus connected with the sense organs. And then comes the outermost planet, which is Saturn. Everything is again inside this. And Saturn has to do with our organ of thinking. Moon — human reproduction Mercury — human digestion Venus — human blood development Sun — human heart Mars — breathing organs Jupiter — sense organs Saturn — thinking organs So you see that this man Dante, who was only 600 years before us, saw the whole universe in a different way. He believed Saturn, for instance, to be the biggest of the planets in which we are. And those Saturn powers create our thinking organs, they make it possible for us to think. Now beyond all this, but again in such a way that we are inside it, is the firmament of fixed stars. Those then are the fixed stars, and above all the zodiac [Fig. 12]. And even greater is that which sets it all in motion, the prime mover. This is not only up there, however, but is also the prime mover everywhere here. And beyond it Res eternal rest, a calm that also exists everywhere else. That is how Dante saw it. Well now, someone may come today and say. 'That is the way it is; people saw everything imperfectly then. But today we have finally reached the point where we know how things are.' Sure, that is what one might say. But Dante was not exactly stupid, and he also saw the things people see today. So he was not exactly stupid. And the others, from whom he took his ideas, people who all held that belief at the time, were not exactly silly people either. It is just that they had different ideas about it. And the question is, how has it happened in the history of the world that people thought differently about the whole nature of the universe in earlier days, and then suddenly turned everything upside down in the sixteenth century and developed a completely different idea of the world? This is, of course, a very important question, gentlemen. And you will not get anywhere by saying, oh well, those earlier ideas were childish. For those people did see things very differently from the way people see them today. This is something we must understand. They saw something very different. Modern people are able to think so terribly well. And those earlier people were not able to think as well as people do today. Thinking is really something that has only developed gradually. The people of those earlier times had a terrible fear of Saturn, which is connected with the organ of thinking. Saturn, they thought, ruins the human being. It is not good to think too much. Saturn was always considered to be a dark planet. And they thought the powers that came from Saturn would make people quite melancholic if they became too powerful in them. They would then think all the time and grow melancholic. So they were not too keen on the Saturn powers, and tended to visualize things more in images. They did not calculate so much. Today we calculate everything. Copernicus' image of the world has all been calculated. Those earlier people did not make calculations. But they knew something else, something modern people do not know. They knew that powers were active everywhere in the world, wherever you looked. But these powers, which are also in the human being, are not in the world we see with our eyes; they are in the invisible realm. And so Dante said to himself: 'There is a visible world, and an invisible world. The visible world — well, it is the one we see. Looking out there at night we see the stars, the moon, Venus, and so on. That is the visible world. But there is also the invisible world.' And the invisible world consists in those spheres, as they called them in the old days. And they distinguished the world one sees with one's eyes, and called it the physical world. That was the physical world. And they distinguished the world one does not see with one's eyes. That is the world Dante was thinking of, and it was called the etheric world. That was the etheric world, the world which consists of such subtle matter that one is always looking right through it. Well now, gentlemen, I do not know if you have come across this, but I have known people who insisted that there is no such thing as air, for one cannot see it. They would say: 'Well, if I go from A to B, there is nothing there; I am not walking through anything there.' You know that there is air there, and I walk through it. But, as I said, I have known people who did not have the education which modern people have, and they did not believe that there is any air; they would say: 'There's nothing there.' Dante knew that there is also not just air, but moon, Venus, and so on. It is just the same. You say: 'I am moving through air.' Dante would say: 'I am walking through the moon, I am walking through Venus, I am walking through Mars.' That is the whole difference. And all the things one does not see in the ordinary way, and which one is also unable to detect with the usual physical and chemical apparatus — all this was called the etheric world. Dante was therefore speaking of a very different world, an etheric world. And why was it that Dante saw the world differently 600 years ago? It was because he wrote of something else, he wrote of the invisible realm, of the etheric world. And all that Copernicus said was: 'Let us forget the etheric world and describe the physical world. For that is progress.' So you should not think that Dante was a clown, for he was simply writing about the etheric and not the physical world. The physical world was not particularly important to him. He wrote about the etheric world. Now you see, the whole only changed to any major extent at the end of the eighteenth century. Up to the end of the eighteenth century people always still knew something about this etheric world. In the nineteenth century they no longer knew of it. We are discovering it again through anthroposophy. In the nineteenth century people knew nothing of this etheric world. Concerning your other question — If we go back to the eighteenth century, we find people did the following, for example. They would say: 'Here we have a candle, with its wick. And the candle is burning.' Now you know that when a candle burns it is bluish at the centre, and yellowish around the edges [Fig. 13]. You can explain this very nicely because of the things we have said about the colours. You see, at the centre it is dark, and here it is light [around the outer edge]. And the result is that you see darkness through light. And you know, for I told you this the other day, when we see darkness through light it looks blue. The inside of a candle flame therefore looks blue, because we see darkness through light. I just wanted to draw your attention to this, so that you may see that the ideas and views about colour I have told you the last time apply in every case. Now you know that when a candle burns it gets less and less. Up above is the flame, and the candle material which melts here [on the candle] goes into the flame. In the end the candle has gone. The material of the candle has spread out into the air. Now imagine someone who lived, let us say, in 1750, which is not quite 200 years ago. He would say: 'Right, if the candle bums there and it all goes into the air, something of the candle goes into open space. Nothing is left of it in the end. And so the whole candle must go out into open space.' He would also say: 'It consists of some subtle material, fire stuff. This fine fire stuff unites with the flame and goes off in all directions. So in 1750 someone would still say: 'Inside the wax is some stuff that has merely been squashed together, made denser. When the flame makes it into fine matter it goes out into open space.' The stuff was called 'phlogiston' in those days. Something therefore comes away from the candle. The fire stuff, the phlogiston, comes away from the candle. Then someone else came at the end of the eighteenth century and said: 'No, I do not really believe that there is a phlogiston that goes off into the world. I don't believe it!' What did he do? He did the following. He also burned the whole thing, but he did it in such a way that he captured everything that evolved. He burned it in an enclosed space, so that he was able to capture anything that might evolve. And then he weighed it. And he found that the whole did not grow less in weight. So he had first weighed the whole candle, and then the little bit that was left when the candle had burned down to there [drawing]; and he captured anything that developed in the burning process, weighed it and found that it was a little bit heavier than before. When something burns, he said, whatever evolves does not grow lighter but heavier. And the person who did this was Lavoisier. 17 Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent (1743-94), French chemist. Why was it that he took such a different view? It was because he was using scales, because he weighed everything. And he then said: 'If it is heavier, it cannot be that something went away, but something must have been addLavoisier, Antoine Laurent (1743-94), French chemist.ed. And that is oxygen.' Before that, people had thought phlogiston was flying away, and afterwards people thought that if something burns, oxygen comes in, and in combustion one does not have phlogiston dispersing, but oxygen actually being drawn in. This has come about because Lavoisier was the first to weigh these things. Before that, people did not weigh them. You see, gentlemen, it is as plain as can be what really happened there. By the end of the eighteenth century people no longer believed in anything that could not be weighed. Phlogiston was of course something they could not weigh. Phlogiston did go off. Oxygen did come in. But the oxygen could be weighed when it combined with other matter. Phlogiston could not be captured. Why? Well all the things Copernicus observed when he studied Mars and Jupiter are things that are heavy when you weigh them. The body Copernicus called Mars would weigh something if you put it on some really big scales. So would the body he called Jupiter. He only looked at the bodies that had weight. Dante did not just look at bodies that had weight but rather at things that had the opposite of weight, things that forever want to go out into cosmic space. And phlogiston simply belongs to the things Dante observed, whilst oxygen belongs to the things Copernicus observed. Phlogiston is the invisible principle that disperses, the ether. Oxygen is a substance you can weigh. So you see how materialism came into existence. This is something that may become extraordinarily important for you. Materialism arose because people began to believe only in the things that could be weighed. The things Dante still saw could not be weighed. If you walk about on this earth, we can weigh you as well. You have weight, and if you consider the human being to be only the part that has weight, all you have is the earthly human being. But remember, this earthly human being will be a corpse one day. Everything that has weight, that can be treated with scales, will be a corpse. Then the corpse lies there. You will still be able to live in the part that does not have weight, the part that exists around this earth and which materialists say does not exist. Dante still spoke of it and we'll have to speak of it again, of the fact that it exists. We are thus able to say: when a human being lays aside his outer, heavy body, which can be weighed, he remains at first in the ether body. And now I am going to tell you what is actually there in the ether body. You see, if there is a chair here I can see that chair. I have a picture inside me of this chair. But I don't see it any more when I turn round. But the picture of it is still inside me, still a real picture. It is the memory picture. Now think of memory pictures. Think of some event you saw and heard quite a long time ago. Say you were in some place, saw cheerful people dancing in the market square, and so on. I could equally well mention some other thing. You have retained that picture. The event you have as a picture no longer exists, gentlemen, and above all it is not among the things one can weigh. It can only be visualized in you. You may go about today and, if you have a lively imagination, have a clear idea of how it all went, even the colours worn by those who were leaping about. You have the whole picture before your mind's eye. But you would never think for a moment that one can weigh the things you saw once long ago. This thing here you can put on the scales. Individual people have weight. But the memory picture you have in you cannot be put on any scales. That is not possible. It has remained with you, though physically the matter no longer exists. How does it come to be inside you, this memory picture? It is in you etherically. No longer physically, but etherically. Now imagine you have gone for a swim, and because of some mishap you are close to drowning; but you are saved. People who have almost died from drowning and have been saved have generally told others of a most interesting memory picture they had. It is also possible to have this memory picture if one is not about to drown but trains oneself in the science of the spirit, in anthroposophy. The people who were close to drowning had a review of their whole life, right back to their childhood. Everything rises before the mind's eye. Suddenly there is this memory picture. Why? Well, gentlemen, because the physical body, which is now in the water, goes through a very special process. And here you have to recall something I have told you on another occasion. I told you that if you have water and a body in it, the body grows lighter in the water [Fig. 14]. It loses as much weight as a body of water of the same size. A nice story is told of how this was discovered. The discovery that a body always grows lighter in water was made in ancient Greece. Archimedes 18 Archimedes (c. 287-212 bc), Greek mathematician, physicist and inventor. gave a lot of thought to these things. And one day he was having a bath. People were absolutely astonished — yes, when you took a bath in Greece, other people were able to look on — people were absolutely astonished when Archimedes suddenly leapt from his bath and shouted: 'Eureka! Eureka!' That means: 'I've got it!' People thought: what has he found in his bath? He had immersed himself in the bath, leaving just the head out. He raised a leg above the water and found that when he put his leg out of the water it grew heavier; when he put it down into the water again, it got lighter. This is what he was the first to discover in his bath. It is known as Archimedes' principle. Every body is therefore lighter in the water. And when someone is drowning his physical body grows light, very light. The memories he has in his ether body continue, and hey will all come up at this point. And you see they come p because he is no longer so heavy. When human beings lie they are completely outside their physical bodies, and this means they are very light. They then live wholly in the ether sphere. After their death they thus remember everything they lived through on earth, all the way back to their childhood. The first experience we have after death is this complete memory. We can test this memory. We can do so by taking up the training I have described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds . 19 Steiner, R., Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, How is it Achieved? (GA 10), tr. D.S. Osmond, C. Davy, London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1976. Also available as How to Know Higher Worlds. A Modern Path of Initiation , tr. C. Bamford, Hudson: Anthroposophic Press 1994. We can then always have this complete memory. We know that the soul grows independent of the body. It then first of all has this memory, for it does not, to begin with, live in the matter we are able to lay aside but rather in something that wants to go out into the whole wide world. That is the first state after death. You remember. The second state is something I'd like to talk about the next time. Now let me speak of something that will prepare us. For the question that has been put concerns a very serious matter. If you consider that Dante had ideas about the world which people call childish today, then the other ideas he had will be considered really childish by people today. For if someone is standing there on the earth [Fig. 14], Dante would think: here in the earth, in the other direction — that is if one goes through there — one would find hell, as he saw it, in there in the earth. His idea therefore was: 'Out there everywhere is the ether of heaven. But if I were to drill down into the earth, then hell will be there on the other side. Before I emerge from the earth, hell will be there.' Now it is terribly easy for people today to call such a thing childish. You'd only have to say: 'Yes, but if Dante had stood here, and not here, he could have made his hole here and then hell would have been there (on the other side).' Well, modern people can say that because modern people know that there are also people living on the other side. It is therefore easy to say Dante was just ignorant, and was quite unable to see that there are people all around the world, so that hell might just as well be here or over there. For if someone were to stand here, he would get heaven from this side, and hell would then be on the other side for him. You see, gentlemen, it's like this. For the physical world it can only be like this: if heaven were there, hell could only be here. For the physical world that is the only possible way. If a chair is in a particular place, it can only be in that place. There's no other place where it could be at the same time. But Dante did not see it like that. He was not thinking of the physical world at all. He was thinking of forces. And he said: 'Yes, if someone stands there, and if he moves in an upward direction with his own ether body, he'll get lighter and lighter. He'll overcome gravity more and more. But if he goes down into the earth he must make more and more of an effort, and the effort that is needed will be greatest when he's reached the other end. There everything will exert pressure on him. And gravity will be greatest.' This is not because there is any kind of particular hell there, but because he's gone through all that in order to reach that place [Fig. 14]. And if that is the way Dante saw it, then he could also stand there [at the other end]. Going out from there he'd get lighter and lighter, getting more and more into the ether. But if he moves into the earth there, he has to go through that [getting heavier]. And the condition, the experience will come in the place I have marked in green; earlier it would have been where I have put yellow. So that is the point of it. It does not mean that hell is exactly in this place. Dante wanted to say: 'If someone has to work his way through the earth with his ether body, the heaviness and hardship will be so great that wherever he ends up, be it at the top or at the bottom, he will have an experience that is hell to him.' It has only been very recently that people have imagined hell to be in a particular place. Dante thought of the experience you have when you have to work your way through the earth as an ether human being. Anyone saying that Dante was ignorant only shows himself to be ignorant in thinking that Dante imagined hell to be on the other side of the earth. What Dante actually thought was: 'Wherever I fly away from the earth and into heaven I will get lighter in soul; if I enter into the earth somewhere, then whichever place I get to at the other end — hellish.' The whole way of thinking has changed. And only if you are able to take some heed of the completely different way of thinking people had before, you will also be able to understand the things I am going to say the next time we meet in answer to the question: What remains of the earthly human being when he has gone through the gate of death? It has been a bit harder than usual today. But you have to consider that this is due to the nature of the question that has been asked. I hope things will now be a little bit clearer. We'll continue on Saturday when we'll look at the human being as he goes through death and what then becomes of him.

From Limestone to Lucifer

Dante's view of the world

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA349/English/RSP1999/19230314p02.html

Dornach

14 Mar 1923

GA349-4

Good morning, gentlemen! I have a few things to say on the second part of the question that was asked the other day. The fact is that if questions are asked about major aspects of life one has to talk a very great deal about them; one would really always need to draw on the whole body of knowledge, for that exists so that these major questions may be answered. Now as I told you, someone wishing to understand human life in soul and spirit must really study the human being. The last time we did so by looking at memory. I showed you that memory — things we recall — is indeed something that is wholly of the spirit in man. Today I want to look at the human being from a completely different angle and consider some things we have been discussing before. But we need to keep all these things together. Let us compare the way an animal develops with the way a human being develops. An animal may learn many things in its life, but the most important things it already has of itself. An animal would only be able to learn very few things if it did not have so many skills already. Just think, a chick hatching from the egg will instantly pick the right grains of com. This is something that comes naturally to it. Human beings first have to learn everything. There are three things human beings must learn at the very beginning of their life on earth. The first thing is the activity we call walking. Animals have it easier, for they walk more easily. They have four legs and it is easier to walk on four legs than on two. Walking on two legs one must first find one's balance. An animal is already in balance because it has four legs. Now you may well say that there are animals that use their forelimbs in a way similar to human beings, apes for example, and also other creatures. Well, you must always remember that an ape is really not very skilful in its front limbs relative to its whole organization. It may not always touch the ground with its forelimbs, but it does have need to hold on to something with them. And when it does not hold on, when it is not climbing, it is definitely clumsy. It cannot use its forelimbs in the right way. Most animals walk on all fours, however, and human beings also walk on all fours to start with. They must first find their balance in learning to walk. This is something human beings have to learn in life — first of all, they must learn to walk. Secondly, as you all know, human beings learn something animals do not get to do, or at least not in the same way. Only someone whose ideas are divorced from reality would say that animals get to do it the same way. It is human speech. I won't say that animals are not able to communicate. I have told you enough things to show that animals are able to communicate. But they do not do so by speaking. They will sniff one another or something like that, but they do not communicate by speech. The second thing a human being has to learn, therefore, is to talk. The third thing a human being has to learn, again something animals do not develop in the same degree, is thinking. These are the three things a human being must learn — to walk, to talk and to think. You may say: 'Ah, but surely we can't easily tell the thinking which a human being does from the thinking of an animal. We simply don't know if animals aren't able to think as well.' But someone who says we are unable, well from just looking at animals, to know if they do not think is more or less like someone who says: 'If my grandmother had four wheels and a steering rod up front, she'd be a bus!' One can of course say anything if one does not consider the facts. One can of course say, if one does not consider the facts: 'Why should not a stone speak as well, or think?' But if you consider the facts the situation is that animals do everything in such a way that the sense that lives in them is not personal but cosmic. They do not do it personally; because of this the things they do may be much more sensible, but they are not personal. They think a great deal, as we have heard, but their thinking is not personal. You see, these three things are something human beings must first learn — to walk, to talk and to think. A normally developing child will first learn to walk, then to talk, and only then to think. It is quite wrong to think that people think before they talk; they first learn to talk by imitating others. They imitate the words they hear, and it is only in those words that they learn to think. Man learns to think by using speech. This is why the whole of humanity only learned to think at such a late date. The primitive peoples did talk, but people only learned to think later on. They learned to think by using speech. Consider what the whole of human life would be like if man did not learn to walk, talk and think in his childhood. But you'll also realize that man needs a body to do these three things — walking, talking and thinking. This is perfectly obvious in the case of walking. The whole way the body is made shows you that man needs his body to be able to walk. You cannot even imagine someone walking without a body. Human beings therefore need a body to be able to walk. As to talking — well, I have told you how speech evolves — human beings need a larynx for this, a tongue and all kinds of things. So they need their bodies to be able to talk. And they also need their bodies to be able to think. They need their brains and their nervous systems for this. You can easily investigate this. If someone is not able to think well and you examine the brain, you will find that it has turned to mush. The human being therefore needs his body specifically for the things he learns on earth. But we need to understand what really happens when we walk, for example, and when we move altogether. When we move in any way, part of us is always perishing. If I stand here and just walk over there, and if I were to examine my body after taking those steps, I would find more ash in my body than it contained before. This is because substances have been burned in it. I cannot move at all, cannot relate to balance, to gravity, unless I burn something or other inside myself. I must therefore bring about combustion inside myself when I use the ability I gain with walking and with movement in the proper sense altogether. Now if I were to be active all the time and would therefore all the time burn things inside me, well, then I'd soon perish. I must all the time also restore the things I have burned. But you see, the outside world does not do this for me. The outside world does not restore the things I have burned inside me. For you only have to look at a human corpse to see this. This has been completely given over to the outside world, which destroys it by combustion. The outside world burns the body up. You'll say: 'Well, not all people are cremated, some are also buried.' But the decomposition that happens in the grave is merely a slow burning process. It is exactly the same process. If one quickly cremates a body, it burns up in a short time. Someone put in a grave will bum slowly. It always is a real combustion process, as I explained when I spoke of a candle the last time, only on one occasion the body is burned quickly, totally, and on the other occasion the body burns slowly in the grave. So when we give ourselves to the earth as corpses, we burn. And we also burn when we walk, when we move. Now we cannot bring the corpse back to life, for we are unable to use it for the other process which compensates for the combustion. We would be able to bring a corpse back to life at any time if we were able to reverse the combustion process. Now you see, this is something we are able to do for as long as we live. Then we are really able to reverse the combustion process. Why? If we only had the body that is laid in the grave, we would not be able to reverse the combustion effect. Apart from the body that is laid in the grave we also have an ether body. This is a subtle body. So to do a proper drawing of the human being we have first of all his physical body and then his ether body [Fig. 15]. Having an ether body we are quite rightly able to make good the combustion caused by our movements. And so we do not just have a physical body, we also have an ether body. When we are sleeping, the ether body is all the time mending the damage caused by combustion processes in the course of the day. This means that we also have our ether body when we are asleep. It is therefore the physical body and the ether body of the human being which lie in the bed. Now, how does the ether body differ from the physical body? You can feel this. It is gravity which causes the combustion in you when you give yourself up to the outside world. And the ether body does not have gravity. If we now really think of the thoughts that we are able to recall, we have to say that they do not belong to the physical body, they belong to the ether body. And the situation is that in his ability to remember man is not subject to gravity. You can work and think at the same time, though it is difficult — but that is due to something else. We may discuss it later. But we can work and think at the same time. Everyone knows this, because work will in the first place only wear down the physical body. The ether body is not worn down by physical work. This is the important point. The ether body works in such a way in the human being that in this ether body the human being has something which in the first place enables him to have recall, to have memory. Now let us go on to the second thing a human being is able to learn — speech. When we learn to talk it is not the same as it is with walking. When we do physical work we also move about in the outside world. We relate to the something or other in the outside world which offers perceptible resistance. Speech is something we produce and we do not really find that talking gets difficult if the air is heavy or stale. Other things make us notice what the air does to us when it is stale and upsets us. We do not notice it in the process of talking. And yet, we would not be able to talk if it were not for the air, for we move the air when we speak. Combustion processes in us are not only related to outer work, for when you eat something this must first of all go through your mouth into your stomach. There it has to be processed. Then it must become part of the whole body. This is inner work; it, too, burns up the physical body. If the ether body were to be inactive for just a moment — well, that would be the end of it for the person. He would then kill himself all the time with those combustion processes inside him. Everything a person does in this world is really designed to kill. It is not like this when we talk. If someone were to stop his heart function for a moment, that is, if the combustion caused by the activity of the heart were not immediately made good again by the ether body, the heart would stop beating. But we cannot say the same about speech. Quite the contrary. Someone who talks all the time would soon arouse our loathing. And he would not exactly be helping himself either. When it comes to speech, it is not the case that people should talk all the time. They may talk, if they wish, but they may also let up. But they cannot let up when it comes to the ether body balancing out the activity of the heart. This is something they must do from the beginning to the end of their life on earth. There is a big difference, therefore, between the things we do inwardly when we speak and those we do just to live. We talk when we wish to do so. But we also destroy something inside us when we talk. We really destroy something. You see, when we breathe we are all the time taking in oxygen, combining the oxygen with the blood, and releasing carbon dioxide. We do not have the same kind of use for nitrogen. But when we talk we always take in too much nitrogen. The strange thing about talking is that we take in too much nitrogen. We poison ourselves in a way. Taking in too much nitrogen means getting more similar to cyanide. For cyanide is a compound of carbon and nitrogen, just as carbon dioxide is a compound of carbon and oxygen. A person is constantly cyanizing himself when he talks. And this, too, must be balanced out. When someone sets his organs of speech in motion he kills himself, in a way, just as he kills himself with the combustion that develops through movement. This needs to be balanced out. And this is done by the astral body. Please don't worry about the term 'astral'. I might also use another term. It is immaterial. So this is what the astral body does. This astral body is also present in the human being, and it lives in our breathing and speech. And you can now see the big difference between the astral body and the ether body. If we did not continue to make up for the combustion that has happened during the day even when we are asleep at night, we would not sleep but die. We must therefore always leave the ether body with the physical body during life on earth. We cannot talk when we are asleep at night; we'd first have to wake up. Talking has to do with the astral body. And so we simply withdraw the astral body from the physical and ether bodies during the night. Because of this we also breathe a little bit differently during the night. We exhale less carbon dioxide during the night than we do in the day. In short, we have a third body in us, an astral body [Fig. 15]. And the astral body lives in our speech. Looking at an animal we note it can walk, too; it can move around, only it does not have to learn this but has it instinctively. But when you look at the animals you find that they cannot talk. They do also have organs of speech. It should really surprise us that a dog does not talk, that it merely barks. It cannot use its astral body to talk. It does not learn to talk. As human beings we must therefore learn to move, to walk, and we must learn to talk. The animal learns nothing for its ether body, learns nothing for its astral body. But we human beings learn things. Now you see, the fact that we are able to learn something is due to the fact that we have thoughts. All learning consists in having thoughts. To talk, the human being merely needs to imitate. To think, he must be active himself. Man learns through thoughts, therefore. He also learns to walk and he learns to talk through thoughts; only he does not yet know it. He does not yet have the thoughts when he walks and talks. And we are able to learn, which is something animals cannot do, due to the fact that apart from the physical, the ether and the astral body we also have an I, which is present in every part of us. So we also have an I [Fig. 15]. Those, then, are the four aspects of the human being — physical body, etheric body, astral body and I. What I have just told you is based on looking at the whole human being in the right way, a truly scientific way. Ordinary science is not truly scientific. It does not care about the real facts. It is quite clear that everyone who really learns anything at all would have to say: the human being has a physical body, an ether body, an astral body and an I. But he does not say so, for people simply do not care to consider the facts. Let us now consider what really happens when we die. You see, this is something one cannot really consider unless one takes the learning process a bit further than is usually done today. The situation is that today's civilized people, as they call themselves, are terribly lazy. What do these civilized people do? It is altogether of little interest to them that a human being learns to walk, for it just happens when a child imitates the grown-ups. No particular attention is paid to this. Nor does it surprise people that human beings learn to talk. There was a time on this earth when human beings could not talk at all. They had a kind of sign language. Then human beings learned to talk. But this is something humanity has long since forgotten. The study of history today simply consists in considering early human beings who were already able to talk. And people take no interest in the fact that speech is something else we have to learn by doing. This is why nation goes against nation. If they were ever to discover that they have learned to talk, and that speech is something human beings have learned, they would not be so arrogant about language and speech, nor want to be separate nations. People have completely forgotten that speech is something that has to be learnt out of our inner being. Now when one wants to come into anthroposophy, then, I'd say, one has to learn one's language all over again. For you'll find that when someone gives a talk nowadays — wow, it's as if it comes from a machine. Observe it — you'll find it is as if it were coming from a machine. It is different from the way it is when someone gives a talk about something out of the science of the spirit, out of anthroposophy. There one must all the time try and find the words, take them up again in a new way inwardly. And then, having shaped the words, one really begins to worry that they did not really present things correctly. In anthroposophy, the relationship to those who listen to one is very different than it is with academics today. Modern academics no longer take care with their speech. In anthroposophy, one must always take care of speech and language. You see, this is something that shows itself especially when I write my books nowadays; I then find myself in a constant state of inner unrest, I would say, concerned to shape the language in such a way that people may also understand what is being written. Something new has to be created here, using language. Modern academics simply say, 'My style is poor; I don't write very well,' for they are used to putting one word after the other, the way we use the mechanics of walking. And so they are not accustomed to someone shaping his sentences a bit differently from the way they do it. And you can see that people today do not care much about language. And now the third thing, thinking. Well, modern people are particularly proud of their thinking. But I would say that people do not think at all today. People usually do not think at all today. Let me give you an example to show that people do not think at all today. We can see this if we take religion, for example. Religions exist. And yet, they did not always exist. People have only come to religion in the course of evolution. And if you really study history, you'll see how people struggled to develop their religious convictions. This is why in earlier times such a thing as struggling to gain religious convictions did exist. What do people do today? They accept the old religious elements as their inheritance. But they do not want to take in new ideas about things beyond the world of the senses or the like. If human beings had always been like that they'd still be beasts today — for that is the truth—because they'd never have taken thought about anything beyond the world of the senses. Today people are unable to take in ideas about anything supersensible. They will only take in what has been preserved in the churches, thoughts people have been thinking in earlier times. Scientists will of course tell you that they are quite independent of the church and develop their own ideas. That is not true. For if you know the church you'll see that the ideas academics have today are merely the ideas that were developed in the church in earlier times. Some time ago there was a great scholar in Berlin. His name was Du Bois-Reymond. 20 Du Bois-Reymond, Emil (1818-86), physiologist in Berlin. His Ignorabimus speech had the title 'On the limits to our knowledge of nature', and was given at the second general session of the 45th German Naturalists and Medical Conference on 14 August 1872 in Leipzig. He really was a great scholar. Above all he was a very elegant speaker, for it all went quite mechanically, it was inherited — just as your great-aunt likes it if the vicar says things she's already familiar with in his sermon; she'd probably not like it so much if he were to say anything new, and she'd fall asleep over it. Du Bois-Reymond, then, a great scholar, made a major speech at a naturalists' gathering in Leipzig in the 1870s. This speech has become very famous. He said, more or less, that as human beings we can understand the things we perceive through the senses. We do not understand things that go beyond the senses. This we do not know. The speech has become famous as the ' Ignorabimus speech' — ignorabimus means: we'll never know anything. That was his conclusion: we'll never know. Now why did Du Bois-Reymond make that speech? If one of you had gone there and said to him: 'You are a pupil' — or, if you like, one of you might have said: 'Your excellency, you are a pupil — of Thomas Aquinas, one of the Church Fathers!' Du Bois-Reymond would have gone as red as a beetroot and been really upset at being told he was a pupil of Thomas Aquinas, a teacher of the Roman Catholic Church. This would not have been to his liking. He did say in another speech: 'German scholars are a scientific bodyguard of the Hohenzollerns.' 21 Literally: 'Berlin University, placed opposite to the royal palace, is the academic "sovereign's own regiment" of the House of Hohenzollem.' Du Bois-Reymond in an academic address given on 3 August 1870. He was speaking of the scholars of whom he is one. But even if he cheerfully acknowledged the House of Hohenzollern, he would not have acknowledged Thomas Aquinas. But, you see, what did Thomas Aquinas teach? He also taught that man is able to perceive the world of the senses by himself; that he needed the revelation given by the Church to gain insight into the supersensible world, being unable to find this for himself. Just take out the words 'revelation given by the Church' from this and you have exactly what Du Bois-Reymond was teaching. He merely took out one bit because it gave him some discomfort. He is indeed a pupil of Thomas Aquinas. For it is not at all true that modern science has its own ideas. It also takes up the ideas of the Church. It is just that people do not realize this. It is only through anthroposophy that people are again developing their own ideas. Generally people do not realize that they have no ideas of their own. And so today no one pays attention to the fact that people learn to walk, to move; that people learn to talk; and that they learn to think. For that is how it is. If you pay attention to the way speech is shaped out of the inner human being, if you pay attention to the way in which combustion has to be made up for from inside us, and if you pay attention to the way in which thinking in particular takes shape in the inner human being, you arrive at the eternal, immortal element in the human being. But if we pay no attention to these things at all, it is easy to see why we cannot arrive at the eternal, the immortal part. You see, it is due to thoughtlessness and lack of attention when it comes to human speech and walking that people are quite unaware that they have something in them that makes them more than a corpse which is put in a grave when they die. They have to fight this corpse all the time; otherwise they'll die any minute. And they must fight it through their ether body, their astral body and their I. Human beings thus must fight death all the time inside themselves. Death is ever-present. We might die at any moment. But we do not die for as long as we are able to connect our ether body, astral body and our I in the right way, both in our sleep and when awake. What, then, remains for us in death? In the first place the ether body remains. But this ether body is powerfully attracted to the world. It does not have weight, it does not have gravity. But it wants to expand the moment it is free, the moment we cease to live. What does this mean? It means we extract the ether body. But the moment we extract the ether body we must die, for it is, after all, the body that enables us to live. To die thus means in the first place to extract the ether body from the physical body. Then the physical body really begins to bum up, for the ether body is no longer inside it. At the same time the ether body seeks to expand into the whole world. Because of this, human beings still have memory after death, for, as I have told you, this is bound to the ether body. But the ether body will rapidly expand into the whole world. This means that this memory will be gone after a few days. For a few days, therefore, human beings have a memory of their past life on earth, which is just the way it is with someone who is drowning. I explained this to you the other day. You see, this is what someone who is an anthroposophist will say; he does not invent it, so what is it that he does? Well, he learns something in addition to the things we usually learn. People walk about in everyday human life today. They walk, which means they see how they are constantly burning up. But they never look to see how this is made good again. If they were to observe how the combustion is made good again — that is, what happens if I just move my foot and must then use the ether body to pour compensation for the combustion into it — they would begin to perceive the ether body. But people forget this today. They do not direct their attention to the ether body. But that is the learning process in anthroposophy. You learn to note how a process that goes against death is continually developed in the human being. And then one makes experiments just as people do experiments in physics and chemistry laboratories. Let me describe such an experiment for you. I have described the whole method in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds . 22 See note 19. But let me show you once more how one does these things. Imagine therefore that I have done something or other during the day, some kind of work, which may have been more physical or more mental. At night, before going to sleep, one puts this very clearly before the mind's eye: there, that's you, this fellow. But you see him outside yourself. And then you visualize how you moved your legs, moved your hands, what you were thinking — all this you bring to mind. And when you thus recall it, quite a different idea will gradually come of its own accord; it is an idea of how it all needs to be made good again. You get an idea of your ether body, a little bit of your ether body. This is certainly something you can call forth. People today will say: 'Ah well, it is enough if one learns to look at outside life.' No care is taken to see that children also get to know something else at school. That is the easiest way. For people who get to know more grow rebellious. If we developed just this one faculty when children are still in their tenderest youth, all people would be able to perceive the ether body. You see, you may have done tremendous exercises to perceive the things you yourself do as you move about, as you work — this may also be mental work. You may get very clear ideas, but the whole is undone again, for after three days those ideas will have gone. When you learn something about the physical world, swot it up, it will stay with you if you swotted it up properly. The ideas you develop of the supersensible world, doing it in the ether body, will have gone after three days; they will have gone unless you have first made them into physical notions. Why? Because it is just as if one is producing artificially, in an experiment, what will happen after death. The etheric images slip away after death. And they'll also slip away if one produces them artificially. You can get to know this through the science of the spirit, doing the right kind of experiments on yourself, just as with physical science you get to know the compounds of oxygen, let us say, in the laboratory. But this means that we must not stop at ordinary science. And my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds therefore takes the things people learn further, but takes them further the way it does this fact — that a human being only has those experiences in the ether body for two or three days. This fact can be established again, and it then becomes science. Well, you see, that is how we can experience the ether body. But it is also possible to experience the astral body. When someone looks at some water, he does not normally know right away that it contains hydrogen and oxygen. He must use a galvanic apparatus to separate the two substances. He then has hydrogen and oxygen in two containers side by side. And if we want to perceive the astral body we must first be able to separate it from the physical body. We thus have to work in a truly scientific way for this. For example one has to observe: 'You took some water, drank some water, at a particular time of the day. Then you did not drink any for a long time. You grew thirsty.' When one gets thirsty one wants to drink again. This is exactly as you must want speech to come before speech actually appears. It is exactly the same. With speech, we have to want to speak; when we are thirsty, we want to drink. Thirst means no more and no less but that one wants to drink. This is the will to drink. We may thus say that one discovers with self-observation that one gets desires, that real desires arise. Please note. First we have memory. Memories will sometimes come if we will this, but most of the time they come of their own accord. They rise up, those memories. They are connected with the ether body. Our desires — thirst, hunger or desires in mind and soul — rise up in such a way in the human being that they are like willing something. The will of the human being comes to expression in them. The desire will continue until it is satisfied, until the will has been given its due. But note carefully what it is one really wills when one is thirsty, for instance. What is it we will in that case? When we are thirsty, we want water to circulate in there the way water does circulate in the body. We are thirsty because it is not circulating. So what is it that we really want then? We want our body to be functioning in the proper way. When we are hungry we also want the body to be functioning in a particular way. So we really always want something that has to do with ourselves. And you see, this something which we want to be like that in ourselves is something the body cannot bring about. You know, if the body had to work all the time to meet desire, it would have to consume itself in the process. The body cannot develop desire. So where do desires come from? They come from the soul. They do not come from the ether body. Something like memory comes from the ether body. Desires come from the astral body. And desire is not always there, whilst life, coming from the ether body, is always there. Desire alternates with satisfaction, because it belongs to the astral body. That is how we discover the connection between desire and the astral body. What, then, does desire seek to achieve? It wants to have the astral body in a particular condition. Now by learning more in the way I have told you when talking of learning things connected with the ether body, we can also learn more with regard to our desires. Strangely enough, as we continue the learning process, we go further and further back in life and come to the point where we were in childhood. There we had nothing but desires. At the time which we no longer remember, we had nothing but desires. The infant kicks and struggles, has nothing but desires. A child is sheer desire when it comes into the world. And we go back to that desire. There we get to know the astral body. You do not get to know your astral body unless you use the methods I have described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds , for otherwise you will only remember as far back as the point in childhood when the astral body had already united with the physical body in such a way that you can no longer distinguish between them. But if you develop this faculty you will be able to go back, remembering how as a very young infant you willed the whole physical body. And you then begin to grasp what we do after death, when memory has been taken away after just a few days. We then continually desire the physical body we had in the last life. And this takes longer. It is something one can also try out. For if someone has reached the age of 60, let us say, and makes this inner experiment, remembering back to his childhood and there finding the astral body, he will get to know this astral body quite well. But he'll find that the process is very different now that he is 60 than it would have been if he had done the exercise ten years earlier. This changes with one's age. For it is easier to go back when you are 60 than it is with 50. And at the age of 25 one hardly manages to go back at all. At the age of 20 you can't go back at all to your astral body. This, then, is something that changes as life progresses. It is thus possible to get to know the astral body, and you are then able to say: the astral body becomes different the older you get. The older you get, the more desires do you develop, and people therefore also have more desires if they have gone through death after reaching more of an age than if they are still very young. Then the human being has fewer desires. After death the human being will live in his astral body for as long as he has not learned no longer to desire his physical body. The next time we meet I'll show you why we have to say: man lives a third of his lifetime in the astral body after death, but only a few days in his ether body. There is not enough time to go into this today. And then the human being will be completely free of all desires. He'll then no longer desire his physical body, and at this point something strange happens. He will no longer have the desire for the physical body which he had before, but he is given the possibility of making provisions for the physical body he will have in the future. And he then goes through a work process in the world of the spirit that will enable him to have a physical body again in his next life on earth. This takes the longest time of all. This is how he comes to have another life on earth again. The next time we meet I'll show you that 'eternity', as we call it, can well be shown to be a reality. I'll bring the matter to a conclusion then. This has in fact been part of the question put to me. But, gentlemen, the way I have explained the matter to you was to take you first of all, really, into the spiritual aspect. I told you that in addition to the physical body we also have an ether body, an astral body and an I. The I is already there before a human being is not just born but before he has entered into embryonic life, been conceived. It is there. But you see there is a particular dogma of the Church that says something very strange. This was in fact soon after Christianity had spread. 23 The dogma of pre-existence was rejected for the followers of Origen at a synod held in Constantinople in 543 and for the Priscillianists at a synod held in Braga in 561. In the dogma, the Roman Catholic Church forbids people to believe in life before life on earth. Why? You see, people do not concern themselves much with life before life on earth. They'll say: 'Well, I'm here. Life before this life is of no concern to me.' But life after death is something people are very much concerned with, for they do not want to stop being alive. This is of interest to people. It is, however, impossible to learn about life after death if one does not always learn about life before birth, that is, before conception. The one is not possible without the other. So what happened when the dogma was established that one should not consider life before life on earth? People's view of the supersensible was cut off. But does it serve a purpose for the Church to cut off this view of the supersensible? Oh yes, it serves a purpose, for since human beings desire to have life after death, the Church is then able to make itself responsible for everything to do with death. People will not be able to know what happens after death, and have to depend on what the Church tells them. And this will make people long to believe above all in the Church. It was therefore a good thing — that is, for the Church — to establish the dogma that human beings go on living after their life on earth. For with this the Church took control of everything connected with death and dying. I once had a talk with a famous astronomer. 24 Probably Wilhelm Foerster (1823-1921). He did not believe anything about anthroposophy. But it is true nevertheless that astronomers find it easiest to understand that we cannot stop at the physical world. We were talking about Church and State. His attitude to the two was that he rather liked the State, but liked the Church less, saying it guides people to mere faith and not insight. And he then put things rather well, saying that the Church has it easy, much easier than the State, for the State only has to control life, whilst the Church controls death and dying. And because it looks after death and dying, the Church has much more in its favour, has much more success. The science of the spirit, anthroposophy, wants to help people realize that they have responsibility for their own dying. That is the thing. You see, gentlemen, that will mean real progress. People will then no longer just want to feel dependent, but to take their lives into their own hands. And that is what matters. People are already aware today that things cannot go on the way they have done in the past. In the past they would think: 'TH have to work for a time in my life, that has to be, for if one did not work, life could not go on; but afterwards I'll get my State retirement pension.' That was the general idea. And when I die, they would say, the Church will put my soul in retirement. You see, they then retire to enjoy eternal bliss, doing so without insight and without doing anything about it themselves. Real progress will consist in people taking their lives into their own hands, not letting themselves be organized by State or Church, but getting somewhere by themselves, out of their own resources, insight and will. And for this they will need to have scientific understanding of their own immortality.

From Limestone to Lucifer

The essential nature of man — life and death

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA349/English/RSP1999/19230317p02.html

Dornach

17 Mar 1923

GA349-5

Good morning, gentlemen! Let us try and bring the subject we have started to a conclusion, at least for the time being. You see, we only learn to understand life if we begin to consider the sleep of human beings, which I have mentioned to you a number of times before. When we are in the fullness of life from morning till night, we usually think that sleep will give us energy again, getting rid of the tiredness, and so on. But sleep actually does much more than that. Just think about it. Looking back on your life, think of the dreams you had in your sleep. These do not always come to mind. Dreams are something we soon forget, as you all know. Though perhaps once in a while you did have a dream that you would often tell. You remember it because of the telling. But the dreams we do not tell vanish in no time at all. Going back to the time when you were boys in your memories, you'll recall many things from your boyhood and from later on in life. But your memories are always interrupted. If you think back over today, you come to the time when you slept. That is a break, something you do not remember. Your memories only start again with last night, going back to yesterday morning. So that in remembering back we do not get the whole of our life, for the part that was during the night will always be missing. If you draw a line to show the process of remembering back, there is a period of time, from evening to morning, that is beyond recall; then you have recall again from morning to evening, a pause again from evening until morning, and so on [Fig. 16]. Our recall of life is really such that there is a whole part of our life which we do not remember. This is quite clear. It is the time we have slept through. Let us now think of someone who is unable to sleep. As you know, many people complain of being unable to sleep. But many of those complaints should not be taken seriously, for some people will tell us they never sleep at night, and if you ask them for how long they have not been sleeping at night, they'll say: 'Oh, not for years!' Well, someone unable to sleep for such a long time would have been dead long since. People do sleep, but they have such lively dreams in their sleep that they feel they've been awake. Now tell such a person: 'Have a good lie-down, you don't need to go to sleep; just lie down.' For he'll then sleep all right, and though he may not know it, he does sleep. I just wanted to tell you this so that you can see that people really need sleep in their life. Sleep is more important for life than food is. And someone who would be unable to sleep would not live. Well, now, how much time do we spend asleep between birth and death? You see, gentlemen, the sleeping time is longest for very young infants. When an infant is born he'll sleep almost all the time. Gradually the time spent sleeping grows less. And when you've reached something of an age and reckon it up, you'll have to say that you have really slept through one third of your life. And that is healthy. We really sleep through one third of our lives. This has been known for a fairly long time. Only people don't like to remember things that have been known for a long time. Just as far back as the nineteenth century, right at the beginning of it, people writing about these things would say: 'Man should work for 8 hours, have 8 hours for himself and sleep for 8 hours. That gives us 16 waking hours and 8 hours of sleep, with 3 times 8 = 24 hours. And one third of the 24 hours is given to sleep.' This was a perfectly accurate observation. Man needs a third of his whole life for sleep. But of course people don't consider how important sleep is for life, for they do not care about soul and spirit today. They only concern themselves with the things they experience when their bodies are in the waking state, but not with their soul and spirit. And that is the way it is, so that people will often say in their everyday lives today: 'Lord, yes, it is a good thing to sleep, but all it needs is that you're tired enough.' And they'll then drink enough beer at night so that they'll be able to sleep. But it is not a matter of being tired enough; what matters is that people realize the real importance of sleep. Let us clearly understand what it really means to sleep. You see, gentlemen, basically people like themselves a great deal. You see this especially when they are sick. Sick people show how much they like themselves, for they'll take very good care of themselves when they have a pain somewhere, and so on. All this is quite right and proper, but it does show that people are terribly fond of themselves. What is it they are fond of when they like themselves so much? They are fond of their bodies. And this is the great secret of life, I'd say, that people are fond of their bodies. And the love they have for their bodies shows itself when something is not quite right with their bodies. But there's also a drawback to this fondness for the body. The body is active all day long. The body toils hard all day long. And the liking which the element of soul and spirit has for the body gets less and less as the day goes on, though the person is not aware of this. This is the strange thing, something we should know. During the day, when a person needs to be active all the time, the element of soul and spirit gets less and less fond of the body. That is why an infant sleeps such a lot. It loves its body very much, always wants to enjoy it. Looking at an infant you can always see how he enjoys his body. Just think of an infant who has had his milk and goes to sleep. In this sleep, the infant relishes his digestion. He enjoys the processes that occur in his body. And he'll only wake up again when he's hungry. For he is less fond of what happens when he's hungry. So he'll wake up again. You see, therefore, that an infant wants to enjoy his body in sleep. You can make the most wonderful observations. But the academics don't do this, for they do not have the ability. Look at a herd of cows feeding in their pasture and then lying down contentedly to enjoy their digestive processes. They are enjoying the processes that happen in their bodies. This is something we have to know — the human being really wants to enjoy his body. But it is a bit different with humans than it is with cows, and again a bit different with an adult than with a child. The young child is not yet working and therefore enjoys his body in sleep. The cows do it all from instinct, and therefore also enjoy their digestion in sleep. The human being never gets to enjoy his digestion. Using his body all day long he has reached a point by evening when he is quite out of sympathy with his body. He does not like it any more. And you see, that is why he sleeps. He sleeps because his body is no longer dear to him. The antipathy a person develops to his body all day long will make him go to sleep at night, and he'll sleep until he's overcome this antipathy in his soul, waking up again when he is once more in sympathy with his body. This is the first thing we need to understand, that waking up occurs when the individual is in sympathy with his body again. And this sympathy is for all the individual organs in the body. When someone wakes up, therefore, he slips into his organs, as it were. Just think of the way waking-up dreams are. Our wakingup dreams are such that we may dream of snakes, for example. We are slipping into our intestines at that point and dreaming of snakes. The snakes represent our intestines. The human being thus slips into his body with spirit and soul when he is in sympathy with his body and wakes up. He has to have this sympathy, otherwise he'd always want to leave his body. And now consider this. Someone has died, he has put his body aside; the body is no longer part of the human being. The first thing to happen, as I've told you, is that he has thoughts that recall the whole of his life. And these thoughts are lost after just a few days. They disperse into the whole world. But he'll still feel sympathy for the things his body has experienced. And this sympathy will gradually have to go as well. This is the first thing we go through after death, that we must lose the sympathy we have with our body. How long does it take for us to regain sympathy for the body when we live for one day? It takes a third of the day. And because of this, losing that sympathy after death also takes a third of our whole life. Someone who has lived, let us say, for about 30 years will need about 10 years to get rid of his whole body, so that he is no longer in sympathy with the world and with life — all this is approximate, of course. So a human being first has a few days after death when he recalls his life, and then he is weaned, I might say, from this backward look, which will continue for a third of his life span on earth. This is the average term for human beings, but it will be longer for some and shorter for others, for one person is more in sympathy with his body, likes himself more, and another likes himself less, and so on. After death we therefore go through something which we might describe as: 'The human being weans himself from all the things that connect him with his body.' Now you may well say that the things I am telling you are really quite theoretical. How can we know that a human being is still attached to something when he has put aside his physical body? How can we know that? Well, gentlemen, to know this we have to look at the way a human being develops in the course of life. We have the first period in life in which the human being develops, the first period of time in life; it continues until the individual gets his second teeth. First he has his milk teeth, then he gets his second teeth. Now you see, we can say that the milk teeth are something we inherit. But the second teeth are not inherited. The second teeth come from the ether body. The ether body is active in us and gives us our second teeth. So we have the physical body, as I wrote it up for you the other day; this gives us our first teeth. Then there is the ether body; this gives human beings their second teeth, the teeth which remain. Now we really must develop the ability to see. Today people only develop the ability to think, form theories, but not to see and behold the things I have described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. If we really look at a child who is gradually getting his second teeth, we see the ether body at work at a level not apparent to the ordinary senses. And this is the body which we keep for a few days after we die and which then disperses throughout the whole world. So if we make a real study of what gives people their second teeth, we find that after death human beings have their ether body for a few days and then cast it off after those few days; that is, the ether body goes out into the world. Now we still have our astral body then and our I. The astral body is the part of us that goes on longing for the physical body. With the I, which is inside it, we continue to long for the physical body. We may say, therefore, that man develops needs and desires in his astral body — as I told you the other day. All needs are developed by the astral body.. They are not part of the physical body. When the physical body has become a corpse it no longer has any needs [Fig. 17]. Thus we are able to say that the principle which gives human beings their second teeth will also be gone a few days after death. So what remains? Here we must find a way to study what begins to be particularly active in the human being from the time when he has his second teeth to the time when he reaches sexual maturity. This is another important period in human life. These things cannot be studied in modern science where no attention is paid to them. You see, from the getting of the second teeth to reaching puberty something is active in the child that is not perceptible to the ordinary senses. And what does this invisible principle want? It gradually wants to take hold of the whole body. It is not yet in it when the child has his second teeth and begins to receive this astral body into the whole of his body, so that it may be present in all parts of it. Then the child matures more and more. And when the astral body is wholly in the body the child has reached sexual maturity. It is important for us to know that it is the astral body which brings sexual maturity into the child. It is, of course, not possible to study these things the way modern academics would like to study them. Modern academics only want to study the things they can lay their hands on. They do not observe human life. But anyone who has learned to observe properly what it is that works its way into the body from the second teeth to puberty knows that this is the astral body. This gives rise to all needs and desires. A child does of course have needs even before he gets his second teeth, at a time when the astral body is mainly present in the head; but later it spreads through the whole body. You can see very well how the astral body spreads if you look at boys. The voice changes as they reach puberty. This marks the astral body entering into the whole physical body. In women you can see it from the way the secondary organs of their sex life, the breasts, and so on, develop. This is the astral body entering into them. And human beings keep their astral body even when they have cast off their ether body after death. How long has someone been in his physical body when he is 30 years of age? He's been in it for 20 years; for 10 years he was not in it. After death he wants to be in it again for those 10 years during which he was not in his physical body, which he has slept through. He will therefore be active in his astral body after death for one third of the life he has gone through here on earth. After this time, the astral body will be satisfied and the human being then lives only in his I. Having gone through about one third of his life span after death, the human being lives only in his I. But this I, the truly spiritual element in man, will now need tremendously much to be able to live on. You see, it was not without reason that I have all the time told you that common sense, the rational mind, thoughts, are really spread out over the world. I have told you that everything in the world is really arranged in a sensible way, if one studies it properly. I have explained this to you by speaking of the animal world. This whole world is such that we should not imagine our own rational mind to be the only one; the rational mind we have has been taken from the rational mind spread out in the world —like a portion of something with a ladle. Rational thinking is all-present. And anyone who thinks his rational mind is the only one is as foolish as someone who thinks: 'I have a glass of water here. The glass was empty to begin with, then it was full, that is, the water has grown out of the glass.' No, the water must first be got from the well, from the whole body of water. And that is also how we first have to get our own thinking mind from the big rational mind that is in the world. We simply fail to notice any of this in our lives. Why? Because it is something our body does. Gentlemen, if you were ever to know — I have spoken of this before — what your body does with a very small lump of sugar you have eaten, with the sugar not just dissolved in the body but transformed into all kinds of other substances — if you knew everything that was going on there you'd be amazed. You are amazed even when I tell you just the very beginnings of everything that goes on in the human body. But however much of it all you consider, you are always only considering a little bit. You take a breath. The breath you inhale must always be used in the whole of your body. Just think, you take a breath about 18 times a minute. And that breath you take must always be used in the whole of your body. That needs tremendous rational thinking, an absolutely tremendous rational mind. Now our body does all this. Our body really works for us with tremendous good sense. It is truly admirable, and we have to feel this when we discover how much the human body really produces by way of good sense. It is simply enormous. Our body therefore relieves us of a great many things during life. But now, after death, we no longer have it. Now we do not even have the ether body any more. We do not have the astral body, nor even a longing for the physical body. All we have, therefore, is the I, and the I now realizes that it does not have the body and begins to familiarize itself with everything that will be needed for a body. And this is where something tremendous comes in, something we need to understand. In modern science things are made very easy in this respect. People will say: 'Where does the human being come from? Well, the human being comes from something that has arisen in the mother through fertilization, as a fertilized egg.' In modern science it is said, therefore, that you have the fertilized egg and inside it, well — somehow the whole human being is already laid down in there. Someone who knows nothing will say: 'A germ is there; the whole human being will come from this.' Now you see, people have got this really clear in their minds long since, but in their own way, which means they have got it really unclear. Just imagine this is the egg [Fig. 18] from which you have come. So you would be in there, a tiny human being, as it were. But this egg has itself come from another egg. So this tiny human being must already have been in the maternal womb, and the maternal egg, that is, the mother herself, must have been inside the grandmother, and so on through great grandmother, great great grandmother and all the way to Eve. And you arrive at the strange notion that the whole of humanity was inside Eve, the original mother, but one inside the other like a nest of boxes. Mr Muller was inside an egg; this in turn was inside an egg together with all other human eggs, only it was like a nest of boxes. The whole human race was inside Eve, the original mother. This thesis was called the theory of evolution at the time and later, derisively, the encasement theory. From the beginning of the nineteenth century people said one really cannot imagine that the whole of the human race was encapsulated in Eve, with one always inside another, and so terribly many of them — this simply will not do. And they then accepted another theory. They then said: 'No, there is really nothing inside the egg; but when the egg is fertilized all the external conditions affect it — wind and weather and sun and light and all kinds of things. And the human being comes into existence under the influence of the whole natural world.' Indeed, gentlemen, materialists feel really good with an idea like this. But it does not stand up to close scrutiny. For just imagine what becomes of us with the whole of nature having its effect on us all the time. It will make us nervy, as people call it today. Someone who is sensitive to every draught of air and every ray of light will not be a proper human being but a fidget. The natural world around us actually makes us fidgety. So that cannot be the answer. Proper study actually shows us something completely different. Proper study shows that there is nothing at all in the egg. Before it is fertilized the situation is that one sort of discovers all kinds of things in it, I'd say. It has form. We are therefore able to notice all kinds of threads and so on in the unfertilized egg. But when the egg is fertilized the threads are destroyed and the whole egg is then nothing but a real scrunched-up mess, if I may put it like that. To put it in a more formal way, it is a chaos. It is matter lacking totally in organization. You see, matter lacking completely in organization does not exist anywhere else in the world. All forms of matter are somehow organized, inwardly structured in some way. If you take anything whatsoever, just a speck of dust, and look at it under the microscope you'll see how finely and beautifully it is structured inside. The fertilized egg is the only thing that is in utter chaos inside. And matter must first fall into utter chaos, it must not be anything in itself any more if a human being is to come out of it. People are always thinking about protein, for example. They always want to find out how it is organized inside. Well, protein has an inner structure for as long as it is not fertilized. Once it is fertilized it is what I've called a 'scrunched-up mess', meaning a chaos, absolutely disorganized matter. And the human being comes from this. Even in the case of Eve, if she ever existed, there was no whole human race, not even later in a fertilized egg, for the egg is completely chaotic, lacking all order, and it also was without order in Eve, the prime mother. And if a human being is to arise from this egg, this must be brought about from the outside, that is, the human being must enter into this egg. Proper scientific study will indeed show that the human being must enter into the egg from outside. This means that the human being comes from the world of the spirit. He does not come out of matter, for matter must actually be destroyed first. It is like this even with plants. There you have the soil, and the seed in the soil. Again people do not make a proper study of what happens with the seed in the soil. For the seed must first be destroyed. The next spring then makes the new plant rise from the destroyed matter in a spiritual way that comes from outside. It is like this with animals and above all also with man. It is only that the plant has it easier. The whole universe creates its form. With man, the whole universe does not create his form to begin with. He has to create it himself. Man actually just enters into this destroyed matter himself, otherwise it would not be possible for a human being to arise from this destroyed matter. Man must therefore first come out of the world of the spirit and enter into the destroyed matter. The whole of fertilization merely ensures that when a human being wants to come into the world he is presented with destroyed matter, that he has the destroyed matter. He would not be able to do anything with matter that was not destroyed. He cannot come into the world the way a plant does, for then he could only become a plant. He really must create the whole universe within himself. And he does create it. And that is a truly wonderful thing the way the human being configures the destroyed matter to create the universe in it. Let me give you an example of how the human being configures the destroyed matter to create the universe in it. If this is the surface of the earth [drawing on the board] — we can do it like this, for if you look at just a small part of the Earth it does look level. The sun rises in the morning, goes up to a certain height and then goes down again. This is a specific angle, with the sun rising that far. It is most interesting that the sun always rises up to a certain level and then goes down again. The angle is of course a little greater in summer than in winter, but the sun always rises to a specific degree. This angle therefore marks an inclination of the sun to the earth. We also find this angle somewhere else. You see, when light enters into the eye, we have the blind spot, as it is called, at the point where the optic nerve coming from the brain enters into the eye. This is a spot where we do not see. We only see really clearly in places that are some distance away from this blind spot where the optic nerve comes in. And this is what is so interesting — the spot where we have the clearest visual perception inside us is at the same angle to the blind spot as the sun is to the earth in its orbit. And there is something else as well. If you take the heart, it is at a slight angle. It has the same inclination as the sun has to the earth. I could tell you any number of things that would show you how everything that exists out there in the universe is also inside us in some way. The inclination of the sun is something we have in the inclination in the eye and in the inclination of the heart. We are entirely created out of the good sense that prevails in the universe. You know, gentlemen, this is something where one begins, as one gradually gains some insight, to say to oneself that man is really a whole small world. Everything which exists out there in the world is recreated within the human being. Just think what it would be like if you were given this 'scrunched-up mess', this destroyed matter, and asked to recreate all those things in there. You would not be able to do it. You see, when the I is all by itself after death, it has to learn from the whole world how to recreate the whole world. Having cast off his sympathy with the body during that period of a third of his past life, the human being then begins to learn from the whole universe how to be a human being again. And this takes longer than a life does on earth, for the way things go on earth, well, you can learn a lot or learn a little. Most people really learn very little today. And strange as it may seem, the academics learn least of all, for the things they learn are all quite useless. They only make it possible to know what a corpse looks like, but not how a living body is inwardly brought about. But that is what the I has to learn after death. It must learn all the secrets, from the whole world, of how a living body is built. And there we may refer to this time which the I spends learning from the whole world how a human being functions and lives inwardly. You see, if someone does the exercises I have described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and is then able to remember the time which one otherwise does not remember, the time when he was a very young infant, he will discover what the life of an infant consists of, an infant who knows nothing of the world as yet, but merely uses his body, merely wriggles, merely lives his way into his eyes, into his ears, but does not yet understand any of it. In ordinary life people do not generally look back. They'll say: 'Why bother about my infancy; I'm here, that's all.' But when one does look back into that short period which one usually does not remember, and does so with insight, one notices what one was actually doing then. And to begin with you get a terribly unpleasant feeling as you come to this. For the wriggling of the very young infant is an effort to forget all that knowledge of the universe. It is given over to the body, and the body will later know it. It will be able to take over that knowledge in its life. The young infant gives his body the wisdom of a whole world. It is really most painful, terribly sad, that in modern science people have not the least idea of what goes on in the life process, with the young infant giving the universal wisdom it has gained to his body, and gradually growing into his eyes, into his hands. He gradually grows into them, giving the whole wisdom of the I over to the body. Before that, the I really held the whole wisdom of the world. It may perhaps seem strange to you, but it is really so: how is it possible for someone who truly has anthroposophy — knowledge of the human being — to tell people something about the universe? One is able to tell something about the universe simply because one is remembering one's earliest childhood, early infancy, when one still knew the whole of it, having learned it earlier, before having entered into the body. And anthroposophy really consists in gradually rediscovering this whole universal wisdom again from the body, to which it has been given. Yes, gentlemen, we are not shown how to do this in modern science. It does not tell us at all how we can regain the knowledge which we ourselves have put into the body in the first place. In science, people are shown how to experiment, and to learn only the things they can learn from this in a superficial way. The right thing would be to take the human being into the living body. Our students are taken to a dead body, a body that is already a corpse, and they do not learn anything about the living human being. It would, of course, be more difficult to do this, for it needs people to practise self-knowledge, looking inside themselves, for there the human being is meant to grow more perfect. But this is exactly what present-day people do not want. They do not want to be more perfect, they want to be drilled a bit in their education, and stop at that; they do not want to be more perfect. People do not want this because with the education they are given today they are already too arrogant, I'd say, to admit that there is any room for improvement. So I have now told you a little bit, for the time being, about the I. But we'll talk more about these things in the next few sessions, so that you will hear a great deal more and gradually find it easier to understand it all. You see, I've told you a little bit about what the I needs to do during the time before the human being comes down to earth again. There are people, however, who'll say: 'Really, I am not interested in what the I needs to do afterwards. Surely one can wait until one has died and then see for oneself.' That's what people say. Well, gentlemen, that would be the same as if the germ, having developed and been fertilized, with the human being now inside it in the maternal womb, were to say: 'Oh, I find it too boring to live in the womb, I'll leave early.' But it will not be a human being unless it spends the allotted nine months in the womb. This is something it must first go through. In the same way the I will not be able to gain living experience after death unless it lives in such a way here on earth that it is encouraged to do so. It is therefore quite wrong for someone to say: 'I'll wait until after death; then I'll no doubt see if I am something or not/ and so on. People really aren't very logical. They are about as logical today as the man who insisted, who swore that he'd not accept any god. He swore: 'As sure as there is a god in heaven I am an atheist!' 25 Anzengruber, Ludwig (1839-89), Austrian writer, in his play Ein Faustschlag (1878), Act 3, Scene 6, Kammauf's actual words: 'for ... as true as God ... I am an atheist!' That is more or less the way people are today. They use the old turns of phrase even if they are contradictory. And so they think they can wait and see if they still exist then or not. You see, people say to themselves: 'Do I believe in immortality or do I not believe in immortality? Well, if I do not believe in immortality and it exists after all, I might fare badly. But if I do believe in immortality and there is none, no harm will be done. It is therefore definitely better to believe in immortality.' But I think you'll agree that we must not play games with our thoughts like that. It is important to be really clear in one's mind. And so we have to say: 'The human being must receive the stimulus he needs here on earth so that his I may really penetrate into the world in a living way after death. And this stimulus is thoroughly driven out in modern science, where people are not made in the least aware of the facts as they really are. It is something that is not admitted, but it is really considered a good idea to keep people as unknowing as possible today, so that they'll sleep after death and have no idea at all of how to penetrate the secrets of the whole universe, and thus be truly human again. You see, gentlemen, if humanity were to go on living the way people live today, being concerned only with superficial things, people will be born at a future time who will not be able to lift a finger, having learnt nothing before their next life. The way lives follow one another is something we'll come back to another time. Today I only wanted to give you ideas so that you may see that I was not careless in my use of words when I spoke of the way the I is after death, for it is possible to show, from the knowledge itself, that the human being comes down to earth again and has to create his life for himself in that chaos of matter. This is genuine knowledge based on objective facts. So this is what it is all about. Only it can't be done so quickly, but I am still going to answer the question fully for you, taking all the things together which we know about the end of human life, how the human being gradually loses his ether body and his astral body, and how the I must then come down to create its astral body and so on. That is what it is all about, how man comes down to earth again and again. And in time one then also discovers when the human being will be freed from the whole of earth life and no longer needs to come down. The question as to when he originally started is one we'll also answer in due course. He must have started at some point as a kind of plant. He did not need to be human for this. But I have also spoken to you of the time when the whole earth was one large plant, and we shall see that one day the earth will be a plant again, and man will then be free from being human. I'll then consider the whole matter once more from another aspect. You will, of course, have to be patient and not say 'I can't follow this' when we are only just starting. You'll see, the more we go into detail the more it will seem plausible to you.

From Limestone to Lucifer

Human life in sleep and death

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA349/English/RSP1999/19230321p02.html

Dornach

21 Mar 1923

GA349-6

Gentlemen! In modern science, only the things one can see with one's eyes, touch with one's hands are accepted. It needs an extra faculty to explore the things one cannot see with one's eyes, touch with one's hands, and people are not willing to work so that they may gain this faculty. Medieval knowledge based on faith meant that people had knowledge, a science, of all things that are of the earth, and they had a dogma of faith in what is written in scripture. People still hold this view today. They no longer want to venture beyond and gain knowledge that cannot be immediately apparent, for they have not really gone beyond a science of things that are tangible. I'd like to explain what I have been saying a little bit more by speaking of something that is quite old in present-day terms. But the really important developments relating to the subject actually came in the last third of the nineteenth century. All I have to do is to read to you the last sentences in a book and you'll see right away how modern scientists think in this respect. It says: 'There is nothing that will take us beyond the boundaries of our knowledge. We can only let ourselves be taken into the trackless ... [gap in shorthand notes] sustained by unceasing hope in a sweet, mystic semi-asleep state, on the wings of our imagination,' 26 It has not so far been possible to identify the book. and so on. So what the gentleman is saying is that things have to be tangible; then we have science. The rest is a figment of the imagination. Everyone can pretend this to himself and have others pretend it for him; it is fantasy, for we simply cannot know anything about it. And if people take comfort in all kinds of supersensible things, well, we need not deprive them of this. It is really terrible to see the confusion that has arisen about this. Now, however, I'll show you how these gentlemen have literally forgotten how to think with this science of theirs. I'll demonstrate this to you by referring to another passage in the same book. For what does this gentleman — who says everything we cannot touch is a matter of belief — do? He says it is nonsense, scientifically speaking, to think of an eternal I living in the human being, for the I is merely the sum total of everything else we have in us. We are in the habit of taking everything we think and feel, from beginning to end, together and consider it a single whole. And having made it a whole we call it our 'I'. That is what the gentleman says. He then wants to illustrate this. He wants to show that we do truly bring everything we experience in life together and call it our 'I'. For in that case 'I' is just a word, as we are simply putting it all together. He then offers an analogy. He compares everything the human being experiences in life with an army, a company of soldiers. And so everything I have known in my youth, as a child — the way I played, the feelings I had when playing — is one group of soldiers; the things I came across a bit later are another group of soldiers, and so on. I then gather up everything there has been to this day, just as soldiers are brought together in a company, and call it 'I'. That is what he says. He therefore compares all the individual inner experiences we have had with a company of soldiers, and makes them a group the way we put things in groups, not saying Miller and Tennant and so on, but 'No. 12 company' and so on. He thus gathers up all the inner experiences of the I in a company of soldiers. And he goes on to say: 'On the other hand there is something else to be said about the I, for it must also be taken into account that from the time of life when conscious awareness has to some extent developed, one always feels oneself to be the same "I", the same person.' What he is saying, therefore, is that we must finally get people out of the habit of feeling themselves to be an I and get them used to the idea that this is no more than as if one is gathering together a company of soldiers. 'Seen from our point of view, this should not really be particularly surprising. In the first place, we must be clear in our minds, if we want to consider this more closely, about the way we should really consider the individual person in relation to the outside world.' So he first of all tells us nicely that we should form an idea. And his answer is: 'It is the result of all kinds of individual ideas, and above all ideas that bring the direct interactions between the organism and the outside world together in a more or less compact whole. In our view, the idea of the I is no more than an abstract idea of the highest order, built on the sum of all the thinking, feeling and will a person has, and more than anything all ideas concerning interrelationships between one's own body and the outside world. The term brings all this together, just as the term "plant world" encompasses the infinite sum of all plants. The word "I"' — this is where it gets interesting — 'is the representative of all these ideas, more or less the way the leader of an army represents all the individual soldiers. Just as we can say of the actions of an army leader that in the minds of individual soldiers and units within the army he provides the bedrock, more or less darkly and unconsciously, exactly so do a mass of individual concrete ideas and feelings provide the basis, the bedrock, for the term "I".' Well now, gentlemen, just consider the way the man is thinking. It is a very learned book, we have to recognize this, at the highest level of science. The man says that we have a company of soldiers and the leader of the army. But only the soldiers are taken all together; the leader is merely their representative. And the same is said of ideas and feelings. All thoughts and feelings are taken together, with the I merely their representative. But you see, if the I is the representative, if it is a mere word, then in the case of a company of soldiers the leader of the army must also be regarded as a mere word. Have you ever known a case where the leader of the army, the man leading a company of soldiers, is just a word, a word put together from all the individuals? Well, we might imagine that the leader of the army is not particularly bright. Sometimes the I, too, is not particularly bright. But to imagine that the leader of the army is nothing but a word — and this is the analogy he uses for the way the I relates to our ideas — simply proves that even the cleverest of people turn into blockheads when they are supposed to say anything about things that are not apparent to the senses. For as you have seen, we are able to show that when they produce an analogy it is completely without logic. There's no logic there at all. Having produced his nice analogy, the gentleman wen' on to say: 'This shows that the concept "I" always depend: entirely on the basic idea someone has. It can be seen most clearly as it gradually develops in a child. But every thinking adult person can also establish for himself that he feels himself to be a different I now than he did ten years ago.' So let me ask Mr Erbsmehl or Mr Burle if you feel yourself to be a completely different I than you were ten years ago! I am sure you are able to tell if you are someone quite different now than you were ten years ago! But you come across such passages wherever you look in books today. The most ordinary facts of everyday life are turned upside down. It is of course complete nonsense for someone to say he feels himself to be a different I than he did ten years ago. But that is what those gentlemen say. But the moment you start to think about the I, if it is the same today as it was ten years ago, you no longer find, you are no longer able to say, that the I dies when the corpse dies. The question is why? I have spoken to you, gentlemen, about the way you cut your nails, the way your skin flakes off, and so on. All this happens over a period of seven or eight years. Today you no longer have a particle in you of the matter you had ten years ago. For as your skin flakes off, your inner part is all the time moving away from the body. You see, your body is like this. At the top it flakes off; then the next layer moves up and flakes off in turn; then the next one moves up, flakes off, and after seven or eight years it has all flaked off. Where is it? Where is the body you had ten years ago? It has gone the same way, only in a rather more complicated way, as the dead body does when it is put in the grave. The dead body becomes part of the earth. If you were to split the dead body up into particles as small as the skin flakes you are losing all the time, or the nails which you cut off, if you were to divide it up into such small particles, you would not notice either that the dead body goes to some place or other. One might blow it away. And that is how the physical body becomes part of the outside world over a period of seven or eight years. But if you still feel yourself to be an I today, and your physical body died two or three years ago, then the I simply has nothing to do with the physical body, the way we have it there. But, you see, it does have so much to do with it that if you pick up a piece of chalk, you will say: 'I've picked up a piece of chalk/ Everybody says that. I had a school mate — I think I have told you this before — who was well on the way to becoming a proper materialist when he was about 19 or 20 years old. We used to go for walks together, and he would always say: 'It seems perfectly clear to me. We don't have an I, we only have a brain. The brain does the thinking.' And I'd always say to him: 'But look, you say I go, you even say: I am thinking. So why are you lying? To be really honest, you would have to say: My brain is thinking!' Perhaps one should not even say 'my', for 'my' refers to an I; surely there has to be an I if one says 'my'. People never say: 'My brain is thinking, my brain is walking, my brain picks up the chalk.' They wouldn't dream of it, for a human being cannot be a materialist in life. He would talk nonsense the moment he became a materialist. But people cook up materialism in theory and do not consider that genuine science does in fact know that we no longer have the body today that we had eight or ten years ago, so that the I has remained. And you are also able to remember back to your early childhood, to your second, third, fourth, fifth year. You would not dream of saying that it is not the same I which then ran about as a little boy. But let us assume you have now reached the age of 40; going back to your thirty-third year you lost one body, back to your twenty-sixth year another, back to your nineteenth year a third, then a fourth back to your twelfth and a fifth back to your fifth year. You have lost five bodies and your I has always been the same. This I therefore continues for the whole of your life on earth. The I is also able to do things with your body. It can all the time direct this body which it is losing. You see, when I walk, my legs, though quite old, are really only six or seven years old where their substance is concerned. But I control them with the old I that was there even when I ran about as a little boy. The I is still walking about. The I controls the body during life on earth. Now I have told you that a child learns to walk, talk and think in the time which we are no longer able to remember. We cannot recall the times, of course, when we were not yet able to think. We learn to walk, to move about altogether, to use our bodies, to talk and to think. It is something we learn. And one has to control the body in that way. When you are crawling about on all fours as a young child you cannot make the body come upright unless you have the will. When you move your hand the I says: 'I am moving the hand' — the I with its will. And that is also what happens when the child has the will to come upright. The child learns to talk with the will. The child learns to think with the will. And so we have to ask: How come that the child learns all these things? And we discover that although the body is continually replaced in the course of life on earth, the I always remains the same; this I is still the same by the time we have learned to think, to talk and to walk. This I was already active in the body at that earlier time. Gentlemen, I have shown you how one really gets one's body. You see, scientists think — I already explained this the last time: 'Ah well, one simply gets one's body from one's mother, one's father. Then it is all prepared, and one is already a small human being. We inherit it; the body is something we inherit.' Well, a science where it is said that we inherit the body really is not worth the powder to shoot with. For you only have to look at a bone — here you'll need to remember some of the things I told you before — if you look at a thigh bone, for example, you find it a wonderful sight. Such a thigh bone has a whole scaffolding structure. The scaffolding in the Goetheanum was nothing compared to the beautiful scaffolding one can see in the whole of this thigh bone if one looks at it under a microscope — a marvellous structure, handsomely built [Fig. 19]. If you cut off the tip of your nose — it only needs to be a very little piece, of course, for it would not be healthy to cut off too much, but one could cut off just so much that it does no harm. Looking at it under the microscope you again see a marvellous structure, most handsomely built. Yes, gentlemen, you have no idea how beautiful the tiniest part from the tip of your nose really is! Admirably well designed. And that is how it is with every part of the human body. It is handsomely built, perfectly arranged. The best of all sculptors could not do better. There is only one part in the human organism where everything must be destroyed, so that there is nothing but matter — I referred to this the last time. This happens in the egg from which the human being develops. And with fertilization we have the last act; form or design is removed from matter. We are therefore able to say that the bone is beautiful; every single thing is beautiful. The tip of the nose is not as beautiful as the bone but it is still most handsome. But the egg, from which the human being will later arise, contains nothing but matter in complete chaos, for in there everything is shattered. It is all atom, and there is no form in there at all. Why? A human soul cannot simply enter into a bone. Superstitious people sometimes think there is a little devil somewhere in their bones or limbs. Well, figuratively speaking that may sometimes be true, but a human being certainly cannot enter into such a bone. Nor can a human being enter into the tip of your nose. I did know a lady once who insisted she had the holy spirit in her left index finger, and she'd always consult it if she wanted to know anything. She'd do so if she thought of going for a walk, and so on. But that's nonsense, of course, superstition. What we have to say is that no human being, no human soul, no human spirit can enter directly into such a well-designed bone, nor into the tip of one's nose. The thing is like this. The human soul and spirit, the I itself, can only enter into the egg because there matter is nothing but dust, world dust. And what happens is that the soul then works on that world dust with the powers it has brought with it from the world of the spirit. If people believe that a person simply comes from a father and a mother by means of heredity, then one has to assume that there is a tiny human being there. But that goes against scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge tells us that the protein in the egg is reduced to dust. And the soul, coming from the world of the spirit, from a world that is beyond sensory perception, actually builds the human body out of this protein that has been reduced to dust. Now you may ask why a child looks like his father or his mother. Well, gentlemen, that is because the child always goes on imitating. Someone who says: 'He is the spitting image of his father' could also put it differently. You see — let us wait a while with the child — let us say we have a child who looks very much like his father or his mother, though in fact it is not all that marked. Children grow much more similar later on than they are when they are very small. But of course such things are of no interest to the learned gentlemen. But let us wait a while and not form an opinion when the child is only one or two weeks old, or a month; let us wait until the child is three or four years old. He will have started to talk then. Someone comes along and says: 'Amazing. The father is German, the child is also starting to talk German; he must have got it from his father; he's inherited it from his father, for his father is German. This is quite amazing! Since the child has come from the fertilized egg, the language must have been there already in the egg. It is only surprising that the child was not able to talk when he came from the egg, from his mother's womb.' But I think you'll agree that the child did not inherit his speech at all, he acquired it by imitating others. His speech is similar to that of his father and mother. But no one would dream of saying the child inherited his speech. In the same way the face is similar. But why is the face similar? Because the soul, when it lets itself be born by a mother or begotten by a father, who is Mr Miller, makes the face similar to that of the father or mother, just as the child will later make his speech like that of his father and mother. This is something you have to consider. The child develops the sounds, the words of his language by making himself similar to his parents or the people who bring him up. But earlier than that the soul is unconsciously working like a sculptor on the face, or the gait, and so on. And the similarity arises because the child has been born into the family and makes himself resemble them when he does not yet have conscious awareness. This happens in the same way as the similar way of talking develops. You see, gentlemen, in this way we discover that the human being does indeed come from the world of the spirit, the world not perceptible to the senses, and builds his own body with all its similarities. Just look at an infant. The infant is born. Sometimes it is not easy to distinguish children from little animals when they are newly born, though their mothers will, of course, find them most beautiful. You see, people are little animals when they are born — compared to later on, of course. They are really quite unattractive, those infants. But the soul element is gradually working things out in there, making it all similar, more and more similar, to a human being, until the moment comes when the infant learns to walk, which means he finds his balance on earth, as I told you the last time. Then the child learns to talk. He learns to use the organs in his chest, for these organs are located in the chest. Then he learns to think, meaning he learns to use the organs in his head. So let us consider this. The child learns to walk, which is to keep his balance and to move. What does he learn when he learns to walk? He learns to use his limbs as he walks. But we cannot use our limbs without at the same time also using our metabolism. The metabolism is connected with the limbs. Walking, keeping one's balance, moving has to do with the metabolism and the limbs. Then the child learns to talk. What does this mean? Talking has to do with the organs in the chest, with breathing. The child has been able to breathe even as a young infant. But to connect words with the air he pushes out, that is something the child learns with the organs in his chest. Keeping one's balance is therefore connected with the limbs, talking with the chest, and thinking with the head, the nerves. And now we have three elements that make up the human being. Just consider this, three aspects. In the first place we have our limbs and metabolism, in the second place a chest, and thirdly our thinking, the head. We have three aspects of the human being. 1. walking, keeping balance, moving — limbs, metabolism 2. talking — chest 3. thinking — head (nerves) Now let us take a look at the child. It is like this with a child. When he is born he differs from an adult not only in the way he looks — the cheeks are different, the whole form; the forehead looks different; I think you'll agree the child looks different. Inside, however, he is even more different. The brain mass is more like a brain mush in the infant. And up to the seventh year, up to the time when the child gets his second teeth, this mush, this brain mush, is made into something truly marvellous. From the seventh year onwards the human brain is quite marvellously structured. The soul, the spirit has done this inside; the element of soul and spirit has done this inside. But you see, gentlemen, we would be unable to shape and develop this brain in such a marvellous way up to our seventh year if we were not all the time in touch with the world. If you have a child who is born blind, for instance, you'll immediately see that the nerves of vision and with them a whole part of the brain remain a kind of mush. This is not beautifully developed. When someone is born deaf, the nerves of hearing, nerves that come from the ear and cross here [drawing on the board], after which they go over there, remain a piece of brain mush along this way. It is therefore only because we have the senses that we are able to develop our brain properly in the first seven years of life. But the brain does not develop anything for you that you might reach out and touch. You could of course stuff tangible materials up your nose, if you like, and into the brain — you would ruin your brain with this, but it would not lead to anything. All the matter we can reach and touch therefore does not help you to develop the brain in the first seven years. It needs the most subtle forms of matter, like the subtle matter that lives in light, for example. Ether is what is needed. You see, this is most important. We absorb the ether through all our senses. So what is it that develops all this activity coming from the head? The activity that comes from the head and also extends to the rest of the child's organism does not come from the physical body. The physical body is not active in the marvellous development of the child's brain; it is the ether body which is active. The ether body, of which I have told you that we still have it for two or three days after we die, is at work in the child. It makes the human being develop a perfect brain and thus become a thinking human being. We are therefore able to say that the ether body is active in our thinking. With this we have once again found the first supersensible aspect of the human being — the ether body. A child would not be able to develop his brain, he would not be able to have a human brain in him, if he were not able to work with the ether body that is all around. Later on in life we can strengthen our muscles by making them work, by physical, tangible methods. But the left parietal lobe of the brain, let us say, to take an example, cannot be strengthened by any physical or tangible means. To make the muscle stronger you could use a weight and lift it again and again, overcoming gravity. But you have to use a material, tangible thing to strengthen the muscles. Just as you have your biceps muscle here, and are able to strengthen it by lifting and lowering weights, in the same way you have here, looking at the head from the front [Fig. 20], a brain lobe. It hangs there just as the arm hangs here. You can't attach weights to it. All the same, there is simply no comparison between what happens when you develop a muscle and what goes on in this brain lobe. At first, when we come into the world, it is mushy; when we are seven years old it has been marvellously shaped and developed. Just as the muscle in your arm is strengthened by lifting and lowering the weight, which is something tangible, getting stronger because of something we are able to see, so the brain is strengthened by something that is in the ether. Man relates to the whole world around him through his physical body, and he also relates to the whole world around him through his ether body. And that is where he gets his thinking. With this, he develops the inner parts of the head in the first seven years. Figure 20 When someone has developed the power of thinking he comes back again, I would say, to speech. Learning to talk is something very different from learning to think. Learning to think is a process that shapes and develops our body. It makes us into sculptors, I'd say, this thinking. It is working in us so that by our seventh year we shall be complete human beings. We also learn to talk during this time. But you see, it is not possible for us to learn to talk the way we learn to think. For when we talk — what happens? Well, gentlemen, you see, if you lift a heavy weight, or hit out strongly with your arm, the arm will hurt. To hurt means to have sensation. We really have a sensation when we use one of our limbs to excess and so injure it a little bit in some way. If you have a pain it always means that something has been injured, even if only just a little bit. You then have a sensation, you feel something. But you know, gentlemen, the whole of our speech comes from our feeling. If you listen to a child you can hear how speech comes from the realm of feeling. The child will learn soft sounds ei, ei [German sounds, pronounced i, i in English] in his language. What does he want to bring to expression by saying those sounds? He is cuddling up. He likes the person against whom he's cuddling up. He rests his little head as he makes those sounds. And that is how it is with all words, with everything that is uttered — it arises from something we feel. Now feelings do not come from the brain, nor do they come from the element that shapes and develops the brain. 1. walking, keeping balance, moving — limbs, metabolism 2. talking — chest 3. thinking — head (nerves) Now let us take a look at the child. It is like this with a child. When he is born he differs from an adult not only in the way he looks — the cheeks are different, the whole form; the forehead looks different; I think you'll agree the child looks different. Inside, however, he is even more different. The brain mass is more like a brain mush in the infant. And up to the seventh year, up to the time when the child gets his second teeth, this mush, this brain mush, is made into something truly marvellous. From the seventh year onwards the human brain is quite marvellously structured. The soul, the spirit has done this inside; the element of soul and spirit has done this inside. But you see, gentlemen, we would be unable to shape and develop this brain in such a marvellous way up to our seventh year if we were not all the time in touch with the world. If you have a child who is born blind, for instance, you'll immediately see that the nerves of vision and with them a whole part of the brain remain a kind of mush. This is not beautifully developed. When someone is born deaf, the nerves of hearing, nerves that come from the ear and cross here [drawing on the board], after which they go over there, remain a piece of brain mush along this way. It is therefore only because we have the senses that we are able to develop our brain properly in the first seven years of life. But the brain does not develop anything for you that you might reach out and touch. You could of course stuff tangible materials up your nose, if you like, and into the brain — you would ruin your brain with this, but it would not lead to anything. All the matter we can reach and touch therefore does not help you to develop the brain in the first seven years. It needs the most subtle forms of matter, like the subtle matter that lives in light, for example. Ether is what is needed. You see, this is most important. We absorb the ether through all our senses. So what is it that develops all this activity coming from the head? The activity that comes from the head and also extends to the rest of the child's organism does not come from the physical body. The physical body is not active in the marvellous development of the child's brain; it is the ether body which is active. The ether body, of which I have told you that we still have it for two or three days after we die, is at work in the child. It makes the human being develop a perfect brain and thus become a thinking human being. We are therefore able to say that the ether body is active in our thinking. With this we have once again found the first supersensible aspect of the human being — the ether body. A child would not be able to develop his brain, he would not be able to have a human brain in him, if he were not able to work with the ether body that is all around. Later on in life we can strengthen our muscles by making them work, by physical, tangible methods. But the left parietal lobe of the brain, let us say, to take an example, cannot be strengthened by any physical or tangible means. To make the muscle stronger you could use a weight and lift it again and again, overcoming gravity. But you have to use a material, tangible thing to strengthen the muscles. Just as you have your biceps muscle here, and are able to strengthen it by lifting and lowering weights, in the same way you have here, looking at the head from the front [Fig. 20], a brain lobe. It hangs there just as the arm hangs here. You can't attach weights to it. All the same, there is simply no comparison between what happens when you develop a muscle and what goes on in this brain lobe. At first, when we come into the world, it is mushy; when we are seven years old it has been marvellously shaped and developed. Just as the muscle in your arm is strengthened by lifting and lowering the weight, which is something tangible, getting stronger because of something we are able to see, so the brain is strengthened by something that is in the ether. Man relates to the whole world around him through his physical body, and he also relates to the whole world around him through his ether body. And that is where he gets his thinking. With this, he develops the inner parts of the head in the first seven years. You see, if there were no sunlight coming in through our eyes, the ether that is all around us would not be able to work on us. We would not be able to bring ourselves to full expression in those first seven years. A child also has basically just feelings in the first seven years. He learns to talk by imitating others. But there is feeling, the way he feels, in this imitating process. And we have to say that light cannot call forth feelings. When we learn to talk through feeling, something else is active in us. The principle that is active in speech, through which human beings are able to talk, is not just the ether body, it is the human astral body. We are therefore able to say that as a second principle we have the astral body in us for learning to talk — astral body is just a term, I could also use another word. We have the astral body which is above all active in the chest, in our breathing, and then transforms itself as we learn to talk. You see, people always think human beings are hungry or thirsty in their physical bodies. But that is nonsense. Think of a machine driven by water. You have to give that machine water. All right, it'll run then, and if you do not give it any water it'll stop running. What does it mean when we say the machine has stopped running? It means you have to give it more water, you have to give it a drink. But the machine did not feel thirsty. The machine does not get thirsty; it will stop, but it does not get thirsty first, otherwise it would scream. It does not do so. It does not feel thirst. So how is the situation in the human being? When a child is thirsty he does not behave like a machine. He does not simply stop. Quite the contrary, he'll start to roar most powerfully when he's thirsty. So what is the connection between being thirsty and screaming? The screaming is not based on matter, nor on the ether. The ether can give form and structure; it is therefore able to create our form. But the ether does not make us scream. If the ether were to make us scream there would be a terrible — well, not perhaps roaring, but a continual hissing in the world. For when we look at things it is the ether which together with our eye makes us see. The ether is all the time entering into the eye. And that is why we see. Yes, but when the ether comes into the eye, it does not go z-z-z-el in the eye; you know, that is not the human ether body, for it does not lisp. Just think if just from the fact that we are looking there were to be a continuous whispering in an auditorium — that would be a fine thing! The ether body does not scream, therefore, nor does it whisper. Something else is there. And that is the astral body. And when an infant is thirsty and cries, the feeling of thirst is in the astral body. And the crying lets the infant's feeling reach our ear. But everything I have been describing to you would still not make me able to walk. For, you see, when I create my body with the ether body, coming from the head, I might be a statue for the whole of my life. My body might be created, I might roar like a lion; my roar might always be created in a process that comes from the astral body. But if I want to gain my balance as a child, if I want to use the will, therefore, so that I may walk, take hold of things, gain my balance — all things where I say 'I walk, I take, I gain my balance' — then the I is coming in as well, and this is a little different from the ether body and the astral body. And this I lives in my limbs and metabolism. When you move your limbs, that is the I. So you have three aspects of the human being, apart from the physical body. You have the ether body, the astral body and the I. I — walking, keeping balance, moving — limbs, metabolism astral body — talking — chest ether body — thinking — head (nerves) And you see, these three aspects of the body can be perceived if we first train ourselves for this. But in modern science people do not want such training. And I am now going to tell you how people behave in modern science who do not want to do this. I am sure you've all had dreams on occasion. Whilst you are dreaming you believe it all to be reality. Sometimes you wake up in a dreadful state of fear, because you are standing on a precipice, get giddy and fall down, for example. You wake up dripping with sweat. Why? Because you thought the precipice was real. You are in bed, lying there quietly, there is absolutely no danger, but you wake up because of the danger you've been facing in the dream image. Just think, if you were to sleep all your life — that would be a nice thing for some. There are people who sleep all through life. There was someone once who had studied Copernican theory. He was a terribly lazy chap. So one day he was lying in a roadside ditch. Another fellow came walking along and said: 'Why are you lying there?' 'Because I have so much to do!' 'Come on, you aren't doing a thing!' And he said: 'I have to move with the earth's orbit around the sun, and I want to stay behind. It's too much of an effort for me, too much to do!'You know, some people don't even want to move with the earth around the sun. But we do go along with the whole of our waking life. You see, if we were to dream all our lives, we might lie in bed in Europe, say; someone would pick up our body-perhaps with the bed, so that he won't wake us — and take it to America on a boat. It would, of course, need angels to do this, for people cannot do it that surreptitiously, but it would be possible to transport us to America. There we would dream on, and anything might be done with us; we would know nothing about ourselves. Dreaming there, we'd never know how the nose feels to the touch, how the left hand feels when taken hold of by the right. And yet, gentlemen, we'd have a whole life. If we were to dream for the whole of life, it would be something different — we might be able to fly in our dream, for example. Only the fact is that on earth we cannot fly; in our dream we fly. We would think ourselves to be quite different creatures, and so on. But just consider, there would be a world all around us as we dreamt our way through life. And we do, of course, wake up. Let us say I wake up and I have been dreaming that during the night — let me take a promising example —I was hung by the neck or beheaded. Let us assume someone dreams he's been beheaded. It would not be as great a cause for concern for one as it would be here. One might perhaps have it happen on several occasions that one dreams one is beheaded and one would believe that this did no harm. Now you wake up — and lo and behold, you had taken a book to bed with you and that has come to lie behind your back as you turned over. So now your head is lying on the edge of the book, which is uncomfortable, and in your dreams this makes you think you have been beheaded. Once you're awake again you realize what the dream meant; after waking up you can discover where the dream has come from. So we must first of all wake up. Waking up is what matters. For people who dreamed all their life their dream world would be their only reality. We only begin to take our dream world for a fantasy world when we wake up. Well now, gentlemen, a person wakes up in bed of his own accord or because the world around him shakes him awake. But it needs a special effort to wake up from the life in which we are, the life where we think the only things that exist are those we can grab hold of. And how to do this, how to wake up, that is something I have described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds . 27 See note 19. Just as we wake from a dream and know that the dream is a world which is brought about by the waking state, so we wake from our waking state when we gain higher insight and know that our ordinary world comes from the things we perceive in that higher waking state. It is something one knows. In future, therefore, science must develop so that we do not just dream on in the world, always only trying to see how one may do things in the laboratory, in the physics cabinet. It must show people how to wake up. Then people will no longer say: 'Man is only a physical, material body' but 'Man consists of physical matter, of the ether body, astral body and I.' And of these one would then be able to say: 'We now know the part of the dead body that is a waking-up part, even when we die.' For the ether body first had to come to the physical body and shape and create the physical body using the head. The astral body had to come, first had to dig itself in a little in the chest, and then the person learned to talk. And the I had to come to the physical body and get it in balance in the outside world. The body then learned to move its limbs and adapt its metabolism to the movements. Man thus brings his ether body, his astral body and his I from the world of the spirit, and the chaotic matter which has been reduced to dust he shapes for himself, using the ether body, astral body and I. And these things, which he brings with him into the world, he will take with him again after death. I have already given you some indication of how that goes. So the situation is that if one really takes up this higher science, this waking-up science, one is able to speak just as well about life after death and before life on earth as one is able to speak about this life on earth. This is something we'll do the next time. Then the question as to what the human being is like when he has no body, which is before fertilization, will have been fully answered. The next talk will be at 9 o'clock on Monday. The subject is a bit difficult at the moment, but that does not matter. The reason for it being difficult is merely that people are never prepared for these things when they are young. If they were prepared they would not find it so difficult. Today, I would say, people have to make great efforts to learn the things at a later stage for which no preparation was given when they were young. But when you see that people actually go so far as to say, 'The leader of the army is only the sum total of a company of soldiers,' you will also see that modern science certainly needs to be improved. And this, then, is something which really enables us to understand the things that are not perceptible to the senses.

From Limestone to Lucifer

Essential human nature — physical body, ether body, astral body and I

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA349/English/RSP1999/19230404p02.html

Dornach

4 Apr 1923

GA349-7

We'll now try and continue our discussion of the things we have been considering these days. I have been telling you in more general terms how this element of spirit and soul in man relates to life in the physical world perceptible to the senses. Today, I'd like to take this further. I have told you before that if we want to know something about these things it will not do to say: 'The rational mind, and after all I have one, must decide everything, and anything it cannot decide does not exist.' We really have to remember that we have gone through a process of development even in ordinary life. Just think what it would be like if we had remained at the level of a three-year-old child! We would see the world in a very different way. A three-year old sees the world very differently from the way an adult does. The three-year old lets himself be taught all kinds of things. He is really still asleep as far as ordinary life is concerned. A three-year-old cannot even talk properly; he is learning the language. And a three-year-old is altogether modest and not arrogant. He allows himself to be taught. He probably would not be so modest if he were not half asleep, otherwise he'd say: 'Why learn? We know it all already!' That is what people say today: 'We know it all already, and since we have no insight into things of spirit and soul with our rational mind they simply do not exist.' Now if I were a three-year-old child and I were to say: I don't want to learn anything else. It's enough for me to say daddy and mummy and a few other things — apple puree and so on,' that would be a child's point of view. But even when we have acquired the usual rational mind we still have something in us that can be developed further. And if we develop the ordinary powers of insight that we have, taking them further, we will be able to make another leap, I'd say, like that from young child to adult person. All this does of course depend on gaining the insight, and basically speaking it should already be part of the whole of human education. Today people cannot help themselves but be arrogant and say: 'I know it all, and anything I do not know is no concern of mine.' A person cannot help but say that because from when he first started school he has been taught in such a way that he put everything down to the rational mind, which he possesses, and says that anything else may be something you can believe in, but you cannot know it. You see, we have to be very clear in our minds that there really is such a waking up from ordinary everyday life to real knowledge, just as there is a waking up from being asleep and dreaming to ordinary life. You simply have to realize that one can really only know something about the world if one takes a higher point of view and is able to see through the things that happen, just as we have to see through a dream from the waking point of view. For it is only then that we'll know that the dream was not reality but something that depended on our waking life. This is when we can come awake. I told you the other day: if we were never able to come awake we would believe the things we dream to be the only reality. But let us look and see now what a dream really is. You see, gentlemen, people have given a great deal of thought to dreams. But everything people say about dreams is really a kind of drivel, fundamentally speaking. It is really a kind of drivel, for people are able to say: 'Well, when the brain starts to oscillate just a little the person will dream. Yes, but why does the brain oscillate just a little?' So the things people say about dreaming are really just a way of proving things. But if you are clear in your mind that human beings have not only this physical body [drawing on the board] which we see and are able to touch in life, but that they also have the other aspects of which I have spoken, that the human being also has an ether body, an astral body and an I, and if you then say to yourself that this I and this astral body are outside the physical body and the ether body during sleep, you'll in the first place be able to realize why a person does not walk in his sleep. He does not walk because the I is not in the physical body. You can also realize why a young infant does not walk. Because the I has not yet woken up in the young infant. So you are able to see why a person walks. He walks because the I slips into his physical body. You can also see why people do not think in their sleep. They do not think because the astral body is not in their physical body. So you see, this shows that we must distinguish, as it were, between physical body and ether body — lying in bed — and I and astral body, which are outside during sleep. Now just think what it is like when you wake up or go to sleep. When you go to sleep the situation is that the I and the astral body are just departing. So there will also be a stage where they are still half inside as they go out. The stage where they are completely outside, the I and the astral body, will only come after this. But there is also a stage where they are half inside and half outside. Then we dream. People usually think we dream during the night. In actual fact we only dream on going to sleep and on waking up. And what do we dream? Well you see, gentlemen, people think we dream because we use the brain when we are awake — this is what today's academics say — and only use the spinal marrow when we are asleep. That is what they think. But these people are simply not able to observe things! Take a real dream. Take the dream of a fire, for example. You dream of a great fire; you dream of all kinds of things. And as you wake up, someone is shouting 'Fire, fire' outside. In reality therefore all you took note of — you did not know anything about the fire and so on — but because the ear is open then, you just half heard this shout of 'Fire, fire!' Being in the habit of it you connect this with the fire, but only rather darkly. And your dream of fire may be about something quite different than anything you will then see. You may dream, for instance, that the fire is due to a volcanic eruption. You may dream something completely different. And when you dream of something that happened to you years ago, you know how confused the dream will be. Maybe you had a minor dispute with another boy in your young days. Now, years afterwards, you dream about this. But in your dream it is as if you were killed, or as if you killed the other boy. The dream throws everything into confusion. And this is something you'll always find with dreams — they throw everything into confusion. Now when we dream as we go to sleep the matter remains in confusion. When we dream as we wake up it will be corrected, for we actually see the situation as it is. We have dreamt someone was murdering us. He put a gag into our mouth and then came and belaboured us with some instrument or other. We wake up and find that we've suffered the mishap of getting a comer of the bed covers in our mouth. You see, the dream takes a minor thing to set it off, adds a great deal to it and creates confusion. If the air is bad in the room where you're sleeping, you may suffer a nightmare, as it is called. But you don't say to yourself in your dream: 'The air is bad, I can't get a good sleep,' but have the impression of an evil spirit sitting on your chest and causing pressure. You know the tales and legends about this. Nightmares arise when we get bad air into our lungs. How do dreams arise? Well, gentlemen, let us take a waking-up dream. The I and the astral body are just slipping in and have not yet fully come in. These are the dreams we are most familiar with. When you are completely inside your physical body you look out through your eyes. But when you are not yet quite inside, you do not look out through your eyes. You have to see it like this: once you are entering into the physical body you turn round, as it were, and look out through your eyes. But when you are still half outside you go through the eyes, slip through the eyes, and then you see nothing clearly. You then develop all kinds of confused fantasies. But that is all we have, when we enter into the body after our night's sleep — these confused notions. And how do we actually put them to rights? We don't put them to rights. Our body puts them to rights for us. Otherwise we'd always see Vesuvius spewing fire every time we heard someone shout 'Fire!' outside. Our eyes are so marvellously organized that it is only by looking through them that we see things rightly. If we were out of our bodies for he whole of our lives we'd be given up to all kinds of fantastic things all our lives. The body actually makes it possible for us to see life in the right way. So you see, when we look at ourselves as we are out of the body we are in reality inwardly in our I and in our soul; we are divorced from reality, creating all kinds of confused ideas in our I which must always be put to rights in our body as we wake up every morning. It is thanks to our body that we see things properly. We are in fact dreamers, divorced from reality, in our life on earth. The dream shows us how we truly are in life on earth. If you come to gain real insight into things because at a later time you woke up in a particular way where your insight and perceptions are concerned, you will come to realize that during life on earth man is what he dreams. He is really fantasizing, and always has to have himself put to rights by his body. And when he is wholly asleep he is really quite powerless. In that case he cannot perceive anything of the world. It is only when he has a little bit of his body that he perceives the world in fantasies. But it is exactly when one knows this that one says to oneself: 'What is a dream, really? What does a dream actually show me?' The dream shows us that we really know nothing of our body; for if we did know we would also be able to see the outside world properly. We might recreate our eyes in mind and spirit. But we cannot really do it; we have to depend on the body giving us the power of the eyes. The dream thus shows us how little we know of our body. Now you'll remember my telling you the other day that we have to create this body for ourselves. Heredity is nothing. What we have when a human being begins existence on earth is matter that has fallen into dust. I have told you of this. The element of spirit and soul must enter into this. The human being must first build up his whole material substance for himself. If he understands the nature of dreams he knows that he cannot do this. And when we come to see through the nature of dreams we also discover something else. Consider how hard it is to go back to our childhood years in our minds. Suddenly an event comes to mind where we know: 'This is something my mother did not tell me; it is something I saw for myself.' This will have been in the third year for some people, in the fourth year for others, and so on. Yes, gentlemen, until then one was asleep, really asleep. But when you look at such a three-year-old who is really still able to sleep — for one does not remember this time, just as we do not remember the times of ordinary sleep — if you look at this child in relation to life you find he can do something which we cannot do in later life. As I told you, the brain is finely developed up to the changing of the teeth, up to the seventh year. Look at the brain of a newborn infant and the brain of a seven-year-old. Something has been going on in this child, something has been working on that brain. The brain itself cannot do anything. The brain is like a dynamo. A dynamo develops magnetism and the running of the whole factory depends on this dynamo. But first an electric current must pass through, otherwise the dynamo won't work. The brain won't work unless the current of soul life passes through it. That current of soul life is much more powerful in the child, for up to the changing of the teeth the child is developing the whole of his brain, and he does so most of all in the earliest years of life. This is why I told you about Jean Paul, a very clever man, saying: 'One learns a lot more in the first three years of life than in three years at university.' 28 Richter, Johann Paul Friedrich (1763-1825), pseudonym Jean Paul, German novelist. In his Levana , a work on education, he wrote in the preface to the first edition on 2 May 1806: 'The first volume goes more fully into the bud period of a child than the second and third do into the flowering period. In the first, attention and concern focuses on what we may call the academic three-year course after which the door to the soul, speech, finally opens.' And in his sixth fragment, chapter 4, paragraph 122: 'The fruits of a good upbringing in the first three years (a higher-ranking three-year course than the academic one) you cannot harvest whilst you are sowing ... but after some years riches in abundance will grow to surprise and reward you.' The work one has to do there is much more skilful than anything one will ever have to work on in the world later on. So there one says to oneself: 'Yes, that is something we had; we have lost it. This inner work of the soul was lost at the very time when we gained conscious awareness. We no longer have it' And when one comes to realize this one will know that one is less and less able to do it. Gaining the ability later on to look back into life, one begins to feel quite funny seeing everything that has been going on. For when one was a boy of 14 one was perhaps still able to do a little of the vast abundance of things one had been able to do at three or immediately after one was born. Then one was able to do most. At 14 one was already able to do very much less. And when one is 30 one has just enough left to be able to digest things — but one can no longer develop them. By 50 or 60 one has become quite an ass where the work of developing the human body is concerned. And one then realizes how much of an ass one becomes as life on earth continues. It is necessary for us to discover that having lived for 20 or 30 years one loses some of one's wisdom. Having lived for 30 or 40 years one has lost a great deal more. And after that one is a terrible ass with regard to all the things one should be working through inwardly. But if one begins to gain insight, acquiring the ability to look back into life, it really makes one feel great respect for the clever creature one was as a very young infant. You may have been terribly ugly then; but you were able to change everything, if you were an ugly chap. At 15 one can no longer make oneself handsome. As a young infant one can do just that. All young infants can do it. It is therefore important to realize what an ass one has become in the course of life. That is an important aspect of life. You therefore do not grow immodest but become a truly humble person. And if you gain the right insight you'll realize: 'As a young child you really sat on the ass and drove the ass yourself. Now, having grown old, you have become the ass.' You see, it has to be put in such strong words, or we'll simply get nowhere. And this is also the way of discovering the nature of dreams. You'll have known this yourselves — in your dreams you may actually think yourself to be the Emperor of China or anything you like. There are many other kinds of dreams. You may dream all kinds of things. But what does the dream show us? Here we must pursue the dream to see how it changes in the course of life on earth. The dreams of young infants are quite marvellous. Infants' dreams still show that the child has the powers in him to shape and develop his body. They are truly cosmic. The child dreams of the things he experienced before he came down to earth because these powers are still in him. He needs them to develop his brain. When you have this marvellously crafted brain which is in the uppermost part of the skull [Fig. 21] — the eye is here, and the nerves he needs in order to see are here. All this has to be worked out in fine detail. He has to work it out in fine detail. Yes, gentlemen, this is something you cannot work out on the basis of earthly knowledge. You can use earthly knowledge to develop machines here and there; but you cannot use earthly knowledge to develop the brain. And looking at the dreams of young infants one can see exactly that they have the way of developing their brain in their dreams. Later the dreams will also become very peculiar if someone does not lead a well-ordered life; they will increasingly fall into disorder. And a dream is full of confusion because one knows so little of one's physical body, because one is not inside it. Figure 21 The reason that we know so little of our physical bodies is that the wisdom we were given when we came down into life on earth has gradually been lost in the course of life, having changed into soul quality. Waking up and saying to yourself, 'Well, if you believe all the things you have been dreaming — that you are the Emperor of China,' you are certainly an ass. But we ourselves cannot do anything but develop ass qualities, for we do not have the body. Not being inside it, we cannot help but be confused by the dream. We have completely lost the ability to develop the body in the right way, an ability we had as young children. The body has to come to us from outside. When we wake up it comes to us from outside. But when we come down to this earth again, it will not come to us from the outside. Instead matter that has been destroyed will meet us in the egg, and we 11 have to build it up piece by piece. All these are things we have to learn between two lives on earth. Between two lives on earth we have to learn what the dreaming human being can come to be. You see, some people who are hostile to anthroposophy and oppose it say: 'These people just want to dream; they come up with all kinds of fantastic ideas about the world.' Ah, but anthroposophy actually means that we no longer attach importance to dreams, for dreams show that we are not able to do the things we were able to do with the dim, unconscious knowledge we had when we entered into this world as little children. We therefore understand clearly that we gained this ability in a world that is not the world here on earth, for here we can only become divorced from reality as regards our true I. Beautiful as this world may be, we can only be divorced from reality in it where knowledge of our real I is concerned. The relationship we have to the body, the whole relationship to the body, is something we have to gain in another world. Now let me tell you that someone who is able to see through it all and therefore also realizes that this process o becoming an ass goes on and on will know that it is easy to lose that knowledge. You see, it is very much the same as when we take an exam. When someone has to take an exam he will often swot for two years and then just as quickly, terribly quickly, forget it again. And that is how it is with the knowledge we need to develop our bodies — we soon forget it. Only the 'quickly' is a bit different from the way it is with exams. It goes on for our whole life on earth. When we have died, we have more or less forgotten what we took down into physical life with us at our birth. Our lifetime is more or less the time of our forgetting. Now imagine that one of you has a memory: 'That was me, a growing child; the first thing I remembered was, let us say, something when I was four years old.' Let us assume someone is 60 now, and at the age of 60 recalls an event that happened when he was just four years old. He needed 56 years after those four to forget, inwardly to forget. For 56 years his forgetting grew stronger and stronger. He spent 56 years becoming more and more of an ass. How many more times did he need to forget the things he still had up to his fourth year? Well, he needed as many times more as 4 goes into 56: he has needed 14 times his earliest childhood in order to forget. Having reached the age of 60 he will need 14 times as long again to regain the things he has forgotten in the world of the spirit. That will be 60 times 14 years, 840 years. After that he will have regained the ability to have the things the child had in his first four years to build the body. He will therefore be able to come back to this earth after 840 years. One can only make such calculations, the way I have just written it on the board for you, in a responsible way if one clearly understands that it is like this if one is able to check what lies in our dreams, the way dreams take us further and further away from the world of the spirit. And you see, if someone goes about and at a particular time is not at all able to enter into his physical body, he is a medium. Someone who enters into his physical body at the right time and uses it again — well now, that is a normal person. But when someone is all the time walking about in a state where the I has not entered into the physical body — you can even walk about in your sleep, you can talk when you walk in your sleep or lie in your bed — we need not be surprised at this; for if we throw a billiard ball and everything is level, it will roll on of its own accord. And so if someone is not quite healthy, when everything passes easily, his body not having the right degree of firmness, then the activity which normally is in the conscious mind can still continue to act. Such a person will be an automaton, however. A sleepwalker is not a human being but an automaton. And someone talking in his sleep does not say anything human. Just try it. You'll hear the daftest things when someone talks in his sleep, for he becomes an automaton, his I and his soul not being in his body. But when this is only half-way the case and the person is only half an automaton — the entering process is such that the human being enters from the posterior part of the brain, moving forward — when someone only comes in half-way, he can close his eyes and, because the optic nerves are back there [Fig. 21, right] he perceives something, but it is something fantastic. And he may then also tell one all kinds of fantastic things, for, you see, he is not seeing but getting images. The hearing is located there, and the sense of speech there [drawing]. So he will also be able to talk away. Mediums talk, but they are not in this world. Because of this we cannot say anything mediums tell us counts, for they are only half-way in their physical bodies. It does not count at all. They are merely saying things which the human being perceives in his ass quality — a term I have to go on using here. I have of course also heard of mediums who say magnificent things. It is true. Mediums will sometimes say magnificent things; but this need not surprise us. For, you see, if a major earthquake occurs somewhere, for example, the animals will leave the place beforehand. The humans will stay and allow the earthquake to destroy them. Animals are prophetic by nature, for there is rational sense everywhere; they have not yet stuffed themselves with sense. A medium is thus something that goes down to the level of the animal. It can say marvellous things, even making them into verse more beautiful than Goethe's verse — well, you see, because he goes down to the animal level of rational sense. The opposite is the case for someone who is to gain insight in the anthroposophical way. He must not merely come in half-way, as in his dreams, but must know everything the way another person knows it, and in addition also know the things one is able to know when one wakes up a second time. When you wake up this second time you get an idea of how this is. You say to yourself: 'Yes, if you have done something in your life on earth to get to know the human being, this will help you after death.' You will then find it easier after death to get to know the human body again. What one has to learn between death and the next birth is the inner nature of the human body. And you really have to understand that it takes a great deal to get to know the world. Students get in a fair sweat when they have to learn all about the outside world, learn to calculate how the stars move in their orbits, and so on, what the earth looked like when today's crayfish did not yet exist, and so on. There is much to learn. Yes, but the things we have to learn about everything outside the human being here on earth are nothing compared to the things we have to learn about the inner human being. You'll say: 'But people do learn about the inner human jeing when someone has died; then they learn everything. They cut him up small, the human being, and learn from the corpse what the human being looks like inside.' But that's a very different thing. All the knowledge you're able to gain from a dead body will never enable you to produce a living human being. Yes, of course, for that you have to have conception. But the human being who has done his learning in the world of the spirit between death and the next birth is actually involved in his conception. On earth, we can only gain insight into things that are dead. We cannot gain insight into something that lives, let alone something that is sentient and thinks. I would not have dared to write up these figures for you if it were not the case that on gaining higher insight one sees that the human being moves further and further away from the world of the spirit in the course of his life on earth. As a child — let us assume he dies at the age of 16 — yes, then it will be different when he remembers back to his fourth year. He may die at 16 perhaps, remember back over 12 years, which is 3 times 4, and if he has lived to the age of 16 he therefore will really only need 48 years before he appears again. It is truly the case that one can reduce this to a calculation. But something very remarkable shows itself here, gentlemen. It is this. As you know, the patriarchal age has always been said to be 72 years. When someone has reached the age of 72, the years that follow are really a gift. So you see [writing it up], that is the patriarchal age of 72. Let us assume such a patriarch to be a truly excellent person, as indeed they were in earlier times. Today we are so inattentive that we recall little of our childhood years. But those earlier people would remember back to their third or second year. And so they would have had 70 years to forget the child's wisdom, the higher wisdom. That means 35 times 2. In the world of the spirit, they, remembering back much further than we do today, would go through a period of 35 times 72 years, which is over 2000 years. You see, if you observe the sun in the spring, it now rises in the constellation of the Fishes. In earlier times it would have risen in the constellation of the Ram, and our calendars today still show the Ram as the point where it rises. Which is not true, however. The sun rose in the constellation of the Ram until the fifteenth century. At that time it was right to say: the sun rises in the constellation of the Ram. Astronomers have grown lazy since then and go on saying the same, though the sun certainly no longer rises in the constellation of the Ram today but in the Fishes. Now assume the constellation of the Fishes to be a certain size. There are twelve such constellations. When the sun comes up again the following year, it will be somewhere in the constellation of the Fishes on 21 March, as I said. And if you observe it the year after, it will have moved a little bit further, no longer rising in the same place; the year before it was a bit further back, again not in the same place as the other year [drawing on the board]. The sun needs a certain period of time to pass through the constellation. First it was quite at the beginning of the Fishes, and a time will come when it will come to the end of the Fishes. It will then have moved on so far that it will no longer come up in the Fishes but in the Water Carrier. At present, therefore, it is passing through the Fishes, later it will go through the Water Carrier constellation, still later the Goat, and so on. The sun takes about as long to pass through one such constellation as a human being who has grown very old will need on average to come back again. So it means a great deal that the sun moves on from one constellation to the next. In my Occult Science 30 Steiner, R., Occult Science. An Outline (GA 13), tr. G. & M. Adams, rev. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1971. I showed first of all that the return of the human being has to do with the sun's movements. And we may therefore assume — science also shows it — that when human beings die today, they get the knowledge they need to build their bodies up again under the influence of the Fishes. And they will return when they can no longer learn anything from the Fishes but have to learn from the Water Carrier. And then they have to learn from the Goat. Then again from the Archer. And then they will come again when they have to learn from the Scorpion. And again when they need to learn from the Scales; then from the Virgin, then the Lion, then Cancer, then the Twins, the Bull and the Ram. Then they are back again at the beginning. And of course they will have learned a great deal by then. They will have gone the whole cycle once in 25,815 years, going through something like 12 earth lives, 11 or 12 earth lives. Now someone may say: 'All right, you tell us that human beings learn the things they need on earth, each time from a different constellation, a constellation that looks quite different.' If you look up to the Fishes, they look very different from the Water Carrier, for example, or the Goat, and so on. But just think of having been here 800, 1000, 1500, 2000 years ago, let us say. Things would have been very different on earth then and you would have lived quite a different life. Maybe you would have been a contented farmer with a very small farm, a nice round belly and utterly contented. Now you are in the industrial workers' movement. That is something you have learned from the Fishes. At that earlier time, when you had grown your nice little round belly and been a contented farmer, this would have been something you had learned from the Ram. And so people learn the things they go through on earth from the very constellations. You see, we can now say that the human being gradually gets around. If you have been here in 825 bc, for instance, in the ninth century, you would have been that round-bellied farmer. Now you have returned under the influence of the Fishes. But if you go all the way round and have come ful cycle after 25,815 years, you will have learned so much in the meantime that you'll not need to be what you have been before, for you will then be at a much higher level as a human being. So we have to say to ourselves: After 25,815 years, when we are about to go down to the earth again, we shall no longer need to go down to the earth in this way, for we shall have learned everything there is to learn in this constellation. And you see, there we come to something I have spoken of before. People who have studied geology in a very learned modern way will tell us: '25 million years ago things were like this and this on earth.' The question is, how do these people know that the earth was a body of fluid 25 million years ago? I have spoken of similar things to you before, but not such long periods of time. How do they know? They will study the Niagara Falls, for instance. The water drops down over rocks. They will remove some of the rock over which it has run and calculate how much of it is worn away by the water in a year. Considering that so and so much is washed away in a year, they would then work out how far the rock must have extended when the water had not yet cooled down to be water but existed as vapour. And that is how they arrive at those 25 million years. Now that is just as if I were to examine someone's heart. Today is the 9th of April. If we examine the heart today and then again in a month's time, it will have changed a little; then, another month later, it will have changed a bit more. And taking these small changes we work out what the heart was like 300 years ago. Fine, but it did not exist then. The calculation is correct, but the object did not yet exist. And that is how it is with the way the earth looked 25 million 'ears ago. The calculation is perfectly correct, but the earth lid not yet exist. And they also do calculations as to what he earth will be like in 25 million years' time. They merely go in the other direction for this. But the earth will no longer exist then. Just as with a heart, which is a little bit less good day after day, it is possible to work out what it will be like in 300 years, except that you'll not be here as a physical human being in 300 years' time. The sums are correct. People are blinded, deceived by the fact that their calculations are terribly correct; but the human being does not last as long as the time given in the sums. When you come back again after 25,815 years the earth will have dissolved in the meantime. You will altogether have been forced to discover in your consecutive lives that you have to find your way in the world in a different way. Then the earth will no longer exist; you'll be free of it. You'll have advanced to a higher form of life. And by going into the matter in the right way we can be quite scientific and go as far as a time of which ancient legends still tell us, saying that man will still need to go through a number of lives on earth, and then he'll no longer need to come back to earth. He must then have learned enough to be able to manage without getting a physical body. By then, however, the human being must gradually have reached a point where he no longer has the crazy dreams we have today, and altogether no longer goes so far away from the world of the spirit. All this will give you a very important result, gentlemen. For you have to say to yourselves: people who struggle against getting to know the world of the spirit do not want that wisdom to come to humanity. They want people to go on being asses on earth, and unable to go back. For by having gained some knowledge whilst still on earth about the human being, something living and not just knowledge based on the dead body, the human being also grows progressively more able to have a real insight after death into what he has to go through there. If human beings, since they have after all to be asses on earth, were to remain asses, which is what certain shady characters want, these shady characters will cause him to lose his spiritual existence altogether. They talk to him of eternal bliss. But in doing so they take away from him what he has been given. This is something that has to be said; it is a terrible thing. Anthroposophy is therefore needed to show human beings that they are truly able to gain insight and thus also able to enter into the world of the spirit again. This is the truth, you see, and anthroposophy does indeed have an important mission and great social significance for humanity. For the whole of the rational mind will go. And when people want to hold on to the rational mind by merely offering the human science that comes from the dead body, the outcome must be what has already happened: humanity living in such darkness that they simply do not know what to do. To get away from organizing all those eternal congresses, for example, and other such things, and make real progress, the human being must really be woken up. But people hate having to wake up. For you see, when people sit around conference tables it is not a matter of just sitting together but also of talking sense. But the way people are today they will not admit that they need to wake up first and make their minds a bit more flexible, so that they may also get inner feelings again about the social question. This is why basically speaking everything is just a patching-up job. What is needed is that people truly come to perceive and understand their inner nature whilst still on this earth, so that they will be prepared for the work they will have to do in the world of the spirit. That is indeed how it is. Anthroposophy has nothing to do with converting individual people. Individuals cannot do anything, but many people can. The purpose of anthroposophy is to help many people gain real knowledge. Then it will in fact be possible to work for better times on earth. This was something I also wanted to say to you, gentlemen. I'll have to go to Zurich, St Gallen and Winterthur now. When I'm back I'll continue with these talks. Perhaps you'll think of some things you want to ask me about in the meantime. ˂˂ Previous Table of Contents Next ˃˃ rights by his body. And when he is wholly asleep he is really quite powerless. In that case he cannot perceive anything of the world. It is only when he has a little bit of his body that he perceives the world in fantasies. But it is exactly when one knows this that one says to oneself: 'What is a dream, really? What does a dream actually show me?' The dream shows us that we really know nothing of our body; for if we did know we would also be able to see the outside world properly. We might recreate our eyes in mind and spirit. But we cannot really do it; we have to depend on the body giving us the power of the eyes. The dream thus shows us how little we know of our body. Now you'll remember my telling you the other day that we have to create this body for ourselves. Heredity is nothing. What we have when a human being begins existence on earth is matter that has fallen into dust. I have told you of this. The element of spirit and soul must enter into this. The human being must first build up his whole material substance for himself. If he understands the nature of dreams he knows that he cannot do this. And when we come to see through the nature of dreams we also discover something else. Consider how hard it is to go back to our childhood years in our minds. Suddenly an event comes to mind where we know: 'This is something my mother did not tell me; it is something I saw for myself.' This will have been in the third year for some people, in the fourth year for others, and so on. Yes, gentlemen, until then one was asleep, really asleep. But when you look at such a three-year-old who is really still able to sleep — for one does not remember this time, just as we do not remember the times of ordinary sleep — if you look at this child in relation to life you find he can do something which we cannot do in later life. As I told you, the brain is finely developed up to the changing of the teeth, up to the seventh year. Look at the brain of a newborn infant and the brain of a seven-year-old. Something has been going on in this child, something has been working on that brain. The brain itself cannot do anything. The brain is like a dynamo. A dynamo develops magnetism and the running of the whole factory depends on this dynamo. But first an electric current must pass through, otherwise the dynamo won't work. The brain won't work unless the current of soul life passes through it. That current of soul life is much more powerful in the child, for up to the changing of the teeth the child is developing the whole of his brain, and he does so most of all in the earliest years of life. This is why I told you about Jean Paul, a very clever man, saying: 'One learns a lot more in the first three years of life than in three years at university.' 28 Richter, Johann Paul Friedrich (1763-1825), pseudonym Jean Paul, German novelist. In his Levana , a work on education, he wrote in the preface to the first edition on 2 May 1806: 'The first volume goes more fully into the bud period of a child than the second and third do into the flowering period. In the first, attention and concern focuses on what we may call the academic three-year course after which the door to the soul, speech, finally opens.' And in his sixth fragment, chapter 4, paragraph 122: 'The fruits of a good upbringing in the first three years (a higher-ranking three-year course than the academic one) you cannot harvest whilst you are sowing ... but after some years riches in abundance will grow to surprise and reward you.' The work one has to do there is much more skilful than anything one will ever have to work on in the world later on. So there one says to oneself: 'Yes, that is something we had; we have lost it. This inner work of the soul was lost at the very time when we gained conscious awareness. We no longer have it' And when one comes to realize this one will know that one is less and less able to do it. Gaining the ability later on to look back into life, one begins to feel quite funny seeing everything that has been going on. For when one was a boy of 14 one was perhaps still able to do a little of the vast abundance of things one had been able to do at three or immediately after one was born. Then one was able to do most. At 14 one was already able to do very much less. And when one is 30 one has just enough left to be able to digest things — but one can no longer develop them. By 50 or 60 one has become quite an ass where the work of developing the human body is concerned. And one then realizes how much of an ass one becomes as life on earth continues. It is necessary for us to discover that having lived for 20 or 30 years one loses some of one's wisdom. Having lived for 30 or 40 years one has lost a great deal more. And after that one is a terrible ass with regard to all the things one should be working through inwardly. But if one begins to gain insight, acquiring the ability to look back into life, it really makes one feel great respect for the clever creature one was as a very young infant. You may have been terribly ugly then; but you were able to change everything, if you were an ugly chap. At 15 one can no longer make oneself handsome. As a young infant one can do just that. All young infants can do it. It is therefore important to realize what an ass one has become in the course of life. That is an important aspect of life. You therefore do not grow immodest but become a truly humble person. And if you gain the right insight you'll realize: 'As a young child you really sat on the ass and drove the ass yourself. Now, having grown old, you have become the ass.' You see, it has to be put in such strong words, or we'll simply get nowhere. And this is also the way of discovering the nature of dreams. You'll have known this yourselves — in your dreams you may actually think yourself to be the Emperor of China or anything you like. There are many other kinds of dreams. You may dream all kinds of things. But what does the dream show us? Here we must pursue the dream to see how it changes in the course of life on earth. The dreams of young infants are quite marvellous. Infants' dreams still show that the child has the powers in him to shape and develop his body. They are truly cosmic. The child dreams of the things he experienced before he came down to earth because these powers are still in him. He needs them to develop his brain. When you have this marvellously crafted brain which is in the uppermost part of the skull [Fig. 21] — the eye is here, and the nerves he needs in order to see are here. All this has to be worked out in fine detail. He has to work it out in fine detail. Yes, gentlemen, this is something you cannot work out on the basis of earthly knowledge. You can use earthly knowledge to develop machines here and there; but you cannot use earthly knowledge to develop the brain. And looking at the dreams of young infants one can see exactly that they have the way of developing their brain in their dreams. Later the dreams will also become very peculiar if someone does not lead a well-ordered life; they will increasingly fall into disorder. And a dream is full of confusion because one knows so little of one's physical body, because one is not inside it. The reason that we know so little of our physical bodies is that the wisdom we were given when we came down into life on earth has gradually been lost in the course of life, having changed into soul quality. Waking up and saying to yourself, 'Well, if you believe all the things you have been dreaming — that you are the Emperor of China,' you are certainly an ass. But we ourselves cannot do anything but develop ass qualities, for we do not have the body. Not being inside it, we cannot help but be confused by the dream. We have completely lost the ability to develop the body in the right way, an ability we had as young children. The body has to come to us from outside. When we wake up it comes to us from outside. But when we come down to this earth again, it will not come to us from the outside. Instead matter that has been destroyed will meet us in the egg, and we 11 have to build it up piece by piece. All these are things we have to learn between two lives on earth. Between two lives on earth we have to learn what the dreaming human being can come to be. You see, some people who are hostile to anthroposophy and oppose it say: 'These people just want to dream; they come up with all kinds of fantastic ideas about the world.' Ah, but anthroposophy actually means that we no longer attach importance to dreams, for dreams show that we are not able to do the things we were able to do with the dim, unconscious knowledge we had when we entered into this world as little children. We therefore understand clearly that we gained this ability in a world that is not the world here on earth, for here we can only become divorced from reality as regards our true I. Beautiful as this world may be, we can only be divorced from reality in it where knowledge of our real I is concerned. The relationship we have to the body, the whole relationship to the body, is something we have to gain in another world. Now let me tell you that someone who is able to see through it all and therefore also realizes that this process o becoming an ass goes on and on will know that it is easy to lose that knowledge. You see, it is very much the same as when we take an exam. When someone has to take an exam he will often swot for two years and then just as quickly, terribly quickly, forget it again. And that is how it is with the knowledge we need to develop our bodies — we soon forget it. Only the 'quickly' is a bit different from the way it is with exams. It goes on for our whole life on earth. When we have died, we have more or less forgotten what we took down into physical life with us at our birth. Our lifetime is more or less the time of our forgetting. Now imagine that one of you has a memory: 'That was me, a growing child; the first thing I remembered was, let us say, something when I was four years old.' Let us assume someone is 60 now, and at the age of 60 recalls an event that happened when he was just four years old. He needed 56 years after those four to forget, inwardly to forget. For 56 years his forgetting grew stronger and stronger. He spent 56 years becoming more and more of an ass. How many more times did he need to forget the things he still had up to his fourth year? Well, he needed as many times more as 4 goes into 56: he has needed 14 times his earliest childhood in order to forget. Having reached the age of 60 he will need 14 times as long again to regain the things he has forgotten in the world of the spirit. That will be 60 times 14 years, 840 years. After that he will have regained the ability to have the things the child had in his first four years to build the body. He will therefore be able to come back to this earth after 840 years. One can only make such calculations, the way I have just written it on the board for you, in a responsible way if one clearly understands that it is like this if one is able to check what lies in our dreams, the way dreams take us further and further away from the world of the spirit. And you see, if someone goes about and at a particular time is not at all able to enter into his physical body, he is a medium. Someone who enters into his physical body at the right time and uses it again — well now, that is a normal person. But when someone is all the time walking about in a state where the I has not entered into the physical body — you can even walk about in your sleep, you can talk when you walk in your sleep or lie in your bed — we need not be surprised at this; for if we throw a billiard ball and everything is level, it will roll on of its own accord. And so if someone is not quite healthy, when everything passes easily, his body not having the right degree of firmness, then the activity which normally is in the conscious mind can still continue to act. Such a person will be an automaton, however. A sleepwalker is not a human being but an automaton. And someone talking in his sleep does not say anything human. Just try it. You'll hear the daftest things when someone talks in his sleep, for he becomes an automaton, his I and his soul not being in his body. But when this is only half-way the case and the person is only half an automaton — the entering process is such that the human being enters from the posterior part of the brain, moving forward — when someone only comes in half-way, he can close his eyes and, because the optic nerves are back there [Fig. 21, right] he perceives something, but it is something fantastic. And he may then also tell one all kinds of fantastic things, for, you see, he is not seeing but getting images. The hearing is located there, and the sense of speech there [drawing]. So he will also be able to talk away. Mediums talk, but they are not in this world. Because of this we cannot say anything mediums tell us counts, for they are only half-way in their physical bodies. It does not count at all. They are merely saying things which the human being perceives in his ass quality — a term I have to go on using here. I have of course also heard of mediums who say magnificent things. It is true. Mediums will sometimes say magnificent things; but this need not surprise us. For, you see, if a major earthquake occurs somewhere, for example, the animals will leave the place beforehand. The humans will stay and allow the earthquake to destroy them. Animals are prophetic by nature, for there is rational sense everywhere; they have not yet stuffed themselves with sense. A medium is thus something that goes down to the level of the animal. It can say marvellous things, even making them into verse more beautiful than Goethe's verse — well, you see, because he goes down to the animal level of rational sense. The opposite is the case for someone who is to gain insight in the anthroposophical way. He must not merely come in half-way, as in his dreams, but must know everything the way another person knows it, and in addition also know the things one is able to know when one wakes up a second time. When you wake up this second time you get an idea of how this is. You say to yourself: 'Yes, if you have done something in your life on earth to get to know the human being, this will help you after death.' You will then find it easier after death to get to know the human body again. What one has to learn between death and the next birth is the inner nature of the human body. And you really have to understand that it takes a great deal to get to know the world. Students get in a fair sweat when they have to learn all about the outside world, learn to calculate how the stars move in their orbits, and so on, what the earth looked like when today's crayfish did not yet exist, and so on. There is much to learn. Yes, but the things we have to learn about everything outside the human being here on earth are nothing compared to the things we have to learn about the inner human being. You'll say: 'But people do learn about the inner human jeing when someone has died; then they learn everything. They cut him up small, the human being, and learn from the corpse what the human being looks like inside.' But that's a very different thing. All the knowledge you're able to gain from a dead body will never enable you to produce a living human being. Yes, of course, for that you have to have conception. But the human being who has done his learning in the world of the spirit between death and the next birth is actually involved in his conception. On earth, we can only gain insight into things that are dead. We cannot gain insight into something that lives, let alone something that is sentient and thinks. I would not have dared to write up these figures for you if it were not the case that on gaining higher insight one sees that the human being moves further and further away from the world of the spirit in the course of his life on earth. As a child — let us assume he dies at the age of 16 — yes, then it will be different when he remembers back to his fourth year. He may die at 16 perhaps, remember back over 12 years, which is 3 times 4, and if he has lived to the age of 16 he therefore will really only need 48 years before he appears again. It is truly the case that one can reduce this to a calculation. But something very remarkable shows itself here, gentlemen. It is this. As you know, the patriarchal age has always been said to be 72 years. When someone has reached the age of 72, the years that follow are really a gift. So you see [writing it up], that is the patriarchal age of 72. Let us assume such a patriarch to be a truly excellent person, as indeed they were in earlier times. Today we are so inattentive that we recall little of our childhood years. But those earlier people would remember back to their third or second year. And so they would have had 70 years to forget the child's wisdom, the higher wisdom. That means 35 times 2. In the world of the spirit, they, remembering back much further than we do today, would go through a period of 35 times 72 years, which is over 2000 years. You see, if you observe the sun in the spring, it now rises in the constellation of the Fishes. In earlier times it would have risen in the constellation of the Ram, and our calendars today still show the Ram as the point where it rises. Which is not true, however. The sun rose in the constellation of the Ram until the fifteenth century. At that time it was right to say: the sun rises in the constellation of the Ram. Astronomers have grown lazy since then and go on saying the same, though the sun certainly no longer rises in the constellation of the Ram today but in the Fishes. Now assume the constellation of the Fishes to be a certain size. There are twelve such constellations. When the sun comes up again the following year, it will be somewhere in the constellation of the Fishes on 21 March, as I said. And if you observe it the year after, it will have moved a little bit further, no longer rising in the same place; the year before it was a bit further back, again not in the same place as the other year [drawing on the board]. The sun needs a certain period of time to pass through the constellation. First it was quite at the beginning of the Fishes, and a time will come when it will come to the end of the Fishes. It will then have moved on so far that it will no longer come up in the Fishes but in the Water Carrier. At present, therefore, it is passing through the Fishes, later it will go through the Water Carrier constellation, still later the Goat, and so on. The sun takes about as long to pass through one such constellation as a human being who has grown very old will need on average to come back again. So it means a great deal that the sun moves on from one constellation to the next. In my Occult Science 30 Steiner, R., Occult Science. An Outline (GA 13), tr. G. & M. Adams, rev. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1971. I showed first of all that the return of the human being has to do with the sun's movements. And we may therefore assume — science also shows it — that when human beings die today, they get the knowledge they need to build their bodies up again under the influence of the Fishes. And they will return when they can no longer learn anything from the Fishes but have to learn from the Water Carrier. And then they have to learn from the Goat. Then again from the Archer. And then they will come again when they have to learn from the Scorpion. And again when they need to learn from the Scales; then from the Virgin, then the Lion, then Cancer, then the Twins, the Bull and the Ram. Then they are back again at the beginning. And of course they will have learned a great deal by then. They will have gone the whole cycle once in 25,815 years, going through something like 12 earth lives, 11 or 12 earth lives. Now someone may say: 'All right, you tell us that human beings learn the things they need on earth, each time from a different constellation, a constellation that looks quite different.' If you look up to the Fishes, they look very different from the Water Carrier, for example, or the Goat, and so on. But just think of having been here 800, 1000, 1500, 2000 years ago, let us say. Things would have been very different on earth then and you would have lived quite a different life. Maybe you would have been a contented farmer with a very small farm, a nice round belly and utterly contented. Now you are in the industrial workers' movement. That is something you have learned from the Fishes. At that earlier time, when you had grown your nice little round belly and been a contented farmer, this would have been something you had learned from the Ram. And so people learn the things they go through on earth from the very constellations. You see, we can now say that the human being gradually gets around. If you have been here in 825 bc, for instance, in the ninth century, you would have been that round-bellied farmer. Now you have returned under the influence of the Fishes. But if you go all the way round and have come ful cycle after 25,815 years, you will have learned so much in the meantime that you'll not need to be what you have been before, for you will then be at a much higher level as a human being. So we have to say to ourselves: After 25,815 years, when we are about to go down to the earth again, we shall no longer need to go down to the earth in this way, for we shall have learned everything there is to learn in this constellation. And you see, there we come to something I have spoken of before. People who have studied geology in a very learned modern way will tell us: '25 million years ago things were like this and this on earth.' The question is, how do these people know that the earth was a body of fluid 25 million years ago? I have spoken of similar things to you before, but not such long periods of time. How do they know? They will study the Niagara Falls, for instance. The water drops down over rocks. They will remove some of the rock over which it has run and calculate how much of it is worn away by the water in a year. Considering that so and so much is washed away in a year, they would then work out how far the rock must have extended when the water had not yet cooled down to be water but existed as vapour. And that is how they arrive at those 25 million years. Now that is just as if I were to examine someone's heart. Today is the 9th of April. If we examine the heart today and then again in a month's time, it will have changed a little; then, another month later, it will have changed a bit more. And taking these small changes we work out what the heart was like 300 years ago. Fine, but it did not exist then. The calculation is correct, but the object did not yet exist. And that is how it is with the way the earth looked 25 million 'ears ago. The calculation is perfectly correct, but the earth lid not yet exist. And they also do calculations as to what he earth will be like in 25 million years' time. They merely go in the other direction for this. But the earth will no longer exist then. Just as with a heart, which is a little bit less good day after day, it is possible to work out what it will be like in 300 years, except that you'll not be here as a physical human being in 300 years' time. The sums are correct. People are blinded, deceived by the fact that their calculations are terribly correct; but the human being does not last as long as the time given in the sums. When you come back again after 25,815 years the earth will have dissolved in the meantime. You will altogether have been forced to discover in your consecutive lives that you have to find your way in the world in a different way. Then the earth will no longer exist; you'll be free of it. You'll have advanced to a higher form of life. And by going into the matter in the right way we can be quite scientific and go as far as a time of which ancient legends still tell us, saying that man will still need to go through a number of lives on earth, and then he'll no longer need to come back to earth. He must then have learned enough to be able to manage without getting a physical body. By then, however, the human being must gradually have reached a point where he no longer has the crazy dreams we have today, and altogether no longer goes so far away from the world of the spirit. All this will give you a very important result, gentlemen. For you have to say to yourselves: people who struggle against getting to know the world of the spirit do not want that wisdom to come to humanity. They want people to go on being asses on earth, and unable to go back. For by having gained some knowledge whilst still on earth about the human being, something living and not just knowledge based on the dead body, the human being also grows progressively more able to have a real insight after death into what he has to go through there. If human beings, since they have after all to be asses on earth, were to remain asses, which is what certain shady characters want, these shady characters will cause him to lose his spiritual existence altogether. They talk to him of eternal bliss. But in doing so they take away from him what he has been given. This is something that has to be said; it is a terrible thing. Anthroposophy is therefore needed to show human beings that they are truly able to gain insight and thus also able to enter into the world of the spirit again. This is the truth, you see, and anthroposophy does indeed have an important mission and great social significance for humanity. For the whole of the rational mind will go. And when people want to hold on to the rational mind by merely offering the human science that comes from the dead body, the outcome must be what has already happened: humanity living in such darkness that they simply do not know what to do. To get away from organizing all those eternal congresses, for example, and other such things, and make real progress, the human being must really be woken up. But people hate having to wake up. For you see, when people sit around conference tables it is not a matter of just sitting together but also of talking sense. But the way people are today they will not admit that they need to wake up first and make their minds a bit more flexible, so that they may also get inner feelings again about the social question. This is why basically speaking everything is just a patching-up job. What is needed is that people truly come to perceive and understand their inner nature whilst still on this earth, so that they will be prepared for the work they will have to do in the world of the spirit. That is indeed how it is. Anthroposophy has nothing to do with converting individual people. Individuals cannot do anything, but many people can. The purpose of anthroposophy is to help many people gain real knowledge. Then it will in fact be possible to work for better times on earth. This was something I also wanted to say to you, gentlemen. I'll have to go to Zurich, St Gallen and Winterthur now. When I'm back I'll continue with these talks. Perhaps you'll think of some things you want to ask me about in the meantime.

From Limestone to Lucifer

Dream, death and reincarnation

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA349/English/RSP1999/19230409p02.html

Dornach

9 Apr 1923

GA349-8

I'd like to start today by telling you a story that is quite interesting. There were witnesses, so it cannot be said to be untrue. A gentlemen was fishing, using a rod, and after some time got annoyed because he had not had a bite. Then suddenly there was a tremendous jolt. Something really heavy had taken the bait. He pulled up his rod and was really pleased to have caught a big fish. But what did he land? A very large turtle. This large turtle had swallowed the hook. It was in its stomach and the angler could not get it out. The turtle pulled in its head a bit more. First he tried to persuade the creature with kind words to let go of the hook. But it would not budge. So he had no other choice but this: he held the turtle by the tail, cut off its head with a sharp knife and let it drop. Now you'll all admit that if this had happened to a per son — let us say during the French Revolution or with any other instance of beheading — well, that person would have been dead. What did the turtle do? It got up on its legs, calmly marched back into the water and disappeared. It did not bother it in the least to have had its head cut off. You see from this that for a time at least, the turtle did not need its head to go on living. The question as to how long it continued to live was not considered at the time, but you can certainly see that the turtle simply did not need its head for such things as walking, for instance. It is able to walk without having a head. I have told you many stories of animals doing all kinds of things, terribly sensible things, and you can conclude from this story of the turtle that the creatures certainly do not do this with their heads. You can cut off a turtle's head and it will go on performing its movements and everything else quite properly. The turtle also did not run away blindly but straight back into the water from which it had come. It could not have done better if it still had a head. Now you might say that this was an isolated case. But it was not an isolated case, for experiments of this kind have been done. Someone able to see these things in the spirit will not need such experiments. But they are being done all the time, in order to prove the matter wrong. They do not prove it wrong, however, but actually confirm it. The experiments about which I am going to tell you have been done countless times. You take a frog and cut off its head using a cut-throat razor. The frog is now without its head. You put it back on the table. It will first of all behave in an extraordinarily impertinent way without its head. It will go down a little bit in front and then most impertinently raise his hind part and hop away. If you now take an acid that burns and put a little on the frog's side here [drawing on the board] — this is the headless frog, these are its legs, only it does not have a head — so if you wet it a little with a corrosive acid, which normally hurts, the frog will first of all scratch itself using a hind leg, the headless frog. You can repeat this over and over again — the frog will scratch itself there, though it has no head. And if you use a bit more acid it will use its foreleg as well. This will make it go down on that side, of course. It'll topple over. So you see, a frog without a head does everything it would normally do and it makes no difference if it has a head or not. Now of course you realize from this that when we go below the level of the mammals, to the lower animals, these lower animals will properly do without a head what human beings and higher mammals do with their heads on. Now we need to see the situation very clearly. It proves something. It proves that we do not need a head for things like these where we have a pain somewhere and lift a hand to rub the place. This is something a frog can do without a head. And so it is proven that this can be done without a head. So we certainly do not have a head in order to scratch ourselves. We do not have heads so that we may walk or run. A turtle or frog will walk without a head. So we do not need a head at all in order to walk. We can't quite do what it says in the fable of lazy Francis who was too lazy to walk but very keen on eating. You know the story. Then someone suggested he should walk with his gob and eat with his feet, so that he'd acquire a new habit. That's impossible, of course, but the situation is that we simply do not need a head in order to walk. Nor do we need it to move our hands. So why do human beings and the higher animals need a head? What is the difference — now with regard to the head — between humans and higher animals on the one hand and lower animals on the other? The difference is that higher animals and humans die if they do not have their heads, but frogs, turtles and all lower animals live on. If you take even lower animals, worms for example — you can cut them in half and each half will walk by itself. So you see we simply do not need a head for the things which the body is really doing. The bad thing is, of course, that as a higher animal or human being one does need a head in order to live. And because we need it in order to live, we'll die when we no longer have it. It is not that we'll no longer rub away acid put on us if we don't have a head, but that we die without a head. A human being will no longer rub away the acid when his head is cut off. A human being would have behaved differently if he had swallowed the hook and his head had been cut off. Things would have been different even before that, of course, than they were with the turtle. So we are able to say that in higher animals and humans, everything connected with the head has nothing at all to do with the movements we make. All we owe to the head is that we live. When we no longer have it, we simply no longer live. Life is therefore in the head for the higher animals. In the lower animals life is in all the individual members of the body. Let me now tell you something else from which you'll be able to see that there is also a big difference between higher animals and human beings when it comes to everything belonging to this head and this whole organization. I am sure you have had experience of a children's disease that is a bit unpleasant. It is called whooping cough. It is not really all that bad for the child at the time when it happens, for he will normally get well again. The bad thing is that something remains if people don't do the right things — meaning doctors or whoever is responsible at the time — when a child has whooping cough. For then the following may happen. What does whooping cough involve? Whooping cough means that breathing in will always be as it should be — you may have a child with really severe whooping cough, it will breathe in properly. This can be seen if one studies the situation. But when the air wants to come out as the child breathes out it gets stuck, it will not come out the way it should, and then a bout of coughing develops. And with the air not getting out properly, fresh air cannot get in, and this causes the whooping cough. That is what it is. But what lies behind it, when a child gets whooping cough? You see, what lies behind it is that the inner mucous membrane of the breathing system, of these tubes that go down to the lung and then out again, grows terribly sensitive. When the air goes in it passes over those sensitive places, for the chest is empty, and you can always pour air into something that is empty. Just think of a vacuum pump. A vacuum pump is a bell jar like this [drawing on the board]; you pump out the air and it is empty. You can have an opening to help you to begin with. If you take out the stopper, the air rushes in with a whistle. So there need be nothing but a vacuum under the bell jar. When we have breathed out our air, we have a vacuum in our lungs, and the air will rush in all by itself. You don't have to do anything special to get the air in. It is not surprising then that air will also rush in through a sensitive windpipe and sensitive tubes, for the air does not feel it. But when you want to get the air out of your vacuum pump again you have to do something, you have to pump it out. In the same way you have to push the air out from the lungs. But the child's breathing tubes have grown sensitive. They are just as sensitive as any other place where you may have got a scratch. The inside of the breathing tubes has grown a bit scratchy, and they are sensitive. The will impulse that pushes the air out will not do this but instead scratch away at the windpipe or tubes, getting involved with the scratchiness in the pipe rather than with pushing out the air. You see, wanting to scratch the child forgets to push out the air, and the air stays put in there. You then get these bouts of whooping cough. The body wants to push out the air by force, whilst in life it is the part of us which I called the astral body the other day that pushes out the air. Looking at a child with whooping cough you can see exactly where the physical body is and where the astral body is. When the child is not coughing, the astral body pushes out the air; the body does not have any problems at all. When the child has whooping cough, you have a sensitive spot there. The astral body wants to scratch away; then the physical body has to come in and push the air out forcibly, in spasms. This may even cause spasms, and then another disease may develop in consequence. So you see it is simply not the case that we can say the physical body does everything. Otherwise we'll never understand whooping cough. When someone has got whooping cough, you have to develop a strange idea. You have to ask yourself: 'What has actually happened to his astral body?' His astral body has grown headless, just like the other part of the astral body in the frog! Just as the frog rubs away with its leg, so does the astral body inwardly rub away on the windpipe or tubes, and the physical body then has to come in to get rid of the air. So we can make a very clear distinction. Now you may well ask me to prove it to you that the astral body, which is the soul principle, is actually involved in this case. Well, let me tell you what can happen when a child has whooping cough, with those sensitive areas in its air pipes, and the astral body wants to brush it away all the time, so that the child gets these spasms. Now imagine the parents bought a cat whilst the child had whooping cough, jr maybe a cat had adopted the family — I am telling you something that is quite common. Whilst the child had whooping cough the parents bought a cat or a dog. This has made the child sensitive to the air the dog or cat had been breathing out. He would not have grown sensitive to this if he had not happened to have this sensitive spot at the time. Now, during the whooping cough, he has become sensitive. The child then recovers from his whooping cough, but sometimes a strange thing remains behind. If the child has not been used to having a cat around before, and a cat has come to live in the house whilst the child had whooping cough — this will not happen when he has just recovered, but later on the condition will develop which people call asthma, a breathing difficulty that repeats itself over and over again. Now when this breathing difficulty comes — asthma always comes periodically, it comes and it goes — you may investigate it and you will sometimes find something strange. So a man develops asthma, for instance, and to begin with no one knows where it comes from. If you observe carefully you find that he gets a further asthma attack if there is a cat near him or in the room. If the cat is removed the asthma stops. There, you see, he is given a reminder, and he does not need his head for this. He need not even know that the cat is in the room. The cat may be in the room, he may not know it, but he'll still have an asthma attack. And I can tell you about an even more magnificent case that is most peculiar. There was a child once who got this kind of whooping cough and, during the time when he had this, a lot a buckwheat was eaten in that family. This made the child particularly sensitive to buckwheat and he got a tendency, a talent you might say, to have asthma every time there was buckwheat in the room, or even just in the house. And then something very strange happened on one occasion when he was already a grown-up boy, a medical student. He lived on the top floor. The kitchen was down below, on the lowest floor, two floors lower down. On one occasion the boy upstairs got asthma, terrible asthma. He had only had it like this before if there was buckwheat in the house. They were very unhappy about this. Their cooks had always been told never to cook anything with buckwheat in it. It should never come into the house at all. What had happened? A new cook had come who did not know this. She had had some buckwheat down below on the ground floor, and the young student up on the second floor developed asthma. These things seem like fables. But they are completely true. You will now also understand that human health and sickness is altogether connected with the whole environment. Thus it is not immaterial for our health if there are rats somewhere near or not. You see, the story of the cats I told you is so well known — human air organs having a particular sensitivity to cats — that it is actually called 'cat asthma' by the medical profession. You can find the term in their medical books. This is the kind of asthma people get if there are cats around. There are, of course, many kinds of asthma. But the situation really is such that one has to say: having a dog or a cat or even buckwheat around is quite a commonplace thing for people. It merely makes an impression on the soul principle. But if the soul principle is not in order somewhere, the impression made on the soul principle remains quite unconscious. What has actually happened to someone who gets cat asthma or buckwheat asthma? Well, whooping cough can be cured as follows. Let us assume a child has a sensitive windpipe or tubes; coal dust may have irritated them in some way. This may immediately cause whooping cough to develop. Such things can come from the tiniest little things. So the child's air pipes are irritated. What happens when such an injury exists in some place in the body? Well, you can see it if you cut yourself. If your body were just physical it would not hurt. Imagine you put on some really thick mittens. You can shape the mitten to be just like a skin. You can cut into it and it won't hurt. But why does your hand hurt if you cut it? You see, your hand will hurt because apart from a physical body there is also an astral body in there. The astral body is used to being in there. If you make a cut in the physical body, the astral body, which you can't cut, suddenly notices: 'Wow, there's no physical body there! That does not fit! It hurts.' You see, only the part which is astral body can hurt. It will hurt until the cut has healed up again. And so the situation is that when there is an injury somewhere the astral body is left to itself. It gets out of the physical body. Now imagine you get this fissure, this crack, in there in the windpipe or tubes; the astral body then comes a little bit free there. And the condition can be healed like this, if one does it very carefully. Let us say we have a child with whooping cough. We first of all put him to bed and let him get into a sweat — you can observe the whole thing step by step — he'll get really hot. The astral body easily joins with heat; it does not easily join with cold. If you let the child run around out of doors or even just indoors, the astral body can't get at the physical body because the warmth it needs is not there. But if you wrap up the child really warm — people often do this instinctively; they'll often tie a woollen sock or stocking around the throat to keep the warmth in — the astral body will start to be attracted to the warmth. It is not attracted to other things such as water or air, but it is attracted to warmth. So if you have had the child in bed for a time like this and the astral body has been drawn there all the time, it will again and again have been attracted to this part here [drawing on the board]. You should then take a piece of cloth and put a bit of warm water on it that contains a few drops of lemon juice and put the cloth around the part. This will draw the irritated part together, so that it will again be open to the astral body, and you can cure the whooping cough very nicely. You just have to do it all the right way, one thing after the other. Effective treatment depends on one's ability to see through the whole human being and on doing things properly and in the right order. You must also take care in following this procedure that the child does not take fright. For when the child takes fright, the astral body will always come out a little, and this will undo the whole thing. If we truly cure the child, the whooping cough will run its course and he'll not have asthma later on. If we do it wrongly, the 'fissures' in the wind pipe or tubes will heal up, and the child will seem to have recovered, but the astral body will not have gone in completely, always remaining a little bit outside. Now if a person is very weak, if the child is a weakling, he'll get asthma right away, because the breathing-out process is never quite right. The astral body is not completely involved. An astral body that is outside cannot be properly involved in the breathing-out process. But if the child is a bit stronger, he'll use the other part of the astral body, with the result that the rest of the astral body will only show its weakness at a later time in life, when another illness comes, for instance if the child later gets influenza or something of that kind. And he'll then develop asthma. You can penetrate the human being very well in this way. You'll find out when the soul principle gets involved and when it does not. But just look at someone with asthma. The astral body is active. It is scratching away inside all the time, just as the frog scratched its side when you put acid on it. So there you have it, gentlemen, there you have the astral body behaving like a frog, like a turtle. We can actually study the way our astral body behaves by looking at the lower animals. Things would go very differently if the head could be involved in this activity of the astral body. It is something we cannot get at with the head. That is the situation. We are not yet human in the astral body. We are human in our physical bodies on earth, but we are not human in our astral bodies here on earth. What is the result of this? The result is that this astral body also behaves like an incomplete being. It behaves in an animal way. Imagine therefore you are bringing someone up by beating him all the time. It is really strange how common this method of education by beating still is. There is someone today — he does not interest me in other respects, I find him boring — but here he is most interesting. He has been all over Europe, he's also been in Basel — Rabindranath Tagore, 30 Tagore, Sir Rabindranath (1861-1941), Indian poet and philosopher, bom in Calcutta. His Reminiscences had just appeared in German translation at the time. a gentleman who is casting his spell on people today. You know how it is — someone from Asia, that's something new and different, that's what draws the crowds. A European might do so much more, but an Asian, that interests them — a rare animal! You see, he has now written his biography. This biography is really quite boring as well; but it is really important to read the first chapters of this biography. There he writes of how he was always beaten by everyone. Someone who is now one of the scholarly Asians, scholarly Indians, travelling all over Europe, tells that the whole of education really consisted in beating the children all the time. So it is not just a European characteristic. We see from this biography that people in Asia have also been beaten a terrible lot. Now, as you know, Tagore then became a writer, became all kinds of things, and so it does not show so much any more. But when someone is beaten all the time as a child this will not only have an effect on the physical body but also on the astral body, especially because in children the head is not involved all the time. And the result is that the astral body is then like a cringing dog that has been beaten all the time. You can clearly tell a dog that's been beaten from one that has been raised in a loving way. And it's the same for people. When they are beaten as children — later life may give them a bit more courage, but the astral body continues to cringe for the whole of life, because it is still at the animal level. So you see, gentlemen, here you can see that it is not just physical beatings that go into the astral body. They will at most cause weals. We carry the moral impressions gained in life on earth in our astral bodies. And it is indeed so that someone who has been beaten a lot in his childhood will later have an astral body that is like a cringing dog. Someone else has hit his teachers — you also get people like that — and his astral body is like a lion. One looks like that inwardly — we might also say in our souls, or let's say astrally, because 'soul' has become quite an abstract word already, with people no longer thinking anything of it — inwardly, astrally, one assumes a different form of one kind or another, depending on the moral impressions gained in life. But that is how it is for the whole of life. A slavish person will take things differently from someone who is free and independent. The slave will accept anything. His astral body then bends down and does have something of a cringing dog. An independent character will not accept anything. His astral body then becomes a little bit more human. Here we get some insight into what happens with human beings during their life on earth. But, gentlemen, we also die. We have been considering this. Only the physical body drops away, goes away. But the figure I have just described remains. You take this through death with you. And someone who has gained higher knowledge by the means I have described, especially in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds , can clearly see the character a person takes through death. The moral impression of life is in there. You then have to go into the world out of which you create your next life on earth. Now, gentlemen, if you went into the world out of which you create your next life on earth with an astral body that has come to be as it is because of beatings received in life, you might perhaps become a dog. But a human being cannot become a dog; that is the situation. A human being comes through death out of the moral impressions gained in life in such a way that he might become something or other that comes from the moral impression gained. Someone who has shown courage might become a lion. Maybe some people would be pleased to be a lion in a future life. But a human being cannot actually be a lion because he is not made that way by the world, the cosmos. Someone else may feel a bit like a cat; he'd like to be a cat. You know, people who lack understanding will raise the objection that anthroposophists say the soul goes into animals later on. The transmigration of souls is said to make the soul go into the animals later on. This is nonsense, of course. What is true is that the soul keeps an impression — you are lion-like, cat-like, tiger-like, crocodile-like when you have died. And because one has to be a human being again, this has to be put aside. This is done during that one-third- the-length-of-life period of which I have spoken before. Someone who lived to the age of 60 will need 20 years for this. This is not mere invention. We know it to be such, for oddly enough the human being becomes like that when he enters into sleep at night. This is merely in preparation. And sleep takes up altogether a third of life. Such a third of life, a period, therefore, that takes up a third of one's lifetime, is needed to free oneself from the moral impression. But, gentlemen, you don't know anything about the whole business you go through between going to sleep and waking up. And that is a good thing. For it means the moral impression gained only comes through a little bit as our conscience. When one is obliged to look at it all, it comes through much more strongly. And why is it that only a little bit of what we have experienced in sleep comes through, as conscience, after we wake up? It is because we go down into the physical body This covers it up. Otherwise one would remember where one wakes up in the morning what sleep has been telling one, and what a dreadful fellow one really is. For one has learned this during sleep. It sometimes haunts us a little in our sleep. And dreams which are a bit haunted by knowing what a dreadful fellow one really is are particularly interesting to study. Generally, however, we know nothing about it. But when we do not have a physical body after death, everything we have in the astral body comes into the I, and so we then have it in the I. We then have to go through the whole period. When we have laid the astral body aside, the things we have laid aside are then only in the I. But we are then able to prepare cleanly for the right physical body in our next life. This takes as long as I have told you before. So you see, we only need to take a good look at the human being as he is now in his life on earth to get absolutely the right idea of how these four principles in man — physical body, ether body, astral body, I — are related. You see, gentlemen, let me tell you something else. Imagine this is the human heart [Fig. 22], So there it sits. Two nerve strands go to the heart. They come from back there, go down there and then to the heart. There goes one, which then spreads out in the heart. And then there is another, and this also spreads out in the heart. Imagine I now let an electric current pass through the nerve. I'll then see something strange. The heart will start to beat faster and faster. Why? The electric current stimulates the nerve and this makes the heart beat faster and faster. The electric current stimulates the nerve. But now imagine I do not galvanize this nerve but the other one, the second one. Now you might think a nerve is a nerve. I apply the electric current. And you would think, wouldn't you, that the heart will start to beat faster and faster again. But that is not the way it is. When I galvanize this nerve here [the first one], the heart beats faster and faster. When I galvanize this one [the second one], the heart beats more and more slowly. And if I put a really strong current through it, the heart will stop beating altogether. I have to stop immediately, or the individual will die of heart failure. Now the fact is that there is absolutely no difference between these two nerves as far as their construction goes. They are both made the same way. What, then, is happening here? You see, it is like this. When this part here is galvanized the astral body goes in there, stimulates the heart, so that it beats faster because something it normally has to do itself has been taken over by the electric current. It can therefore work faster in the heart. But let us assume the current is applied here [the other nerve]. Now the astral body wants to make the heart move faster, but an obstacle is put in its way from the other side. As soon as it wants to make the heart move faster, it cannot get through on the other side. This stimulus [first nerve] helps the heart by taking over some of the work. This stimulation [second nerve] hinders it because it comes from the opposite direction. If I were able to get inside the heart and apply the electric stimulus fron there, this, too, would make the heart beat faster. But when 1 galvanize this nerve from outside, the astral body cannot move the heart because it meets more and more of an obstacle. You see from this that it is possible to know exactly how this really happens in the human body, with the astral body on its part taking action just as I would if I wanted to turn a wheel. There I push, and I continue turning the wheel; but when I want to turn it the other way, it won't do it. That is how it is with the heart, that is how it is with the lung, with every organ. Every organ is supplied with nerves from two sides; but it is the astral body which is actually taking action. Now you might say: 'Well, perhaps it is the head after all which is active in the case of the astral body?' No, gentlemen, if it were the head you would have to apply your electric current up at the head. But that would not get you anywhere; you have to galvanize from that point. If you cut off the head as far as the astral body is concerned, it will still find the spot, just as with the frog, or the turtle. You have to galvanize where the nerve is, for even the frog still has it. This spot is called the medulla oblongata, a continuation of the spinal marrow. This is where you have to apply the electric current, and the head need not be involved at all. Other things also show quite clearly that the head need not be involved. First of all, just think, if you would have to let the beating of the heart be done from the head, that would be a pretty kettle of fish! The heart needs to beat 72 times a minute, and you would therefore have to think of your heart 72 times a minute. And your heart would have to stop whilst you were asleep. The head thus cannot help when it comes to these movements which take place inside the human being. They are done the way it is done in a frog or a turtle. If we have asthma, these internal movements are done in an abnormal way; in health they are done in a healthy way. You see from this that everything that happens by way of movements and so on inside the human being happens unconsciously, governed by the astral body. And it is this astral body which after death must first hand over to the I, as it were, the moral impression it has gained of the world. The I will then be able to create a further human life on earth. Because of this the years after death, when we live in such a way that we are able to lay aside the inner astral configuration we have gained in life, are such that we can prepare again for a new life on earth in which we can be truly human. And how do we bring the fruits of our previous life into the new human life? Well you see, gentlemen, it is like this. The child sleeps in the early part of his life. If he had conscious awareness, he would not be able to bring the things the I has brought with it to realization. They have merely been learned from the astral body. The I is still in the astral body; only it does not need to be involved in the work before conception. It is the astral body which has to work, the astral world has to work from the stars, the way I showed you the other day. The child must come into life asleep; he learns to walk, learns to talk, learns to think. Into his walking, talking and thinking he pours the moral impulse from the previous life and selects. That is our destiny. It does not limit our freedom. I think I have told you this before. We have our destiny in us; we prepare our own destiny. But this does not limit our freedom, just as it is not limited by the fact that we have black or blond hair, brown or blue eyes, or are unable to reach out and touch the moon. Our freedom is not limited by the fact that we bring things with us from our previous life so that we may be one thinj or another as human beings. People differ because they bring different things with them from their previous life on earth. Now you might well say: 'This takes us back to a point where we think that we return for ever and ever to live new lives on earth.' No, gentlemen, there was a time on earth when human beings got no further than infants do today. With the earth still thick, not surrounded by air but by a thick sauce — you'll remember the things I have told you about the earth — human beings did not need to learn to walk. The thick sauce would support them. Today they have become human in their physical bodies. In their astral bodies they are still at the animal level at which they have been in the past. There they have not brought anything with them, and it has all come about gradually. When human beings learned to walk, talk and think, their destinies also began to evolve. And if human beings are now again learning to take in things of the spirit in their lifetime, they will also get out of the animal habit again and get used to a world in which they will no longer live in a way that involved walking, talking and thinking, but in yet another way. So there is a space between these two states. And in this in-between space we come back again and again in a particular life. And now, gentlemen, there is one more question. We'll have to consider this the next time, at 9 o'clock next Wednesday. It is this important question which comes up again and again, where someone says: 'It's all right for you to talk about the previous life on earth. But I don't remember it. I won't believe anything that I cannot remember.' I'll explain to you about this remembering the next time we meet, what it is about. This will have taken us a bit further again, and we shall more or less have covered the question for which we have been preparing.

From Limestone to Lucifer

A symptomatic view of the astral body

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA349/English/RSP1999/19230414p02.html

Dornach

14 Apr 1923

GA349-9

Good morning, gentlemen! Let us now add some more on the matter we have been considering. As I said at the end of our last meeting, the main objection people raise is that the things they hear about life before we enter into an earthly body and also about earlier lives may indeed be true — but why do they not remember any of it? The first thing I'll do today, therefore, will be to show you in detail why we don't remember and what memory is about. To start with we have to give some thought to the human body, for it really is indeed important to put these things in a scientific way. You see, in this respect, when it comes to the question of repeated earth lives, people are really quite funny in the way they judge others who did or do know something about these repeated earth lives. A great figure in German literature was Lessing, who lived in the eighteenth century. 31 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729-81), German writer. Lessing's achievements were tremendous, and he is still generally acknowledged to this day. Professors speaking about Lessing at German universities will often stay on the subject for months. As you know, a book by a Lessing expert has actually appeared in social-democratic literature, a big book on Lessing by Franz Mehring. 32 Mehring, Franz (1846-1919), German left-wing writer, one of the founders of the German Communist Party. Wrote historical studies of the workers' movement. He presents Lessing from a different point of view. We can t say that what he says is right; but at any rate, social-democratic literature now includes a big book on Lessing. In short, Lessing is considered a very great man. As a very old man Lessing, whose plays are still performed at many theatres and much appreciated, wrote a relatively short work called 'Educating, or bringing up, the human race'. At the end of the book we read that we really won't get anywhere in considering the human soul, that we really cannot have proper knowledge of the inner life, unless we assume there to be repeated lives on earth, and if we reflect on this, we really come to see things the way primitive peoples did in the past. For they did all believe in repeated earth lives. Humanity only gave this up later, when people became 'modern'. And Lessing said that he could see no reason why something should be nonsense just because people believed it in earliest times. In short, he himself said he could only manage with the inner life of man if he held to this original belief in repeated earth lives. Now as you can imagine, this is highly embarrassing for present-day 'scientists', as they are called. They will say: 'Lessing was one of the greatest people of all times. But those repeated earth lives were nonsense. What is one to do with this? Well, Lessing was old then. He'd grown feeble-minded. We don't accept the repeated earth lives.' You see, that is the way these people are. They will accept the things that suit them and call the person concerned a great man. But if he ever said anything that does not suit them, then they say he was feeble-minded at the time. Very odd things will sometimes happen. There was the great scientist Sir William Crookes, for example. 33 Crookes, Sir William (1832-1919), OM, bom in London, chemistry lecturer at Science College, Chester.. Well, I don't agree with everything he says, but he is certainly considered to be one of the great scientists. He lived in our time, at the end of the nineteenth century. He'd always do scientific work in the mornings. He'd go to his laboratory, and he made great discoveries. We would not have some of these things — X-rays and so on — if Crookes had not done the preliminary work. In the afternoons, however, he would always study psychology. As I said, I do not agree with everything, but that is what he did. And surely people thus also had to say: 'Well then, he must have been intelligent in the mornings and stupid in the afternoons — bright and stupid at the same time!' That's the way things are in the world. Now there's something else. You will always hear — I spoke about this when I was talking about the colours — that scientists consider Newton to be the greatest scientist of all times. He wasn't, but they think so. And again we have an embarrassment. This man Newton, considered the greatest scientist, also wrote a book on the Book of Revelation , 34 Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St John , published posthumously, London 1733. which is usually found at the end of the Bible. Another embarrassment, therefore. In short, people who altogether deny that it is possible to study the psyche, the soul, are profoundly embarrassed by the greatest scientists of all people, and also the greatest historians. The point is that anyone who takes science really seriously cannot help himself but to extend his search for knowledge also to the soul. And the opportunities for this are always given. As I told you, one simply needs to observe. Now it is not possible to see everything directly by looking at everyday life, especially if one has not studied it beforehand. Nature, and sometimes humanity, also does experiments for us, experiments we need not design artificially. Once they have been done, however, we can study them. We can take our guidance from them, or at least pick up ideas. There is one experiment that is really important, characteristic, if we want to have something valid concerning the inner life of man. Everyone accepts the physics body, otherwise they would have to deny existence to the human being altogether. It is not in dispute. Everyone has it. In modern science the view is that the physical body is the only one, and everything has to be explained in terms of the physical body. There is something, however, which will immediately show us that the human being also has the other three bodies — the invisible ether body, the astral body and the I — if we observe it properly. One thing can be observed in a completely scientific way — there are many things, but one in particular can be observed in a completely scientific way. It shows that human beings may indeed get into states where they show us that the ether body exists, and the astral body, and the I. You see some people in Europe feel the need to numb their minds. Many other means are used today. I have told you that people use cocaine, for instance, to numb their minds. 35 Cocaine, a white alkaloid extracted from the leaves of the South American coca shrub (Bolivian leaf from Erythroxylon coca or Peruvian leaf from E. truxillense ). But opium has been used in Europe at all times. There have always been people who have been dissatisfied with life, or had too many problems, not knowing what to do, and they would drug themselves with opium. They would always take just a small amount of opium. What happened then? To begin with, if someone takes a small amount of opium he gets into a state where he experiences things inwardly; he is no longer thinking, but begins to dream, seeing wild, chaotic images. He likes it, it puts him at his ease. The dreams get more and more intoxicating. Some will then enter into blank despair, bethink themselves and begin to behave like sinners; others start to rant and rage, even feeling murderous. And then they go to sleep. Taking opium thus means that people take a poison into their bodies so that they enter vehemently into a state which then gradually merges into sleep. If we consider what is really happening here in the human being we find — one can see it — that they first of all get into very excited dreams, starting to fantasize, and then go to sleep. So something has gone away from them. The element has gone away from them that makes them sensible people, something that lives in them to make them sensible. That has gone. But before it goes, and even after it has gone, they live in the wildest, most chaotic and excited dreams. After a time they'll wake up again and be restored to normal, up to a point, until they take opium again. They thus make themselves into sleeping people, but vehemently so. We can see that when someone goes to sleep under the influence of opium the principle that is active in him is not the one that makes him sensible but the one that gives him life; otherwise he would not wake up again, he would have to die. The principle is active in him that gives him life for the moment. And we can see that during the night, too, something of a struggle takes place in the body so that we may wake up again. Something is active in the human being that does not include the sensible part; it is the element that gives life to the body. The poison makes the person's body die a little. This drives away common sense. But the life-giving element is still in him, for otherwise he would not wake up again. What has therefore been influenced by the opium? The principle that gives life. Taking small amounts of opium has influenced the ether body. But now imagine someone takes too much or deliberately poisons himself with opium. The effect is not the same then. It is a strange thing, but now only the thing which happens last when a little opium is taken will happen. What happens last in that case will come first if a lot of opium is taken. The individual will immediately go to sleep. The principle that gives one sense will not go away slowly then, but quickly, very quickly. Something remains in the person, however that was not in him at all when he took just a little opium Again this is something we can see. So let us assume someone takes so much opium that he is really poisoned. The first thing that happens will be that he goes to sleep. But then the body will begin to get restless, unreasonable; he is breathing stertorously, snoring; then he'll have fits. And you'll notice something very peculiar, for his face will be quite red and his lips quite blue. Now remember what I told you last time. I said that breathing problems always come when we breathe out. Now what is snoring, for instance — first stertorous breathing, then snoring — what is it really? You see people who cannot breathe out properly will snore. When we breathe out properly — if that is the mouth [Fig. 23], then the air goes in, and after some time it goes out again. And in the air passage is the uvula. You can see it if you look in the mouth. And up there is something that goes up and down, the velum, the soft palate. This moves. The uvula and the soft palate are moving all the time as we breathe in and out, if it goes normally. But if you breathe in and then do not breathe out properly, so that it eructs, then this part, the soft palate and the uvula, starts to tremble and this produces the stertorous breathing and then snoring. You can see from this that it has something to do with our breathing. Someone who just drugs himself with a little opium gets into those other states I have described to you — a kind of delirium, a rage. He will slowly go to sleep. But if he goes to sleep quickly, having taken a large amount of opium, he starts snoring and gets fits; his face turns red, his lips blue. For as I told you, human beings have red blood because they breathe in oxygen. When the blood mixes with oxygen it turns red; when it mixes with carbon it turns blue. When it is breathed out, it is blue. So if you see someone with a red face and blue lips, what does it mean? Yes, there is too much breathed-in air beneath the face, too much red blood because of breathing in. And what does it mean when the lips are blue? Then there is too much of the blood that should really go out. It piles up in there. It could indeed go on to the place in the lung where the carbon dioxide then comes free, where carbon dioxide can be breathed out. So when someone is poisoned by opium the situation is that the whole of his breathing is held up. And because of that you get the red blood in the face on the one hand and the blue blood in the lips on the other. This is tremendously interesting, gentlemen. What are the lips? You see, the lips are highly peculiar organs in the face. To have a face you really need to draw it like this [Fig. 24], with skin on the outside everywhere. It is covered with skin on the outside everywhere. But on the lips it is really a piece of inner skin. There the inner becomes outer. It is a piece of inner skin. The human being opens up his inner nature to the outside by having lips. If the lips are blue, therefore, rather than red, it means that everything inside has too much blue blood in it. So you see that when someone has opium poisoning the body sends all unused blood to the surface, and sends all blue blood to the inside. This is something else primitive peoples once knew, this business of the blue blood going inside. When someone had too much blue blood inside they would say that someone who has too much blue blood inside him is in the first place someone who has little soul; his soul has gone away. 'Blue-blooded' therefore became a term of abuse. And when members of the nobility were called blue-blooded, people wanted to say their souls were not there. It is strange how these things live in a most marvellous way in popular wisdom. You really can learn a tremendous amount from language. You can now see that this is something that has an effect in the human being but not, for instance, in a plant. For if you introduce a poison into a plant, the poison stays up above in some way; it does not spread. Belladonna, deadly nightshade, is a very poisonous plant. It keeps its poison up above and does not let it go into the whole plant. When a human being takes such a poison the effect is that it involves the whole body, driving the red blood to the outside and the blue blood inside. Yes, plants also have life. Those plants have their ether body in them, they have the principle in them which in people is left blue with small amounts of opium taken, not with large amounts. That will make the human being sentient. If a plant had blood it would also be sentient, as human beings are and animals. Humans and animals have this without taking opium when the ether body is in conflict with the physical body; the blood is then immediately pushed to the outside, and something remains behind in the body, and this puts things out of order in the body. This is the astral body. We are thus able to say that the astral body is influenced when much opium is taken. The third way of taking opium is widespread in the world, though not in Europe — more among certain Turks, for instance, and above all in Asia and Indochina, among the Malays. These people always only take as much opium as they are just able to tolerate and therefore wake up again properly and do not die of it. They therefore go through everything opium eaters go through, which is most interesting. Only they gradually get habituated, and then they go through the process more consciously. The Turks thus say: 'Yes, I was in Paradise when I had taken opium.' So that is indeed how it is when the fantastic developments come. And the Malays in Indochina would also like to see all this. They therefore get the opium habit because they would like to see it all. This is something people can do for a relatively long time and we therefore have to say to ourselves that there must clearly also be something else. Now one would have to say that if these people who eat opium from habit — it is a real habit with them — if these dreamers were to see only this they would surely get tired of it after a time. But, you see, it is a most peculiar thing. These people are descended from the first people on earth, people who still knew something of the eternal soul, the soul that goes through different lives on earth. They knew something of this. It is something people have lost today. And these people who have not gone through European civilization use opium to put themselves in a position where they can feel something of the soul's eternal life. It is indeed a terrible thing, but they will again and again induce a disease in themselves. At the present time a healthy body cannot know anything of the soul's immortality unless a person makes special mental efforts. And because of this these people are gradually ruining their bodies, so that the soul principle is gradually forced out. You can see something very peculiar when you look at people who take opium habitually and therefore also survive for a time. They grow very pale after a time. They may have had a good skin colour earlier on, but now they will be pale. It means something different among Malays than it would among Europeans, for they are yellowy brown and therefore really look like spectres when they grow pale. Then, after some time, they look as if their faces were quite hollow around the eyes. They then begin to grow skinny, and even before that will no longer be able to walk properly. They merely hobble along. Then they also no longer want to think and grow extremely forgetful. In the end they have a stroke. [writing on the board] Physical body — Ether body — taking small amount of opium Astral body — taking small amount of opium I — habitual use of opium Those are the phenomena. It is very interesting to observe it. Before their limbs grow clumsy they get severe constipation, which means their intestines are no longer functioning. You can see from the things I have told you that the whole body is gradually undermined. Now there is something highly peculiar here. Not much is known yet about this because people do not pay attention to it; but it is something one can see quite easily. It is well known how these people become opium eaters; that has been described often enough. But now just let them try — after all they try things out often enough in other respects today — and give the dose a habitual opium eater takes to an animal. The animal will either get a little bit lively, which would be the first stage, where the ether body is thrown into chaos, or it will get to the second stage, if given enough, and die. You do not get the condition I have just described, the condition of the habitual opium eater, in animals. You do not get this in animals. What does this tell us, gentlemen? Well, it shows that when opium in that strength gets into the astral body, causing the relationship between blue and red blood to change, the situation is that in animals blue and red blood are all the time shooting one into the other in a horizontal direction. In a human being, who learns to walk upright, blue and red blood does not exactly shoot in that direction [drawing on the board], but from top to bottom and from below upwards. It is because of this that human beings can be habitual opium eaters. Now I have been telling you that human beings have an I because they are upright. Animals do not have an I, for their backs are horizontal. So what is affected by habitual opium eating? — the I. We are thus able to say: I — habitual opium consumption. And by considering opium we have now discovered all the three supersensible human bodies — the ether body with opium taken in small amounts, the astral body with opium taken in large amounts, and the I with opium taken habitually. So you see how one can develop this most beautifully in a scientific way; one must only be able to observe properly. You'll now also see that a Malay who is a habitual opium eater comes to something tremendous. He comes to the I And what does he get? What is this Malay or this Turl looking forward to as he follows his opium habit? He looks forward to it because his memory comes awake in a most wonderful way. He will quickly get a view of his whole earth life and much more. On the one hand it is terrible, for he is making his body sick by doing this. But on the other hand the desire to get to know the I has such a powerful effect in him that he just cannot resist. He is simply delighted when this gigantic memory is produced. But, you see, it is like this. When someone does something to excess it will ruin him. If he works too much it will ruin him; if he thinks too much it will ruin him. And when someone is all the time calling up a tremendous power of memory, this will ruin his body. All the things I have described to you simply come from a memory that is too powerful. That is what comes first. And later — I have described it to you — the person grows slack in his walking. He no longer remembers inwardly how he should put his feet forward. This is unconscious memory. Then he grows forgetful. And it is exactly in achieving his aim that he is ruined. But it is possible to see, to be aware, that the I is present when opium has become a habit. What happens in modern science? Well, if you open a book you will find the things I have told you. You find it said that people grow delirious with small doses of opium, and so on, and if they take large doses they will first go to sleep and their bodies will immediately be destroyed. They die, their faces having turned red and their lips blue. And all these things also come with habitual opium eating. But all this refers only to the physical body and what happens in it. You can read that opium eaters develop stertorous breathing, get fits, snore. You can read hat they lose weight, are no longer able to walk, grow forgetful and finally have a stroke, because their memory is destroying the brain — for that is how we should see it. Everything is described, but it is all related to the physical body. And that is nonsense, of course. Otherwise everything physical could only be said to relate to the physical body. All the phenomena that appear there can also be seen in plants. Yet we cannot say that man is just a plant. For with opium taken in high doses the effect shows itself in the astral body, and the phenomena relating to habitual opium use are only seen in human beings. If animals had something to gain from opium use and did not die of it immediately you would see many animals simply eating the opium found in plants. Why would they do so? Because animals eat the things they eat from habit. So if opium eating would benefit them, they would eat the opium in plants. If they do not do so, this is simply because they would not gain anything by it. All this can be discovered by means of science. But we now have to consider if all this — the memory a Malay gains by making himself sick — can also be gained in a healthy way. Here we must remember that the earliest people knew that human beings live on earth again and again. Lessing said, as I told you, that he could see no reason why something should be nonsense just because people believed it in earliest times. Those early people simply did not have the kind of abstract thinking we have today. They did not have science either. They saw everything in mythological terms. Looking at a plant they would not study it and say that there were particular forces in it; they would say that it had particular spiritual elements in it. They saw everything in images and they were altogether still living more in the spirit ... [gap in text]. The situation is that human beings were then able to develop in such a way through progress that they came to live more in the physical body. This alone made it possible for them to be free, otherwise they would always have been influenced. The people of earliest times were not free; but they did still see things in the spirit. The way we are now, gentlemen, we do truly have the abstract ideas in which we are drilled even at school. You see, we are actually able to say that the most important activities of which humanity is so proud today are really something abstract. Speaking to the teachers who are here in Dornach I said yesterday that when a child gets to be about seven years old he is supposed to learn something. He should learn, having learned his whole life up to now, that the individual he sees before him is his father and that this [writing f a t h e r on the board] means 'father'. He is suddenly supposed to learn this. But it has no connection with his father. Those are strange signs that have nothing at all to do with his father! The child is supposed to learn it all of a sudden. He'll resist, for his father is a man who has that kind of hair, such a nose; that is what the child has always seen. He'll resist the notion that those signs are meant to be his father. The child has learned to exclaim 'ah!' when he was amazed. Now he is suddenly expected to think that this [pointing to the letter] is an 'a'. The whole thing is completely abstract and does not relate to anything the child has learned until now. So we must first build a bridge, so that the child is able to learn such a thing. Let me show you how such a bridge may be built. You may, for example, say to the child: 'Look. What's that?' [Fig. 25, left]. If you draw this for the child and ask him what it is, what will he say? He'll say: 'A fish! That's a fish.' He'll not say, 'I can't tell what it is.' There [the written-down f a t h e r ] he can't say: 'I can tell it's my father.' But he will recognize the fish. I then say: 'Say the word fish; then leave out the "i" and what comes after it, and say just "F". Look, let me draw it for you: F.' I have thus taken the F from the fish. The child will first draw a fish and then come to the letter F. You just have to do it in a sensible way so that it'll not be abstract but come out of the image. And then the child will of course be happy to learn. It is something we can do with every letter. You just have to gradually get into the way of it. One of the teachers at our Waldorf school once showed most beautifully how Roman figures came into existence. When he got to the V, it suddenly would not work. How can one get the V? Well, just look — what is this? [He held up his hand.] Of course you'll say that a hand is always a hand. But surely we can see something in it? I, II, III, IIII, V fingers. Let me draw this hand on the board [Fig. 25, third form] in this way, with two things extended [the thumb and then the other four fingers]. Now I have a hand with the V [five] in it; it is definitely a five. I now draw it in a slightly simpler form and you have got the Roman figure V from a hand that has five fingers. So you see, gentlemen, the situation is that we are suddenly thrown into a completely abstract world nowadays. We learn to write, we learn to read, and it has nothing to do with life. And that is how we have lost the things which people had who were not yet able to write and read. Now you should not do as our opponents do and say: 'That man Steiner told us in class that people were more intelligent when they did not yet have writing and reading.' And they'll immediately go on to say: 'He does not want people to learn to write and read any more.' That is not my intention. People should always keep pace with their civilization, and certainly learn to write and to read. But we also should not lose the things that can indeed be lost through writing and reading. We need to take the spiritual view to discover what human life is like. Let me now tell you something quite simple about two people. One of them takes off his shirt collar when he undresses at night — it has two little studs, one at the back and one in front, and I am taking this example because I am wearing such a collar. One of the two people does it without giving it any thought, undoing one stud and then the other and getting into bed. In the morning he'll run around and look everywhere in the room, asking: 'Where are my collar studs?' He cannot find them. He does not remember where he put them. Why? Because he did not give them any thought. Now the other person. He has not exactly developed the habit of always putting his collar stud in the same place — which would be the lazy way — but he says to himself: 'When I put the little studs down, I put the one next to the candlestick and the other one over there.' He thus gives the matter some thought and does not merely put them down in a thoughtless way. Now when he gets up in the morning he'll go straight there, pick up the studs from where he put them, and have no need to hunt for them all over the room: 'Where are my collar studs? Where have I put my collar studs?' So what is the difference? The difference is that one man has given a matter some thought and then remembered, and that the other man did not give it any thought and does not remember. Now you can only remember things in the morning — it is no good to go to bed at night and then try and remember — you will only remember things in the morning when you have given them some thought the night before. Gentlemen, let us take a bit of a look at history now. According to what I told you before, all our souls have been here at a time when only few people had as yet learned to think. People did not think at all in earlier times. In earliest times they lived in the spirit. And it was abnormal for someone to think in those times. During the Middle Ages people did not yet think at all. They have only started to think from the fifteenth century onwards; they did not take everything into their thoughts the way we do. This can be proved by historians. No wonder then that you don't remember your earlier lives! Now people have learned to think. We are at a time in historical evolution when people have learned to think. And in their next life they will remember this present life just as someone remembers his collar studs in the morning. It means that if someone now learns to think of the things in the world in the right way, learns to think the way I have shown you, it will be just as it is when he thinks of his collar stud. The modern way in science is a way where people do not think of their collar studs. If someone just gives a description: 'Delirium develops, the lips turn blue and the face red,' and so on, the situation is that in his next life he will not think of the things that are most important. He'll not remember at all, throwing everything into confusion, like the person who creates confusion in his room because he has to go out and he cannot find his things. Someone who thinks, however, that it simply comes from ether body, astral body, I, will learn to think in such a way that he will be able to remember properly in his next life on earth. It will only show itself then. And today only few people are instructed on how to do things because only few individuals have known about it in their last life on earth. They now find out about it and are able to tell others about it. And if they do the things I have written in my books, if they do what it says in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds , it may happen that they realize even in this life that they have lived earlier lives on earth. But we are only just beginning with the anthroposophical science of the spirit. And people will gradually be able to remember again. Now people will say: 'Yes, but one can't remember it; and if someone does not remember earlier lives on earth this means he cannot have had those earlier lives on earth.' We might just as well also say: 'A human being is unable to do sums; we can prove that a human being cannot do sums. He is a human being but he cannot do sums.' And to prove it someone brings in a four-year-old child and shows that the child cannot do sums. This is a human being, but he cannot do sums! We'll tell him: 'He'll learn, never fear. Knowing human nature we know that he'll learn to do sums.' And if someone refers to someone today who cannot remember his earlier lives on earth we have to tell him: 'Yes, but nothing was done in the past to help people remember. Quite the contrary, there are still many people today who have not caught up with the times, and they want to keep others in ignorance, so that they will know nothing of the spirit, have no idea as to what they should remember in their next life on earth, and get quite confused, like the man with his collar stud.' People must first of all learn to think in life about the things they should remember later on. Anthroposophy exists to draw people's attention to the things they should later remember. And people who want to prevent anthroposophy actually want to keep people in ignorance, so that they will not remember. And it is important, gentlemen, for us to realize that human beings must first of all learn to use their thoughts in the right way. Today they want to define thoughts and demand that books should give the right definitions. That is something people knew even in ancient Greece, gentlemen. There was someone then who specially wanted to train people in making definitions. Today they tell you in school: 'You have to learn: What is light?' I knew a boy at school once; we were in primary school together, then I went to another school and he trained to be a teacher at a teachers' training college. I met him again at the age of 17. By then he had become a real teacher. So I asked him: 'What did you learn about light?' He said: 'Light is the cause of the ability to see bodies.' Nothing wrong with that. We might just as well say: 'What is poverty?' 'Poverty comes from having no money!' It is more or less the same kind of definition. But people have to learn a great deal of such stuff. Now there was someone in ancient Greece who made fun of that kind of clever learning even then. Children have learned at school: 'What is a human being?' 'A human being is a living creature with two legs and no feathers.' A boy who was a particularly sharp thinker took a cockerel, plucked it, and brought the plucked cockerel to show his teacher the next day, saying: 'Sir, is that a human being? It has no feathers and has two legs!' That was the power of definition. And the things we generally still find in our books are more or less in line with such definitions. All books, including social books people write, refer to the condition of life more or less the way a definition is made: 'A human being is a living creature with two legs and no feathers.' Further conclusions are then drawn. Of course, if you have a book with a definition to start with, you can draw all kinds of logical conclusions; but it will never fit the human being; it may also be true for a cockerel that has been plucked. That is the way our definitions are! What matters is that we must see the thing the way it really is. The truth of the matter is that we have to say [referring back to the table of the human bodies in relation to opium use]: physical body; ether body, affected by opium taken in small amounts; astral body, affected by large amounts; the I affected by opium taken as a habit. And working with the science of the spirit, getting to know the human being in a way one does not merely describe things as if in a dream: 'Such and such conditions occur,' but really knows: 'That is where the astral body is active; there the ether body is active; in there the I is active,' one has real thoughts and no just definitions. And if we have taken in real thoughts in our present life on earth and not just definitions, we will remember the present life on earth in the right way. Now it is only possible to remember earlier lives on earth with great effort, as I have described it. Later we shall remember it well, if we do not make ourselves ill, for instance by taking opium, if we do not influence the body, but do exercises in mind and spirit that will make it possible for the soul truly to know the spirit. So you see that a science of the spirit is in fact developing in anthroposophy. You can be sure that in anthroposophy we are not wanting to be superstitious. You get people who hear something unusual reported about spiritualistic things and they'll then say: 'Surely it is as if a world of the spirit is revealed in this.' But the world of the spirit reveals itself in the human being! If people sit around a table and get it to knock they'll say: 'There must be a spirit in there.' But when four people are sitting there, you have four spirits! You only have to get to know them. But people prefer to do things unconsciously. A medium has to be there. Just look at the newspaper cutting you gave me a few weeks ago, for example. 36 It has not so far been possible to trace this newpaper item. There you read that somewhere in England people got tremendously excited because things fell off shelves during the night, windows got broken, and so on. What struck me most about this — one must of course have seen it for oneself before one can really talk about it — but what struck me most was that the report also stated that those people had a whole horde of cats. Well, if you have a horde of cats and two or three of them run riot, you can indeed see these 'spiritual phenomena' happening. But, as I said, one would have to know the story properly; only then can one really speak about it. You see, people once urged me strongly to attend a spiritualist seance. Well, I said I'd do so, for you can really only judge such matters if you've seen them. Now the medium was very famous, and when everyone had sat down, and had first had their minds numbed a bit by some music — everyone sat there numb in mind — the medium started to have flowers come down out of the air all the time, just the kind of thing one would expect. Every medium has an 'impresario', a manager, which is part of being a proper medium. Well, the people paid their obolus, a financial contribution, having had their enjoyment. For the organizers this was of course the important thing, that a contribution was paid. And I said — people are terribly fanatical about these things, they'll start a fight with you if you want to tell them the truth, it is just people like this who are the worst — but there were some who had sense and I said to them they should investigate things on another occasion, not at the end but at the beginning, and they would find the flowers in the manager's humped back. You'll always find that this is how things are. Superstition has to be left behind, gentlemen, if we want to speak of the world of the spirit. One should never be deceived, not by mad cats nor by a hump-backed manager. We only find the spirit if we no longer fall for superstitions but always do things in a truly scientific way.

From Limestone to Lucifer

Why do we not remember earlier lives on earth?

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA349/English/RSP1999/19230418p02.html

Dornach

18 Apr 1923

GA349-10

Good morning, gentlemen! Have you thought of a question? Speaker: You were so kind as to tell us what it is like when the spirit has left the body. Me and my colleagues did find we could understand the last lecture very well. But in the [book] Theosophy it says that when the spirit has left the body the soul still has its cravings. We find this a tough nut to crack.Rudolf Steiner: Very good. Now tell me the other question as well. Speaker: A pamphlet has come into my hands, by chance; it's by a Dr Hauer. 37 Hauer, J.W., Werden und Wesen der Anthroposophie (Origins and nature of anthroposophy), Stuttgart 1922. I suppose you have read it and therefore know about it. This man Hauer makes you appear as if the things you are saying are nothing new, as if everything said in anthroposophy has been known for a long time, that it is all known already. And he then goes on to say that the thing he has found most incredible in anthroposophy is the story of the two Jesus children. [The speaker went on to say that he had to admit that he, too, could not understand the thing about the two Jesus children himself, with one of them coming from another world. No doubt Dr Steiner had the pamphlet himself.] Rudolf Steiner: Yes, I have the pamphlet, but I have not yet cut the pages. The speaker then went on to say that if it were not too much to ask, he'd be pleased if Dr Steiner were to say something about the Jesus family. Another question: In the last few days my colleagues have asked me about the Christ. So it would please me if Dr Steiner could say something about the Christ spirit. Rudolf Steiner: Is there perhaps another question as well, so that we may consider the whole of it? I'll first of all deal with the question of the desires. The thing is like this. If you consider the things which human beings experience other than those experienced by stones and plants, you will find that human beings experience their world of thought. Plants do not show that they have a world of thought. Thoughts do live in plants, but it would be nonsense to look for conscious thought in a plant. Now with science often so superficial today, something rather peculiar has come about. Scholars are of all kinds nowadays, and since some of them are not able to believe completely that all processes are merely physical, mineral by nature and without life, they do assume that there is at least a soul element. Not knowing anything about this soul element they will say, therefore: 'The soul element shows itself in the fact that some creature does something or other.' There are plants that behave in a very strange way. One of them is called the Venus's fly-trap because of the way it behaves. 38 Venus's fly-trap ( Dionaea muscipula ), member of the sundew family ( Drosera ). See Darwin on insect-eating plants, in his collected works. The surface of the broad leaves in the ground rosette is divided into two halves, with three bristle-like outgrowths on each. If an insect lands on the leaf and touches one of these bristly outgrowths the two halves of the leaf fold up so quickly that the small insect is trapped between them. So that is something which exists. People who talk superficially of the soul and do not know anything about it will say: 'A plant has a soul just as human beings have a soul.' I always have only one thing to say to such people: 'I know a small device; you put some fat bacon into it, having browned it a little first — a mousetrap. And when a mouse nibbles on the bacon the trap will close of its own accord. Someone who concludes from such things as the Venus's fly-trap that there has to be a soul in there would also have to say that the mousetrap has a soul, for it closes of its own accord.' It always is a matter of how we take the background of anything. You see, the characteristic of anthroposophy is that we always consider the background. Others who do think there is a soul but know nothing of the soul will say a plant also has a soul if it acts in a similar way to a mousetrap when an insect comes close. In anthroposophy, it is not outer appearances that lead to conclusions but true insight into the soul element. Part of this is that human beings develop cravings. A craving arises, for instance, when one is thirsty. If I'm thirsty I crave a drink of water or something. All right, then, good; the water will quench my thirst. A craving is anything where you wish for, want, something out of the inner organism; that would always be a craving. Now you see, people never think about one thing. They do not think about the state of soul that exists when someone wakes up. You know, when someone wakes up, these people now investigate how much carbon dioxide is in the blood and so on; that is, they only investigate the physical condition. The truth of the matter is that a human being wakes up because he has a craving for his physical body. When you go to sleep at night you no longer crave your physical body. It is filled to the brim with getting-tired substances. It is no longer a good place to be. The soul — being the I and the astral body — wants to go outside to recover. In the morning, when the physical body has been restored, and the soul which is outside the body has noticed this from the condition of the skin, being close to it — the soul will return to the physical body, for it craves to be in the physical body for as long as the physical body is at all able to live. The soul thus craves to live in the body for the whole of its life. Now consider something else. You cut your finger and it hurts. This would be the finger [Fig. 26]. You cut it and it hurts. What has actually happened? Well, the physical body has been torn apart a little bit. You can cut into the physical body but not into the astral body. Let me now draw in the astral body. If I make it a big cut, you have a gap, and the astral body is in it. It craves to be able to get also into the place where the physical body has been torn apart. It craves to be in the body and cannot do so because the body is torn there. That is the pain. Now just think, if the soul craves for the physical body throughout life, something has to happen after death. If you develop a craving for sugar as a child and someone who is important, someone who means something to you, considers it better for you at some stage in your life not to take so much sugar, you will still have your craving for sugar. Let us assume you have developed diabetes and therefore should no longer do it — well, gentlemen, it will take a long time to get out of the habit! You'll always have the craving for sugar and have to get out of the habit gradually. You know, someone who drinks a lot has developed a craving for drink; he'll need to get out of the habit gradually. Someone who eats opium, the way I told you the other day, and people deprive him of it, he'll go quite mad in his craving for opium. The craving for the body lives in the I and astral body throughout life. After death, the soul wants again and again to wake up in the body. This is something it has to learn to do without, and it will take about a third of a lifetime to do so. Sleep takes up about a third of life. The first day after you have died you'll want to go back. You'll want to do what you did the last day of your life. On the second day you'll want to do what you did the last but one day of your life, and that is how it goes on. The craving thus has to be got rid of for this third of life. You won't feel the cravings of hunger or thirst after death, but for everything you have had through your physical body. It will be like this after death. All your life you developed a love for the area around your home village. It is something you have always been seeing. And you have been seeing it through your physical body. Only people with strange beliefs will think that they'll have much more beautiful meadows, flowers and so on after death than they have here on earth. And we have to let go of all this. And because this needs to be done, we have to say that cravings continue. I think you can understand this? Answer: Yes, indeed. Cravings for the physical body and for life altogether continue after death, therefore. No longer hunger and thirst, for hat would need a stomach. We won't have a stomach then, hat will have been put into the coffin. But above all there is a craving after death still to see all the things we have seen during life. There is something else as well. After death we'll not be able to see things rightly in the spiritual way in the world we have entered, just as an infant does not see things fully here in the physical world. This is something that has to be learned. We have to grow into the world of the spirit. The first stage after death, a third of our past life, therefore is such that we are blind and deaf to the world of the spirit but still long for the physical world. This comes after the two or three days in which the individual who has died looks back on his life, as I have told you. And it is only when he has shed these longings that he will grow into the world of the spirit and gain perceptions in the spirit. He'll no longer have the craving for the physical world then. Anyone able to understand the inner life will therefore also understand what remains of our physical life. And the things that remain are not all pleasant, of course. If someone has been always wanting to beat up other people, the craving to beat people up will remain, and he must gradually get out of the habit. These are the things one comes to understand. In anthroposophy we always seek to understand what can be truly seen of the soul, being truly apparent. This is what it is about. As to your other question, the one concerning Christ Jesus, we'll consider it a little bit right now, today, so that you'll not feel dissatisfied. It does mean, however, that I have to go into history first. I have told you of all kinds of stages which the earth went through in very early times. Now the thing is like this. Conditions on earth today have at most existed for six to eight or nine thousand years, let's say 6,000 to 9,000 years. This also agrees with observations made by modern scientists, and I have mentioned this to you before. Before that, you would not have been able to go far from here and you would be in the glacier region, as it is called. Switzerland was then covered with glaciers all the way to here, in places where you can walk around today. Glaciers then flowed in valleys where rivers flow today. The Aare, the Reuss and so on, are thinned-down remnants of glacier rivers from those times. The time when Europe was largely under ice was preceded by a time that was very different. The earth is such — though you have to think in very large spans of time for this — that its surfaces are always going up and down, rising and falling. So if this is the sea, for example [drawing on the board], with land up there, this land is floating in the sea. All land actually floats in the sea. Can you imagine this? It is not that it goes down to the bottom; the land, all lands, float in the sea. The sea is also beneath the land. Now you'll say: 'But why does it not move around in that case, like a ship?' Let me first tell you something else. The land masses do indeed float in the sea, but imagine this is Great Britain, England [drawing on the board]. It is an island. It does indeed float in the sea, but close to Europe, and the distance does not change. Even from the modern scientific view, however, it has not always been like that, and there have been times when the water went over the land. England was then under the sea. Going across this little bit of sea you would, of course, reach bottom. So there have been times when England was beneath the sea. The situation is actually like this. If you study the soil in England you'll find some fossilized creatures in it and they are not all the same. If you look at a bit of English soil here, and then again higher up, the fossilized animals will be quite different, and quite different again if you go even higher up. You'll find four successive layers of fossilized animals in the English soil! Where do these fossilized animals come from? When the sea floods the land, the animals die. Their shells drop down and the animals are fossilized. If I find four different layers in a soil, the land must have been under the sea four times. It would have put down a layer each time. And looking at England we find that the land was up above and then down below again four times. England was below sea level four times, and it always rose again. Now you may ask: 'Why does such an island, which is really floating in water, not move about like a ship?' Well, it is not held in place by the earth. If only the earth were involved, you simply cannot imagine how things would be shaken up and thrown into confusion. England would hit the Norwegian coast one day and then be moved across to America, and so on, and the countries would all be thrown into confusion if it were only a matter for the earth. But it is not just a matter for the earth, for it is the relative positions of the stars which send out the forces that keep a land mass in a particular place. It thus is not the earth which does it. It is the relative positions of the stars. And it is always possible to show that when a land mass has changed position, the relative position of the stars has changed — not the planets, of course, but the fixed stars. Someone who does not want to know about this world is just like people who say the powers of thought come from the brain. If I leave footprints in soft soil and someone coming from Mars, if you like, says the footprints have been produced by the earth, with the earth pushing the sand up or pulling it down, that is not the way it is at all, for I have pressed down the soil from outside. And the convolutions of the brain have also come from outside, from the soul's thinking. And that is also how it is with the land masses on earth. They are held in place by the relative position of the stars. And so we find that the spirit has to be seen to be not only in the human beings on earth, and on the earth altogether, but in the whole of the universe. Now just think, gentlemen, people of earlier times actually knew these things, though in a very different way than we do today. Let me prove this to you. Several centuries before the birth of Christ a great philosopher called Plato lived in Greece 39 Plato (c. 427-347bc), Athenian philosopher. The passage about Solon, the Athenian lawgiver, is in the Timaeus dialogues, translated as Plato's Cosmology by F.M. Comford in 1937. He knew a great deal. He told how one of the wisest people of his nation, Solon, went to see an Egyptian once. The Egyptians were the older nation at the time, but the Greeks had more sense than we have, for though they greatly revered the Egyptians — as we shall see in a minute — they did not learn Egyptian, the ancient language of the Egyptians. The Greeks did not learn Egyptian! Our scholars all have to learn Greek! The Greeks had more sense. We do not copy what they aimed to do; but we copy their language. Our scholars are handicapped exactly because they do not grow into the things that would come to them naturally on earth but are deflected from this by having to find their way into a very ancient language. Well, people are now trying to change this in Switzerland. When our young people wanted to study medicine, they first had their minds warped by having to learn Greek. I am not saying this because I, too, had to learn it once. I truly love the Greek language. But it should be for people to learn who want to gain something from it, not because they want to be doctors or lawyers and later forget their Greek again. Plato told the story of Solon and the Egyptian. And this clever Egyptian said to him: 'You Greeks may be quite advanced, but you are still children, for you do not know anything about the land masses being drawn up above the sea all the time and then going down again, with the situation changing all the time.' The ancient Egyptians thus still knew it and the Greeks no longer did. Only Plato. He did know something about the fact that there had been land out there in the Atlantic Ocean, where ships go from Europe to America today, so that there had been a land connection between the west coast of Europe and the east coast of America. But the old truths have been forgotten. And this was because knowledge was then still at a more unconscious level. We have learned to think in an abstract way, which is something we need in order to be free. For those people in the past were not free; but they did know more. And Lessing, I told you, set great store by the fact that earlier people knew more than those who came later. And so we come to a point where we say to ourselves: 'It is true that in very early times, and because of the way they then were by nature, people knew that a spiritual principle is present all around. People knew this for quite a long time.' There was a Roman emperor in the fourth century after Christ, for instance, whose name was Julian. 40 Julian, Flavius Claudius Julianus, 'the Apostate' (c. 331-63). Concerning the triple sun, see also the lecture Rudolf Steiner gave in London on 24 April 1922 (in GA 211), Man's Life on Earth and in the Spiritual Worlds , tr. G. & M. Adams. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1952. He was taught by people who still had some of the Asian knowledge. And Julian said that there was not one sun but three. The first sun is the physical sun, the second a sun of soul, and the third a sun of spirit. The first is visible, the other two are invisible. This is what Julian said. Then something very strange happened. Julian has always been given a bad name in history, for he did not believe in Christianity. But he did believe in the things people knew before Christianity came. And one day, when he had to conduct a military campaign in Asia, he was murdered all of a sudden. It was a kind of assassination. But the assassination was done by people who hated him because he had still acquired the old knowledge. You just have to remember that at that time, in earlier days, the matter was handled very differently from the way it is today. The Egyptians were terribly clever, as I've told you. But they did not have the kind of writing we have; they wrote in pictures, with a word always looking similar to what it meant. And the scribes of ancient Egypt were always told that writing was a sacred task and that they had to copy things exactly. Do you know what would happen to someone who was careless enough to make an error in writing in pictures? He would be condemned to death! Now today we'd be really surprised if someone were condemned to death for a spelling error. But human history is different from the way we think. The ancient Egyptians were indeed both wise and cruel in some respects. So there has of course been some progress in human evolution. But though writing was so sacred to them, we cannot deny that they were indeed wise in other respects and knew about things that are only gradually emerging again today in anthroposophy, in a very different way. They actually dreamt it, and we know it. It was a completely different way. Now you see, Julian was right. It is indeed true that just as you have soul and spirit in your body, so does the sun have soul and spirit. Someone who knows the soul element will say so. He would not say that a Venus's fly-trap has a soul, for it would be nonsense to say that anything that moves in some way for a purpose also has a soul. He knows, however, that light has a soul when it shines, and moves in a soul way. This is something he perceives. And people thus knew that the sun had a living entity inside it. Now you know we are told that Jesus of Nazareth was born in Palestine at a particular time. You see, gentlemen, Jesus of Nazareth grew up in fairly simple circumstances — we can check the things written in the Gospels today, that they are true. He was the son of a carpenter, a joiner. That is correct. He grew up in a fairly simple way. He still had a great deal of the old wisdom. And it is also true that he was able to give very good answers to the scribes and scholars when he was 12 years old. It can still happen today that a boy of 12 gives more sensible answers than a scholar whose head has been turned by scholarship. It was then apparent what he was a greatly gifted child. He continued to grow up, and when he was 30 years old something suddenly changed in him. What happened in Jesus when he was 30 years old? When Jesus was 30 years old he suddenly understood something — he had of course been prepared for this by the great knowledge he'd had before. It was something people no longer knew at that time. Only a few unknown scholars still knew it from ancient wisdom, so that Julian was also able to discover it at a later time. He came to see, out of ancient knowledge, that the whole universe and the sun had soul and spirit. And the reality that lived in the universe filled him when he came to know it. When we know something, we do indeed have it. In those days things had to be taught to people in images. The things I am telling you today can only be put the way they are put since the fifteenth century. Before that, people did not have these concepts. They therefore said that a dove came down and he received the holy spirit into him. The situation was, of course, that anyone able to perceive it would know that something had happened to him. It would be put in this way, and in one of the Gospels it says: 'And lo a voice from heaven saying, This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.' 41 Matthew 3:17. Properly translated: 'This is my beloved son; today I have born him.' It means that the event which happened in his thirtieth year was truly seen as a second birth. The birth of Jesus was just the birth of a boy who was more gifted than others, but who did not yet have this feeling in him. This was felt to be something extraordinarily important. It was the baptism in the Jordan. There was something once that was a real problem to me. You do get such problems in science, gentlemen! One had the four Gospels, as you know, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And of course today everyone knows that they contradict each other. When you read the genealogy of Jesus at the beginning of Matthew's Gospel and compare it with the genealogy in Luke's Gospel, they are contradictory. People will say: 'They do not agree.' But they don't give it any further thought. At most they'll say: This was invented by one person, and this by another; one of them simply invented something different from the other, and we therefore have the contradiction.' But that is not how it is. It is like this. Goethe, for example, said of himself: 'I have my stature from my father, meaning he looked rather like him: I have my stature from my father, The serious approach to life; My cheerfulness comes from my mother, As does delight in making up stories. 42 Goethe, 'Zahme Xenien' VI, 32, in collected poetic works (in German). Well, perhaps Goethe was not yet able to make up stories when he was three; it may have been something he was able to do when he was nine. Then he had to say: 'Right, delight in making up stories comes from my mother; it has come to me from my mother.' I am telling you this because it will help you understand how my problem of the contradictions in the Gospels was resolved. I first of all took these two Gospels, the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. Now if one does not just carelessly say they are inventions, no one can know why the two are contradictory. I therefore did a spiritual scientific investigation to discover what lies behind it and found that it was not just one boy who was born but that two Jesus children were born. Both were called Jesus. That need not really surprise us, for if a boy is called Joseph in Austria, no one will be surprised if another boy, born at the same time, is also called Joseph. It need not surprise us if two boys are called Seppi (short for Joseph) or Francis. And so one need not be surprised that two boys were both called Jesus at that time. Two boys were in fact born who were both called Jesus. 43 See Steiner, R., Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity (GA 15), tr. S. Desch, New York: Anthroposophic Press 1992. They lived together up to their twelfth year. And then something strange happened. Because they had lived together, the gifts which one of them had suddenly appeared in the other. Just as a son can inherit gifts from his mother, so did the one Jesus child inherit the gifts of the other, for instance. And the Jesus child whose gifts the other one had inherited did not continue to live, he died at 12 years of age; he died soon after. One of them thus remained, and because he was deeply touched by the fact that the other one was departing from this life, the wisdom of the other boy came alight in him. And it was only because of this that he could impress the scholars with his brilliance. The parents could have said: 'Where does he get it from?' An explanation can be found if we accept that the soul principle also has an influence. And such soul influences simply exist. The one Jesus child did not have wisdom until he reached his twelfth year. The other one died, and his wisdom had come to the other Jesus child, partly due to the shock of the other boy dying, partly because they had been friends. And this Jesus went through the baptism in the Jordan. The truth is that two Jesus children were born, not one. One of them died in his twelfth year, and the other suddenly woke up from the shock and then had the wisdom of the other boy. And you then find that one of the evangelists, Matthew, wrote of the childhood of the one Jesus child, whilst the other, Luke, wrote of the other Jesus child. The two therefore are in agreement. I have not thought this up. It is the result of research work. And I am therefore speaking of two Jesus children because I have knowledge that the others do not have. You can see from this that in the science of the spirit we apply the same principles as in natural science, saying that if there are causes, effects will also show themselves. We do not simply say: 'Well, two people simply invented something. The one Jesus child, in Matthew, is an invention, and the other Jesus child, in Luke, is an invention.' At the time when the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written, there was no thought of inventing things like this. People spoke in images; but they did not invent things, for they took things very seriously, so seriously that when a scribe wrote something that was not correct he would have been condemned to death a few centuries earlier in Egypt. We should not just carelessly say that people in earlier times invented things. They put it in images. But it would never have entered their heads to invent anything. Only an ignorant person would say that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are probably inventions. Yet this is what present-day scholars and theologians are saying. They cannot help themselves but have to admit that there are contradictions. But if one knows that there were two Jesus children, one of them the Jesus child of Matthew's Gospel, the other the Jesus child of Luke's Gospel, the matter is made clear in the best possible way. Now there comes Mr Hauer. He is a visiting lecturer at Tübingen University and elsewhere. He's against anthroposophy. Today it does not profit you to speak for anthroposophy, but it does certainly profit you to speak against anthroposophy. Mr Hauer has therefore come along and found this to be something strange and peculiar. Well, gentlemen, it certainly is strange and peculiar because no one has discovered it before. It is of course peculiar for me to say that there was not one Jesus child but two, and one of them died in his twelfth year. Of course it is peculiar. It is not at all surprising that it is peculiar. But it is peculiar only because it is something no one else has said before. Because of this, Hauer finds it all strange and peculiar. You find this on every page of his book. On the other hand you will find this: 'Well now, Steiner does not say anything that has not been known before.' Well, gentlemen, Mr Hauer finds anything he did not know before peculiar. He complains about it. On the basis of things he has read here and there — the old wisdom has existed, and you will of course find it written down everywhere today; I do not read it up here and there but it comes together — he concludes: 'Well, Steiner is not saying anything people have not been saying before.' That is how you find yourself at the mercy of these people. If something has to be said somewhere they will say: 'He is not saying anything new.' To write a book on geometry I would of course have to include the Pythagorean theorem. Pythagoras discovered this 600 years before Christ was born. I may have a number of new things in the book, and I must also have the Pythagorean theorem. I'd prove it in a slightly different way today, but it would be there in the book. Surely people cannot complain if something that has been forgotten is found again! And so it is true that many of the things which are today, of course, said in the science of the spirit can be found in the works of the ancient Gnostics, who were the writers in an earlier time. They will have put it differently, for it was a different situation then. Gnostics still existed at the time when Christ was on earth, and also after that. They wrote down such ancient wisdom, but this did not come from science but from ancient knowledge, so this was different from anthroposophy. People will compare what is written in anthroposophical works with Gnostic works. It is a little bit the way it is also found in the work of the Gnostics, because it is true. And these people will then say: 'Well, he's not saying anything that the others did not also say.' But when it comes to the two Jesus children, Hauer is, of course, unable to say: 'Here Steiner has discovered something which the others also knew.' In this case, he simply has no notion of anyone ever knowing this before. The whole book — I've not yet cut the pages — but anything I have seen of it so far is teeming with this kind of contradiction. If you compare one page with another, you find nothing really hangs together. But that is what modern scholars do. On the one hand they say: Others have said this before, many times.' And on the other hand they'll say: 'He's not saying anything new. We ahead’ knew all about it.' Well, if they've known all about it already, why then are they complaining? And on the other hand, if there is anything they did not know before they find it unbelievable. But you see, when I had found this, truly finding it entirely by means of spiritual research, that there were two Jesus children who lived together until their twelfth year, I knew no more than that it is a fact. Then one day in Turin we saw a painting. 44 Described by Hella Krause-Zimmer in her book Die zwei Jesusknaben in der bildenden Kunst , S. 157 ff. and 159 ff., Stuttgart 1997. This painting is rather unusual. It shows the mother of Jesus and two boys. One of them was not John, for we all know what John is like from all the paintings that show both Jesus and John. The two boys in the picture look fairly similar and yet also not similar. It is quite evident that these are two young friends. If one has already discovered that there were two Jesus children, one will realize what this painting tells us. It was painted at a relatively late date; but an Italian painter put two Jesus children in a painting at a time when people still knew that there had been two Jesus children. If Hauer knew that this had still been the case, from ancient knowledge, he would now say: 'It simply means that Steiner has seen the painting in Turin.' He would say he had known it all along. And he would go on to say: 'Steiner is not telling us anything new; he always only says things we've known anyway.' That's how people are. It really is quite a terrible thing to consider the contradictions people come up with, evidently silly things, to fight anthroposophy. On the one hand the things I say are supposed to be invented. All right, let us assume it is an invention of mine. But the same person then surely cannot say in the same book: 'What he says is nothing new!' He insists that I have invented those things and objects to my doing so. And then he goes on to say that others have known them before. What these people do is simply crack-brained. Yet if you truly approach the Christ event and investigate it the way you normally investigate facts, it becomes very clear that the Jesus child's tremendous gifts had come from give-and-take between the two boys. Let me prove to you that such give-and-take is possible, with other people not realizing that it is taking place. You see — I am going to tell you of one such case, but there are many such cases — there was a little girl once who had older brothers and sisters. Those brothers and sisters had learned to talk quite properly. The little girl did not learn to talk properly at first. When she did start to talk — which was a bit later than with other children — she was talking, true enough. But she spoke a language which no adult could understand. She'd say 'papazzo', for instance, and when she used this word she meant the dog. And so she invented her own names for all the animals. These are scientific facts. Those names cannot be found anywhere else. After a time the girl had a new little brother. And the little brother very soon learned that language from his sister. And they would talk to one another in that language. The little brother died when he was about 12 years old, and the girl got out of the habit of that language and learned to talk like everyone else. She married later and was a perfectly ordinary middle-class woman. She'd tell people the story. It was something she had gone through herself. A fact. The two children communicated in that language, talking to one another in a language which no one else understood. Gentlemen, that may be the greatest wisdom! Only those two understood one another and had an understanding about this. You can see from this how one individual is influenced by another. So why should it not have been the case that the one Jesus child, who died when he was 12, knew something which no one else understood? If you know the facts, you see it again and again. Nothing is said here, therefore, that cannot also be most eminently scientific. People who will not accept that it is scientific don't always get their facts together. Someone who knows that such things happen, that two children speak a language which no adult can understand, and share something in mind and spirit in which the adults have no part, will understand everything I am saying about the two Jesus children up to their twelfth year. And it is not surprising that this was an unusual thing. It does not happen every day. And it only happened once in world history in the form in which it happened then — with illumination then coming to this individual when he was 30 years old. Now you see, there the Christ story becomes true science, true insight. And here one cannot help oneself; it changes of its own accord when insight is gained. Now you might say: 'All right, then, Jesus had been illuminated when he was 12 years old by the other boy, the one who died. But when he was 30, he had again suddenly become a different person.' The evangelist put it in words by writing: 'A dove came down upon him from heaven.' 45 Matthew 3:16. Yes, gentlemen, the fact is that he did become another person. So what happened there? I have told you that when a child is born you first of all have an embryo. The spirit of he universe has to influence this embryo. No wonder that he spirit of the universe has an influence when it even has an influence on the island that is England, as we have seen. The event that happened for Jesus in his thirtieth year cannot be explained if we just consider the earth. Just as a human being comes into existence on fertilization, with one thing influencing another, so did the whole universe have an influence on the 30-year-old Jesus at that time, fertilizing him with a soul and spirit principle, and he then became Jesus Christ, or, better, Christ Jesus. For what does it mean? Christ is the name for someone who has been illuminated. And Jesus was a common first name in Palestine, just as people are called Seppi in Austria today, meaning Joseph, or in Switzerland, and so on, where you find such names in every family. Many were called Jesus, therefore, and he was called the Christ because there had been this illumination. Yes, gentlemen, if you read my book Christianity as Mystical Fact , 46 Steiner, R., Christianity as Mystical Fact (GA 8), tr. A. Welbum, Hudson: Anthroposophic Press 1997. you will find proof there that this illumination had already been brought about artificially before that for some people, only to a lesser degree. They would then be called the wise ones of the mysteries. The difference between people trained to have the greatest wisdom in dim antiquity, the difference between them and Jesus Christ was that those wise ones of the mysteries were taught by others in schools which were then called the mysteries. In Jesus it happened of its own accord. It therefore was a different process. In the ancient mysteries, people who achieved the greatest wisdom were known as 'Christ'. It is just like today when you need not be surprised if someone who has been studying until he was 25 — before that he was plain Joseph Miller, now he is suddenly Dr Miller. That is how people became 'Christ' in the old mysteries, though not exactly in such a simple way; for you can of course be an absolute nincompoop and still have the doctor title at 25. That was not possible in the ancient mysteries; there it was deep, deep wisdom. Then people became 'Christ'. It was the title given to the wisest people, just as today the doctor title is given after some degree of study. Only in those days, if things went the way they should, it was genuine wisdom. And this happened of its own accord in the case of the Christ. It means that something which was otherwise given from the earth, by people, was given from the wide expanse of the cosmos. It only happened once. World history then took another turn. And it cannot be denied by anyone, not even someone who is not a Christian, that world history took a different turn then. The Romans did not take account of it, for they did not know it. Christianity was founded over yonder in Asia by Christ Jesus. At the same time the Romans progressed from an ancient republic to being an empire, and they persecuted the Christians. The Christians had to make catacombs for themselves down below, underground. There they thought about the nature of their Christianity. Up above ground, what did people do there? They had circuses, tying human beings, their slaves, to pillars and burning them to provide a spectacle for the people sitting in the circus. That was up above ground. And down below in the catacombs the Christians lived their wisdom, religion, which at that time was for people who lived in slavery. Religion simply means union — religere , to bind, to unite. The Christians had their religion below ground. And what happened a few centuries later? The Romans were no longer there in the old way. No one was any more looking at burning people just for pleasure; that had gone. The Christians had taken their place. And that is also how it will be. People who talk like Dr Hauer today, the man you mentioned, will without doubt be swept away. And something which today has to be active in catacombs — not physically so, but in spirit — will have its effect. But you have to understand that it is genuine science; and how it annoys people who are not learning much today that something like this is coming up! I'll be able to take this further when I am back again. But I think you will have got a general idea of the way in which this is going.

From Limestone to Lucifer

Sleeping and waking — life after death —the Christ spirit—the two Jesus children

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA349/English/RSP1999/19230421p02.html

Dornach

21 Apr 1923

GA349-11

Good morning, gentlemen, have you thought of something we might discuss today? Question: Perhaps Dr Steiner would say something about the true nature of the Christ, Ahriman and Lucifer in relationship to human beings? Rudolf Steiner: For this we must consider the true nature of man from another point of view, otherwise it might sound like superstition to you. Basing myself on the things we have already been discussing, let me now say the following. You see, gentlemen, today the general thinking is that the human being is the same all the way through. That is not how it is, for the human being is really all the time in a condition where he comes alive and dies again. We don't only come to life when we are born and die when we die. We are all the time dying and coming alive again, as I have also told you on other occasions. Now if we look at the head, for instance, the inside of the head really consists completely of what we call 'nerve substance' inside. As you know, the nerves are otherwise just threads running through the body, but the head is all nerve inside. We might show it like this in a drawing [Fig. 27]: head, forehead; there head is all nerve inside, a thick mass of nerve matter. Some of this nerve matter also goes down the spinal marrow, and then the nerve threads go all through the body. Matter that occurs only in threads throughout the body is thus a uniform mass in the head. That is the nerve mass. If you were to look at the inside of the human belly, you still have many nerves in there. There you have the solar plexus, as it is called. There's still a lot of nerve in there. But in the arms and hands and in the legs and feet the nerves are mere threads. If you now look at something else again, the blood vessels, you'll find that they are fairly delicate in the head. On the other hand the blood vessels are particularly well developed in the heart region; and there are also thick blood vessels in the limbs. We are therefore able to say that on the one hand we have the nerve system, and on the other the blood system. Now the situation is that we are born again out of the blood every day and every hour. Blood always means renewal. If we only had blood in us, therefore, we would be like creatures that grow all the time, getting bigger, creatures that are fresh and new, and so on. But you see, gentlemen, if we were nothing but nerve, consisting only of nerves, we would all the time be tired and worn; we would really be dying all the time. We therefore have two opposite principles in us — the nervous system that makes us get old all the time, actually handing us over to death all the time, and the blood system which is connected with the nutrition system and lets us grow young all the time, and so on. We can take this matter, of which I have just spoken, further. As you know, some people change in old age in such a way that we have to say they are calcified. Calcification, sclerosis develops. When people's arteries get furred up, as we say, when the walls of the blood vessels calcify, people easily reach a point where they can no longer move so well. And if the calcification gets really severe, one has a stroke, as we say. One has a stroke. This stroke, which people get, simply means that their blood vessels calcify and no longer stand up to the strain. What has come over someone who calcifies, who grows sclerotic? You see, it is as if the walls of his blood vessels want to turn into nerves. That is the strange thing. The nerves have to die all the time. The nerves have to be in a condition throughout life, as it were, in which the blood vessels must never be. The blood vessels have to be fresh. The nerves must all the time be inclined to die off. If someone's nerves get too soft, not sufficiently calcified, if I may put it like this, he'll go mad. So you see, nerves must not be like blood vessels and blood vessels must not be like nerves. This really compels us to say that man has two principles in him. One is the nerve principle. It really makes him old all the time. We really get a little bit older all the time from morning to evening. During the night this freshens up again, something that comes from the blood. And that is how it goes all the time, like the pendulum swing of a clock — grow old, grow young, grow old, grow young. Of course, if we are awake from morning to evening, we'll get older; and when we sleep from evening till morning, we'll get younger again. But there's always a little bit left over. The night does improve the situation; but a little bit of every day's getting older is left over. And when the sum of this gets big enough, the person will truly die. That is the way it is. So we have two things in the human being that work in opposite directions — growing old and growing young. Now we can also look at this with regard to the soul. I have so far spoken of the body. You see, if getting young grows too powerful in a person, he'll get pleurisy or pneumonia. The point is that things which are really quite good, which are excellent within their limits, become illness if they get too powerful. Sickness in human beings simply means that something which they always need is getting too powerful. A temperature develops when the getting-young process grows much too powerful in us. We cannot cope with this. We begin to be too fresh with the whole of our body. We then have a temperature, or pleurisy, or pneumonia. Now we can also look at this from the point of view of the soul. You see, people can also dry up in their souls, or else get into the kind of state which in the physical body would be a temperature. People have some character traits — we don't like to hear about them, because so many people have them today — where they become pedantic, become philistines. Philistines do exist. You get to be a pedantic philistine. And if you are a teacher, someone who should be really fresh and lively, you get to be as dry as dust. And you see, this is the same as when our blood vessels calcify and dry up. We can also dry up in our souls. And on the other hand we may also grow soft in our souls. This means we get to be zealous, mystical — or theosophists! What is it that we want in that case? We don't want to think properly. We want to reach out to all the world with our powers of fantasy and not think properly. This is the same as the temperature you get in the body. To become a mystic, a theosophist, is to develop a temperature in your soul. But we must always have the two things in us. We are quite unable to have insight unless we use fantasy, and we are quite unable to somehow bring things together in our work unless we are a little bit pedantic, keeping records of all kinds of things, and so on. Too much of this, and we are pedantic, we are philistines. Getting the balance right means the soul is as it should be. The point is that there is always something or other that has to be at the right level in a human being. If it gets too powerful it will make us sick in body or soul. It is also like this with the spirit, gentlemen. We cannot sleep for ever but have to wake up occasionally. Just think of the jolt it is to wake up. Just imagine the way it is with sleep. You lie there, knowing nothing about the world around you. If you're having a good sleep, someone may even come and tickle you and you won't wake up. Now think of the difference when you wake up, seeing everything around you. That is a big difference. Now when you wake up — yes, we must have the power to wake up in us; but if it is too great, if one is always waking up, if one can't sleep at all, for example, the power to wake up is too strong in us. Now there are also people who cannot ever wake up properly. Some people are always in a dim, dreamy state of mind, wanting to sleep all the time. They cannot wake up. We need the ability to go to sleep properly; yet this ability should not be too great. Otherwise we sleep for ever and never wake up at all. We are thus able to say that different conditions can be seen at three levels in human beings. The first level is physical. On the one hand we have our nervous system. This shows a constant tendency to harden, to calcify. So we say: physically hardening calcification You see, you are all of you at an age — with the exception of just one who is sitting there among you — that you must have your nervous system a little bit calcified. For if you still had the nervous system today the way you had it when you were six months old, you would all be mad. You can't have that kind of soft nervous system any more. People who are mad have a child-level nervous system. So we have to have the power to harden, to calcify, in us. And on the other hand we must have the power to soften, to grow younger. The two powers need to be in balance. physically hardening softening calcification growing young If we look at the soul level, we are able to say that the soul equivalent of hardening is pedantry, being philistine, materialistic, with a dry intellect. All this needs to be understood. We have to be a bit of a philistine or we'd be madcaps. We have to be a bit pedantic or we would not keep our things in proper order. We'd hang our jackets in the stove or in the chimney rather than in the wardrobe. So it's not a bad thing to be a bit of a philistine and a bit pedantic, but of course not too much of it. We also have the power of fantasy, the power to be dreamers, mystics, theosophists. If all of these get too much, these powers, we will be dreamers, we'll live in fantasies. This must not happen. But on the other hand we also should not be completely without fantasy. I once knew someone who hated anything by way of fantasy. He never went to the theatre, for instance, let alone the opera, for he'd say none of it was true. He had no fantasy at all. But someone who has no fantasy at all will be very dry, sneaking through life, and not a real, proper human being. So again things must not go to extremes. in the soul pedantry philistinism materialism dry intellect fantasy dreaminess mysticism theosophy If we now look at the spiritual side of things, we have the power of hardening in waking up. Waking up, we firmly take hold of the body, using our limbs. And the power which at the physical level causes softening, getting younger, we have here on going to sleep. Then we sink into dreams. We no longer have our bodies in hand. in the spirit waking up going to sleep We can say that human beings are constantly in danger of falling into the one extreme or the other, either becoming subject to too much softening or going into excessive hardening. If you have a magnet you know it attracts iron. We speak of two kinds of magnetism in the magnet. And that is true. We have positive magnetism and negative magnetism. The one attracts the magnetic needle, the other repels it. They are opposites. You'll agree that when it comes to physical, bodily things, we are not afraid to call things by their names. We need names. I have now described something to you in body, soul and spirit which every one of you can perceive for himself, something we always see, and about which you can all be quite clear in your minds. But we need names. When we have positive magnetism, we have to understand that this is not the iron; it is something in the iron. There is something invisible in the iron. Someone who will not admit that there is something invisible in the piece of iron will say: 'You are daft! Iron is supposed to have a magnetism in it? This is a horseshoe. I use it to shoe my horse.' I think you'll agree that someone who'll not admit that there is something invisible in the iron and uses it just to shoe his horse is an idiot. You can also use this horseshoe for quite a different purpose if it has magnetism inside it. Now you see, something invisible, something we cannot perceive with the senses, is present in the hardening process. And this invisible, supersensible principle, which one can observe if one has the gift for it, is called ahrimanic. The powers that want to make the human being into a kind of corpse all the time are ahrimanic. If only the ahrimanic powers were there, we would all the time turn into corpses, we would be pedantic, human beings turned to stone. We would wake up all the time and be unable to sleep. The powers that soften us and make us younger, taking us into fantasy, are the luciferic powers. We need the luciferic powers so that we may not become living corpses. But if only luciferic powers were present, well, then we would be children for the whole of our lives. The luciferic powers are needed in the world, so that we do not become old people at three years of age. The ahrimanic powers are needed in the world, so that we do not remain children for ever. These two opposing powers must be present in the human being. Now it is important that these two powers must be in balance. How is the balance held? Nothing of these two powers should gain the upper hand. You see, it is now the year 1923, as you know. This whole time from the beginning of the century until 1923 has really been such that humanity is in danger of falling prey to the ahrimanic powers. Just consider — we are educated in an ahrimanic way today, unless there is a science of the spirit. Just think — our children go to primary school where they have to learn things that must seem very odd to them, things that cannot possibly interest them. I have mentioned this before. They have always seen their father. He looks like this — hair, ears, eyes — and then they are supposed to learn this: father [writing on the board] is their father. It is something quite alien to them. And that is how it is with all the things children are supposed to learn initially in primary school. They are not the least bit interested. And that is, of course, the reason why we must establish sensible schools again, where children may first of all learn things that would interest them. If the teaching were to continue the way it is done at the moment, people would grow old very early, for it is ahrimanic. This makes people old. The way children are educated at school today — it is all ahrimanic. The way it has been in these 1900 years is that the whole of human evolution has gone in the ahrimanic direction. It was different before. If you go back to, let us say, the time from the year 8000 bc to the turning-point of time, things were different then. People then faced the danger of not being able to grow old. They did not have schools in those early times the way we have today. Schools were only for people who had already reached a respectable age and were meant to be real scholars. They had schools for those people. There were no schools for children then. They would learn from life. They would learn the things they saw. And so they did not have schools, nor was any kind of effort made to teach the children anything that was alien to them. The danger with this was that people might become utterly luciferic, dreamers, in short, luciferic. And they did. Much wisdom existed in those early times, as I have told you. But this luciferic principle had to be controlled, otherwise they might have gone on all day telling each other ghost stories! That was something people were particularly fond of then. We are thus able to say that in very early times, from about the year 8000 bc to the turning-point of time, it was a luciferic age. And then came an ahrimanic age. Let us take a look at the luciferic age. You see, the people who were the scholars in those early times had some problems. At that time scholars would live in places that were like towers. The tower of Babylon about which the Bible tells us was one of those buildings. That is where the scholars lived. These scholars would say: 'Yes, of course, we he fortunate. For fantasy also wants to take over our minds. We always want to go into ghostly, luciferic things. But we have our instruments. With them we look into the stars and see how they move. This puts a rein on our fantasy.' You see, if I look at a star and want it to go a particular way, it won't do it. So then my own fantasy is reined in. The scholars therefore knew that they could use the phenomena of the world to keep a rein on their fantasy. Or they would have instruments for physics. They would know: 'If I were to think that burning a very small piece of wood will give me a huge fire, I can imagine this, but when I do it in reality the small piece of wood will only give me a small fire.' That was really the purpose of those ancient schools — to keep a rein on the lively powers of imagination those people had. And their problem was that they would say: 'Yes, but there are all the other people who cannot be scholars.' And so they made their teachings public, sometimes honestly so and sometimes in a dishonest way. These are the ancient religious teachings, and they were certainly based on great knowledge. Only it would sometimes happen, of course, that the priests went astray. And the result is that the dishonest teachings — the honest ones have largely been lost — have come down to posterity. That was the way in which a rein was kept on the luciferic element. As to how things are in the ahrimanic way — this you know. Present-day science is going more and more ahrimanic. The whole of our science today is really designed to make us all dried up. For in this science people really only know the physical world, which is the calcified, material world. And this is the ahrimanic element in our present civilization. Between the two is the principle which we call Christian in the true sense. You see, gentlemen, people do not really know the truly Christian spirit today. If you take the element known as 'Christian' in this world today, this is indeed something we would have to fight, that is obvious. But the spirit of whom I also said a few things the last time we met, who was born at the turning-point of time and lived for 33 years — this individual was not the way people say he was. His true aim was to teach the whole of humanity the things that will make it possible to create a balance between the ahrimanic and luciferic elements. And to be Christian is indeed to look for the balance between the ahrimanic and luciferic elements. You really cannot be Christian the way people often say it is supposed to be. What does it mean, for example, to be Christian in a physical sense? To be Christian in a physical way is to learn things about the human being. A human being can fall ill. He gets pleurisy. What does it mean when we say he gets pleurisy? It means there is too much of the luciferic element in him. If I know this, that there is too much of the luciferic in him, I have to say: 'If I have some scales [Fig. 28] and they shoot up too much on this side, I have to take away some weights. If it goes down too much here, I must add weights there. And so I now say to myself that when someone has pleurisy the luciferic element is too powerful and the ahrimanic too weak. I have to add something ahrimanic to balance it out. So let us assume I say to myself, quite rightly: 'This person has pleurisy; how can I help him?' I take a piece of birch wood, let us say. Birch wood grows actively in spring. And birch wood is something really good, especially the part near the bark; the bark has excellent powers of growth. I kill these by making the birch wood into charcoal. So what have I made of that fresh birch wood that was always growing young again? I made it into birch charcoal, something ahrimanic. And I then make the birch charcoal into a powder 47 Carbo Betulae, Weleda Co. and give this to the person who has too much of the luciferic element in him with his pleurisy. I have then added the ahrimanic element to the luciferic of which he has too much. You see, I have made things balance out. Just as I have to add something when the scales go up too much on one side, so I have added birch charcoal when there is too much of the luciferic element in that pleurisy. I made the birch wood mineral by turning it into charcoal. It has been made ahrimanic. Or let us assume someone gets to look so tired, inactive, that I have to say to myself: 'He'll have a stroke next.' He has too much of the ahrimanic element in him. I then have to put something luciferic into him, to balance things out. What am I going to do in this case? Now you see if I have a plant — there's the root [Fig. 29]. You know the root is hard. It contains many salts. That is not luciferic. The stem and the leaves are not luciferic either. But if I go higher up I come to a scented, powerfully scented flower. The scent wants to escape, just as fantasy wants to take wing. Otherwise I'd not be able to smell it. I then take the juice of the flower. 49 Fresh lily of the valley flowers are expressed and processed by special methods. That is luciferic. I give it in a suitable way and so balance out the ahrimanic element, and I can cure the person. What is done in modern medicine? In modern medicine, things are tried out. A chemist one day discovers acetylphenetidin. 49 Former name of phenacetin. I need not tell you what it is; it is a complex substance. People now take this to a hospital. There they have, say, 30 patients. All 30 patients are given acetylphenetidin, their temperatures taken and recorded, and if there's any result the substance is considered medicinal. But people have no idea at all as to what is really happening in the human body. We cannot look inside the human body. It is only if we know that pleurisy means there's too much of the luciferic element and one has to add something ahrimanic, or that a stroke means there's too much of the ahrimanic element and one has to add something luciferic — then that is the right way. This is something humanity lacks today. The human race is not Christian enough in this sense, because the Christian element creates the balance. You see, I am showing you why purely physical healing can be something Christian. It is Christian Decause a balance is sought. You see, this is also what I wanted to show in the wooden figure which is to be set up in the building? 50 The Representative of Man Between Lucifer and Ahriman , at the Goetheanum in Dornach. Up above is Lucifer, the luciferic element, all the things that are feverish, fantasy, going to sleep in human beings. Lower down is everything that wants to harden, the ahrimanic element. And between the two is the Christ. It is this which helps us to discover what we should do — in medicine, in science, in sociology and everywhere. And it is part of being human today that we understand that human nature has both luciferic and ahrimanic elements in it. But what do people understand of these things? A pastor who was very famous in Basel and beyond, his name was Frohnmeyer, 51 D.L. Johannes Frohnmeyer (1850-1921). The passage in question from Die theosophische Bewegung, ihre Geschichte, Darstellung und Beurteilung ; S. 107, Stuttgart 1920, reads: 'A 9- metre-high statue of the ideal human being is currently being carved in Dornach, with 'luciferic' traits in its upper and animal characteristics in its lower parts' (omitted from the 2nd edition). Frohnmeyer took this information from an article written by pastor Heinrich Nidecker-Roos (Christlicher Volksbote aus Basel 1920; 88: 23: 179 f., 9 June 1920) without checking it, and without giving the source, as if this was something he had established himself, rather than go to Domach from nearby Basel and look at the sculpture himself. See also lectures given on 16 January and 6 February 1921, in GA 203 S. 76 ff. and 193 ff. (not available in English). once gave a lecture. He did not take the trouble to go and look at the figure, but he had read in someone else's work — who may not have seen it either, but just copied from someone else again — that a figure is being made here, luciferic at the top, the Christ in the middle, and ahrimanic down below. It is three figures, one above the other, and, as you know, there are in fact even more of them. Ahriman twice, Lucifer also twice over. This man Frohnmeyer, however, knew it so well that he wrote: 'Steiner is producing something quite terrible out there in Dornach — a Christ figure that shows luciferic traits up above and animal-like traits down below.' Well, the Christ figure has no luciferic traits at all but a completely human head. But he got it mixed up. He thought it was a Christ figure that has luciferic features up above and animal-like characteristics down below. In actual fact the Christ figure is not at all finished yet down below, it is still a block of wood! That is how this Christian pastor seeking the truth has described the matter, and the whole world now says it must be true, for after all it is a pastor who has written it. It is difficult to cope with this if people do not want to understand, do not want to grasp things. They always run to the pastors because they believe what they say. You have here an example of falsehood being told, an example that is so miserable that one simply cannot think of anything worse. And these people do have strange views. Pastor Frohnmeyer has written this. At the time when he wrote it, Dr Boos was still here at the Goetheanum. 52 Boos, Roman (1889-1952), lawyer and social scientist, active representative of anthroposophy, leading figure in the threefold movement in Switzerland. As you know, Dr Boos does tend to go at things a bit with a cudgel. You may have your own views as to whether one should swing a cudgel or a hand-brush. The hand-brush is softer, more luciferic, a cudgel is hard, more ahrimanic. So the question is, which should one use? Well, he told Frohnmeyer the truth, telling him the truth more with a cudgel, as it were. 53 In a publication called Die Hetze gegen das Goetheanum , S. 106, Domach 1920, which included a lecture by Rudolf Steiner on the truth about anthroposophy and defending it against untruthfulness, and Dr Boos's article. So who gets a letter from Frohnmeyer? I do! I get a long letter from Dr Frohnmeyer in which he asks me to get Dr Boos not to be so rude to Dr Frohnmeyer. 54 Letter dated 23 January 1921. Now just think what kind of ideas people have. It is hard to believe what kind of ideas they have. They speak ill of someone, as I have told you, and then they turn to one, asking one to proceed against someone who is putting the matter straight. This is the problem. The public, especially the middle class public, are not inclined to make the least effort to see things for themselves but simply accept what they are told. It must be right because this is someone who holds an official position. And this is why our civilization is so tremendously frivolous and so mean in many things. The situation is that the whole way of thinking people have today must get on to a track where it is possible to see again that all this talk about Christian things will not do. We have to be objective about it. We have to know, therefore, that medicine can be Christian if we know the following, for instance. Let us say someone shows quite clearly that people who have regularly been eating sugar, perhaps even as children, get cancer of the liver — this means the liver turns ahrimanic. We then have to know what to use to treat it, and that is the corresponding luciferic element. 55 Rudolf Steiner suggested using a medicament made from mistletoe grown on poplars to treat cancer of the liver. Just as we can tell the difference between hot and cold, so we must tell the difference between becoming luciferic and becoming ahrimanic. You know that if one's limbs have grown stiff, one has become ahrimanic. Hot compresses, warm cloths put on them will be the luciferic element to counteract this. And so we really have to know in all areas, and in all situations, what is the matter with a person. And then medicine will be Christian. Education, the school system, must also become Christian. This means we have to teach in such a way that the children do not turn into old people in their earliest youth. So we must let them start at school with things that are familiar to them, in which they are interested, and so on. You see, if we take the matter in this way, then using such terms as ahrimanic, luciferic, Christian has nothing superstitious about it but is completely scientific. And that is indeed what it is. How did the historical evolution go? Well, you know, there was a time from the earliest Christian times until the twelfth, thirteenth centuries, and even the fourteenth century, when Christians were not allowed to read the Bible. It was forbidden to read the New Testament. Only priests were allowed to read it. The faithful in general were not allowed to read it. Why? Well, it was in fact because the clergy knew that the Bible has to be read in the right way. The Bible was created at a time when people did not think the way people do today; they still thought in images. And so one has to read the Bible in the right way. If people were to read the Bible without being properly prepared for this, they would discover that there are four Gospels in it, the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John. These actually contradict each other. Why do they contradict each other? Well, gentlemen, you have to understand this the right way. Anyone who is even halfways not a fool would have realized that they contradicted each other even in the fourth or fifth century. Of course they contradict one another. But just imagine I have taken a frontal photo of Mr Burle and show it to all of you. Well, you'll all recognize him from his picture. Then someone comes along and takes a photograph from the side, so that one sees the profile. I'd show you this and you'd all say: 'That's not Mr Burle, he looks quite different; you've got to see him from in front, then he looks like that. But the picture you are showing me that was taken from the side — that's not Mr Burle!' Well, it is Mr Burle, but we see him from two different angles. And if I were to take a photo of him from behind you'd certainly say: 'But he does have a nose as well, and not just hair!' But that is because of the different angles. Now if we 'photograph' spiritual events from different sides, they will also look different. One simply has to know that the Gospels were written from four different points of view. They therefore have to contradict each other, just as a picture of Mr Burle looks different if it is taken from the front, from the side or from the back. Now, however, a time has come when people have said: 'No such thing! To prepare before reading the Gospels! We don't prepare for anything any more today. We let ourselves be prepared at school; there we let ourselves be broken in. But once we've been broken in, once we are beyond the age of 14 or 15 or so, then there's nothing to prepare any more, then we have to understand everything.' Well, that's the general view today. So why should this not also go so far that people see the Goetheanum and see it to be a place where no children go to be prepared but really old fellows with bald heads — they still want to be prepared. That must be a house of fools! You see, that's what they say, for they cannot imagine that people still want to learn. That's the way things are today. And we have to be clear in our minds that to read something like the Gospels we really have to prepare for this first, for it is meant to be in images. You know, anyone wanting to read something written in Chinese today would first have to learn the script. To take the Gospels just the way they are written would of course be nonsense, just as Chinese writing is all scribbles unless one is able to look at it the right way. But when one understands these things rightly, one discovers that with anything Christian it is always a matter of: 'You must learn to find the right balance between the ahrimanic and luciferic elements, and not let one side of the scale rise and the other go down.' And so we anthroposophists are also not ashamed to speak of the Christian element in this sense. In anthroposophy it is made very clear that being Christian does not mean having the name of Christ on one's lips all the time, and so on. One of the reproaches directed at anthroposophy is that so little is said about the Christ. But I always say: 'You see, the name of Christ is not used all the time in anthroposophy because the Ten Commandments are taken seriously. And you talk such a lot of the Christ because you do not even know the commandment that you shall not use the Lord's name in vain.' When a pastor preaches in a Christian church today, the name of the Christ is on his lips all the time. It should only be used if one truly understands what it is about. And this, you see, is the difference with anthroposophy, which is intended to be truly Christian, not superstitious or sanctimonious, but truly scientific, and in these terms indeed wholly scientific. And so the event that came between the earlier luciferic and the later ahrimanic times, the event that happened in Palestine, is in anthroposophy considered tc be the key event in world history. When people rightly understand once again what happened on this earth in that event, they will really find themselves again, as we might put it. Today people are really quite beyond themselves with their utterly external science. We'll talk more about this when we meet at 9 o'clock next Wednesday. This is what I wanted to say in reply to your question. I think it is possible to understand it all.

From Limestone to Lucifer

On the Christ, Ahriman and Lucifer and their relationship to man

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA349/English/RSP1999/19230507p02.html

Dornach

7 May 1923

GA349-12

Question: Might we hear some more about Jesus Christ as a person? Rudolf Steiner: You see, gentlemen, the question has been asked at the right moment, and so we'll consider it today. Let me say right away that only those of you who have been coming for some time will understand all of it. The gentlemen who have come for the first time today will need time to find their way into the things we are discussing. The question I have been given and which we are going to discuss concerns the Christ as an individual who lived for 33 years and then died. Question: 'On this day he rose from the grave, he rose from the dead.' How could this be, and where did this individual gain the might and the power? And then you would perhaps be so kind as to speak of his ascension after 40 days. As it is just the right time of the year, I am going to speak about it the way it really happened. We have already been considering the other aspects. But, as I said, only those of you who have been coming for some time will fully understand it. The others will also come to understand, I am sure, if we get together here quite a few times. Now you see, the first thing is that the whole business about the person of the Christ and what happened to him was relatively unknown in the times that followed immediately after the event. You should not think, the way it is generally thought today, that the events connected with the person of Jesus in Palestine became known throughout the world in an instant. That's not how it was. The situation is that at the time when the Christ Jesus went through his destiny there was the Roman Empire, a world empire, and Palestine was part of this powerful Roman Empire. As you know, we still have a rather unfortunate legacy from the Roman Empire, and that is Roman law, as it is called. You may know that law studies at university take a very long time, for the students have to study Roman law. This had been thought up at a time when social conditions were very different, and so Roman law has of course become something that is no longer suitable in our own time. But justice is still dispensed today according to Roman law. This, then, is a legacy from Roman times. We have various other things as well; but this one legacy, Roman law as it is called, is something you can all be aware of. Roman rule spread far and wide. Let me give you just a bit of an idea of how far it spread. If this here is Spain, more or less [drawing on the board], this would be Italy. There we have Greece, the Black Sea. Then a lot of small islands. Asia Minor is coming across from here, and over there, more or less in the area I'll mark for you, was the small country called Palestine, with Jerusalem, Nazareth and so on. Roman rule extended to all these countries. The Romans had gained dominion over all these countries. And so it was a rule that spread far and wide! Rome is about there, of course. Now all government business and so on would be in Rome, a long way away from Palestine of which people in Rome knew extremely little in those days. And for about a hundred years after the events connected with Christ Jesus in Palestine writers in Rome never mentioned them at all. It was only about a hundred years later that people in Rome became aware of what had happened in Palestine. And the way people looked at it in Rome was not much more than just to say: 'Ah well, some unknown person was crucified in Palestine.' To be crucified was more or less the same in those days as being hanged in later times. The affair therefore attracted no particular attention. It was only when those hundred years had passed and Roman rule grew more and more tyrannical, and also more and more luxurious, it emerged that in the meantime, whilst the people of Rome lived their life of luxury, Christianity had spread here [pointing to the board] little by little, and the first thing people noticed in Rome was actually the Christians. What happened to the Christians in Rome was that at first people simply would not tolerate them. If you were a Christian, you were very much persecuted in Rome. And now I must tell you why the Christians were persecuted in Rome, otherwise you would of course be quite unable to understand the way of thinking which in those times led people to say that over yonder, in Palestine, a god had died. There you need to understand the way people thought in the world in those times. You see, for a Roman in the first Christian century, a time, therefore, when one would have said it was the year — people actually did not say it was that year, for they used the Roman calendar then — but if our calendar had already been in use they would have said it was the year 1, or 10, or, if you like, 50 — so if you had asked a Roman 'Who is God?' at that time, he would have said: 'Augustus', or 'Tiberius'. Just as if you were to ask a Chinese today [1923] 'Who is God?', he'd point to the Emperor of China. You have to understand, therefore, that in those days the Romans saw their ruler, the men who governed them, to be their God as well. And the first thing the Romans noticed about the Christians, when they first took note of them, was that the Christians did not believe that a human being here on earth could be a general god. The Romans only knew that someone sitting on the throne, someone who was a mighty ruler, was their god; he was the most sublime and had to be venerated. The Romans did indeed accord their rulers a kind of veneration. Yes, that is how it was all over the world in those days. Over yonder in the Orient, where the great realms once were — the Persian, Assyrian, Babylonian realms and so on in earlier times — the ruler would always also be the god. 'God' meant simply the one to whom you turned when you were in need of anything. He was the most highly placed. People saw him as a helper. He did not always act as a helper, but people saw him as such. Let me remind you that you probably also know the way the word 'god' is used in your language. When children are baptized, people have to be their sponsors or godparents. In some areas, I think also here in Switzerland, the sponsors are called 'godfather' and 'godmother'. [The German dialect words are similar to the English ones. Tr.] It means that the sponsors are expected to help the child. This is the same meaning of 'god'. And the god was thus the sponsor for all the world. The name of the German writer Goethe also comes from this. And the first things people heard about the Christians was that they did not believe that a human being could be a general god on earth. It was something the Romans found unbelievable. Dreadful people who will not accept the emperor as a god! They are dangerous, these people! And the Christians on their part referred to the words: 'Pay the Caesar what is due to the Caesar and pay to God what is due to God.' You can see from those words spoken by Jesus that Caesar and God were separate issues. God is the invisible. God is something which does not dwell in a visible human being on earth. This is what the Christians would say. And that was the big difference between the Romans and Christians. The result was that the Romans considered the Christians to be the most dangerous people in the whole world, people who undermined the power of the state, for they would not offer sacrifices to the emperor in the temple. People would then offer sacrifices to the emperor in the temples. The Christians offered sacrifices to a god who had died in Palestine and could not be seen anywhere. This was something the Romans were unable to grasp. The early Christians therefore had to hold their offering services below ground, under the earth. And the underground passages they dug, where they buried their dead and made their offerings, are called catacombs. Such catacombs spread far and wide underground in Rome, and in Italy altogether, like small cities. This is where the early Christians held their offering services in the early centuries, whilst the Romans had circuses, vast circuses, above ground. And one of their favourite entertainments in those circuses was to tie people they despised to a stake in some way, to a pillar, cover them with pitch and set fire to them, so that they were burned alive. And people would look at this in their circuses just as people today look at bull fights. It was quite the usual thing in those days. Now think of this picture. Up above the wild Romans in their circuses, covering people with pitch, tying them to pillars and burning them alive. This was something they enjoyed watching. And below were the Christians, holding their services in the catacombs. The difference, gentlemen, between above and below ground was so great you cannot think of any that would be greater. This is something we have to consider. It is true, of course, that terrible things were also done by the Inquisition in medieval times. But the Christians never behaved in quite the terrible way the Romans did when their empire was at its height. This is something to be remembered. It is true. So the first thing you would hear in Rome was: "The Christians refuse to accept a visible god.' Well, it gradually became more widely known what was really meant by this Christ Jesus — I have told you something about this before. I told you, for example, that there were really two Jesus boys — Jesus was a common name in Palestine, and many people were called by it, just like Seppi or Michel today. One of them died young. They were playmates, we might say, extraordinarily able, gifted children. Now you see the story you all know from the Bible about 12-year-old Jesus teaching the scholars in the temple 56 Luke 2:41-52. is based on absolute truth. Now it would not be right for you to say: 'Yes, but if a 12-year-old boy were to come to the university today the academic staff would not hold him in great respect.' One simply cannot compare the teaching of today with the way it was then. You really should not think I am being either conservative or reactionary here; I have to give you the facts as they are. You know, we do of course have to send our children to school today. And gifted children in particular learn a great deal there that does not suit them at all. One should put things in such a way — and that is what we do in our Waldorf school — that they suit the children. But in general children are learning a great deal that does not suit them at all. Adults are of course much better at these things which do not suit the children at all. But, gentlemen, people fail to realize today what is taken away from the children when they learn to read and write in the way they do today. If you know how to listen to them, children will tell you extraordinarily interesting things. They have brought these with them from their life in the spirit before they came down to earth. And this one Jesus child brought extraordinarily much with him. And as the two Jesus boys were playmates they would basically always both know the same things. One of them then died. And the Gospels speak of only one Jesus child because that was more what people wanted to hear. But this does not help us to understand the Gospels. If you read the Gospel of Matthew today and the Gospel of Luke, they do not agree. The whole genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew is different from that given in the Gospel of Luke. Why? Well, because these things really refer to two Jesus boys. As I told you, I have truly spent years on considering this matter from the spiritual point of view. I have found that there were two Jesus children, and the Jesus boy in Matthew's Gospel was a different child from the one in Luke's Gospel. One of them died in his twelfth year, while the other remained behind. And where the Gospel says: 'Jesus gained in wisdom, spirit and power', this refers only to the one. You see, I had discovered the fact that there were two Jesus children long before that. One did not know if there was any historical record of there being two Jesus children. And then one day we saw a painting in northern Italy 57 Painting by Borgognone in St Ambrogio Church in Milan. It shows the scene in the temple where Jesus taught the scripture experts. And oddly enough, there you have this second Jesus child. He is walking off. One who teaches, and the other one who is walking off — that is not the usual Jesus child — we know him! So the painting shows two Jesus children. We are thus able to say that in some centuries people still knew that a second Jesus child existed. He went away. It was only when I had discovered this fact that I knew that this second Jesus was shown in the painting. So you see, gentlemen, that this was known for centuries. But the Church would never let such things, which are in accord with the truth, raise their head. Now, as I told you, there simply are some things in human life where illumination comes, as we say. People won't accept this, of course. But you see, one can indeed speak of such instances of illumination, for they simply do happen. Let me give you an example that was given to me by a member only yesterday. I could give you hundreds of examples, but let me tell you this, the latest one. Mr Pfeiffer — I hope I have your permission? Kekule 58 Kekule von Stradonitz, Friedrich August (1829-96), German chemist, professor at Ghent and Bonn Universities. was a renowned chemist, a proper scientist who wrote many books on chemistry. Two discoveries he made are very important. I need not go into them here, for that would take hours and it is not what matters to us. These two important aspects of chemistry have to do with the nature of the smallest particles that make up substances such as benzene. Kekule's views on this play an extraordinarily important role in chemistry. Anyone who knows about chemistry knows that everyone is talking of Kekule's theories. But how did Kekule himself experience this? He told of an occasion when he was in London, living quite a long way outside the city — he had not yet developed his theories then — and how he always had to take a bus to the other end of London at night. He would visit a friend in the evenings, and he then always had to go such a long way because he spent the night there. One day he was on his way home, having talked for a long time about chemical things with this friend, who was also a chemist. He was going home and was sitting on the top deck of the bus, on the outside. He was dozing off, beginning to fall asleep. And as he was about to fall asleep on the bus he dreamt: There's one atom, there's another, there a third atom; and there are little atoms, and they are held together by the big ones [drawing on the board]. He dreamt of the way matter is made up. He dreamt all this up on top of the bus. He made careful notes of it as soon as he got home. This was one of his theories. You see, it came to him in a dream. It was given to him, a completely materialistic theory. His second theory is called the benzene theory. He dreamt it at another time, not in London this time, but when he had dozed off somewhere else. 59 Ehrenfried Pfeiffer gave Rudolf Steiner part of Gustav Schultz's report on the German Chemical Society's celebrations held in Berlin in 1890 in honour of Kekule's birthday. The two incidents August Kekule described are given below. 'When I was in London I was staying in Clapham Road, near the Common, for some time. But I would often spend my evenings with my friend Hugo Muller in Islington, which is on the opposite side of that vast city. We would talk about all kinds of things, and most of all about our beloved chemistry. On a beautiful summer's day I was once again taking the last bus through the streets, now empty, of the normally busy cosmopolitan city; outside, on the top of the bus, as ever. I fell into a dream. Then the atoms were dancing before my eyes. I had always seen those tiny entities in motion, in my mind's eye, but had never been able to get a feeling of the way they moved. On that occasion I saw how two would often make a pair, two larger ones would encompass two smaller ones, even larger ones take hold of three or even four of the smallest, with everything in a whirling dance. I saw larger ones in a row, with smaller ones dragged along just at the end of the chain. I saw the things Mr Kopp, our doyen and my much revered teacher and friend was later to describe so charmingly in his 'molecular world', but I saw it long before he did. The conductor's shout 'Clapham Road' woke me from my dreams, but I spent part of the night to record at least sketches of those dream configurations. That is how structural theory developed. 'It was much the same with the benzene theory. In Ghent, in Belgium, I stayed in elegant bachelor's rooms in the main street. My study looked out on a narrow side street, however, and did not get any light during the day — no drawback for a chemist who spends his daytime hours in a laboratory. So I would sit there working on my textbook; but I was making little progress, for my mind was on quite other things. I turned my chair to face the fireplace and fell half asleep. Again the atoms danced before my eyes. Smaller groups kept modestly in the background this time. The mind's eye, grown more acute following repeated visions of this kind, then distinguished larger structures in many different configurations. Long rows, often held more tightly together; everything in motion, twisting and turning like serpents. And look — what was that? One of the serpents took hold of its own tail; derisively the structure whirled about in front of my eyes. I woke as though from a flash of lightning; again I spent part of the night to work out the consequences of the hypothesis.' Well, gentlemen, you see, a completely materialistic chemist had to confess that he did not make his discoveries by thinking things through but was given illumination in a dream. All of it was truly given. Now I'd like to know why people object when one says that the Jesus who remained behind changed greatly in this thirtieth year. Kekule did not, of course, immediately become a different person, for the inspiration given to him had been a minor one. But knowledge of the whole world entered into Jesus when he was 30 years old. This was perfectly possible in earlier times, and similar things can still happen today. So you just have to consider that Jesus of Nazareth was illuminated in his thirtieth year with everything that is called 'the Christ'. The Christ entered into him, just as the benzene theory entered into Kekule. He then became a completely different person. And people who understood something of this said: 'The Romans have a god on the throne.' 'The god on the throne,' they would say, 'has come into being through the ordinary powers of the earth.' Such gods on thrones do not normally have illumination; at least not as a rule, you know; they did not receive such illumination at the age of 30. Now the Christians said: 'Our God has not been put there by human beings; he has been put there by the powers of the universe themselves.' They also had to say something else, however. You see, the things they said about Jesus at the time were not as indefinite as the things I am telling you now. I have to tell it to you slowly, bit by bit, you see, and this makes it all rather indefinite to begin with. It was more definite then in the following way. You see, today, we have universities so that individual people may grow clever in the way people are considered clever today. Having spent a long time being made clever at a grammar school or secondary school, people go to university. There their cleverness is given its final polish. But you'll not always find that people have become different people at university; they have only learnt things in a superficial way. That was not the way it was in earlier times. In earlier times people made no difference between churches, theatres and schools. It was all one, and they called it 'the mysteries'. These were the places where people were taught then. And the most important thing they were taught in the mysteries was 'knowledge of the sun', as it was called. You see, when we talked about scientific matters, I always told you that the sun influences everything that happens on earth. Plants do not just grow because they are pushed up out of the soil, but because the sun brings them forth. Sun power is in all of us, just as there is earth power. And I told you that this sun power is not just a dead force, but a living power, full of wisdom. I gave you many examples. You were able to see that the things that happen among animals happen in a way that is full of wisdom, intelligent, sensible. Yes, if you look up to the sun, it is a sphere of gas, scientists will say. Well, gentlemen, that is just about as clever as if we could all of us get on a large plane — we can't do it, of course, but let us assume we could, the way Jules Verne has written about it — and go up to the moon, looking for something to do on the moon. And I'd then say to you: 'Look, gentlemen, down there is the earth. The earth is a body, and there is nothing else on it.' You would not believe me, gentlemen, because you'll have travelled up to the moon with me. You would believe that there are people on the earth, after all. People, who have souls, are on the earth. But that is exactly what scientists do when it comes to the sun today. They sit here on the earth, look up at the sun and say: 'There is nothing up there but burning gas.' But that is downright nonsense. The sun is inhabited, though perhaps not by the kind of people you can see with your eyes. In the ancient mysteries, people were mainly given this knowledge of the sun. And because of this, they were called 'sun scholars'. People would say: 'Up there, on the sun, are the powers, the powers of spring, the powers of the sun, the principle which draws everything forth from the earth.' And someone who had learned those secrets of the sun would then be called a sun scholar, and later, when he was fully taught, a sun master. And the knowledge that came suddenly to Jesus of Nazareth in his thirtieth year was this sun wisdom. This sun wisdom had come upon him. Now you have probably seen plants which are a good green colour in the soil, robust plants, go quite white and powerless if they are kept below ground, in a cellar. The sun's power does not enter into them there. In a mystic, spiritual sense, this sun power entered into Jesus. And the people who understood what had happened said: 'Now the Christ has entered into Jesus.' You see, now this strange thing happened. The Jews, who then lived mainly here, in Palestine [pointing to the blackboard], had long since heard through their prophets that it would have to happen one day that the earth could be taught out of cosmic space itself. But you can be quite sure, if someone somewhere were to write a play like William Tell today, the way Schiller has written it, and it were to be performed on stage, people would say: 'That's baloney, it's quite terrible.' They would not accept it. The play was only accepted by a few people at first, people who knew Schiller. Then it got more widely known. That's the way it is in our society, and always has been, that the majority of people like to take their lead from others. And the Jews, too, took their lead from others and when the event happened, and they were no longer guided by the mysteries but someone came instead who had this sun wisdom, they said: 'Well, really. Here's someone who says everything he says is true.' You know what people do to someone who speaks a truth that has not yet got known among the populace. It was a great truth and great wisdom which Jesus of Nazareth, in whom the Christ now lived, had to tell. Well, they crucified him. And he did indeed go through death. This now brings me to the question as it was put to me. You see, gentlemen, today's enlightened theologians are perhaps even worse, in most cases, than the unenlightened ones. Unenlightened theologians say: 'Well, they put the Christ in his tomb, and after three days he rose again, flesh and blood, as he had been.' Well, enlightened people would of course say: 'We don't believe that, for no one returns from the grave.' But, I'd say, they do at least have something they are able to profess. It may be debatable, but it is something they are able to profess. But what do enlightened theologians say? You see, one of the most enlightened theologians, a man who is widely known and often spoken of, is Adolf von Harnack. 60 Hamack, Adolf von (1851-1930), German theologian, professor in Berlin from 1888. The passage about the resurrection is in his book Das Wesen des Christentums. Sechzehn Vorlesungen vor Studierenden alter Fakultaten irn Winterseinester 1899/1900 an der Universitdt Berlin , S. 102 (9. Vorlesung), 4. Aufl., Leipzig 1901. And what does he say about the resurrection? You see, Mr Harnack says: 'We cannot tell what happened there on the third day in the Garden at Gethsemane.' This, then, is what an enlightened theologian says: 'We cannot tell what happened there on the third day in the Garden at Gethsemane. Many people did gradually come to believe that the Christ was risen there. That is belief in the Easter story, and we assume that one should hold to this belief.' You see, I once put this question at the Giordano Bruno Association in Berlin — it was a long time ago now. The chairman was a learned gentleman who thought he knew a great deal about these things. He said: 'Surely Harnack cannot have said that, for where would we be if Harnack were to say that we should not believe in what has really happened but only in what people think about it.' That would be like the story of the robe at Trier 61 Trier or Trèves, ancient city on the Moselle river in Germany, close to Luxembourg. where people said: 'Well, we don't know if this is the robe that the Christ actually wore, but so many people believed this, and so we believe it as well.' That is what a Protestant said about Catholic faith in the robe at Trier. Another example are the bones of St Anthony. When they were carefully examined they turned out to be calves' bones. But the people who believed in them did not let this worry them; they said it did not matter if it was true or not but only that people believed it. It is not that it does not matter, however, but it matters what actually happened. The story is really told in a wonderful way in the Bible, but people do not pay attention to the way it is told. The Bible does not say: such and such a thing happened. It always says: this is what people saw, really saw. This is what the Bible tells. So the story is that the women went out there and it tells us what they saw at the tomb. You may of course take it to be sophistry, if you like! We are told that the Christ came to the disciples at Emmaus, and so on; that the Christ was seen. This is what the Bible tells us. Now you'll remember I told you that human beings do not only have this material, physical body which is laid in the grave, but they also have the ether body, astral body and I. I described this to you very exactly. And the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth was indeed put in a tomb. I have considered this question a great deal, and it is extraordinarily significant that the Bible itself tells us that an earthquake happened. Such an earthquake did happen. It made a cleft, and the body was taken up into the earth, so that it truly was no longer there. And the disciples did not see this physical body but the ether body, the supersensible body. The women and the disciples saw the Christ in the ether body, no longer Jesus of Nazareth but the Christ, the transformed inner human being. Now you have to imagine that what happened there was something extraordinarily grand for the disciples. You just have to imagine that one of you, someone with whom you have come to be good friends, is taken away from you to be crucified, or hanged, as it would be today. You are closely connected with this person — this creates a state of mind. And such a state of mind made the disciples positively clairvoyant for these things. And in those early days they truly saw the Christ over and over again, more often than the Bible tells us. But it was the supersensible Christ. And you see, if you read the epistles of Paul, you read there of the famous event at Damascus which came to Paul. Near Damascus he went into a kind of sleep state and the Christ appeared to him in the clouds. And now consider how Paul told the story. He once said: 'They cannot take away my faith in the Christ, for like the other apostles I have seen the Christ.' Paul therefore did not say that the other apostles had seen the Christ in a physical body; for then he would have to say that he, too, had seen the Christ in a physical body. Hi emphatically said that he had seen the Christ in the clouds, and that is the supersensible Christ. In saying that he and the other apostles had seen the Christ, he was indicating that the other apostles saw the Christ in his supersensible body, just as he did. And then, you know, people say this is contradicted by the fact that Thomas had to put his hands on the wounds of the Christ. All this is meant to say, however, is that the Christ was there, and the experience of his presence was so powerful that Thomas himself was able to believe firmly that he had touched him. Everything therefore had to do with the supersensible Christ. Now you know, the wounds were something that touched the hearts of the disciples, and especially the apostles, most deeply. This would not show itself so clearly if the Gospels did not say that the wounds could be touched. Why the wounds, exactly? Why not put his hands on the face or something else? There he would also have felt that there was something there. But he put his finger on the wounds because the wounds made a particular impression, and it did indeed depend on higher vision what the disciple actually became aware of in the Christ. We may thus say that for 40 days in succession the disciples knew clearly that the Christ was still there. And this gave rise to the Christian teaching — the original Christian teaching, which is connected with the things I told you last Monday — it gave rise to the Christians saying: 'When the Christ was buried, only the dead body was in the tomb, and it disappeared, of course. The Christ revealed the immortal aspect to us in himself; he went about for 40 days in his immortal aspect. We have seen him. And he even appeared to Paul at a much later time. He is therefore always present.' And so we can say, even today: 'He is always present.' The disciples no longer saw him after 40 days because their vision lost its power. They then said: 'Now he has gone away from us.' The ascension was an event that did, of course, make the disciples feel very sad. They said: 'Although he died, although his enemies crucified him, he was still among us for 40 days. Now he is no longer among us. Now he has gone back again into the wide expanse of the cosmos.' And they truly felt sad then. Not the usual kind of sadness, but a profound sadness. And the ten days of which we then read, those ten days were a time when the disciples and apostles turned inwards, looking deep into their hearts, using their inner strength to think of all the things the Christ had said to them. Those ten days were enough for them to be able to say afterwards: 'Yes, we, too, are able to know all this. This wisdom' — they said to themselves under that powerful impression — 'this wisdom is also in us.' And now, after ten days, they felt strong enough also to teach the wisdom to others. The tongues of fire — that is an image of this — came down on to their heads. That was Pentecost, the Pentecost thought, the tongues of fire. In their great sadness, having thought about everything, not being able to see the Christ any more, had made them turn inwards to such effect that they themselves were then able to teach. And we read the beautiful words that they then began to 'speak in all tongues'. But here we have to understand a little how people put things in earlier times. You should not think, of course, that the apostles started to speak Chinese or Japanese, or even German. What is meant, in the way of saying things they had in those times, is that because of everything they had had in their thoughts in the ten days between the ascension and Pentecost they had grown tolerant. Now they no longer saw differences between religions but spoke of one religion for all human beings. This is what is meant by saying they were able to speak in all tongues; they spoke of one religion for all humanity. And that is the best of all thoughts for Pentecost — one religion for all humanity. You see, the greatest harm had always come to humanity from fanaticism in religion things, being exclusive in religion, having Christianity and Buddhism and Judaism and all kinds of things. Why is it that there are so many religions? It is because these religions are earth religions, real earth religions. What do I mean when I say earth religions? Well, you see, there was a time — it is 1923 now — if we go back, for example, to the time when Christ Jesus lived in Palestine, as I have told you, which would be the turning-point of time. Now let us go further back, let us say to the year 3500 before Christ Jesus, to antiquity. At that time, 3000 or 3500 years before Christ, people in Egypt would speak of their god, but they would use the old terms. They would call him Ra, for instance. They would speak of their god, but they would say: 'The god is in the city of Thebes,' for instance, and in the city of Thebes stood a building that had been created with great art, a tomb-like structure. The god lived in there. That was the earliest way of venerating one's god, by saying he was in a particular place. Well, gentlemen, someone living here where we live today in those early times would probably not have said: 'The god is in Thebes.' Not only would they never have got to that place in those times, but they would not have known anything about it. They really did not know about Thebes. So the people who were down here in Egypt, where the Nile flows, they would say: 'The god lives in Thebes.' And the people who were here, in our part of the world, also had such local gods. There was a local god in Alsace once, for example, or in Munster. People therefore venerated God in a particular place. And it is because of this that we have different religions — the religion of Thebes, the religion of Münster, the religion of Alsace. There the religions got divided up. And later, when people had moved around more on earth, they could no longer think of God in a particular place, for then they would have contradicted themselves. They had moved to another place, and then they no longer took the place for the god but the individual who led them. And that is how emperors and princes gradually came to be seen as gods. The prince of one nation would be the emperor. Many princes came into existence. You see, they still had something of this religion in Rome, for the Romans still venerated their emperor as their god. But what, then, was Christianity? Christianity had nothing of all this. The divine spirit we should venerate is not in a particular place on earth but is connected with the power of the sun, the living nature of the sun which the Christ has taken into himself. And the sun is truly for the whole of humanity. No one in Europe can say, when the sun is shining on his head, that this is a different sun from the one that is there for the Egyptians, or the Chinese, or the Australians. Anyone who truly accepts that the Christ power comes from the sun has to accept the general religion that is for all humanity. It was the general religion for all humanity, even if people did not always understand this. And the disciples realized very well that the sun religion had come. The way it is put is to say that they were able to speak in all tongues. They were able to speak of a religion of reconciliation, of tolerance for all humanity. That is the Pentecost idea. But, as you know, the Pentecost idea has not yet come to fulfilment today. And it must come to fulfilment. It must be truly understood that the Christ has brought something to this earth that does not depend on any form of teaching at all but is based on a fact. When European missionaries go to an Indian or a Chinese person today, they ask him to believe what people in Rome say of the Christ. The Indians or the Chinese cannot agree to this, for it is something that has developed in the European situation. But if one were to put it the way I have put it to you today, it could be understood everywhere on earth. For the Pentecost idea is for the whole of humanity. I have tried now to present the ascension idea to you, as we should take it, and the Pentecost idea. This is what the gentleman who wrote down the question wanted to know. I think it is also very appropriate, for today is the day before Ascension, and Pentecost will follow in ten days' time. I am very glad that I was able to speak about this. Now I have to go to Norway. I'll ask them to tell you when our next talk will be. Goodbye for now!

From Limestone to Lucifer

The death, resurrection and ascension of the Christ

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA349/English/RSP1999/19230509p02.html

Dornach

9 May 1923

GA349-13

Good morning, gentlemen. As not all of you are here today I think I'll talk about things in such a way that the people who are not here won't miss much. Would you have any questions? Mr Burle asked about reincarnation. Surely there are a lot more people on earth today than there were before. Another question was that he had often noted people liking to go round and round — dancing, maybe, or in other ways. And a running dog would always come back to the same spot. Also, if one got lost in the woods or if there was a fog, one would find oneself in the same place again. Rudolf Steiner: That is indeed a most interesting question. First, then, the question about incarnations. As you know, if we take account of the anthroposophical science of the spirit, we realize that everyone who is living today has a whole number of earth lives behind him and also ahead of him, and that the human soul therefore returns again and again. Now you should not think that this has anything to do with the belief, which was also quite common in earlier times, that human beings have lived in animal bodies and things like that. This is something our enemies pretend we say. There can be no question of this. But there are two objections that may be raised against the idea of human beings always coming back. The first of these is the one Mr Burle means. The general view is that the earth's population is always growing, so that we have very many more people in Europe today, for example, than there were about 150 years ago. Is that right? Is this what you mean? That the figures would be too high if we were to trace the earlier lives of all the people who are part of today's large population? One would then have to say that there were fewer people in earlier times and many more people live on earth today. So how can it be that those people from earlier times appear in present-day bodies? That is the question. It is asked very often, the idea being that there are too many people on earth today for us to be able to say that they have all existed before. Now there are a number of things that have to be taken into account. In the first place, statistics are always only produced for particular areas where the population happens to be increasing to an extraordinary degree, and this gives the idea that the population of the whole earth has always been growing. It would seem as if 3,000 or 4,000 years ago, let us say, there were only few people on earth, whereas today they are here in enormous numbers. People do sums of this kind. They say, for example, that the population of Europe has more or less doubled over the last 150 years. Continuing their calculations on this basis, they then say that there must have been terribly few people on earth 2,000 or 3,000 years ago. But, gentlemen, this goes completely against the facts as we generally know them. Let me just mention the following. You see, if we go back to before the birth of Christ, let us say, 2,000 years back, that was a time when the most enormous pyramids were being built in the Nile region in Africa, in Egypt; the whole river was being regulated. And if you consider the masses of people needed to erect those vast buildings, even just to build the sphinxes, for instance, which are gigantic in size, in the large numbers in which they were built, you realize that it is quite wrong to say that Egypt's population was small at the time. No, the population must have been dense in Egypt then, much denser than the population of Saxony or of Belgium is today, for example. The historical facts thus definitely contradict the view that going further and further back in earth evolution one would find fewer and fewer people. Also, if we go much further across into Asia we find vast canal systems. You know, if this is Europe [ drawing on the board ] — I've drawn this for you before — then Africa would be here. That would have been the Nile and Egypt, and over here this would be Asia. That is a vast continent which goes further. And here we have the teeming population who built the pyramids and so on. Over there in Asia was ancient Chaldea. As you know, the Bible says Abraham came from Ur in Chaldea. The land Chaldea existed in those times. And in that country vast canal systems were built in earlier times, remnants of which can still be found. This, too, needed vast numbers of people. So you have to see that the facts prove, quite simply, that vast masses of people existed in Africa and Asia some thousands and thousands of years before Christ's birth. You also have to consider the following. When the Europeans went to America they settled there. But America was not empty of people at that time. The ancient Indian population that I told you about, 1 See lecture given on 3 March 1923 in GA 349. the people with copper-coloured skins, has now died out completely. Looking at the things they left behind, some of them buried by now, you realize that a vast population existed there, but the Europeans did not have contact with them. So this is simply something that is not true, that there were far fewer people on earth in the past. Just think about it — exact figures are not known about the present population; it is only possible to give figures for specific areas. What do European statisticians of today know about the Chinese population now and a thousand years ago? All the things travellers tell us suggest that the population does not always decrease when one goes back in time as is generally assumed but that there certainly have been times when the earth was very highly populated. Then, of course, there have also been times when some areas in particular were less densely populated, but we shall see in a minute that this was nothing special. Generally speaking, and with reference to the things it is possible to know at a superficial level today, the objection that too many people exist today to be reincarnations from earlier times can definitely be shown to be untrue. But there's something else to be considered as well. You see, looking at people today one comes to realize that one person may have gone through 1,000 years between death and his present birth, someone else perhaps only 500 years, and yet another may have been in the world of the spirit for 1,500 years before he came down again. The people who live today thus have definitely not all been here before at the same time but at different times. If the earth's population was smaller at some time, the souls would wait up above until it had grown larger again. The things we are able to say about incarnation and reincarnation do therefore agree completely with the facts. I have often said — for this objection has been raised again and again over the years that I have been lecturing — it's just a matter of arithmetic. Let us assume someone lived in ad 300 — somewhere or other. Someone else lived in ad 1000 [ drawing and writing on the board ]. It is now the year 1923. It is perfectly possible that the one I've drawn there meets the one you see here, because the second one had a shorter distance to cover. So now, in 1923, you have two people, but at those earlier times it was always only one. They do not all of them need to be here at the same time in order to return at the same time. It therefore is perfectly true also for times when the earth is less densely populated; it is just that fewer souls come down at such times. So you see, if one is not thinking in fantasies but in real terms one has to understand that it simply was not the case that there would be two people, later four, then six, and so on. As we go back further in looking at the earth's population we realize that this is completely rhythmical. There are times when there are many people on earth and times when fewer people are on earth. And we shall never get back to a single pair, as it is says in the Bible. That is not what it means. There can be no question of 'one pair', the way it says there. For if we assume that there were just two people at one time we would have to say that there would always have to be just two, and none at all in between times. But that is not the way it is. Here true knowledge contradicts the beliefs of knowledge based on fantasy today. But there's something else as well. You see, we have to understand clearly that some time must pass before a human being comes down to earth again. And so you may ask: 'Yes, but when does he come down?' Investigating the matter right through to the end one finds that one of them gave much thought to the world of the spirit when on earth, and he'd then grow into that world more easily after his death. Having given much thought to the world of the spirit, he'd need a relatively long time between death and rebirth. He could stay in the world of the spirit for a long time because he had already learnt a great deal about it here. People like that, who've given much thought to the world of the spirit, are able to develop better there, stay longer and return to earth later. Someone who has only given thought to the material world will come back relatively soon. So this is another way in which things shift and change. That would be one objection. Then there is also another one. I have talked to you about this before. 2 See lecture given on 18 April 1923 in From Limestone to Lucifer . Tr. A. Meuss. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1999. It is this: 'Why do we not remember our earlier incarnations?' Well you see, gentlemen, it's like this. If someone says human beings are able to do sums, that is beyond doubt. They can do sums. But then someone will come and say: 'I'll prove to you that man cannot do sums.' 'Oh, how'll you do that?' And he'll bring along a young child who cannot do sums. 'He's a human being, too,' he'll say. That is how it is with earlier lives on earth. Human beings can learn this, and they will learn to remember their earlier lives on earth as they continue to evolve on this earth. This is one of the things we hear of in the science of the spirit, that at the present time human beings are not yet able to remember their experiences from the previous life. But what we have to say on this in the science of the spirit is in complete agreement with it. You see, gentlemen, you are in the waking state from morning till evening. You gain living experience from everything around you. And when you remember things, you'll only remember things you have known like this, in the waking state. Just think how quickly we forget even our dreams — which have no particular significance, as I've told you. Human beings therefore remember the things they have come across in the waking state. But there's something else which they do not remember, even here on earth. These are the things they experience in the sleeping state. And we actually experience a great deal more in our sleep than we do in the waking state, only at our present level of conscious awareness we are not yet able to take them in. Once we have gained the ability to do this — and human beings can gain this — we'll know that we experience a tremendous amount in our sleep. As a rule, however, people do not know this, and when they die the things they experienced in their waking life go away after two or three days. It then seems as if all the thoughts one has experienced in the waking state simply go away after two, three or four days. And then all the things we have experienced in our sleep will come up. As I have told you, 3 See lecture given on 21 April 1923 in the same volume as note 2. they'll take a length of time equal to a third of our whole life on earth. Here on earth we therefore also do not yet know about the things that are wholly inward experiences. We shall know them if we enter more and more deeply into the science of the spirit. So we also need not be surprised if things that happened in our previous life on earth do not come to conscious awareness in our present life. The other day 4 See note 2. I told you about the difference if I put down a collar stud unthinkingly — I'll then be running about, looking and looking for it in the morning — and about the situation where I specifically recall: that's where I put the stud; in that case I'll not run around but go straight to it. It all depends on whether we give thought to something. In earlier times people knew that they lived on earth several times over, but as the millennia passed they did not think of this at all as something that was of the spirit. This is why they cannot remember it in their present life on earth. But a time will come when they will remember, just as a time will come for the 4-year-old child when he will be able to do sums. Now to your other question. People have a desire to go round in a circle. That is a perfectly true statement. Here I have to remind you of the following. We have to learn to stand and walk when we are young children, something we have spoken of before. 5 See lecture given on 17 March 1923 in the same volume. Imagine now you are lying asleep in your bed, waking up again with a dream, and the dream may not just be one where you are turning round and round — this, of course, would be in your dream — but actually flying. Dreams of flying, in the first place only in one's soul, of course, are not that uncommon. The reason why someone flies in his dreams is usually this. He wakes up; he is used to having the ground under his feet or the seat of a chair or something under him when sitting up in the waking state, in short, always to have something under him. When he is lying down, it is quite uncommon to touch the bottom of the bedstead with the soles of his feet, and the soles are usually free. The individual will thus wake up in a position he is not used to. He'll think he is in the air and flying. This is what he'll think at first. But now you have to consider the following. If we first have to learn to walk and to stand, that is, to be upright, as children, this means being upright is not something we have in us from birth; we have to learn it. But if we ask ourselves: Where does it come from, this being upright? What is it that we do when we walk upright? Now you have to consider this carefully. Imagine this is the surface of the earth [Fig. 1]. If you loosen a stone here it will fall to the ground. Why? We say because the earth attracts it. If it is really just like that, so that the earth pulls it towards it as if it were on a string, this is something we need to think about. We might talk about it another time. But in any case, a force exists that pulls it down, otherwise it would not fall to the ground. And wherever the stone may be, it will always drop to the ground straight down. We, too, must learn to take the direction of this line. We must learn to stand in the vertical when we are earthly human beings. And so we adapt ourselves to this vertical line. The whole of our physical body would serve no purpose if we did not assume the vertical position. Look at animals that do not walk upright but on all fours — their toes are quite different in form from our fingers. If our physical body is to have meaning, therefore, we must take up the vertical position. This is absolutely necessary. But does the ether body also need what the physical body needs? You know I've told you that we do not only have this physical body which we see with our eyes when we look at someone, which we can touch with our hands, but we also have a subtle ether body. Now this ether body does not need to adapt. It keeps different habits. What habits? Well, gentlemen, you know that the earth is round and that night and day alternate. What makes night and day alternate? You know, the sun is here [drawing on the board], and when its rays come to the earth like this, it is daytime on this side. It would always be day if the earth did not rotate. So when this half, which I've made red, gets to over here, it will be night on this half and day on the other half, which then comes over here. Night and day therefore arise because the earth rotates. Just think now, the human ether body, this subtle body which we also have, does not get so used to the vertical position as a child does, but always wants to follow this rotation of the earth. This ether body always wants to move around the earth; this is how it wants to be; this is the movement it always makes. If the ether body did not want to make this movement, you would want to rotate all the time when you are just walking in the direction of the earth, wanting to go round and round all the time because you'd hurt all over from the shove you are given. There has to be something in you that always goes with the movement of the earth; otherwise you'd be hurting all over all the time. You can also see from this how little thought is given to things in modern science. People know very well that the earth is rotating and not just making the movement the physical body makes when it has adapted to the vertical position. But they do not know of any body that follows this movement. That is the situation. Now imagine you faint. When you faint something departs from your physical and ether body. It is the I and the astral body, that is, the part of you that is the actual element of spirit and soul. And you'll then be aware that the astral body wants to rotate. You will first of all rotate in soul and spirit just as you do with that dream in the morning when you sensed that you had no ground under your feet. When you faint, therefore, you first of all rotate in the mind. When someone feels dizzy, for instance, only the soul part wants to rotate. But imagine now you walk on without giving it a thought. Now, if you walk without giving it a thought you are moving the physical body mechanically. You then do not think about your walking, and especially if there's a mist in the woods you won't be able to give thought to your walking. You don't know which way to turn — where should I go? For you normally aim towards a particular point when you walk with your physical body. You may not always be aware of it, but the path directs you towards a particular point. But if there's a mist you don't see anything, and then your physical body does not know its way about. Along comes your ether body; it only wants to follow its own movement, which is circular. It will follow its own circular motion and take the physical body along with it! When you are merely dreaming or feeling dizzy, the astral body makes the movement. But once you've got going, the ether body brings the physical movement into the physical body and you go along with that. You can see from this that the ether body is not at all earthbound. The human ether body thus does not go along with the way things are on earth. Now consider this. Between birth and death man is a creature of this earth. He has to work. But as you know, you can't work all the time. The physical body would be worn down, and so on. The person then wants to move his physical body, but not the way it has adapted to the earth; he wants to follow the ether body. The ether body wants to make circular movements, however, and so the person dances. Dancing is usually a matter of someone not wanting to follow his physical body but his ether body. The desire to dance actually exists so that a person may forget his physical body and can feel himself to be a spirit that belongs to the cosmos. The problem would be, however, that people would always want to follow their inner feeling and belong far too much to the cosmos, going with their ether bodies. People do not usually want to move the way the earth wants them to move, they'd really like to follow their ether bodies. And it might suit them very well to move as much as possible in circles, the way the ether body wants to move. People must therefore get used to the kind of movements that belong to the earth. And we have also adopted those movements in education, doing physical exercises. Why do people do physical exercises? It means that they adapt even more to the earth than they would otherwise be able to do. People do physical exercises so that they let go more of the ether body, do not always follow the ether body. But if they are not to be completely estranged from the big world, the outer world, people must also make movements that do not tie them to the earth. Now you see, we live in the age of materialism today. The people who have the greatest longing for materialism live in the West. The Orientals, who once had an ancient culture, the people of Asia, have no great desire to belong to the earth. They see the earth very much as a vale of tears, much more so than Christians do, and the people who live in the Orient, in Asia, want to be off again as quickly as possible. But Western people like the earth so much, terribly much. It is not that they admit this to themselves, but they'd really like to stay on earth for ever. And here I must tell you something. The ether body wants to move towards the heavens. The planets move in orbits, and so the earth, too, moves in an orbit. The ether body wants to be in orbit, the physical body wants to get out of this orbit. It does get out of it when it has much work to do; but let us consider how it is for people of the upper classes in the West who do not have to do any work. It feels a bit strange to them, for the ether body is always tormenting them. When such a steak-eating individual moves around in the world his ether body is teasing and tormenting him all the time, and he wants to go round in circles. This steak-eater then wants to follow the circular movements of the ether body. Wow! This is extremely uncomfortable! The ether body always wants to dance, to make nice round movements, and the steak-eater cannot keep up. He therefore wants to get his physical body in a condition where it is strong enough not to let itself be pulled into circular motion by the ether body all the time. The individual therefore takes up sport — not just physical exercise but sport. And the result is that the individual comes completely out of the ether body and only follows the physical movements of the earth. He makes friends with the earth more and more and leaves the world of the spirit aside. You must not think that we merely leave the world of the spirit aside by not thinking about it. We do it also by such means as being so active in sport that we separate the physical body completely from the ether body. This is a terrible thing for the human being; I'd say it is a matter for serious concern. The more they get involved in sport the more do people forget about things of the spirit. After their death they will then come back immediately from the world of the spirit, within a very short time. If it were not the case that everything in the West does receive a little of the spirit, the earth would gradually be populated only by people who do not at all want to go back to the world of the spirit. And you would then have nothing but people on earth who gradually bring the earth to utter ruin. We are beginning to do this a little bit even now. This little bit is already quite serious for present-day humanity. But once people start to give no more consideration to their ether body but only their physical body, this will bring about horrific conditions on earth. And so one must once again intervene by means of the science of the spirit. The only possible way is to oppose movements that are entirely designed to drive man into his physical body, making him wholly earth-man, using other movements that are in opposition. People's minds are already turned towards becoming earthly human beings. You'll understand, now that I have given you so many talks, that without being a philistine, such things do make one's heart ache. You see, I also went to England last summer. When we were just about to leave, all England was full of excitement, waiting for the evening papers to read about the most important event. Everyone was eagerly waiting for the evening papers. What were they waiting for? The football results! Now we've just come from Norway. Many people were there when we left. The station platform was full of people. And when the train started to move people shouted hurrah, hurrah. At the next station they were shouting: 'Three cheers for him!' Well, this was not for us, of course, and the question is, who was it for? I just managed to find out that it was for football players who'd come to Norway from Central Europe and were on their way home again. So what does interest people today? Well, they are much more interested in these things which gradually draw the physical body away from the ether body, making the human being wholly into a creature of the earth, than in any event connected with the weal and woe of millions of people. Because of this, other movements have to be made to oppose the movements that are now being made all over the world, spreading more and more. These are the eurythmic movements. They take their orientation from the ether body. When you see eurythmy being done, you'll see all the movements which the etheric body makes. When you see sport being done, you'll see all the movements which the physical body makes. Yes, gentlemen, this is extraordinarily important, for it also means a longing for sport. I do not want to say anything against sport in general. Sport is of course quite a good thing if it is done by people who also work, for one has to get used to more unnatural movements at work; if one then does natural movements in sport, movements that are more adapted to the physical body, then recreation in sport is a good thing. But the way people are active in sports today, with many of them having no need for recreation, what is this, really? You see there are sports people today who may perhaps — not all of them, of course, but there are certainly some — quickly go to church in the morning, where they pray: 'I believe in a god in heaven,' and so on. Then they go to the sports field. Now they are not putting it in words, but if we put what they do in words it is this: 'I do not believe in a god in heaven, of course. I believe in flesh and bones, for this alone makes life worth living.' You see, that is the inevitable, unconscious consequence of the things people do today. You are a materialist not only if you say you do not want to know about things of the spirit but also with things like these, where the whole human being is torn away from the spiritual element. Concerning your question one is therefore able to say this. When someone walks in the woods and there's a mist and he loses his way, it'll happen on occasion that he runs after his ether body. That is not so bad, for he'll come back to the same place again. When you turn around yourself — that is not so bad, it means a lot of swinging to and fro like a pendulum, now to the ether body and now to the physical body. This is because human beings have both of them and should also develop both. That is the way the situation is. But in the Western world there is a general tendency today to leave the ether body out completely and care only for the physical body, and this causes the terrible materialism which is the truly harmful materialism. For materialism in thought is not the most harmful. The most harmful kind of materialism is the one where the whole human being descends to the animal level. This is what we have to consider. It happens only too easily that people say: 'Oh, he's a philistine, for he rants and raves against sport. Sport is something extremely useful!' But I do not rant and rave against sport. People are free to indulge in sport, they are free human beings. But they will completely ruin themselves as human beings if they devote themselves only to things to do with sport. Here it is necessary to understand clearly that the things I said in the first chapter of Towards Social Renewal 6 Steiner, R., Towards Social Renewal (GA 23). Tr. F. T. Smith. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1977. apply in the widest possible sense. When I wrote the book I did of course think I'd write in a way that would make people think about the subject. Well, they've not cared a rap about it. They did not reflect at all and the book has not been understood. I said that whilst we do have a large democratic proletarian movement, one finds, on taking a closer look, that most proletarians today are copying everything middle-class people have done before, they follow the academic line, and they believe in the things that are said at the universities. Sometimes the proletarian parties are the first to agree to legislation — remember freedom of choice in medical treatment? — and the socialists are generally the first to say, 'Yes, that calls for an expert committee,' and so on. And when it comes to sport — sport is of course a middle-class invention which they try to copy as well. It won't always quite work; but they certainly copy it as far as attitude goes, considering sport to be the only beneficial thing. But in fact the proletarian movement will only come to be something if they do not copy what the other classes did before. I therefore specially wrote that first chapter. One could see the proletarian movement everywhere getting under the influence of belief in authority. That is why I wrote that first chapter of Towards Social Renewal, thinking that people would give thought to the matter. But of course, giving thought to things is something people who do sports do not like at all. For when someone is very active in sport this will get him out of the way of thinking things over. For we can only think with the ether body. You may try as hard as you like — you can't think with your physical body. And when someone asks if they should eat meat or only vegetables in order to be able to think better, all one can say is: 'You can't cultivate your thinking by eating; you have to do it with the ether body. You have to enter into the ether body there.' So you see, the ether body reveals its presence in the human being in the circular movements which people want to make, in the longing to dance, or in people losing their way and walking in a circle. Yes, gentlemen, if you've ever lived in Vienna, for example, you'll know that the Viennese like to enjoy life. They are quite frivolous; they have warmth of heart, but they are frivolous. In Vienna you have the Prater, large pleasure gardens, vast pleasure gardens. It is a place where people usually go on a Sunday, unless they are the kind of ne'er-do-well who goes there every day. You get hot dogs there, clowns and all kinds of things. But the paths in the Prater are laid out in a peculiar way. They are laid out in such a way that you will always end up in the same place. You walk down a long avenue, entering the woods somewhere, and after some time you'll be back in the place where you were before! If you started from a hot dog stand, you'll be back there again. That is how the paths are laid out. You see, they did not of course say to themselves, 'Let's encourage the people of Vienna to come out here and enjoy themselves,' but they had an inner feeling for this, and so they made the paths run in such a way that people don't even need a mist to find themselves back at the beginning again. They made the paths go round the way the ether body likes them, so that people feel quite taken out of their physical bodies. For you can feel taken out of yourself there, and this will really make you feel good. You'll go around in circles unless you have a direction. And if the paths are already made in such a way that you'll walk in circles willy-nilly, you'll also feel good. And that was what the people who designed the Prater wanted the Viennese to feel — that their ether body would feel really good as they found themselves back at the hot dog stall again and again. It is very cleverly done. You can go and look how the paths run. When you give yourself up to this — you'll always come back again, but you go round. And it is this turning round which makes people feel really good, especially if they do it all Sunday afternoon. This is of course a much more innocent feeling of well-being than in many other cases. You know that one can also lose one's bearings in other ways. I've told you the story before. Coming home late at night and not quite knowing if you're drunk or not, you put your top hat on your bed. If you see one, you're not drunk, if you see two, you're drunk. This is because it is going round. You see, in that case, something is also turning. It is the astral body. When someone lies in bed who is drunk, his astral body is going round. But when someone brings the ether body into it in a more mental way, by following paths that go round, it is the ether body which goes round. That is the more innocent way of going round and round. Drinking goes to the astral body; turning round oneself more to the ether body. There you can also see the difference. For when I look at someone who is drunk, well, he does not turn round like someone following circular paths, for everything is going round and round for him, as if his astral body itself had now become the earth's globe. He goes round and round the way the earth goes round. That is the astral body which is going round. But when people are dancing or going round and round in Vienna's Prater, the ether body is going round. It takes the physical body along with it; it is the more innocent way. We may say that when someone is dancing the ether body is going round, and when someone is drunk it is the astral body which is going round. You see, these things are not considered in modern science and because of this the big questions relating to our civilization cannot be answered, for people do not know how to arrange things so that human beings will not become utterly inhuman. Humanity will get more and more animal-like if today's sports craze continues. Something of the spirit must come to humanity. And I am convinced that people who on the one hand get to know the earth through work will on the other hand also feel a longing to enter into things of the spirit and will gradually come to understand that we must also take care of the spiritual side of things, that this is necessary. This, then, is what I wanted to say to you for the moment. We'll be talking a lot more about these things, so that they will be clear to everyone.

From Mammoths to Mediums

About repeated lives on earth. Physical exercises, dancing and Sport

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA350/English/RSP2000/19230530p02.html

Dornach

30 May 1923

GA350-1

Good morning! I'd really like to add something today to what I said last time. I believe we shall have better and better knowledge of what man really is within the whole scheme of things if we study exactly this kind of thing. So I'd like to add to what we discussed the last time by considering how things really are when people develop conditions such as grey or black cataract. The eye becomes useless in that case. At first it seems to a person as if something was flickering before his eyes, and then he will no longer be able to see the things which he was able to see before. The question is, what causes this eye condition? It develops because something which should be as transparent as glass in the eye becomes non-transparent. If you have some kind of non-transparent paper or cardboard in your window instead of transparent glass, you'll no longer be able to see through the window. And that is how it is when an eye develops cataract. Something that should be transparent has become non-transparent. Let us be really clear about this. I have drawn the eye for you on several occasions. It grows out from the brain like this [Fig. 2], from the skull; this is looking at it from the side. It projects a little in front, and inside the eye you have blood vessels spreading and the optic nerve. Blood vessels and optic nerve thus come together there. Then there is something else in the eye, a kind of muscular attachment. It holds the part we call the lens in position. The muscle in the eye thus holds a very small, transparent, lentil-shaped body in position. Think of a small lentil, but transparent — this is suspended in the eye. And we have to look straight across and through this lens. Seen from in front, the lens looks like this [drawing on the board], and we must be able to see through it. This alone will show you that we have to have a transparent eye if we are to be able to see. The eye must be transparent. And of course if you think about it you have to say: 'It cannot be the eye itself which sees, for the eye must actually get itself out of the way, make itself transparent, so that it may see.' If you smear something on these window panes, for instance, so that you cannot see through them, then you'll no longer be able to look out. Yes, it is you who looks through the panes. The panes cannot see; it is you yourself who sees. In the same way it is not the eye which sees but there is something in the human being that sees through the transparent eye. What, then, happens when someone develops a cataract? When someone develops a cataract, the lens in the eye loses its transparency. It is very small, this lens, but if you take it out of the eye and look through it, it is transparent. A lens taken from someone with cataract, however, is white, milky, non-transparent. I would then have to draw the lens, which is so beautifully transparent in a healthy eye, like this [ drawing on the board ]. It has become milky and is no longer transparent. You see, we always have the benefit of the human body being elastic in its individual parts, elastic in many respects. So if you have an eye affected by cataract and cut into it in a particular direction, this muscle here brings its elasticity into play, and the lens, which is normally held by the muscle, will pop out if you make a hole here. The operations are relatively simple, because the body always comes to your aid. The lens pops out. You hold it in your hand and put it in a glass dish, this lens which has grown opaque. The individual will of course be quite unable to see clearly once the lens has been removed, for he needs the lens to be able to see. I'll show you in a minute why he needs a lens to be able to see. When one has done this operation on someone, having removed the lens, the world around him will light up again where before he saw nothing at all. He will now be able to look out, but, having had the operation to remove the lens, he'll only be able to see objects that are far away. His power of vision will not be adequate. We then have a useless eye. The power of vision is not enough to be able to see things which we might have been able to see, still have been able to see, with the lens that has been taken out. The eye has become useless. You then give the person who has had the operation a pair of glasses. You see, they are actually artificial lenses. Before he had the lens in his eye, and now he has an artificial one. The artificial lens now makes the visual rays — which went like this before the lens was removed [Fig. 2], so that he would only have been able to see things a long way off — go in such a way that he can see nearby things again. This is the effect of the glass put in front of his eye. The lens he had inside his eye can therefore be replaced with a transparent glass lens. It will of course be less perfect, because there's no life in it. The lens in the eye has life; it can be moved, and that does have its advantages. But at least one will be able to see if need be, if the lens which has grown opaque is simply taken out and replaced with glasses, cataract glasses. The individual will then be able to see again. This makes it possible for us to see exactly how things are with our seeing — that in the eye we have an apparatus, a tool that allows us to see, for it is actually possible to replace a small part of the eye with an external tool, the cataract glasses. You will realize that the living tool, that is the lens, has an advantage over the cataract glasses used to replace it, for if one wants to see something that is a long way off one has to make the lens, which looks like this [ drawing on the board ], a bit thinner. You'll then see something that is further away. So when a hunter takes aim and wants to shoot something that is further away, he has to make his lens thin. This is done by the muscle here [ pointing to the drawing ]; this makes it thinner. If one wants to see something close by, reading small print from close-up, one has to make the lens thicker. Again it is the muscle which does it. This is something you can't do with cataract glasses, of course; all one could do would be to use a different pair. People sometimes do this. There certainly are people today who have to have two kinds of glasses, one for things nearby and one for distant things. But the lens in the eye is a living thing and can be changed inside so that one sees both near and far. You'll now also realize why someone will only see distant objects when I've taken out the lens, for that is as if I'd made the lens quite flat, having taken it out. I then see things again that are a long way off. But the ability to see is not adequate. Behind the lens is a body that is quite slimy, the 'vitreous body'. This can also grow opaque. In that case no operation is possible, for it cannot be replaced in some way or other. The eye is black if you look into it from outside. The lens lies behind this black pupil, which looks black because you are looking at the background of the eye, looking through the whole of the lens and through all this. Now we have to ask ourselves what actually happens when the lens grows opaque. Think of glass once more. When glass is transparent the light goes through it. If you have something that is not transparent, this means that the light does not go through; it is stopped. Now the situation with the eye is that light must go in and out through the lens. You see, the light belongs to the ether. It does not belong to matter, to the stuff of gravity, which is outside. Light belongs to the ether. Now I've told you that apart from his physical body man also has an ether body. And what does it mean that the lens is transparent? The fact that the lens is transparent means that the human ether body, which goes through everything — I'll make it red here — can simply pass through the lens. If the lens is nice and transparent, the ether body is able to pass through it. This means that the human being has a little piece of ether body in the place where the lens is. When the lens grows opaque, this is because the lens gets all stuffed up with matter. If salt or something like it settles in the lens it grows opaque. It is just like having salt dissolved in a glass of water. For as long as the salt is in solution you have an almost transparent salt solution. If the salt settles down at the bottom [ drawing on the board ], the glass of water is not transparent down here. The matter will not let the light through. And the lens grows opaque when salty matter settles in it. Salty matter will settle like that in old age, and the transparent parts of the human being then lose their transparency. With a cataract, therefore, a transparent lens grows opaque. What is the result of this? It is that the human ether body is no longer able to get into the opaque lens. So then there's a small hole here. The human being has his ether body everywhere, and when he's in good health the ether body fills the whole of him. If the lens gets sick, grows opaque, the ether body cannot get into the place where the lens is. So then you don't have ether body in the place where the lens is. We therefore have to say: What kind of condition is this cataract? Cataract means that the person has no ether body in the place where the lens has grown opaque. You can't, of course, see with just the ether body. If we were able to see with the ether body, we would also see all night, for we have our ether body when we lie in bed at night; only the astral body is outside. We therefore do not see with the ether body. We see with the soul. But we need the ether body to be able to see. The astral body is there as well — it is the third thing a human being has, and it also fills up everything. When the astral body wants to see here in the place where there is no ether body, it cannot do it, for the ether body is missing there. And so we are able to say: What makes it possible for us to see? The fact that our astral body is inside our ether body. But if the ether body has been eliminated somewhere, pushed aside because the lens, the eye, is opaque, we are unable to see. Then the astral body cannot see. Can you understand this? Agreement - yes! Our astral body is therefore able to see because the ether body is able to get in everywhere where we have the lens, where it is most needed. So if one really knows what a cataract is, one can truly see that the human being has an ether body and an astral body. When someone is just beginning to have such a cataract, we can say that the cataract is developing because the salts which settle in the eye, in the lens, do not let the ether body into the eye. And one would have to do something to make the lens transparent. When matters have gone a long way and the lens has salts in it everywhere, one cannot do anything but remove it and replace it with cataract glasses. But the situation is that one can still do something if the cataract is only beginning to develop. And on this occasion I think I can show you how human beings are completely bound up with the world around them. Let us assume this is the earth [Fig. 3]. Plants grow in the soil. You see, such a plant does of course have a physical body. We can touch it, look at it. But the plant also has an ether body, for it lives, and everything that lives has an ether body. The plant is not able to feel, however, to respond to things inwardly. It does not have an astral body. But there is astral substance everywhere around the earth. Let me tell you how one can discover the fact that the astral is everywhere. To do this we'll need to bring in something that seems rather remote and does not appear to belong here. You know that volcanoes will now and then — well, they'll start spewing, as we may put it, so that red hot masses fly out from them. Let me describe such a mountain a little bit for you. First of all there is the ground, filled up with ordinary rock material. And if we look at Vesuvius, for example, which is in Italy, the ground, the basic ground, is Apennine rock, as it is called. So we have ordinary rock down there, which you also have everywhere else in that region. But then somewhat different layers pile up here [Fig. 4], The layers go like this. And in the place where Vesuvius erupts there is a cleft. When there is an eruption, particles of ash will first of all come up from the cleft, mixed with water; then come rocks like bombs. All this is flung to the surface. It is sometimes liquid, sometimes like bombs. It then runs down, runs further down. And the rocks which are thrown out like bombs are everywhere. They flow down. In between comes a rain mixed with mud. All this will really pile up to make such a mountain, create such a mountain. So the first thing thrown out from the inner earth is hot water mixed with ash. It makes a very sticky sludge as it runs down. Then, a bit later, these bomb-like lumps come, rushing upwards and flung all over the place. So that is how such fiery mountains are made. Now let me tell you, gentlemen, how a phenomenon like fire-spewing mountains is usually considered in science. It is said that all kinds of things that are under the earth rush up and out. Fire-spewing mountains are normally near water, it is said. And that is, of course, true. You have few volcanoes in the middle of a land mass; they are usually close to the shore, to water. As there is a cleft in the ground, the water can get in, they say, and the heat inside the earth brings the water to the boil. And this boiling water then pushes out all the matter which is down below. This is what a learned person will say, writing a book about it, and people will then say he has explained how volcanoes develop. Then someone else comes along and says: 'Yes, but we have reason to believe that these clefts are not big enough for water to get in. We cannot assume that the water gets in through those clefts in the earth, even if the volcanoes are close to water.' It therefore does not appear to be quite right what the first expert said, and the matter will have to be explained in another way. The next person will say: 'Well, in the inner earth, things are not the way they are on the outside; metals are liquid in the inner earth. As iron is liquid when you work it in a smelter, so are the metals liquid in the inner earth. You have liquid metals in there.' Well — and it is easy to put a name to things — these liquid metals are called magma. So you have magma in there, well and good, liquid metals. And when this liquid metal, this magma, gets to a place where it can escape more easily — everywhere here it is too hard for it to escape, or it would spew forth everywhere — when it gets a place where it can escape more easily, then it will get out just there, and that is how it comes out.' That is what this person has to say. He is saying, therefore, that it happens because of irregularities in the density of the earth; the magma then shoots out in one direction or another. Then a third person comes along, or a fourth, and he'll say: 'Yes, but the magma cannot have the enormous energy needed to throw out those bombs! So this cannot be the explanation either.' Other people will say something else again. And this then ends up in the ordinary books produced for the general population. So that is more or less the situation as it is today. You will usually find that one person says one thing and another says something else, but people do not really know where the cause lies. These things are enormously important, but they do not know where the cause lies. But now let me tell you something. The matter is this. When you come to a region where Vesuvius is not far away, into the neighbourhood of a volcano, 7 The text here refers to the solfatara (volatiles) at Pozzuoli, a half extinct volcano by the Bay of Naples, with a crater that is 770 metres in diameter. The hot sulphurous vapours continually rising from countless cracks ( fumaroli ) there increase greatly in volume if a burning piece of paper or torch is brought to the fumaroli vents. you'll see something that is rather nice. If you take a piece of paper and set it alight, the ground will suddenly begin to smoke. You see, if this is the ground [Fig. 5], and you light a piece of paper here, so that it burns (red), the ground will start to smoke, quite by itself, everywhere here beneath the burning paper, and if you burn a large piece of paper you may gradually be completely enveloped in the smoke. This is really a most interesting phenomenon. Guides will show visitors to Italy how the smoke comes up from the ground if one just burns a piece of paper. Now what does this really mean? Well you see, gentlemen, some water vapour has collected in there, in that place. It has collected in there in the soil, where this vapour will then rise. It cannot get out if the air that is above has a certain density. The air keeps the vapour in. Now you all know that air gets thinner if you warm it up. The air in a room also gets thinner if you heat it. The thinner air can then no longer keep the vapour in and it will stream out. It has to be there in the first place, of course. There has to be something down there which can stream out. Yes, but think, gentlemen, what you have been doing there! You have not been down below to blow the vapour up and out. No, you did not do that. You have coaxed the vapour out by lighting a piece of paper. You can coax the vapour out by setting something on fire up here, above ground. You do so by making the air thinner. You see the learned gentlemen are always looking for the reasons why water vapour rises from a volcano and even bombs fly out; they look for the reasons — yes, they look for them below ground. But that is not where they are, just as the reasons for water vapour coming out when you light a piece of paper are not below ground but outside, outside and not in it. You really must be able to understand the facts rightly, and then you find out how things are. But just as you are not in here [pointing to the drawing], blowing vapour out of the ground, but coax it out with the help of thin, hot air, so something there is coaxing out something from down below. And you see, you won't get solid rocks coming out if you just light a piece of paper, otherwise the curious English tourists would not just be enveloped in vapour but also get all kinds of rocks hitting them in the face when they light the paper. No, you don't get that; it is only that the air is thinned and vapour rises. But here above Vesuvius, when it begins to spew, to erupt, everything that is astral above it is thinned down. And this astral element is thinned down by forces that come from the stars, the planets, forces that are a long way off. So if the stars above Vesuvius are in a particular position relative to each other, which happens often — it does not happen elsewhere but just in that place — then it is just as it is with the paper here, in this case through the position of the stars, with the astral element above thinning out, and things are forcibly pulled up from below. You thus produce a small volcanic eruption by making the sulphurous vapours — it is not only water vapour but also a sulphurous vapour — come out. These places are called solfatara , volatiles. So wherever you have these tremendous volcanic eruptions, the activity lies not in the matter which is below ground, but in something which is outside, coming from the relative position of the stars. Now you'll sometimes also get — what shall I call it? — busybody activity, officiousness. Someone did once realize that some such things come from the positions of the stars, the relative positions of sun and moon, for instance. His name was Rudolf Falb. 8 Rudolf Falb (1838-1903), Austrian writer. His theories are set out in two of his publications: Grundzüge einer Theorie der Erdbeben und Vulkanausbrüche (1870) and Das Wetter und der Mond (2. Aufl. 1892). 9 See lectures given on Some of the older ones among you may have heard something about his famous theory. Mr Falb said that not only earthquakes but volcanic eruptions, too, were due to the positions of the stars. And that was quite right. But he was also an extremely vain man who liked to show off. He discovered something else as well, which is equally important. You know about the firedamp explosions which are a terrible problem in mines. Something happens down the mines because gases ignite, rushing through the mines with great vehemence. Mr Falb said that this particular quality of the gases also did not come from below ground but from the positions of sun and moon, for example. Having thought this up, he actually forecast earthquakes and firedamp explosions in mines. Well, his forecasts would sometimes come true and often they would not. The thing is that unexpected elements often play into natural events, and then the matter won't be as expected. Mr Falb would however publish forecasts every year that gave you the critical days. When the stars were in particular relative positions, when sun and moon were in particular relative positions, he would say that firedamp explosions would occur on such days or that there would be an earthquake. I once went to a lecture by Falb — it's a long time ago now, much more than 30 years ago. He was a tall, slender man and very convincing as he presented his theories. So he said — he knew nothing about the astral but thought it all just came from this dilution of heat — that heat was diluted and this would coax up gases from below in the mines — just as in the solfataras — which would then result in firedamp explosions or the like. It was a large hall. Mr Falb was standing up high. He explained it, explained it well. Much of what he said was correct. Suddenly, as he was in the middle of his explanation, saying: 'So a particular relative position of sun and moon causes a change in the air, firedamp must develop, and the gases are coaxed up' — bang! a knock on the door. A boy from the Neue Freie Presse came in and brought a telegram, putting it on the desk. Mr Falb was not exactly subtle. Saying, 'Must be something important,' he opened the telegram in the middle of his lecture and read: 'Major firedamp explosions have just occurred in such and such a mine.' Now he'd just forecast those firedamp explosions in his lecture. He had previously contacted the paper and asked them to send any news of this kind to the lecture hall as soon as it came in. He did such things on several occasions; he was a bit vain. But it did happen, gentlemen. Just when Mr Falb had said that something like in the telegram. And he actually said: 'You see, ladies and gentlemen, that is how proof is put straight on the table!' Well, that was a case of showing off, of course. But there was something behind it all that was extraordinarily true, especially in the case of Mr Falb. The situation is such that one has to say that even the dense, heavy masses thrown up into the air are not pushed up from below but coaxed up from above, by the relative positions of the stars. Only I'd say that the air has thinned down a little if you get vapour rising with a burning piece of paper and you are quite enveloped in the vapour. When solid masses are thrown up into the air, this cannot be just due to the air thinning down; the ether must be thinned down in that case and also the astral. So in finding the right explanation for our volcanic eruptions we also discover that the earth is enveloped all around not only in earthly matter but also in the astral. In modern science, people do not have the courage to explain these things exactly as they are. There is a lack of courage there. So if we imagine this is the earth [ drawing on the board ], we have to think of it being surrounded everywhere firstly by the ether, and then also by the astral. But the astral also penetrates into everything. Plants, however, do not generally take in the astral. They only have an ether body. But some plants do take in the astral and these are poisonous plants. The difference between non-poisonous plants and poisonous plants is that non-poisonous plants do not have anything astral in them and poisonous plants do. What does this mean, however? You see, deadly nightshade is one of the most poisonous plants. If you have a deadly nightshade berry, it is as black as it is because the astral has been taken up into it. Deadly nightshade thus takes in the astral. And because deadly nightshade takes in the astral — it does not really destroy itself completely — it has the power to destroy physical matter all the time. A deadly nightshade berry is quite acrid inside; it wants to destroy physical matter. And if we eat one, the juice begins to destroy our inner substance as soon as it is inside us. We then have to perish under the deadly nightshade influence. Deadly nightshade has the power inside it to destroy physical matter. Just imagine we now bring deadly nightshade extract into a person's blood in the right way by inoculating it in a highly diluted form. If the lens begins to have salts in it, to get dark, we can fight this cataract exactly by using deadly nightshade extract, if properly diluted, having been made so thin that it is no longer poisonous but destroys the deposits that have formed. I have drawn the sediment on the board for you. And if we have done the right kind of inoculation to bring the destructive deadly nightshade extract, which always makes everything else go apart, to the lens here, it will also drive apart the salts that have settled there, and it may be possible to cure the lens. Of course, you won't be able to depend too much on this if the cataract has already developed too far. But if you have someone whose cataract has not yet gone far and this is noticed in good time, it will still be possible to fight the cataract and not have to remove the lens later on. This is why it usually does not get one very far to do it the way homoeopathic physicians do it. They give diluted deadly nightshade by mouth. It will have an effect, but not a very powerful one, and the problem will keep coming back. So it is not usually possible to achieve anything in this way. But you can do a great deal if you inoculate it into the blood. The blood goes everywhere, also into the eye. Now this also shows you something else. It is this. If we have a poison like that of deadly nightshade, if we eat a lot of deadly nightshade berries — a little would be a lot, of course, in this case — but if we eat relatively much of the deadly nightshade, it will destroy our physical substance, starting from the stomach and even the gullet. We'd no longer be able to live. If we dilute this deadly nightshade extract more and more, it will no longer attack the physical parts but will be digested and still attack the head very strongly. You can thus use deadly nightshade extract when people have grown nervy, when they are all at sixes and sevens; you can put them to rights again by giving them highly diluted deadly nightshade extract to eat. It will drive out the stuff that has become deposited. But if you take it so highly diluted that it will no longer attack the head, it will still act on the eye. The eye is the organ which is sensitive to the most dilute quantities of deadly nightshade. It is called belladonna, 'beautiful lady', because of its lustrous black eyes. The eye is therefore able to react even to very small amounts of deadly nightshade extract. And it is strange that our human nature is sensitive to different substances from the world around us in so very different ways. As I said, too much deadly nightshade extract destroys the whole eye, but the eye is sensitive to deadly nightshade extract in high dilution. Other organs are sensitive to other extracts. So there is always something in our body that is particularly sensitive to a particular substance and one gets different effects. Take the human liver, for instance. Now the situation is that the human liver really has an awful lot to do. I have told you before that it is an internal observer. 9 See lectures given on 9 and 13 September 1922 in The Human Being in Body, Soul and Spirit. Our Relationship to the Earth. Tr. J. Reuter, rev. S. Seiler. Hudson and London: Anthroposophic Press and Rudolf Steiner Press 1989. It has an awful lot of things to do in our digestion. Above all the liver has to perform a major function in processing fats in the human organism. If the liver is unable to function properly, all the fat in a human being gathers itself up and wanders about in the body in all kinds of different ways. Fat migrations happen instead of the fat being processed in the liver. The fat we eat therefore has a special relationship to the liver. And just as good substances have a relationship to different parts of the body, so poisons, too, have a particular relationship to all parts of the human being. And so we can say that it is possible, in a way, to lighten the lens in the eye again when it has darkened, thus sending the astral body back into this small part of the human being by inoculating the individual with something from the outside world that will specifically attack the eye. And that is deadly nightshade extract in suitable dilution. So you see, deadly nightshade extract is something which will draw the astral back into the eye, so that the person is able to see again, thanks to the astral principle. It draws in the astral, and the astral in turn will draw in the ether principle. I'd therefore also like to say that deadly nightshade also attracts the astral when it grows out there. The etheric is in it already, it does not need to be attracted. But if we are able to do a proper study of the subtle process involved in curing eyes affected by cataract with deadly nightshade, we shall also understand what happens in the plant outside. The extract attracts the astral principle which has been excluded. And the sap of the plant therefore also attracts the astral principle from the world. Deadly nightshade sap is something that attracts the astral. And when we are poisoned by the plant, with too much of the astral drawn to us, this astral element comes to a boil and this boiling process destroys our physical substance. And when too much of the physical has been destroyed — in an eye affected with cataract it is destroyed because deposits form in it — we must get rid of those deposits. Get rid of them! One might thus also hope, gentlemen, to cure situations where salts or similar substances have settled elsewhere in the body with belladonna, deadly nightshade. When someone develops gallstones, for example, or stones in the bladder, something solid is deposited that should not be there. One would hope, therefore, that if we can cure the problem in the lens of an eye affected by cataract with belladonna we might also cure gallstones and stones in the bladder with belladonna. And one can do this, if things are done the right way. One can do it! We can see, therefore, that it all goes together, and if we gain the right understanding of nature we can also gain a right understanding of the human being. Once again we have arrived at the ether and the astral body, just as we did the last time when we talked about people going round and round. If one finds the right way of looking at things, one always comes to these higher bodies of the human being. This is not something thought up but something that has been discovered in a science that goes further than ordinary science does in every respect. Next Wednesday we'll talk more about these things, unless you'll have some other questions you have prepared.

From Mammoths to Mediums

How the etheric and astral principles work in man and earth

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA350/English/RSP2000/19230602p02.html

Dornach

2 Jun 1923

GA350-2

Good morning, gentlemen. Does anyone have a question? question is asked regarding grey cataract. The individual says he was in hospital in Basel in 1916 with an inflammation of the iris, and he had been given injections in the head. He now wanted to know if these injections might not have done harm. Rudolf Steiner: Why, did you notice something? You must not think, of course, that those injections could play a role in developing grey cataract. The spots before your eyes you mention need not indicate any form of cataract; they are due to something else. Now you see, injections have the peculiarity that they sometimes make the muscles in the area a bit weaker, and one can then no longer bring the muscles freely into play; the eye becomes a little bit rigid. If you then direct your eye to something it will not focus properly right away, and that causes these 'flies and midges'. But this is often only due, I'd say, to a minor weakness of accommodation. Why did you have those iris injections? They thought it was the vitreous body. Rudolf Steiner: The thing is, it is always better to fight such things by other means, that is, for as long as possible with medicines taken by mouth. Some things cannot be treated with medicines taken by mouth; then one tries inoculation. But you need not feel concern over this. There's no need for that. Is there perhaps some other question to be asked, so that we may answer it? Questioner: I'd like to go back once more to the business of going round and round. I have noticed, and so have my colleagues, that some things are not clear when we are discussing the heart. I have been thinking about the way Dr Steiner once did a drawing for us of how the earth is connected with the moon and there is that aura - I'm not sure I'm getting this right — around the sun. The heart is on the left side of the body. Now I wanted to ask if the heart is also connected with all the things that go on in the world at large. Rudolf Steiner: Here we need to remember a number of things we have been discussing before. I once said that the ideas people have about the heart in modern science are wrong. They imagine the heart to be a kind of pump, and that the heart pumps the blood through all parts of the body. They see it like this. The heart contracts. When the heart contracts it gets smaller, has less blood in it. It therefore pushes the blood out through the arteries, the blood gets pushed into the body, and being elastic — that is what people think — the heart then expands again. The heart is therefore said to act as a pump today, pumping blood through the body. You see, that is quite the wrong idea. It is altogether an idea which only comes from the age of materialism, reducing everything to mechanics, therefore, with people thinking the heart is a proper mechanical pumping station which pumps the blood through the whole body. No account is taken of the way in which the whole of life really goes in a living creature. Let me draw your attention to one thing here. There is a very small lower animal which is really just a kind of tube. If I were to draw it [Fig. 6], it would be something like this. There you'd have a skin. The creature is such a tube. Inside it is hollow, and there it is simply like a small bowl, a small dish. There it has little trapping hairs, and hairs it can move around with. It lives in water, this creature. It is called a hydra, because it lives in water. This creature, the hydra, has the peculiarity that compared to higher animals or human beings it is really nothing but a stomach. And this tube really does nothing but take in all kinds of little granules, all kinds of foods that come near it, and digest them in there. The creature lives in the water, as I said; and all kinds of food float around in the water. The creature swims about, swims up to the bits of food, takes them in and so does just what our stomach does, for that, too, takes things in. The creature does not of course have a gullet, a mouth, for preparing the foods. The hydra simply takes in the foods and digests them. Now the odd thing is that its mouth is also its organ of elimination, its anus. It also eliminates things through the mouth. So you have everything together in this creature. Now of course to be a form of life, and especially an animal, it must not only eat — eating is something it has to do — but also breathe. And this creature breathes with the outer side of its skin. Everywhere there you have tiny little holes. You always have such little holes where there is organic matter, living matter. And it absorbs the air it needs from the water through these little holes. So we can say this tiny creature, the hydra, has an inner side, a hollow space, which it uses to eat. On the outside it has its breathing organs. The creature draws in air, and the air also gets in there, into the hollow space in the middle. The creature is able to feed, to breathe. Those are its main occupations. It floats about everywhere in the water, eating and breathing in air, which is of course also present in the water. Now what would a materialistic person say? He would say: 'Ah well, this creature simply consists of this skin. This skin has grown in such a way that it is a feeding apparatus inside and a breathing apparatus on the outside.' That's what a materialist would say. But we cannot say that, for we have to consider this to be a highly superficial way of looking at it. We have to say: 'No, this creature also has an ether body, and it is inside this, and it also has an astral body, being inside that as well. These it has as well, these are its invisible parts.' Well now, gentleman, is there some way in which we can prove that the creature has something invisible to it as well as the visible part? A materialist will say: 'The visible is of interest to me, the invisible is not. The visible creature shows me a kind of stomach inside, and a kind of lung on the outside. And I am content with that.' Now there is something you can do with this creature. You know, gentlemen, people like us don't wear gloves, but we know what that looks like. If you have a glove you can turn it inside out. So imagine the glove is brown on the outside, let us say, and has a grey lining inside. If you turn it inside out so that the grey part is on the outside and the brown part inside, you have turned it round completely; now the inside is outside and the outside inside. You could cut off a finger and do the same thing with just a finger of the glove. And if you cut off a finger of the glove and turn it inside out, you get something like this hydra. The hydra looks like the finger of a glove. And the odd thing is that just as you can turn the finger of the glove inside out so that the inside is outside and the outside inside, so you can also turn the hydra inside out. The part I have made red in the drawing will then be on the outside, and the part I have made violet on the inside. But the hollow space is now also on the outside, and whatever was outside before is now inside. And the strange thing is that the hydra suddenly starts to swim about again. It is not at all bothered. It will swim about in the water again, feeding and breathing. It will now take little grains into the hollow space inside, which has been newly created, just as before, and it will now breathe with what was the lining of its stomach before. So the hydra does not mind at all. It takes no harm at all. It begins to feed with the part it had used to breathe before, and to breathe with the part it used to feed before [Fig. 7]. Well, gentlemen, if the situation was that it had grown just so that you had the stomach inside there and the breathing organs on the outside, all the hydra could do in that case would be to breathe in there and start to feed on the outside. But it does not do this. The moment it is turned inside out it makes its stomach into a lung and its lung into a stomach. I'd like to know how that could be done if you had nothing there but a stomach and a lung! If you have a tool, a glove or whatever, you can turn it inside out if it is something physical. If it is something inner you'll of course not be able simply to turn it inside out. The part of it which is ether body and astral body, therefore, the invisible part, still remains. And it is because that part is there that the hydra can simply be turned inside out. So you see that if one just takes a clear look at the things that happen in the natural world, you will immediately find that the materialistic view simply has to be wrong. We are therefore able to say that the actual feeding and breathing is done by something which is invisible. And because the body of a hydra is not made as firm as ours, does not have bones and muscles but is all one kind of material, the hydra is in fact able to use this material for everything. You see, don't you, that we cannot turn our stomach outside in simply because it is made in a particular way, because we do not consist of the same material all the way through the way the hydra does but of different materials. But our stomach must also breathe inside, and the air we have in it is also taken in from outside. Our stomach is therefore also a kind of hydra. We can see from all these things, and much more could be added, that it is possible to show in even the smallest of creatures that there is something invisible on which this creature is based. Well now, gentlemen, you can see from this that even if we talk about the principle which really moves the whole human being, we find that it is something invisible. If you take the external movement of walking, you'll not at all think it is your big toe which takes a step. Instead you say to yourself: 'I am walking; it is my will which make me walk.' When the organs inside us are moving - and that is not only the heart, our intestines are also moving all the time, for instance — when the organs inside us are moving, therefore, these movements are not brought about by the physical matter in us; they are brought about by the part in us that is invisible. We therefore have to say: 'The heart is not a pump, for the heart is moved by our astral body.' So we have an astral body and this moves the heart, or rather, seeing that our I is actually also in the astral body, we also move our heart with our I, and we do so in a quite specific way. If you look at the heart, it is a bit to the left in a normal person, as Mr Burle said, quite rightly. Not as much as people generally think, but it is a bit to the left. And then these large vessels come from the heart [ drawing on the board ]. The aorta and the other blood vessels really come from the heart. Now it is like this. When I breathe in, for example, I feed myself oxygen, as it were. When I breathe out, I give out carbon dioxide. As soon as I have given out the carbon dioxide I hunger for oxygen. I want to breathe in again. In the first place, this has nothing at all to do with my heart but with my whole body. My whole body hungers for oxygen. Because it develops this hunger for oxygen, the instinct arises to get all the blood moving, for the blood has to have oxygen. Using its astral body, the physical body sends the blood to a place where it can get oxygen. Or let us assume I walk, or I work. The food in me is burned up then. I have discussed this with you before. The blood then has few nutrients left. If you work, the blood always loses most of its nutrients. And what does the blood want now? It wants more food again. The blood grabs the food for itself, as it were, which the stomach and intestines have taken up. All this, the hunger for air, the hunger for food, sets the blood in motion. It is the blood which moves in the first place, and the blood takes the heart along with it. And so it is not the heart which pumps the blood through the body, but the blood moves because of its hunger for air, hunger for food, and this moves the heart. We therefore have to say that it is the invisible human being in us which moves the heart. Well, gentlemen, hearing this you may well raise a question. You see, the situation with our anthroposophy is always such that our opponents believe that they are raising the objections. But we've already known the objections long before that. You raise them yourself in the first place. This is why I am also always drawing your attention to the objections. You may object: 'Yes, but why do we have a heart if it does not pump the blood through the body? If the blood moves by itself, maybe we don't even need a heart that needs to be taken along in the movement.' Now you see, that is the kind of thing people will say who have no real idea of the whole human body. There is a big difference between the human head and the rest of the human being. I have spoken of this difference before. Just think you are walking or working. Well, the head does not join in the effort. The head sits on the rest of the body, more or less the way we would sit in a carriage. You sit there without moving. The carriage has to move its wheels, the horses must pull it along. But it is our hands and our feet that have to work like this, and the head sits in there and does not join in the effort, you see? Otherwise we'd need ropes or something on our ears and we'd have to set the wheels of the machines in motion with these. We don't do that. The head does not join in the effort. Just imagine one might fix such ropes to one's head of hair — most people can no longer do this today, having gone bald. Doing this will not do people any good. The head does not really share in the effort; it sits calmly on top of the rest of the organism. The question is, why does it do this? Well, you see, the head is something completely different from the rest of us. The rest of us is a movement apparatus. The head is only a movement apparatus in so far as it goes along with the movements, and so on; the movements thus act up into the head. But the head is not the part of us which moves of its own accord. The head has sense organs on its outside. There it perceives what exists outside. But the head also perceives what goes on inside, though unconsciously so in most people. If I want to look outside, so that I'll know what goes on out there, I use my eyes. If I want to look inside, at the blood circulation, I use my heart. The heart does not exist to pump blood through the body; it is a sense organ which perceives everything, just as the whole of the head does. We would not be able to know anything about our blood circulation — of course, we know nothing about it directly in our brainbox, but there has to be a knowing in the head — if the head did not perceive the whole of our blood circulation through the heart. I have told you that the liver is an organ with sensory functions. It perceives the lower movements, for example. But the movements of the whole human being are perceived by the heart. It is this which sets the heart in motion. The movements caused by the hunger for air and the hunger for food set the heart in motion. And the movements of the heart show you if something is out of order in the body or if it is in order. You can easily see this, gentlemen. For what do we do when someone gets sick? The first thing to do is to check the pulse. Someone who has developed the habit of checking the pulse can tell an enormous amount from the pulse beat. The pulse beat truly is a barometer for the whole state of health and sickness. The pulse beat is nothing but the movement of the blood, however. The head is all the time doing what we do when we feel the pulse of a sick person. It is continually sensing the whole blood circulation and it does so through the heart. And indeed, the head senses everything that goes on in the body, doing so through the heart. Imagine someone has drunk a lot of alcohol one night, getting thoroughly drunk, as we say. This will upset the whole of his blood circulation. The next day the head will know, from the heart: the whole blood circulation is upset. It develops a hangover, the well-known thick head. But why does the head feel like that? You see, if I go for a walk on a beautiful day, using my eyes, I am impressed by the beauty. If the weather out there is terrible, I get a bad impression. Yes, gentlemen, if everything moves the way it should in the blood, the head gets a good impression, and all is in its proper order in the head. But if there's a thunderstorm in the blood — which is the situation when someone got drunk the night before — the head gets a thunderous impression through the heart, with everything going topsy-turvy. We can therefore only understand what the heart really is if we know that it is in fact the inner sense organ through which the head perceives everything that is going on in the body. When we look about us in the world we find that man is related to the whole world through his invisible part, the part I have called his astral body. Sun and moon are the most important stars to which we relate. Now the situation is that the head relates mainly to the sun and the rest of the human being actually relates to the moon. And we can say that it is of course a terrible superstition when people think they can do something with today's moon phases. But there is a rhythm in the human being that is also reflected in the blood. This is similar to the moon rhythm. Man does indeed take his orientation from the whole world. And so it is also the case that the internal movement of the blood does not only depend on the food we eat. When someone is in good health — in a way he is an independent creature — he makes himself in a sense independent of the influences of outer nature, and in a sense also makes himself independent of the whole world. But the moment a person begins to be a little bit sick, he becomes dependent on the whole world. Let us assume someone is sick and you notice this when you check his pulse. Someone able to read the pulse will find an enormous difference in the pulse between morning and evening. Much can be learned from the difference between the morning and evening pulses. With some sick people there is also a big difference between the pulse at full moon and the pulse at new moon. The individual is dependent. He may be able to make himself independent when in health, but some dependence remains, and this shows itself particularly in the case of sickness. We thus have to say that with regard to the influences on the heart we certainly have a relationship to the movements of cosmic bodies, especially the moon. We relate to the movements of the moon. This is something where many, many observations still need to be made. As I said earlier, the heart is a little to the left in a normal human being. But just as there are left-handed people though most people are right-handed, so, oddly enough, there are also people with the heart on the right. There are people whose hearts are on the right and not the left side. This is not noticed, as a rule, for the difference is an internal one, of course. You soon notice it if someone is left-handed, but you'll not notice so easily if his heart is a little to the right rather than the left. It would, however, be interesting to follow up people who have their heart on the right side and see if they are a bit different in life from people whose hearts are on the left. People whose heart is on the right, that is, placed more to the right, are people who must always do certain things they do at a particular time of the year or of the day. A right-hearted person is much more dependent on the environment than a left-hearted person. And if the heart is just a little bit to the right — after all, it's not in the same place in every person but a little bit different in each individual — if it is still to the left but just a little bit to the right, he'll have a longing to take his orientation more from the outer environment. He'll want to do something special in spring, let us say, and something special in autumn. He won't always be able to do that, of course, and this will then have a bad effect on him. People have no idea of the things that can have a bad effect on them. If children have their hearts a bit to the right, one needs to do things slightly differently for them at school — this need not be at all noticeable — than for children who have their hearts in the right place. Someone whose heart is more to the right is led to make many more demands on his astral body. You see, gentlemen, that's how it is. If someone operates a machine for a long time you'll realize that as a general rule his work will become mechanical. It gets more unpleasant because one is oneself becoming a piece of machinery, and if you operate a machine for a long time your actions and so on become mechanical. Now imagine you're a completely normal person with the heart properly to the left. Your father also had his heart to the left, and your grandfather and your great grandfather. So there's been a gradual development, and when you are born as the son, you will of course make the same movement inwardly that your father and grandfather and great grandfather have made. That happens as easily as if one had been operating a machine for a long time. Someone whose heart is to the right has not inherited the position of his heart from his father. The father will not generally be a right-hearted person. It is not a hereditary trait. In this case one has to do everything afresh again, as it were, out of the astral body. You do not then have all the heredity in you. And the result is that such a person, who is a right-hearted person, needs to use much more inner strength to have his blood circulation in proper order. And it is because of this that such a right-hearted person takes his orientation much more from the outside. The following may actually happen. Let us assume that you are not at all right-hearted, but quite normally left-hearted. But if you become a ballet dancer — this is something that also happens to men, but even more so to women — the dancing will also affect the heart. At present ballet is very materialistic. But in earlier times, when people were asked to dance, in ancient Greece, for example, they would follow movements that imitated those of the stars and this would actually move the heart a little bit to the right, in their lifetime. Dancing, even though it has grown materialistic today, does have a powerful effect on the heart, for it does move it a little to the right. And if people were to pay more attention to such things they would certainly see, if they dissect the body after death, that certain vessels in the heart are enlarged. Because the individual concerned was a dancer, the heart — and one can see this even after death — has moved a little to the right. This answers the question Mr Burle has asked. It is answered because we see that someone who is given more to his astral body, does not want to follow his normal blood circulation but wants to control it more. He therefore gives himself up to movements that are more like those that occur beyond the earth, like those of the moon. Can you understand this? [ Answer: Yes. ] So the matter you asked about today, that one easily notices that people have a certain longing to do this, has to do with the fact that human beings control the whole movement of the heart from their invisible part, and that they then, I'd say, slip over a little in the direction of the invisible, and then really take their orientation from the outside world and not only the internal movement of the blood which takes its orientation from the breathing and the blood. All these things can be explained if one really understands the human being. I'd now like to talk about something that still has a little bit to do with what we discussed the last time. The last time we met we saw that there is this small lens in the eye [drawing on the board]. When someone has normal vision, this small lens is transparent. When someone develops cataract the lens grows opaque. Salts are deposited in it. We are thus able to say that in a healthy person, we have the lens here — if this is the front part of the eye. It is transparent. In someone with cataract, the lens is opaque, with salts deposited in it. If the lens is transparent, the human astral body is able to see the world with that transparent lens. He'll see everything in the world. If the things I have written about in my little book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds get one in the habit of very, very intensive thinking, a moment will come when one is able to do something quite special. But people are not easily prepared to get in the habit of very intensive thinking today. They'll not do such a thing as withdrawing completely into their thinking, for they say everything should be given to them from outside; the secrets of the world must be investigated from the outside. Of course, it is not at all easy, for one has to pay very careful attention with this thinking. If one is very much alive in one's thinking, one must of course be terribly careful. But a moment will come in life where one is able to do something quite special. You see, anyone will understand it if I use my hand to lift up a chair, for it is something that is done all the time. But I can also keep my hand still and not use it to do the things it usually does. The work done by the lens in one's eye is not in our power like that. When an impression comes from outside, well, you simply look in the direction of it through your lens. When there's no impression coming in, the lens is at rest. But just think, gentlemen, that someone has really worked very hard to make his thinking very strong. He then lives wholly within his inner thinking. He does not look at the outside world, keeping his lens still just as we keep a hand still when not using it to do something. What happens then is that the whole of the starry heavens is reflected in the place where one otherwise has the transparent lens that enables one to see. This is the truly wonderful thing, I'd say, that if one uses the method I have given in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds one learns to use one's individual organs not for the earth but indeed for the other world. Now if salts have become deposited, of course, the lens develops cataract and becomes non-transparent whether you want it or not. When someone thinks very deeply, it will stay transparent, of course, but the person is not looking through the lens, he is not looking at the outside world. And then it begins to illumine the whole world from the lens. But it is the spiritual element one then sees, the whole of the starry heavens in their true inner significance. This small area in the human being where the lens is located can teach us about all the things one then takes heart to say about the stars and so on. You see, that is how magnificent things are with the human being, that tremendous insights are gained in the smallest place. Someone who has cataract — we won't wish it on anyone, of course — actually has it easier with the whole of this, he need not make quite such an effort with his thinking. He only needs to concentrate just a little and he can reach the point where he sees inwardly, having lost the ability to see in an outer way. But this is something we always need to emphasize when speaking of such higher insights. However, speaking of such higher insights, it is obvious that one may also make too much of an effort and then something like a disorder of the lens may develop instead of higher insight. With this powerful inner concentration the lens may grow a bit less transparent, even if one does not get cataract. Because of this everything in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds is written in such a way that a person can achieve the things that are described but will not get sick in doing so. No exercise should be described in such a way that people may also get sick from it. But the lens is the place in the human being where the whole spirit world can indeed be revealed in the inner eye. And we may therefore say that we can see in an outer way if everything is transparent in the eye. We can see in an inner way if something is deliberately made opaque. Yes, gentlemen, this is something which will show you how insight into worlds of spirit comes about. Insight into worlds of spirit arises if one first of all finds the individual points in the head, points which are then not used for ordinary activities by keeping them at rest. The lens will in the first place give us insight into the outside world. But one can get the whole body to a point where all kinds of things inside are not needed for the moment. If one does not use the heart, for instance — the circulation may continue, but you do not use the heart as a sense organ — you actually begin to perceive the whole of your blood circulation. But you'll not only perceive the blood circulation in that case. If you make your heart such that you look at your blood circulation through your body, as it were, and do not have inner sensation of the heart, nor of your pulse beat, but look through them, as you look out into the world through your lens with your head, that is, if you learn to see through yourselves — then, gentlemen you will see not just the blood circulation but you'll see the whole movement of the moon, everything the moon does, and you'll see how the moon relates to the sun. And you will then see the relationship which the heart has to sun and moon. You see, in earlier times people had it easier with all this. They had not been taught at school to gain all their knowledge from the outside world only. They simply did not want to see only the things in front of them. If you had taken a Greek who may have lived 2,700 or 2,800 years ago to a cinema he would not have looked at the film for long, for he would have fainted. The moment the ancient Greek would have looked at the film, something would have happened in him — not just in a limb but in the whole human being — which happens to you if a limb goes to sleep because there is some pressure on it. He would not have had a real sleep, but this going to sleep of the whole person would have happened if you had made an ancient Greek sit down and watch a film. He would of course have fainted. The ancient Greek could not have looked at this at all because his head would have suffered such disorder through the heart in his whole blood system that his whole body, not just individual limbs, would have gone to sleep and the head would not have had anything under control. He would have fainted. People are very different now from the way they were in the past. Today people's blood circulation is already so disordered because of our modern civilization that they'll not faint at the pictures. When one has really inwardly worked a bit with the science of the spirit and goes to a cinema, one has to make quite an effort, or one may pass out even today. But of course we're all human beings, and the one takes up the characteristics of the other. And the situation is that people no longer have the blood circulation system they had in earlier times, like the people of old. Those people of old therefore found it easier to see through to the blood circulation system and to speak of sun and moon than we do. We are cut off from that and have to get back to it first by doing exercises. We must first really make our organs such again that we'll be able to see. You see, the ancient Greek would still have been able to understand the things earlier people told him about what really happens on earth. You should not think that everything that has come down from antiquity is superstition, it is only that later people often changed it so much that it has turned into superstition. It is really strange how things that were quite sensible to begin with later on simply become superstition. If one no longer knows how things actually should be presented, they will of course become superstition. The ancient Jews would not eat pork, for example. Yes, they knew that, being of that particular race and living in the area they did, pork would make them weak. Later this became a superstition. Things that later on are superstition will always come from things that originally were quite sensible. So we must not think that all the knowledge of ancient times is always nonsense, but you can't always rely on the old things because they have often been falsified later on. We must therefore investigate everything afresh again. It is nonsensical therefore for people to say that anthroposophy is a collection of things that have been known before. Nothing is taken up as it is; everything is investigated again. And when someone says to you, gentlemen: 'In anthroposophy they're just putting together all kinds of ancient teachings of the Gnostics,' ask him if he can show you where the business of the lens may be found that I have told you about this time and the last time, if this can be found in a book anywhere. It can't, of course, for the business had been completely forgotten. You can therefore say to anyone who says the things have been collected up: You re lying, for you simply do not know what is being said there,' meaning all the things about the heart and so on, where a new look is being taken. The truth is that everything here comes from original investigation, and concerns the whole human being. Such simple things like people dancing, turning round and round, which I referred to the last time and today, in answer to Mr Burle's question, can show one a great deal. And one can understand it. But, gentlemen, something else will then show itself, something of which humanity is most afraid. For you see, when anthroposophy wins through — today you can't do a thing; if you want to do anything practical, all hell is let loose immediately; and even if you just say things, opposition will immediately arise, as you know only too well — but when anthroposophy will have reached the point of entering into our schools, putting things into effect everywhere, something else will come. People will then know which movements are good for a person's health and the whole development of metabolic activity, and which are wrong. A time will then come when work will be adapted to the human being. Today work is determined by the machines. Today one has to move the way the people who discovered the machine think appropriate. Later people will find that what matters is not what comes from the machines but that what matters is the human being. Because of this all machines must be made for human beings. This is something that will only be possible once anthroposophy has been fully accepted. Then one will be able to say: everything mechanical must take its orientation from the human being. Something else is needed for this, however. First we have to understand that the heart is not mechanical but takes its orientation from the human being. Then people will also find the basic principles for external machines, making them such that they take their orientation from the human being. But in a science which has so much taken the easy way that the heart is described as if the human being had just a pump there in his blood circulation, in such a science people will feel no compunction to make machines where You see, the ancient Greek would still have been able to understand the things earlier people told him about what really happens on earth. You should not think that everything that has come down from antiquity is superstition, it is only that later people often changed it so much that it has turned into superstition. It is really strange how things that were quite sensible to begin with later on simply become superstition. If one no longer knows how things actually should be presented, they will of course become superstition. The ancient Jews would not eat pork, for example. Yes, they knew that, being of that particular race and living in the area they did, pork would make them weak. Later this became a superstition. Things that later on are superstition will always come from things that originally were quite sensible. So we must not think that all the knowledge of ancient times is always nonsense, but you can't always rely on the old things because they have often been falsified later on. We must therefore investigate everything afresh again. It is nonsensical therefore for people to say that anthroposophy is a collection of things that have been known before. Nothing is taken up as it is; everything is investigated again. And when someone says to you, gentlemen: 'In anthroposophy they're just putting together all kinds of ancient teachings of the Gnostics,' ask him if he can show you where the business of the lens may be found that I have told you about this time and the last time, if this can be found in a book anywhere. It can't, of course, for the business had been completely forgotten. You can therefore say to anyone who says the things have been collected up: 'You're lying, for you simply do not know what is being said there,' meaning all the things about the heart and so on, where a new look is being taken. The truth is that everything here comes from original investigation, and concerns the whole human being. Such simple things like people dancing, turning round and round, which I referred to the last time and today, in answer to Mr Burle's question, can show one a great deal. And one can understand it. But, gentlemen, something else will then show itself, something of which humanity is most afraid. For you see, when anthroposophy wins through — today you can't do a thing; if you want to do anything practical, all hell is let loose immediately; and even if you just say things, opposition will immediately arise, as you know only too well — but when anthroposophy will have reached the point of entering into our schools, putting things into effect everywhere, something else will come. People will then know which movements are good for a person's health and the whole development of metabolic activity, and which are wrong. A time will then come when work will be adapted to the human being. Today work is determined by the machines. Today one has to move the way the people who discovered the machine think appropriate. Later people will find that what matters is not what comes from the machines but that what matters is the human being. Because of this all machines must be made for human beings. This is something that will only be possible once anthroposophy has been fully accepted. Then one will be able to say: everything mechanical must take its orientation from the human being. Something else is needed for this, however. First we have to understand that the heart is not mechanical but takes its orientation from the human being. Then people will also find the basic principles for external machines, making them such that they take their orientation from the human being. But in a science which has so much taken the easy way that the heart is described as if the human being had just a pump there in his blood circulation, in such a science people will feel no compunction to make machines where the human being has to take his orientation from the machine. All the problems in our social situation are due to this wrong view that is taken in science. And so one really has to understand that a proper way of thinking must first of all come upon people, for only then will it be possible to begin a proper social life. For as long as people think the heart is a pump, they will also not be able to relate to outer life in the right way. It is only when people know that the invisible human being is greater than his heart, that it is he who moves the heart, that they will also design their machines to be in accord with human nature. One first has to begin to see this. People make things much too easy for themselves today. They really make things much too easy for themselves. What is the most international thing today? Football. I explained this to you the other day. 10 See lecture of 30 May in this volume. But the things which are of the spirit are more and more limited to small groups and so on. It is all split up. You know, in Norway you'll hear them sing 'For he's a jolly good fellow', or you'll hear them sing a German song if the players come from Germany. But otherwise people go their own ways. What we have to take hold of is the spirit, but in such a way that we take hold of it in detail. One should not speak of the spirit in general terms, but take hold of it in every detail. We'll say more about this next Saturday.

From Mammoths to Mediums

Blood circulation and movement of the heart.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA350/English/RSP2000/19230606p02.html

Dornach

6 Jun 1923

GA350-3

Well, gentlemen, what have you in mind? Question: Various chemical substances have the property that they produce specific colours in a flame, for example. On the other hand many stars also have a bit of colour. Mars, for example. When iron oxidizes, rusts, you also get a reddish colour. Would these things be connected? Rudolf Steiner: That is of course a very difficult question. One would first of all have to remember the things we have already discussed about colours. 11 See lecture given on 21 February in From Limestone to Lucifer (as in note 1). We have talked about a number of things relating to colours. You have to consider that the colour of the solid has to do with the whole way in which it exists in the world. Imagine, therefore, that we have some substance or other. This substance has a particular colour. Now I believe you're thinking this colour may look completely different in a given situation, for instance if we put it in a flame, so that the flame will then have a particular colour? We have to remember that the flame already has its own colour when it develops. If we put some material into the flame, the two colours interact, the colour of the substance and the colour of the flame. But it is altogether most peculiar how colours behave in the world. Let me tell you a few things about this. You know the ordinary rainbow. It has a band of red, then the colour changes to orange and yellow, then it is green, blue, a somewhat darker blue, indigo blue, and finally the band is violet. We thus have more or less seven colours in the rainbow [Fig. 8]. People have always observed these seven colours which one gets in the rain58 bow, the most beautiful colours ever to be seen in nature. And you must also know that these colours are such by nature that they are floating freely. As you know, they develop when the sun shines somewhere and there is rainy weather between you and the sun. The rainbow will then appear in the sky on the other side. So if you see a rainbow somewhere you have to say: 'Where's the rainy weather? Yes, the sun must be on the other side of the rain, the side facing away from it.' That is how things have to be. That is how the seven colours of the rainbow develop. But these seven colours also appear elsewhere. Imagine we are burning a metallic body, heating it more and more so that this metallic body gets very hot. As you know, it will first turn red hot, and finally white hot, as one says. Imagine therefore that we have created a kind of flame by having what is really, I'd say, a metal flame. But it is not a real flame, it is glowing metal, metal that is wholly aglow. If you look at a metal which is thus wholly aglow through a prism, as it is called, you do not see a white hot mass but you see the same seven colours as in a rainbow. Let me draw you a diagram [Fig. 9]. Imagine this to be the glowing metal, and I then have such a prism here. You know what a prism is. Here it is shown from the side, such a triangular piece of glass. There's my eye. I now look through this. And then I do not see a white body but the seven colours of the rainbow in the order red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Looking through the prism I see something that is really white, white hot, in seven colours. You see from this that it is possible to see something that is white hot shimmering in the colours of the rainbow. Now we can also do something else that is most extraordinarily interesting. You see, we can only produce such a white hot mass if we heat a metal, or any solid body. But if I have a gas and burn up the gas, I do not get the seven colours looking through my prism, not such a band of seven colours, but something quite different. Now you may say: 'How do we get such a glowing gas?' Well, it is quite easy to get a glowing gas. Imagine, for example, I have some ordinary table salt. There are two substances in it — a metallic substance called sodium, and then also chlorine. Chlorine is a gas and if you let it spread anywhere, if it is present anywhere, it'll immediately rush up your nose and it is biting. It is the same gas which people use to bleach their linen, for example. The linen is bleached if you let chlorine pass over it. So if you have sodium and chlorine together, as a solid, this is the ordinary salt we use to season our food. If you take the chlorine away and put the sodium, which will then be whitish, into a flame, the flame will turn quite yellow. Why does this happen? Well, gentlemen, it happens because sodium turns into gas if the flame is hot enough, and the sodium gas will burn yellow, giving you a yellow flame. So now we have not only a glowing metal but also a gaseous flame. If I look at this through my prism, it'll not show seven colours but on the whole stay yellow. It is just at the side — and you have to take a very good look for this — that you see something a bit blue and a bit red [Fig. 10]. But one generally does not notice this but only sees the yellow. But all of this is not yet the really interesting thing. The most interesting thing is this. If I set the whole thing up [Fig. 9], 12 A few sentences are missing here. To show the 'really interesting thing', Rudolf Steiner probably described a set-up that would look something like this: Using this arrangement, it is possible to see the yellow absorption line in the yellow part of the continuous spectrum of the incandescent lamp of which Rudolf Steiner then spoke. The drawing on the board was only a very rough sketch. and then put the yellow flame in here and again look through my prism — what do you think? You'll say: 'Looking through there I'll get red, orange, yellow, green and so on. And yellow, too.' 'It'll be a particularly strong yellow here,' you'll say, 'a particularly bright and luminous yellow.' But you see, that is not true. What happens is that to yellow appears at all, the yellow is completely eliminated, extinguished, and you get a black bit there. just as you can have a yellow gas flame so you can also have a blue one. One can find other substances, lithium, for example, that have a red flame. Potassium and similar substances give a blue flame. If you put a blue flame in here, for instance, the blue will not come up more strongly, but you'll again have a black spot. So the peculiar thing is that when you make something glow, if a solid body is completely aglow and is not a gas, you get this band of seven colours. But if you only have a burning gas, you get more or less a single colour, and this single colour then extinguishes its own colour in the band of seven colours. These things I am telling you are something people have not known all that long; they were only discovered in 1859. 13 In 1859, Bunsen and Kirchhoff discovered spectral analysis. It was not until 1859 that it was found that if you have a band of seven colours coming from a glowing solid, then individual colours coming from glowing gases, burning gases, will extinguish the corresponding colours. You can see the highly complex way in which one colour influences another. And it is because of this that if one looks at the sun in the ordinary way, it looks as if it were a white hot body. It is really like this. If you look superficially through a prism, you'll also see the sequence of colours — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet — in the sun. But if you look more carefully, then you'll not have those seven colours in the sun's disc. The seven colours will merely be near each other, with lots of black lines in between, a whole lot of black lines. If you look very carefully at the sun you do not have a band of seven colours; you'll have the seven colours, but always interrupted by lots of black lines. What does one have to say to oneself in that case? If it is not the usual, continuous band of colours that shines out from the sun but a band of colours with lots of black lines in between, well, then one has to say to oneself: 'There are lots of burning gases between us and the sun and these are always extinguishing their particular colours between us and the sun.' If I do not look at glowing metal, therefore, but at the sun, and see those black lines, I have to say to myself: 'There, always in the corresponding place, the yellow is extinguished by sodium, for instance. Looking into the sun and seeing a black line in the yellow, I have to say that there is sodium between me and the sun.' And I get such black lines for all the metals in the sunlight. So all kinds of metals exist as gases in cosmic space between me and the sun. What does this tell us? Gentlemen, it tells us that cosmic space, or at least, in the first place, the area surrounding the earth, is filled with lots of metals that are not just glowing but burning. If one thinks about this one must altogether understand that basically we can never just say that we are standing here on the earth and up there is the glowing sun, for anything we see actually depends on what is there between us and the sun. And physicists would be most surprised if they ever actually managed to get into the sun, for it would not be as they expect. What we see actually comes from the things that are between the human being and the sun. So there you can see from just one example how complex the connection between substances and colours really is. So if you have a flame somewhere and the flame, say a candle flame, has a particular colour, you must first of all ask: 'What does the candle contain?' Solids from the candle exist as gases in the flame; they are usually made into gases by the heat of the flame. If we then look through a prism, as I did here [pointing to the drawing]: when a substance is a gas it colours the whole flame. Sodium will colour the flame yellow, for example. If you had a flame somewhere, in this room, for example, and looked through a prism — the sodium is almost always black. You don't actually have to put it in first. If the apparatus is very exactly set up, so that you can see things properly, you'll always find these black lines that should really be yellow and basically develop because very small traces of sodium are present everywhere. This proves to you that sodium is altogether necessary in the natural world. We cannot live unless it is there. We must also always have a quite specific amount of sodium in us and have to process the sodium in us. Its presence is really only betrayed because it always extinguishes the yellow lines and makes them into black lines. Now you need to remember what I have told you before. 14 See note 11. How do blue and violet colours arise? And reds and yellows? Well, blue, as I told you, is the colour of vast cosmic space, for there is nothing out there where we see the blue firmament. It is vast, black cosmic space. We thus see vast, black cosmic space. But we do not see it, though it is there right in front of our eyes. Water vapours are rising all the time between us and that vast, black cosmic space. Even if the air is pure, you always have water vapours in the air. So if this is the earth [drawing on the board], these are the water vapours, and all around is black cosmic space, the sun will shine through those water vapours. If you stand down here and look up, you do not see black but blue. You look through something that is illumined and therefore see dark space as blue. It means that if I see something that is dark through something that is illuminated, I see it in blue. The red sky at dawn and dusk is, as you know, yellowy or a yellowy reddish colour. If this here [drawing on the board] is the earth, and there are the vapours all around, and now the sun comes up here, I see this illuminated. I see something that is lit up, but I see it through the dark vapours. This makes it yellow for me. When I see something bright through something dark it will be yellow. When I see something dark through something that is lit up, it will be blue. Blue is darkness seen through something that is lit up, yellow is the brightness seen through something dark. I am sure you can understand this. If I have the yellow produced by the yellow sodium flame, this yellow colour of the sodium flame means that sodium is a substance that gets very bright when it evaporates but at the same time also creates something dark around itself. Sodium therefore really burns like this. If the sodium is burning here, the white light shoots up in the middle [Fig. 11, left] and I therefore see the whole as yellow. The sodium radiates light, but creates darkness all around it because it radiates light so powerfully. It need not surprise you that sodium creates darkness around it by radiating such a powerful light. If you are a fast runner and run really fast, someone who wants to keep up with you will inevitably lag behind. The light spraying out is a fast runner; it therefore shows itself as shining in the darkness — it appears yellow to me. With an ordinary candle flame the situation is that the particles go apart like this [Fig. 11, right]. This makes it light all around here and dark at the centre. So if you have an ordinary candle flame you see the darkness through the light. Here the bright little dots scatter; here at the centre it stays dark and therefore appears blue. If you have a yellow flame, therefore, as in the case of sodium, it means that it sprays out with tremendous power. If you have a blue flame this means that it does not spray out very much but goes apart and scatters. That is the difference you always get in the world with the effects substances have. Imagine I have a glass tube here; I fuse it so that it is closed at both ends. I then also pump out the air so that I have a glass tube that has vacuum inside. 15 Geissler tubes, after Heinrich Geissler (1815-79), glassblower and mechanic. I then do the following. I let an electric current go in here, letting it go this far, and another current on the other side. This gives me a closed circuit. So the two poles of electricity are opposite each other here. Between them is a vacuum. And now something very strange happens. On the one side the electricity sprays out and on the other side, where it looks bluish, you get such waves [Fig. 12]. And that then goes together. Light is all the time spraying into the darkness, we might say, bright electricity into the darkness. So there you have the two flames I have shown you separately. You have this one at the one pole of the electricity and that one at the other pole. Here on one side you have the same thing as in the sodium flame, and here on the other side the same thing as in an ordinary candle flame. If one does this properly, one gets different kinds of rays here, including X-rays, which, as you know, can be used to see solid parts such as bones and so on, or foreign bodies in the body. So the thing is that there are substances in the world that are radiant. Others are not radiant but, we might say, give off a faint light and cover themselves with such waves on the surface. Substances that cover themselves with such waves are bluish; substances that are radiant are yellowy. If a dark body then comes in front of the yellow the yellow will turn reddish. So if you make the yellowy light darker again it may turn reddish. So you see, gentlemen, solid bodies in the world are such that some are radiant and therefore have the bright colours we see on one side of the rainbow; others are not radiant but send out those waves. This gives us the bluish colours from the other side of the rainbow. If you know this you will say to yourself: 'There are many stars such as Mars, for instance, which is yellowy or reddish, or like Saturn which has a bluish light.' You are then able to see from this what the star is like, how it behaves. Mars is simply a star that radiates a great deal and therefore it has to appear yellowy or reddish. It is a star that radiates a lot. Saturn is a body that stays quieter and covers itself with waves. You can almost see the waves around it. When you have Saturn you can also see the waves as rings around it. It appears to be blue because it surrounds itself with waves. So the things we observe on solids here on earth tell us, if we are not dull in our minds but observe correctly, what the bodies are like out there in the universe. Only one has to know, of course, that the whole of cosmic space is filled with all kinds of substances, as I've told you, and these are really always in a state where they'll burn. Take just one solid, iron for example. It rusts. I think that is what you meant with your question, isn't it? The iron rusts and therefore grows redder than it usually is. So we have a solid that is relatively dark, which rusts and then turns reddish. Having studied the colours we'll be able to tell ourselves what it really means that iron turns reddish when it rusts, which means when it is continually exposed to the air. Let us see clearly what this means. I don't have chalk in all the colours to hand, but you'll see what I mean. Let us assume, then, that we have blue iron. Now it is exposed to the air. And because it is exposed to the air it turns reddish as it rusts. Now you can say to yourself that the reddish colour develops because something light is seen through darkness. If I look at iron in its usual state it is dark at first, which means it produces waves. But if I expose it to the air for a long time, if the iron is in contact with air for a long time, the air gets to the iron; and the iron gradually changes in the air for it begins to defend itself against the air. It defends itself against the air and begins to grow radiant. And something that radiates like our sodium flame here, so that you get darkness all around, will be yellowy or reddish. You are therefore able to say that the relationship between iron and air is such that the iron begins to be all on edge inside and grows radiant. The iron gets all on edge and grows radiant. Now you know that iron is also present in the human body, where it is a very important substance. Iron is in the blood and it is a very important part of human blood. If we have too little iron in the blood we are people who cannot walk properly, getting tired quickly, people who grow lethargic. If we have too much iron in the blood we get excited and smash everything to pieces. We therefore have to have just the right amount of iron in the blood, otherwise we don't do well. Well, gentlemen, people do not pay much attention to these things today, but I have mentioned this to you before: if you investigate how the human being is connected with the whole world you find that in man the blood is connected with influences that come from Mars. Mars, which always moves, of course, really always stimulates the blood activity in us. This is because of its relationship to iron. Scholars of earlier times who knew this would therefore say that Mars had the same nature as iron. So in a sense we can regard Mars as something that is like our iron. But it also has a reddish yellow shimmer, which means it is all the time growing radiant inside. Mars we thus see as a body that is all the time growing radiant inside. We only understand the whole of this if having made these studies we say to ourselves: Mars is iron-like by nature, is a substance rather like iron; but it is always on edge, wanting to grow radiant all the time. As iron does under the influence of air, so does Mars want to be radiant all the time under the influence of its environment. By nature it is therefore inwardly on edge all the time, wanting to come alive. Mars constantly wants to come alive. We can see this from the whole of its colouring and the way it behaves. With Mars we have to know that it is a cosmic body which really wants to come alive all the time. It is different with Saturn. Saturn has a bluish light, that is, it is not radiant but surrounds itself with a wave element. It is exactly the opposite of Mars. Saturn all the time wants to go dead, become a dead body. One can see that Saturn is surrounding itself with brightness, as it were, so that we then see its darkness as a bluish colour through the brightness. Now let me draw your attention to something. You can see something really interesting if you walk through a willow wood on a night that is not really dark but rather dusky — walking through a wood where willows grow. Every now and then you may see something that'll make you ask: 'Goodness, what's that light there?' You come close to it and the light can be seen to be coming from rotting wood. Something that is rotting down thus becomes luminous. If you then walk a long way off and look at it again, with something dark behind this luminous stuff, it would no longer appear to be luminous but blue. And that is how it is with Saturn. Saturn is decomposing. Saturn is really decomposing all the time. Because of this there is something of a brightness all around it, but the star itself is dark, and it looks blue to us because we are looking at its dark shape through the decomposing matter which is all around it. So we see that Mars wants to live all the time and Saturn wants to die all the time. This is what is so interesting, that we can look at cosmic bodies and say: 'The cosmic bodies which appear to have a bluish shimmer are perishing, and those that appear to have a reddish, yellowy shimmer are only coming into existence.' And that is how it is in the world. In one place something is coming into existence, and in another something is passing away. Just as on earth you have a child in one place, and an old man in another, so it is also in space. Mars is still a young man who wants to be alive all the time. Saturn is already an old man. You see, the ancients would study this. We'll have to study it again. But we'll only understand what the ancients meant if we find it again for ourselves. Because of this it is really silly — I spoke of this also the last time — for people to say that in anthroposophy we are simply writing up all the things that can be found in the ancient writings. For you cannot understand the things you find in ancient writings! You see, one only understands the things written in the ancient works, which are based on real wisdom, if one has first found them again for oneself. There was a verse known in medieval times, before America was discovered, that was most interesting. 16 Often quoted in alchemical literature and said to have been composed by Basilius Valentinus, said to have been a Benedictine monk at St Peter's monastery in Erfurt, Germany, around 1413. A version of it is published in Gesammelte Schriften des Basilius Valentinus , Hamburg 1740. Almost every single person would say it. In medieval times all kinds of people would say the verse, for they would learn it then the way people today learn — well, I don't know — an agitators' slogan perhaps. The verse goes like this. O Sun, a king of this world! Luna keeps your generations going. Luna is the moon. Mercury soon couples you. Without Venus you'd all be nothing, Venus who chooses Mars to be her husband. So the verse suggests that Venus, another young figure, has chosen Mars for her husband. It is suggested that Mars is a young man out there in the universe. Without Jupiter's might you'd lack everything. It is therefore suggested that Jupiter gets busy everywhere. And then, in the end, we have: So that Saturn, ancient and old may show himself in many colours. Just think how beautifully this medieval verse contrasts Mars' youth with Saturn's age. O Sun, a king of this world! Luna keeps your generations going. Mercury soon couples you. Without Venus you'd all be nothing, Venus who chooses Mars to be her husband. Without Jupiter's might you'd lack everything. So that Saturn, ancient and old may show himself in many colours. So you see it is something one can't understand, and people show this. For a present-day academic reading such a verse would say: 'Well, that's just silly superstition.' He'll laugh about it. And when one rediscovers the truths that lie in such a verse, he'll say one has copied it. Yes, well, you know, it is quite unbelievable how stupidly people behave really, for they cannot understand it, of course. No academic today understands what is said in such a verse. But if you are able to do spiritual research, you'll discover it again, and then you'll finally understand it. One has to find these things out for oneself again, otherwise the ancient verses, which are popular wisdom, really have no value at all. But it is also a wonderful thing when one discovers these things through spiritual research, and then finds this tremendous wisdom in simple popular verses. It shows that the old popular verses were taken from things taught in the ancient schools of wisdom. That is where the verses come from. Today people can no longer go to their academic scholars in that way, for today's knowledge does not give us any verses! You won't find much that is of use in life. But there was a time when people did know things like these, which I have also told you again today. They then put them into such nice verses. And then all kinds of things came of this, of course, and sometimes also misunderstandings. Now the verse about all the planets that I've just recited for you has been forgotten. But other verses later came to be distorted. Now it is of course also true that it means something when animals do something or other. They are connected with the universe. We can know that something is happening with the weather if we look at a tree frog. You know, tree frogs are used as weather prophets when they move up or down their ladder. This is because all that lives is connected with the whole universe. Only it came to be distorted later, and then there is perhaps also some justification in having verses to amuse oneself, having listened to some that have been taken hold of by silly minds. So if someone says, for example: 'When the cock on the dunghill does crow, the weather will change or it'll stay as it's now,' well, it just shows that one should not mix everything up together, and not mix in silly things with wisdom. The verse I cited does of course point to secrets in the universe that have to do with light and colour. The things people often say about a cockerel or the like are, of course, something we can laugh about, like the saying I have just quoted. But on the other hand old country maxims sometimes still have something extraordinarily deep to them, something most wise, even today. And it is not for nothing that a countryman is unhappy if it snows in March, for there simply are connections between seed grain and March snows. We thus truly see from such things that we can understand the whole world in the light of the things we observe on earth. It would perhaps be better if one stuck more to what the tree frog is able to do as it climbs up and down, depending on the weather, rather than to what a dormouse does when it sleeps and sleeps, so that one sleeps through all the secrets of the universe. I hope you've been able to understand what I have been talking about in answer to your questions. It is of course quite complicated and one cannot put it in just a few words. I therefore had to say all those things, but you'll be able to put it together. It really is quite interesting, isn't it, to see how things go together in this way. We'll continue on Wednesday.

From Mammoths to Mediums

Effects of light and colour in earthly matter and in cosmic bodies

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA350/English/RSP2000/19230609p02.html

Dornach

9 Jun 1923

GA350-4

Does anyone have a question? Mr Burle: I'd like to tell you something that happened when I was young, something connected with destiny. Religious people will say, for example, that it is because we have a guardian angel. I was a skittle boy once, setting up the skittles, I'd have been 9 or 10 then, and as I was busy setting them up a voice called 'Move!' with such intensity that I quickly jumped aside. And a moment later the big skittles ball came to the place where I'd just been, it was tremendously powerful. I asked who'd called out to me. But everyone said it was not them, and it was also that the voice could not have come from there. The other occasion was in a smithy where people sharpened their ploughshares. There was a big wheel there. We were five or six boys amusing ourselves in the place. I was about 11 then. I got up on a spoke to force the wheel down. I liked that. I then said to the other boys, pull out the rebound stopper because then I can get from one spoke to the next. They all pulled as hard as they could but did not manage it. I was the smallest, but I went to take a look. The wheel had gone round very fast, and it clearly would have been my death if they'd managed to raise the rebound stopper. I'd be pleased to hear if Dr Steiner has anything to say about whether a higher power can show itself in such situations. Rudolf Steiner: Well, gentlemen, I'd like to talk to you about such things, but we always have to discuss them in a way that is properly scientific. Things like this are not simply accepted in the anthroposophical science of the spirit, the way people often do accept them, but they must of course be considered scientifically, for they are much more important in life than people think. I'll start by telling you one thing, as a kind of preparation. You see, people really only give thought to a very small part of life. There is a great deal they do not consider, and because they do not consider it they also think it does not exist. Let us assume, for example, someone walks past a house somewhere and at that moment a tile drops down from the roof and kills him. This will get a lot of attention, and a lot will be made of it of course among the man's friends and acquaintances. People will talk about it. It is something they have observed and so they'll talk about it. But now assume the following. Someone wants to go out in the morning. At the last minute, just as he is about to leave the house, he realizes he has forgotten to do something that absolutely has to be done. He is therefore five minutes late. He now leaves the house. The tile fell off the roof five minutes before he went past, and therefore did him no harm. If he had gone that way five minutes earlier the tile would have stove in his head. Nobody can possibly know about it — he himself forgets, of course, and no one pays attention to what would have happened if he'd not been delayed by a few minutes. Now you see, no note is taken of these things, but they are just as much part of life. Countless such things, where destiny prevents disaster, happen, but no note is taken of them. They are not considered because it is not so easy to track them down. You can only track them down if the situation is really noticeable in some way, drawing your attention. Then one does take note of such things. There was someone once 17 This incident was more fully described in a lecture Rudolf Steiner gave in Berlin on 20 April 1915. Published in Steiner, R., Destinies of Individuals and of Nations (GA 157). Tr. A. Meuss. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1984. The story was originally published in G. H. v. Schubert, Die Symbolik des Traumes, 3. verb. u. verm. Aufl. Leipzig, pages 10 and 11, as follows: Erasmus Francisci dreamt... when he was a young man that someone who even in his dream called him by a familiar first name wanted to shoot him dead but that he was saved by his aunt who grabbed the barrel and pulled it aside. In the middle of the day he told the dream, jokingly, to his aunt in whose house he was staying. She took the matter more seriously, however, and asked him not to go out that day, all the more so since a child had recently been shot dead by someone who was careless. To encourage the young man to stay at home, she gave him the key to the room above his, where fruit was stored. The young man went to his room, having had a brief conversation first with the servant who was on the side of the passage directly opposite to his room, cleaning some rifles that had been lent out and only just returned. At that moment he escaped the imminent danger of which his dream had warned him, for the person who wanted to shoot him in the dream had had the same first name as the manservant. The young man had barely sat down at his desk, reading for a few moments a book that he normally enjoyed, when his hand and eyes fell on the key his aunt had given him. This drew him away irresistibly from his book and to the room where the apples were kept. He had only just moved from his seat when the rifle, unbeknownst to the servant loaded with two bullets for a wolf hunt, went off and the whole charge hit the wall immediately above the chair. If the chair had not just been moved, it would inevitably have struck the young man right in the middle of his chest. In this strange case, therefore, the dream had without doubt saved the life of someone who later became a most useful and learned man. who spent a lot of time at his desk, with the rest of the family living below. One day he dreamt that something terrible was going to happen to him on a particular day and that he would be shot. What did the man do? He told the others about it; people said he should be very careful, for he might be shot dead one of these days. So he did not leave the house but stayed in his room all day. But the dream had made such an uncanny impression on him and he knew from a number of earlier experiences that such dreams might come true — this happened some time ago, when people still paid more attention to such things. He had an unpleasant feeling. Because it all felt so unpleasant he became aware of himself. And it then happened that he grew restless at a particular moment and because of this inner restlessness had to get up from his chair. At that moment a shot went very close to his chair! The situation was that an old gun from much earlier times hung in the ante-room. The door stood open and his servant had taken the gun in his hands. He did not think it was loaded and rather carelessly held the gun in such a way that it went off and the bullet went just where the man had been sitting. So you see a double destiny link here. First a banal dream. On the other hand, because his destiny was not yet fulfilled and he was meant to live on, he was driven away by an inner urge at just the right moment. But now there is also something else to be considered. You see, he might just as well have heard the word 'Move!' at that moment, as you did [ turning to Mr Burle ]. He might equally well have heard that. How would that have come about? You see, when we speak of a world of the spirit we must clearly understand that one must not talk about it in a stupid way. But we would always be talking about it in a stupid way if we were to believe — and many people do believe it, at least those who are spiritualists — that there are Germans and French people and English people and Spaniards and Chinese people in the world of the spirit. They would have to be there, of course, if one were to hear the word 'Move' from the world of the spirit, for in that case some spirit or other would have to be speaking German. It would speak in French to a French person, for if it were to speak English or German the person would think it was an unarticulated sound and might even think it was something quite evil. So it would be rather silly to think that a spirit had said 'Move!', for a spirit cannot be a German or a French or an English person. That is the silly thing with spiritualists that people think they connect with the dead through a medium and get answers, believing that spirits talk like that. They don't, of course. They are there, but they don't do that. The situation is like this. This kind of connection with the spiritual world, which also makes it possible for us to speak of the spiritual world in a scientific way, requires us first of all to get out of the habit of thinking that the spirits talk in some kind of earthly language. You must first get to know the world of the spirit and then be able to translate what the spirits are saying in a supersensible language into an ordinary language. If the man sitting at his desk had heard the word 'Move!' that might have been quite good, too. But the thing is like this, gentlemen. You have heard me say that the whole human being is filled with good sound sense. I once told you how the liver perceives processes in the human abdomen, the lung perceives things, the whole human being is a sense organ. The heart perceives; through the heart we perceive the blood circulation. But in ordinary life we don't use those other organs for our sensory perceptions. We use our eyes and nose, but we do not use those other organs for sensory perception. These organs have a quite specific peculiarity. Take the liver, for example, gentlemen. You see if the liver is removed from the body it is this organ which you know from animals, because you've probably all seen a liver some time or other — a goose liver if nothing else. But this organ has an ether body which is connected with the rest of the ether body [Fig. 13, yellow], and it also has an astral body [violet], and then there is also the I in it. This liver therefore has something that is of the spirit. You can be aware of things that are of the spirit in your head, but you do not perceive them consciously in your liver. The way you are made in ordinary life you cannot gain a view of anything there, just as I explained to you the other day that you do not perceive the spiritual element in the small lens in your eye. But it is possible to perceive the whole of the heavens with the small lens in the eye. Spirits hardly ever speak through any of the organs in the head. The whole world speaks there; the stars in their motions and so on; they speak through the organs in the head. But spiritual entities do indeed also speak to us, and they do so through the other organs, such as the liver. The stomach speaks to the liver, but so do spirits, and also to the lung. Spiritual entities speak to all the organs which we do not use for our ordinary life in the conscious mind. Now, gentlemen, as the head really has to depend on perceiving only the things it sees there in the outside world, the inner part of the human being, the lower organs, are actually designed to perceive things in the world of the spirit. These organs are, however, extraordinarily subtle. They are really quite subtle. And you can see that they are subtle even if you just consider the conditions that sometimes arise from those organs. People don't usually pay attention to those conditions, and they don't pay attention to them because our medicine is so imperfect. You see, I'm sure you'll have known someone get diarrhoea because he was terribly afraid. No attention is paid to this because people can't think that diarrhoea may come from fear. But it does. An influence is there from the outside world, but the influence may also be from the realm of mind and spirit. And it does come from that world in such a way that those organs do indeed perceive things, but things that are quite different from those that exist in the outside world. I have told you a few times now that we human beings go through different lives on earth. Now if until now people had been expected to go through different lives on earth without much ado, they would not have been able to do it. If a human being is to develop from infancy here on earth he must have a guide, someone to bring him up and teach him, or someone like that, otherwise he'd always be quite stupid. And the human being actually has such a guide in the world of the spirit, who guides him from earth life to earth life and really looks out in the individual life on earth not for things where we are acting freely, things we can think about sensibly ourselves, but for things we cannot think about, though our human organization depends on them. And so it happens that if someone is sitting there and feels a certain anxiety he grows particularly sensitive to something that lies ahead. This sensitivity must be considered in the right way. We have to distinguish quite clearly: does the sensitivity relate to the spiritual side or is it after all something for which a physical explanation can be found? It is impossible to talk about these things properly unless one takes a critical view. Let me give you another example. A sick woman lived on the fourth floor of a house and the doctor had to come and see her daily, even when she was getting better, for it was a fairly dangerous condition. The doctor would not come at the same time each day but at different times, but the woman up on the fourth floor would always know he was coming, even if he was still down below. He'd still be at the front gate, but she'd know: The doctor's coming. Above all she'd be sure of it when he was in the hall on the ground floor, though he had not yet taken one step up the stairs. People told the doctor, saying she was clairvoyant. Well, the doctor was a bit edgy about this at first. Doctors don't believe such things straight off. But when the people went on and on at him, saying their daughter was clairvoyant for she'd know when he was there downstairs, he decided to put the matter to the test. He quietly took off his boots before he went in through the gate. And then she did not know! So you see, there are also such cases, and one needs to put them to the test. The patient's hearing had simply grown very acute from lying in bed for so long and she had heard steps down below which one normally does not hear. If you always say right away that all of it is clairvoyance, you have no right, of course, to speak of spiritual worlds. You must learn to distinguish carefully between things the senses are still just able to perceive and things that cannot be perceived with the senses. Developments like these show us that the senses may grow extraordinarily acute. In ordinary life one is of course unable to hear someone's steps below if one is on the fourth floor. But just as the senses in the head and elsewhere may grow acute, so our internal organs, also being senses, may grow more sensitive to spiritual elements. And if the liver, for instance, has the impression that it might be shot that day, it will be particularly sensitive, with the result that the liver is able to hear the warning given by the spiritual entity which really does exist, but not, of course, in Italian, German or some other language. But just think, now something amazing happens. The liver must first pass this on to the head, otherwise the human being cannot be aware of it. And on the way from the liver to the head the matter is translated into the language which the person speaks. This is the remarkable thing, something truly mysterious. And it is only here that you can really say what a remarkable creature man is. Not only is he able to have premonitions but, and this is much more to be marvelled at, he unconsciously translates something that comes to him in the language of the spirit into his own language. You can see from this that everything people in various spiritualist organizations record in writing is something that is said to the abdomens. People would prefer not to admit this. They believe the spirits speak Italian or French, but it all comes from the human being himself. And yet, there is a connection with the spiritual world even in those seances, but it is something very bad. This is then translated into all kinds of things. But you'll realize that when there's something like this Move!' one has to understand that the actual connection with the world of the spirit would still not be clear to one. It is not the right idea to imagine that the guardian spirit has murmured something in one's ear. Instead we must know the roundabout route that is taken. You then also understand something else. You understand that people can easily refute such things. For an ordinary person the business of the man who took off his shoes is equal to a refutation. He'll say: 'People believe it to be clairvoyance, clairaudience, but it was not a case of clairaudience but of ordinary hearing. And that is also how it must have been in the other situation.' Well, gentlemen, this is exactly what needs to be investigated first. And one will then see, proceeding with the necessary caution, that human destinies are indeed being worked on all the time out of the spiritual world, using these roundabout routes — most of all, of course, in childhood. Why in childhood? Well, the astral body is much more active in childhood, working with much greater intensity. Later on it no longer works with the same intensity. When the liver is still soft in the child, the astral body is able to transmit the things it hears in the world of the spirit to the liver. Later, when the liver has grown harder, it can no longer transmit things. Now you have to consider the significance of an event like the one Mr Burle has known, when death is really about to come and then the event, perfectly well arranged for in terms of the outer nature of things, does not happen. For it might have been your death at that time, when you heard the word 'Move!'? [Affirmed] So it would have been your death. There are many such instances in human life. It is merely that many go unnoticed. But that was one you certainly took note of. However, you went through many other lives on earth before you came to this one. Yes, gentlemen, the things one has gone through in earlier lives on earth now want to come into their own in the right way. They want to come into their own in such a way, for example, that one may have a long life this time, so that everything laid down in earlier lives can develop fully in this one. Outer nature may actually go against this. External circumstances may put me in danger of having an accident one day, so that I'd have to die, and the matter might turn out in such a way that if I were to die, let us say, I'd really die disproportionately early as far as my earlier life on earth is concerned. According to my earlier life it is not right that I should die so soon, because I still have something to do on this earth. Now I might indeed die. Don't think there is any absolute certainty that I won't die. I might indeed die, the accident might happen. I might die, and this would change the whole of my destiny. The spiritual entity that guides the human being from earth life to earth life intervenes at this point. It is able to warn the person. There is always a reason why it is able to warn him. But the situation is of course extremely complex, and on some occasion it may also be that this entity which wants to protect the individual, if we want to use the term, has to obey other spirits which will prevent it, stop it. Such conflicts can certainly also arise in the world of the spirit. But when evil spirits do not have a special interest, if I may put it like this, the warning will come through. And it does happen on countless occasions that quite unusual things may happen, even externally. You were wondering, weren't you, why the wheel did not go on turning in the second event you told us from your life. For if it had gone on turning you would have perished. The others could not make the water run, only you could. So what was the reason? You were quite unable to see any outer reason why this should happen? [ Mr Burle: No. ] It happened because the spiritual entity wanting to warn you or keep you alive paralysed the other boys' will at that moment. This always works through the person concerned, not in an external way, not through another person. The others' will was paralysed at that moment; they did not manage to move their muscles. So that is how things are, that's how they are connected. And whenever one wants to speak of the world of the spirit one must realize that the spiritual world works through the human being. Just as you cannot see a colour unless you have an eye, so one cannot perceive the spiritual world without this inner activity of the human being. This is something we must always take into account if we want to be truly scientific and not fall into superstition. For the fact is that the different languages we have on earth are no longer valid in the world of the spirit. We first have to learn the languages that can be used there. To penetrate into the world of the spirit — I have spoken of the exercises that need to be done to enter into the world of the spirit — one must above all be able to get out of the habit of thinking. Not all the time, that would be a bad thing, but for the moments when one wants to enter into the world of the spirit. For human thinking belongs to this earthly world. This is also why thinking relates so closely to talking. We really think in words in the physical world, and it is only by gradually learning not to think in words that one gets close to the world of the spirit. Now let me explain to you what it is like when one looks directly into the world of the spirit. Imagine Mr Burle had been a clairvoyant, a proper clairvoyant, at the moment when he was told to 'move'. What would have happened then? If Mr Burle had been a clairvoyant he would not have had to do the terribly ingenious work inside of translating what a spiritual entity told him into his own language. Something else would have happened instead. For he would have known that spirits can indicate the same tiling by gestures, signs. For the spirits do not use words, they make gestures. Not the kind of signs deaf and dumb people use, but they make gestures. It is just that people do not usually find the gestures enough; they want to hear something, like the spiritualists. But it is not like that in the real world of the spirit. There things cannot be heard with the physical ear. It is impossible to see why a reasonable human being would imagine he can hear spirits with his physical ears, for physical ears cannot hear things there. It is nonsense to think that physical ears can hear the spirits. It has to be the astral body of some organ, of course, which hears the spirits. But then that also is not a real, external way of seeing and hearing. It is knowing how to take the signs the spirits make. And if Mr Burle had been clairvoyant he would not have heard the word 'Move!', but he would have seen a spiritual image, you know, as if someone were pushing him aside. And if he had truly perceived it in the spirit he would not have needed to translate it into 'Move!' But all of this happens calmly and quietly, and people are not in the habit of taking in the world of the spirit calmly and quietly, in silence. And of course if there was danger threatening somewhere one would never think of wanting to be particularly quiet. You're excited then, but it is exactly because of your excitement that you'll not perceive the world of the spirit. And if destiny has to speak after all, it will speak in such a way that the person then translates it inwardly. You see, there are people, as you know, who find it easy to think mathematically, and others who cannot think mathematically at all; people who are good at doing sums and others who can't do sums at all. People have different abilities. But it is easier to get into real clairvoyance if one makes a real effort to think mathematically than if one has no idea at all of mathematical thinking. And there we already have the reason why people find it so hard today to gain insight into the world of the spirit. For those who seek to develop inwardly are after all mostly people who have gone through Greek and Latin and all kinds of things, everything that makes for sloppy thinking. Yes, most of the people we call educated and learned have really only learned to think in a sloppy way, for their thinking moves within the thinking of the ancient Romans or Greeks, and other people then learn it from them. Today's thinking is terribly sloppy, therefore; it is not a thinking that has real power to it. Because of this, people are not at all able to have a proper understanding of things brought to them from the world of the spirit. If they were able to think really clearly they would find it much easier to understand what is going on in the world of the spirit. You can see from events that have happened in recent centuries that people are actually trying very hard not to consider the world of the spirit. I'll explain this to you by means of an example. You see, when a man called Stephenson 18 George Stephenson (1781-1848), English railway engineer who constructed the first locomotive in 1814. Stephenson was engineer for the construction of the Stockton & Darlington mineral railway which opened in October 1825. said one could make carriages with iron wheels that would move on iron rails, the matter was presented to the academics of his day. This was not all that long ago. The academics started to make calculations, quite correct calculations. What did they find? They found that if you have a rail here [ drawing on the board ] and a wheel here, a carriage would never move if the wheel was meant to run on a rail like this. They did further calculations and found that the wheel would only move along the rail if the rail had teeth cut into it, like this [ drawing ]. So they worked out that if the carriages had cogwheels and the rails had teeth cut into them for the cogs to engage in, that would be the only way for trains to move on rails. Well, gentlemen, you can see it works fine today, with no need for cogwheels and teeth cut in the rails! What did those people do? This wasn't all that long ago. Well, they did their sums. But they only kept those sums in their heads and did not let the rest of the human being play a part in them. With this, the sums lost their edge. Doing sums is actually something that can make you bright. But in the last century people actually went against doing sums. This then also threw all the rest of their thinking into confusion. And in 1835, when people were no longer debating about 'cogwheels' but the first railway line from Fürth to Nürnberg was about to be built, the authorities consulted the Bavarian Medical Council 19 See Hagen, R., Die erste deutsche Eisenbahn , 1885, S. 45. and asked them if the railways should be built, if it would be a healthy thing to do. The document about this is extraordinarily interesting. It is much more recent than you'd think — less than a hundred years. The body of learned gentlemen produced a document saying that it would be better not to build railways, for people sitting in the trains would grow very nervy. But if people were to insist on having them built, wanting to go that fast, one would at least have to put high wooden walls on either side of the track, so that farmers would not suffer concussion of the brain as the trains rushed past. This is what the document issued by the learned gentlemen says. Yes, that was the opinion then. But don't think people form different opinions today about things that really point the way ahead as they come into this world. We may laugh about what happened in 1835, but that is after the event, and people will also only be able to laugh later on about what is happening today, when it will be almost 100 years in the past. It was not all that easy with the railways because it really went against people's way of thinking. When the first railway line from Berlin to Potsdam was to be built, the postmaster general had to be consulted, 20 Karl Ferdinand Friedrich von Nagler (1770-1846), who developed the modem postal services. for he had been in charge of the four mail coaches that went from Berlin to Potsdam and back again every week and he had to be asked to give his professional opinion about building a railway. His professional opinion was that he had four coaches going from Berlin to Potsdam every week and hardly anyone ever travelled in them. So why build a railway when no one ever travelled in the mail coaches? Today, 10 or 12 trains go from Berlin to Potsdam every day and they are always full. Not just now, at this moment, but they were always full. You see, that is how hard people have been finding it for some centuries now to relate to what is really going on in the world. They therefore do not notice what is really happening and will at most only believe someone who's an authority in an outer way, I'd say. People will sometimes believe him. Let me tell you a story. Not long ago, it's about 40 years now, a very famous engineer lived in England, I think he was called Varley, 21 Cromwell F. Varley (1828-83), electrical engineer and inventor of an early kind of telephone. The passage which follows comes from Carl du Prel, Die monistische Seelenlehre. Ein Beitrag zur Losung des Menschenrätsels , Leipzig 1888, S. 195: Varley, a member of the Royal Society in London, electrical advisor to the Atlantic Cable Society, tells of an even more complicated case, and it is truly helpful that we have a witness who really counts in this peculiar case. He once went to the country with his wife to visit his sister-inlaw— for the last time, it was feared, for she suffered from heart disease. During the night, Varley had a nightmare and could not move a muscle. Whilst in this state, he saw his sister-in-law's double stand by his bed, for he knew the lady was in a closed room. She said: 'You'll have to die unless you move!' Varley tried, in vain, and she went on to say: 'If you submit yourself to me, I'll give you a fright, and you'll then be able to move.' He resisted at first, for he wanted to learn more about her presence in the spirit, and when he finally agreed, his heart had ceased to beat. Her efforts to give him a fright proved unsuccessful at first; but when she called out: 'Oh, Cromwell, I am dying!' he woke from his paralysed state. He found the doors closed and made a note of the time. In the morning the sister-in-law, who had been told nothing of all this, told of the whole event as of a terrible dream she had had. ( Berichte der dialektischen Gesellschaft II , 108) and no one doubted his intelligence. The following thing happened to this very famous man. He went from London into the country with his wife, for his sister-in-law, his wife's sister, was very ill; she was practically dying. They were going to stay in the country for a few days. The first night this gentleman, who was such a famous engineer, suddenly had a nightmare, as it is called, and found himself lying in his bed unable to move a muscle. Now you know, it's not so bad if such a nightmare passes quickly, but if it goes on a long time and a person is unable to move a muscle and stays awake, he may die from lack of breath. So he lay there, quite benumbed already, and was still just able to think: I'm going to suffocate. Well, you know, someone was there in the house who, it was believed, would die within a few days. And the house had to be kept quiet. He therefore tried to pull himself together, but he could not. Suddenly he saw the sick woman standing by his bedside, and she addressed him by his first name, saying: 'Get up!' This gave him such a fright that the shock enabled him to move again. Being an intelligent man he knew that this had saved him. He was glad, of course, that such a thing had been possible. You can understand this, for such things happen in the world. People who have been dumb for 15 or 20 years would suffer a sudden major shock and be able to talk again. A big shock can thus have a terrible effect on a person, but it may also be beneficial. And in the morning, when the gentleman had got up, he went to see his sister-in-law, who had been lying in her bed all night. But the first thin' she told him, without him having made any reference to it first — wanting to spare her he did not want to mention the dream to her — was that she said: 'You know, I had the most peculiar dream last night. I dreamt I had to go to you and give you a fright so that you would not die from want of breath. And I went therefore and gave you a fright so that you would not suffocate. That was my dream.' Her room was quite some distance from his. You see, this is a story about which there can be no doubt. I am telling it to you merely because it was told by someone who was otherwise very factual in his thinking, being an electrical engineer and famous in his field. I don't want to tell you any old story, but this one is confirmed to be true, just like something someone reports from a laboratory. What was going on here? I have told you, gentleman, that the human I and the astral body go out of every human being at night. So when the sick woman was asleep, her I and astral body were not in her body. Now the principle which is known as the guardian spirit was unable to reach the man, for his thinking was of the factual kind that has become a habit over the centuries. If Mr Burle had had that kind of factual thinking — he definitely did not have it as a young boy, of course, for he'll have been no more of an academic at that age than he is now — he would not have heard what he did, for factual thinking drowns it out, blows it away. Mr Varley was a factual thinker. His guardian spirit could not have given him a fright just like that. And so this guardian spirit chose a roundabout way, using the astral body of his sick sister-in-law as she lay asleep, guiding that astral body to his bedside, so that he did get a fright. His sister-in-law would never have known about this, would not have been able to speak of it, if she'd been in good health. She died a few days later, which is when the astral body goes into the world of the spirit anyway. At the time, the astral body was already prepared. Because of this the sick woman found it easier to recall something she perceived a few days before she died, for it was something she was soon to experience. And the result was that she also knew about the matter. So you see that if one observes these things properly one is able to talk about them exactly the way one talks about situations of the kind where you have a flask in a laboratory somewhere, a flame beneath it, and put in sulphur, let's say; the sulphur will be yellow at first and then turn brown and later red. One can describe it. And one can also describe how things are with phenomena in the spirit, providing one is really sound in one's thinking. And that must, of course, be the basic requirement. It is just that in our time everything is thrown into confusion, and the confused thinking I have mentioned predominates. And I did not describe this confused thinking for you just in order to describe it, but because I wanted to make you see how the roundabout way involving the sick woman was chosen in order to intervene in the destiny of someone who still had something more to do on this physical earth. But you have to see the matter in the right way. I think I have told you before about what happened to me with Dr Schleich, the medical man who died recently in Berlin. 22 Schleich, Carl Ludwig (1859-1922), Vom Schal twerk der Gedanken , Berlin 1916, S. 261. See also R. Steiner, Spiritual Science and Medicine (GA 312). Tr. not known. London: Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co. 1948, 3rd lecture. He was quite a famous man in Berlin, a famous surgeon, but he also had a tendency — he was more intelligent than his colleagues — to understand such things. The following once happened to him. Someone came to him one evening and told him: 'I just stuck a steel pen into my hand in the office, and some ink got in. You must remove that hand right away, amputate it, or I'll die of blood-poisoning.' Schleich said: 'But sir, I have to look at the wound first.' 'No,' said the man, 'it must be done right away!' 'It won't do,' said Dr Schleich, 'I am not permitted to do this!' He then looked at the wound and said: 'It will be quite easy to remove the stuff from the wound by suction.' And he did so. The patient insisted on having his hand removed. T can't amputate your hand,' the surgeon said. And the mar replied: Tn that case I must die!' He did not believe that the wound was harmless and said he must die. Dr Schleich had an uneasy feeling. Later on another medical man telephoned to say that the patient had told him he'd seen Dr Schleich who'd refused to amputate his hand and that the man was now with him. But he, too, could not amputate the hand because of a small puncture wound. Dr Schleich could not sleep all that night, for the whole thing seemed most uncanny to him. The next day he went to the house where the man lived. He'd died in the night! A post-mortem examination showed no signs of blood poisoning. But the man had to die. Well, Schleich simply said to himself that his death had been due to suggestion — it is known nowadays, of course, that such a thing as suggestion exists. All kinds of things are done under suggestion. One can make all kinds of things happen due to suggestion. To give you an idea of what can be done by means of suggestion, let me tell you the following. You can say to someone, for instance: 'I'm applying a blistering plaster, a Spanish fly plaster.' But in fact you are only applying a little piece of blotting paper, yet the man will develop a huge blister! There the soul principle is entering into the physical. One can do such things. Today everyone who studies such things knows that it is possible to do this. Schleich said to himself that the man had imagined he'd die and he did die. The idea had a suggestive effect on him, hence death by suggestion. He simply did not want to believe me that that is nonsense. But it was nonsense in this case to say the man died by suggestion, for something quite different was going on. You see, the stress he had suffered in more recent times as an office worker and business man had completely destroyed the man's nerves; blood had got into the nerves. The blood in his veins could be examined quite easily, and it was all right. And when the nerves were examined, the amount of blood that had got in was so small that it could not be detected by external means; but the nerves had been destroyed due to blood getting in. The man had therefore grown nervy and irritable and stuck the pen into his hand because he'd grown clumsy. And without anything much being apparent on the outside, he was already a marked man — for the following night. He had to die for internal reasons, because blood had got into his nervous system. And he had a premonition and grew anxious, so that the psychological effect was exactly the opposite. Schleich thought he had suggested his own death. He did not suggest his death, however; death had come because of his physical organization, but he had an inner premonition that death would come. You see, this is a striking example of how one has to think in the right way if one wants to see into the world of spirit. One has to know exactly where the problem lies, or you can be a great and learned man and still get the wrong idea. This is exactly what happened to Sir Oliver Lodge, 23 Lodge, Sir Oliver Joseph (1851-1940). See his book Raymond ; see also R. Steiner, Cosmic and Human Metamorphoses (in GA 175), lecture of 6 February 1917. Tr. H. Collison. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1926. one of the greatest physicists in England. For he put entirely the wrong interpretation on the world of the spirit. His son had been killed in one of the battles fought in the recent [First] World War. He mourned his son, Raymond Lodge, deeply, and then got himself embroiled with a whole tissue of mediums. A very clever medium was brought to his house and arrangements were made for his son to speak to him after death. In view of the fact that his son had died on a German battlefield, this did of course make a tremendous impression, and it was also a consolation to him. But Sir Oliver Lodge is an extraordinarily great scientist who does not believe anything just like that. But then something else happened which meant he could hardly do anything but believe. What happened is the following. The medium had gone into a trance, which is a half-conscious state, and told him that his son had his photo taken a few days before he died, saying that there were two photos, however. Now it is quite common for several shots to be taken when photographing someone, and people will usually be asked to sit in a slightly different way for the second photo. The medium therefore said that Raymond Lodge was sitting in a slightly different way in the second photo, and gave a perfectly correct description of the difference. Oliver Lodge immediately said to himself: 'Wow, if only that were true what she is saying — photos taken a few days before his death, in two different positions!' At the time, no one in England would as yet have been able to know if this was true, for it had only happened a few days before the death. And lo and behold! A week later the two photographs arrived by post in London — the mails were very slow then — and it was correct, absolutely correct. He then could not think anything else, from his point of view, but that his son had told him this from the other world. And yet that was not the case, for the medium had already gone into a trance and had a prophetic vision, which is something that does happen. The people sitting around the medium only knew about the photographs a week later, when they arrived, but the medium had a prophetic vision and saw them a week earlier. So there was no link with the other world, but it all happened on earth. The medium just had a prophetic vision, and Oliver Lodge was deceived after all. That's how careful one has to be! So it is all true, that human beings live on beyond death, and they can also tell us things, but one has to be sure. If Raymond Lodge was telling them in English: 'I've had two photos taken just before my death, and the positions were different,' one has to ask oneself if that did in fact come from him. For after death this is no longer conveyed in the English language; otherwise the spirit would also have to know English. The information must have come from the medium's subconscious, from something that does not come to conscious awareness in ordinary life. Mr Burle's question has made me discuss some rather difficult things today, but I also wanted to tell you how careful one has to be, for we are responsible for the things we say. I wanted to show that one cannot simply accept some idea or other, but has to follow everything up. And it is only after thinking about it for a long time that one is able to say: 'Yes, in that case a guardian spirit was indeed speaking.' But that the words were in German, that could only happen through human mediation. And when people are not able to do something somewhere sometime, their muscles have to be paralysed first out of the world of the spirit. Everything has to come through the human being. Having gained these basic insights, one is then able to go further. We'll talk more about this next Saturday.

From Mammoths to Mediums

The way our guardian angel works

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA350/English/RSP2000/19230613p02.html

Dornach

13 Jun 1923

GA350-5

Have you thought of something, gentlemen? Mr Dollinger: 1 wanted to ask about human destinies. Millions of people have died in the Great War. Did they bring this with them into the world as their destiny? How does this look in the world of the spirit and in relation to world evolution? Rudolf Steiner: This is something we can also discuss in connection with other things, for in anthroposophy it is certainly necessary for us not to explain things the way other people sometimes do. The things we say have to be scientific. I'd like to tell you something especially in connection with this that will then guide us to understand how the disastrous situation we have now, this terrible misery so many people are going through in the world today, has actually been possible. People usually no longer pay much attention to the way one individual is connected with another. The situation is that people are really isolated individuals in the world today. Even when people know about the kind of things I spoke of the last time we met, knowing them from habit or as some remnant of superstition, they'll generally give a wrong explanation. Now let me tell you a simple story 24 The story was published in Carl du Prel's book (see note 20), page 194 f.: Professor Perty tells the story like this: 'One afternoon in August 1853, Miss Sophie Swoboda — she was 20 at the time — lay down on the sofa in her mother's room because she had a severe headache, and she finally went to sleep. It then seemed to her that she was quietly leaving the room; she awoke. Sophie now felt quite weightless and free from pain; she rose quickly to hurry after her mother into the third room and tell her that there had been this change for the better. Her mother was sitting at her knitting, and opposite her sat Sophie's father, reading aloud from Bonaventura's (Schelling's) Mystische Nächte . Sophie stood beside the two of them, waiting for a break in the reading to tell her story, but her parents took no notice of her, in spite of the fact that they would look up every now and then and talk to each other about the text they were reading. Sophie, feeling put out by this, withdrew into a window alcove and listened to the text. Before long her mother got up, saying: "Sophie's not well, and that worries me; I must go and see how she is." Sophie quickly went up to her to reassure her, but her mother did not look at her but went straight to the door and to the first room. Sophie, wanting to make herself noticed, wanted to surprise her with a kiss as she came up behind her. But her mother, seriously concerned, went quickly up to the sofa where Sophie had lain down before, calling out to her sister, who had come in by another door: "How pale she looks!" Sophie now looked in the same direction and was greatly surprised to see herself lying on the sofa, her face pale as death and her eyes closed. Her mother and sister were much concerned, bending over her, calling her by name, and this made Sophie go up close, so that they might finally see her. At that very moment she felt herself flung on the sofa with great suddenness. She opened her eyes with great difficulty and much effort and then her mother and sister helped her to sit up. When Sophie had recovered a little, she told her parents of her experience and they were not a little surprised to hear her quote the passages her father had read and the views her parents had expressed, some of it word for word. She had, after all, been three rooms away, with the door closed.' ( Psychische Studien 1979, 294) to show you that people no longer remember at all that one person is in some way connected with another. The following once happened, its truth is pretty well assured, like a scientific fact. One of the younger members of a family, a girl aged 18 or 19, was sick, not so sick as to have to stay in bed, but she had to lie down every now and again. She was lying on the sofa, with her mother looking after her, and once, when she'd pretty well gone to sleep, her mother went to another room, where she read something from a book to her husband and other members of the family. This was in a room that was quite a long way from the one where the sick girl was. The sick girl was then aware of the following. When her mother had left the room, she suddenly felt the urge to get up. She got up and followed her mother through two other rooms into the third, where she found her reading to the others. She was greatly surprised that they were not at all amazed. The sick girl, hardly able to walk and sleeping when her mother left her just a moment ago, had now appeared in the room where her mother only intended to be for a time, because she wanted to do something for the others as well. The girl thought it a bit strange that they remained so calm. Then her mother, who was reading, suddenly said: 'Now I must go and see how our daughter is!' and left the room. The daughter followed her, however. Her mother went through those other two rooms again and found her daughter lying on the sofa, looking very pale. She did not address her immediately. But when she did, the girl did not answer, but lay there looking quite pale. The daughter herself had followed her mother all the way anc saw now how her mother went into her room where she saw herself lying on the sofa. And the daughter was again very surprised, firstly to see herself lying on the sofa, and secondly to hear her mother address her. At that moment the daughter felt as if she was struck with great force, and then the form lying on the sofa gained a somewhat better colour and things were as they had been before. This is a story we can pretty well rely on; the thing did happen. But now there are all kinds of people wanting to explain it. They'll explain it as follows, for example. 'Well, apart from having a physical body the daughter also has an astral body.' The astral body is something people used to talk about up to the sixteenth century, which is now about 400 years ago, the way we talk about a nose or an ear. But it is not something that has survived to this day; has been generally forgotten. So people would talk about the astral body in the past and say: 'Ah well, the astral body went out, walked through those rooms, took in what the others were reading, and so on, went back again and slipped in again the moment the mother addressed the girl.' But, gentlemen, you have to be clear in your minds that when someone explains the matter like this, he's explaining it as if there were a second physical person inside one, as if there was a circle around one, and this circle would be large, and as if one slipped out and walked around like a physical human being. Today it is a powerful superstition to explain it like that. This superstition is widespread among academics today, otherwise things like those with Oliver Lodge that I've told you about would not happen. It is always important to know exactly what went on. Now what really went on is the following. The mother had been sitting by her daughter, nursing her. You know, this is a case of what we call 'tender loving care', and the daughter found it most pleasant to be cared for by her mother. She experienced her mother's love. At such a moment, gentlemen, when someone feels the love of another so strongly and at the same time is also rather weak, the strange thing happens that he no longer thinks with his own astral body. This grows dull and the astral body of the other person gains power over one's own astral body. Then it can actually happen that one begins to think with the thoughts of the other person who is beside one. Now the situation was that whilst the mother was still nursing her daughter, the feeling which arose in her transferred to her daughter in such a way that the daughter felt and thought just as her mother did Then the mother went away. Just as a ball will keep rolling if I give it a push, so the daughter was then not thinking with her own thoughts but with those of her mother. And as the mother went through those two rooms, the daughter was all the time thinking her mother's thoughts. And when the mother was reading aloud, the daughter was thinking her mother's thoughts. The daughter did of course continue to rest on the sofa, but she was all the time thinking her mother's thoughts. And when the mother grew concerned and went back again, the daughter thought she, too, was walking back. And now you need not be surprised that the daughter grew pale. You'd be pale, too, if you were to lie as though in a deep swoon for a time. For a situation like that, where one thinks with the thoughts of someone else, does of course create a condition similar to a faint. And when the mother returned, the effect on the daughter was that she was deeply shaken and therefore able to have her own thoughts again. So you see that in this case, the right explanation is that one person has a most powerful influence on another, particularly in mind and spirit. This will happen particularly if the one who is influenced is in a greatly weakened condition, that is, if he is unable to develop inner strength, then the inner strength of the other person will easily influence him. But that is how it is in life quite generally. One often does not consider the great influence people have on one another. Do you think that if someone tells you something and you then believe it, you actually always have reasons, sensible reasons, to be convinced of the truth of it? That is not at all true. If you like someone you believe that person more than you do someone you hate. The thing is that the one person's soul has an extraordinarily strong influence on the soul of another. I therefore have to know very exactly how things are in the realm of the spirit if I am to talk about them at all. Let me give you another example, which I'm telling you for a particular purpose. For someone might now say: 'Well, Dr Steiner clearly does not believe at all that a human being can go out of himself; he only believes that one person is able to influence another.' No, I was only giving you an example that would clearly show you how one individual influenced another, in this case the mother the daughter. Now another example, where one cannot in the least say that someone was influenced. Two students were sharing a room. This happens all the time with students. One was studying mathematics, the other was studying philology and knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about mathematics. One evening they were swotting terribly hard, which is the term students use, one of them his Latin grammar, the other a mathematical problem which he wanted to solve but simply could not get right. He was quite unable to do anything with it. The one managed reasonably well with his language studies and went to bed feeling reasonably satisfied. But the mathematics student did not feel satisfied on going to bed, for he could not solve his problem. With a language you usually don't know if you've got it right or not. At most you get things wrong but may well think they are right. The situation with mathematics is that you'll not get any result if you can't do it. That is the difference. So they went to bed; the two of them went to bed somewhere about 11.30 or 12 o'clock. At about 3 o'clock in the morning the mathematics student got up-the language student looked at the clock and noted the time — sat down again at his desk and started to calculate and calculate and calculate. The language student was really surprised at this, but he had sufficient sense to wait calmly to see what would happen. The other one went on calculating, then got up off his chair, went to bed and slept on. At 8 in the morning they both got up. The mathematics student said: 'Wow, I've got a really thick head today, as if we'd been to the pub all night. But surely we stayed at home?' The other one then said: It does not surprise me in the least! Why did you get up during the night and work?' 'What, me? Work? That never came into my head! I was in my bed all night,' said the mathematics student. 'But you did get up,' the other one said, 'you picked up your pencil and worked on and on.' 'Well,' said he, 'absolutely not.' 'Well, let's look and see,' said the language student, 'the stuff you've written must be there.' The mathematics student went to look. The whole problem had been solved, everything he'd been unable to do the night before had now been done. Now you see, here you have an example where there can be no question of the other student cheating, for he could not have solved the problem. He was a student of languages and he also watched everything that happened. The other student got up, knowing nothing about it, and solved the whole problem. But there was no question of one of them influencing the other in any way. The student did in fact get up in the night. But when one explains it, something very odd comes out. You see, as you know, we have first of all our physical body, then the ether body, the astral body and the I-body. I call them all 'bodies'; they aren't, of course, bodies in any outer sense, but I call these four parts of the human being 'bodies' Well now, gentlemen, when we are sleeping, only our physical body and ether body lie in the bed; the astral body and the I-body are outside. We see them around the physical body and ether body on the outside. I have explained all this to you before. And that is also what happened with our mathematics student. He went to bed. He was able to sleep, so that his astral body and I-body went outside, but he was upset because he had not solved his problem. Now if the astral body and the I-body had then slipped into his physical body and ether body, he would have woken up and again been unable to do anything, probably not solving the problem. But the astral body and the I-body did not do this. But the unrest which had developed made it nudge the student. The astral body can nudge one, it can even nudge the skin a little. But this can only happen by means of the air, not physically, for the astral body is not the least bit physical. It can, however, set the air in motion. And this has an effect especially on the eyes, a bit on the ears, and especially on the nose and the mouth. Wherever you have sense organs, the nudging breath of the astral body has quite an effect. So our mathematics student had gone to bed, the astral body was nudging him from the outside all the time, but not coming in. But because of this nudging, the physical body with the ether body felt compelled to get up, quite automatically, like a machine. The astral body stayed outside, however, for if it had been inside the student would have become conscious. So he sat down. His astral body and his I were not prepared to go inside. So who was doing the sums? The physical body and the ether body were doing them, and the ether body was able to do all the calculations which the student could not do when the astral body and the I were inside him. You see from this, gentlemen, that you're all a great deal more intelligent in your ether body than you are in your astral body and your I. If you were able to do and know everything you can do and know in your ether body, wow, what clever fellows you'd be! For all learning really consists in bringing up into the astral body something which we already have in our ether body. So what really happened with our mathematics student? You know, in earlier times there were hardly any teetotallers among students, and they really would drink rather a lot normally. And those two students did not swot every night but also went to the pub a lot, and because of this — with the blood under the influence of alcohol — the astral body was ruined. The ether body was not ruined so much. And the result was that the mathematics student could have solved his problem quite well if he had not gone to the pub so much; but because he had allowed his astral body to be greatly influenced he could not solve it when awake. He first had to get rid of his ruined astral body; then he could sit down at his desk, and his ether body, which was still quite clever, solved the problem. So the things the rational mind does we actually do with the ether body. We can't love someone with the ether body, that is something the astral body has to do, but everything the rational mind does is something the ether body is able to do, this is where the ether body has to do its job. We are therefore able to say that we can see quite clearly from this example that in this case there was no influence from somewhere else, but the mathematics student just had to do it by himself. Let us have a clear picture of this. There [Fig. 14] we have the physical body; here the ether body [yellow] which goes through the physical body. And now, so that we get a better picture of the whole human being, I am going to draw the astral body outside, where it is during the night. It is quite small at the top and enormous, bulging out, down below. So at night we are really two people. You should not, of course, imagine that this is a second person who is also physical, for the part that is outside is entirely spiritual. If you were to fail to think of it as spiritual you'd fall too much into materialism again. But you can certainly take the view that in himself man really is this twofold creature, one part that is spirit and soul, and a physical part combined with the ether body. Someone who is awake is only the way he is because every morning the astral body and the I-body are brought into the physical and ether body [arrows]. But now imagine that this might not always happen in the proper way. There are some strange cases of this. There was a girl — if they happen of their own accord and not because of exercises, such things always happen when the individual gets a bit weak, in the case of young girls for instance when they have just reached maturity, when they have just entered into womanhood — so there was a girl of 19 or 20 and it was like this with her. There were days when she'd talk but the people in her family could not understand a thing she was saying, nothing at all. She would talk of completely unknown things. It was very strange. She might say, for example: 'Ah, good day, I am delighted at your visit. We met two days ago in ...— yes, we went for a walk in those lovely woods. There was a spring there.' Then she'd wait. It was just like on the telephone; you did not hear the other person, but only her reply. It was as if she was replying to something: 'Yes, of course, you took the glass and drank.' And so one would always hear what she said in reply to something someone else was supposed to have said. The people around her could not see the other person. But she was in a very different world and having a conversation in it. The following would happen, for instance. Now, you see, she could not move, she'd stay quite still on those days. But if she sat there and you nudged her, she'd not say: 'Why are you nudging me?' She'd say: 'The wind is terrible. Close the window, there's such a draught!' She had completely different ideas if one nudged her, for instance. She'd be like that for one or two days. Then there would be some days, or a longer period, when she was perfectly sensible, talking normally to people, and knew nothing about what had happened on those other days. She did not remember any of it. If people told her some of it, she'd say she knew nothing about it. It was just as if she'd been asleep. But something else would happen instead. When she was in this other condition, she'd remember everything that had to do with this condition, and nothing of what had happened when she was in her usual state. She was able to review the whole life she'd known in that other world which people said she'd dreamed up. What was it with this girl? What I am telling you now does, of course, happen many, many times, and sometimes in a ghastly way. You see, I knew someone with whom 1 worked together for some time. He then became a professor at a German university, and one day he simply disappeared. No one knew where he'd gone. All enquiries ultimately led nowhere. The only thing people were able to find out was that he'd gone to the station from the place where he lived and bought a ticket. But quite a number of people had got on the train and so people did not know the destination to which he'd bought a ticket. He went away. And he did not come back for a very long time. One day a stranger arrived at a hostel for the homeless in Berlin and asked to be admitted. When they asked for his papers it was found he was Professor XY from such and such a place. He had ended up in that hostel in Berlin. He came home again and was able to continue his work as a professor quite well. You know, things go on automatically; it does not matter if there is a bit of a break. But his family — he was actually married — made further enquiries as to what had happened in the meantime. And it was more or less that he'd bought a ticket to a station that was not that far away. He had been quite crafty about it all. He'd got off the train, bought another ticket — you did not yet need a passport at that time — and gone to another country, and then another country, then he'd taken a completely different route, to a town in southern Germany where he'd once been stationed, and on to Berlin where he lived in the hostel. He knew nothing, absolutely nothing of it all, being in a completely different state of consciousness. What is going on in such a case? You see, with someone like that it is just as it was with that girl. When such a person is due to wake up, the astral body and the I-body do not come in fully, merely nudging the person from the outside, and then the physical body and the ether body go through all those things. Such people behave in a tremendously clever way. This story has also been fully confirmed. It is similar to the one I experienced with someone of my acquaintance. Another story. Someone took a train ticket, did the same thing, going to a station that was not far away. He then had to think up all kinds of clever dodges; it was his ether body which did it all. He got all the way to India and stayed there for some years. And then, having forgotten all about it, he went on with his life as before. Yes, you see these things really are such that one has to say: There one gains deep insight into the whole nature of the human being. For what happened later with the person I knew well, who'd travelled through two countries and ended up in a hostel? He returned to his university, and was even called to another university to take the place of a renowned professor. One day I happened to be in that town. We were no longer in touch, for it happened quite generally that when I gave anthroposophical lectures people I'd known well before would no longer have anything to do with me. One day people said Professor XY had gone off again. This time he did not reappear but his body was found. He had drowned himself. What had happened? You see, what had happened was that he again returned to the state where the astral body would only nudge him. He then recalled the earlier events in his ether body and got such a fright that he committed suicide. So one is able to see deeply into human nature in that case, if one knows how the different bodies of the human being work together. Now the matter is this. There was someone once who also got into such states, and then he'd talk in such a way as if he were someone quite different than he now was, so that other people did not understand any of it. He spoke — this was in the nineteenth century — of being involved in the French Revolution, describing whole scenes. What had happened to him? It was similar to the situation of the people I have just told you about. But what had happened in his case? In their ordinary state of consciousness people know very little indeed about what is going on in the astral body and the I-body, but they do actually go through a lot in those bodies. Now imagine the following happens. You see, I want to describe to you what it is like when someone wakes up. As the person wakes up, his astral body first of all splits. It tears off here [Fig. 14], and one part goes into the head, whilst the other, the lower part, goes into the rest of the body. That is how it goes sometimes. Now consider this. If the head finds it easier to take in the astral body and the I than the lower part does, the astral body may be in the head sooner, before it gets to the lower part. In this case the person begins to talk as someone quite different. So what is happening? You see, for a moment the ability is there to look back into an earlier life. But the person is unable to understand or interpret this, and will therefore invent something based on history. The man who was in an altered state, because his astral body and I had entered into his head earlier, said he was a Frenchman involved in the French Revolution. This is something he had learned about and he simply reinterpreted the facts. He was actually finding himself in an earlier incarnation, an earlier life, and was unable to understand this right away; and so he interpreted it in his own way. Now you have to understand that up to the sixteenth century — which would be four centuries ago — people would talk of such things, though in a rather silly and vague way. Wherever people forgathered — it was not that they would tell each other ghost stories, but the truth is that they took this just as seriously as other events in their lives — they told such things, knowing that they existed. It is certainly not true to say that they did not know about it. Today — well, I ask you, gentlemen, just try and tell stories like those I've told you at your party conferences and you'll be chucked out immediately — today there is no way of speaking of these things naturally or sensibly. People do not speak of them at all. And the academics have least to say about them. Let me prove to you that they know least of all about them. Think of one of the most important scientific events in the nineteenth century. A citizen of Heilbronn had qualified as a medical practitioner. The people at Tübingen University thought he was not very gifted and so he did not have any real prospects. He therefore let himself be hired as a ship's doctor in 1839 and went to Indo-China on a ship that had quite a lot of people on it. The journey proved to be a fairly difficult one, with the seas fairly restless so that people got seasick. Practically the whole crew were sick when they arrived in Indo-China. The ship's doctor was kept very busy. At the time, it was still customary to let blood when people had one kind of sickness or another. That was the first thing. People have two kinds of blood vessels. When one kind is opened, the blood that splashes out is reddish in colour. Another kind of blood vessel runs right alongside the first kind. If this is opened, the blood is bluish; bluish blood will come out. Ordinarily, when you bleed someone, you do not let the red blood flow out. The body needs this blood. You let the bluish blood flow out. Physicians know this very well. They also know where the blue blood vessels are and do not open the red ones. Dear Julius Robert Mayer, 25 Julius Robert Mayer (1814-78), German physician and physicist. Established the law of conservation of energy in 1842, and the mechanical heat equivalent in 1851. who was that ship's doctor, therefore had to do a lot of bloodletting. But every time he opened a vein the blood that came out was not the proper bluish colour but pale red. Oh dear, he thought, I've opened the wrong one! But when he did it for the next person, taking special care, the blood was again a pale red. In the end all he could do was tell himself that when one gets to the tropics, the hot regions, things are not the way they usually are, and blue blood turns reddish because of the heat. Julius Robert Mayer thought this a most important discovery, quite rightly so. He had seen something that was extraordinarily important. We now have to have a hypothesis, make an assumption. Imagine this had happened to someone in the twelfth rather than the nineteenth century. He would have travelled somewhere or other with people. Travels did not range far in those times, but it could certainly have happened that a whole crew fell sick. Let us assume, then, that a whole crew got sick, the physician bled them and found that the blood which should really be blue was reddish instead. Now in the twelfth century he would have said: 'What is it that causes the blood to turn blue?' And since he would have known all the things I have been talking about, though rather vaguely — for there was no anthroposophy then and things were rather vague — he would at least have had an inkling and would have said: 'Wow, yes, there the astral body does not enter as deeply into the physical body as it does in people whose blood is quite blue.' For he would have known that it is the astral body which makes the blood blue. The heat keeps the astral body out, however. The blood therefore grows less blue and looks similar to the red blood. He would have said: 'This is an important discovery, for now I understand why the ancient peoples of the East had such great wisdom. With them, the astral body did not enter so deeply into the physical body and ether body.' He would have had a profound respect for the wisdom of the ancient Orientals and he would have said to himself: 'Today the people of the Orient have merely been infected by the people who have a lot of bluish blood, and it therefore is no longer possible for them to bring their ancient wisdom to light.' That is what a twelfth-century ship's doctor would have said. A ninteenth-century ship's doctor no longer knew anything of all the things I have been telling you. What did he say to himself? He'd say: 'Well, there's the heat. It burns things up. The blood therefore burns up more when one is in the hot zone.' He discovered the law of the transformation of heat into energy which plays such a big role in modern physics, a completely abstract law. The rest does not interest him at all. He found the law that plays a big role in the steam engine, for example, where heat is transformed into work. And he said: 'The fact that the blood flows red there shows that the organism works harder in the hot zone and therefore produces more heat.' Julius Robert Mayer thus found something that is wholly mechanical. You see, that is the big difference. In the twelfth century, people would still have said: 'The blood is redder there because the astral body does not go in so deeply.' In the nineteenth century, people no longer knew anything of all this spiritual side and simply said: 'There the human being is like a machine, and the situation is that heat generates more work and because of this more heat is converted in the human organism.' Yes, gentlemen, what Julius Robert Mayer did there as a greatly learned man is more or less the way people generally think in our day. That is how it is. But because people are now only able to think and feel about things that are no longer of the spirit, they have lost their connection with other people. And it will at most be when they are sick and weak like the girl I spoke of that they'll enter so much into the other person that they actually go along with that person's thoughts into another room. That's an enormous difference, of course. Yes, we have made tremendous progress today, but our humanity has not progressed; it has grown less. We only speak of the human physical organism as if it were only a machine today. Even the greatest scientists now speak of it only as a machine, as Julius Robert Mayer did. Yes, gentlemen, if things were to go on like this on earth, all thinking would fall into chaos. All horrors and disasters would come. People already no longer know what they should really do. They therefore go at things with might and main, saying: 'Yes, common sense no longer keeps us together, and so nationality must keep us together.' National states only arise because people no longer know how to keep together. And the fact, gentlemen, that people no longer know anything of the spiritual world has brought about the tremendous misery — all the rest are only external factors. It is this which has brought about the tremendous human misery. And to say that people deserve it because they've done bad things in their previous life is, of course, nonsense, for this is not the destiny of an individual person, it is the common destiny shared by each and every one. But every' single individual knows it now in this life. Just think how much misery people know in this present life. That does not come from their previous life. But in the next life they will know the consequences of the present misery. The consequence will be that they'll be wiser, and the world of spirit will enter into them more easily. The wretched state they are in today is educating them for the future. There is something else we can see from this. Just think that anthroposophy started as early as 1900 and has really got quite well known. But people have resisted it, not wanting to hear of the spiritual world. Well now, gentlemen, if you had a schoolboy in earlier times who did not want to learn — this has changed now; I'm not going to say if it was right or wrong — he'd be given a thorough beating. Some would then start to learn after all. It did help with some of them. Humanity has not been wanting to learn anything of the spirit until 1914. They have now had a beating for this from world destiny, their common destiny. We shall see now if it has done any good. That is how it is, gentlemen, we have to see it as a common human destiny. For what did happen? You see, the girl I told you about thought her mother's thoughts. People have gradually got out of the habit of thinking altogether and now only think the thoughts of those whom they consider to have authority. People must start to think for themselves again, every single one of them, otherwise they will all the time be influenced by the world of the spirit, if they do not know anything about it, but in a bad sense. And it would then be fair to say that the misery which has come for humanity may be seen as a beating given by destiny, I'd say, and we can learn from this. People can have as many congresses as they like; none of it will help. People who want to support the German mark, thinking the way they do today, will make it go down twice as much afterwards, for an understanding that is wholly of the earth is absolutely no use at all. If a body does not have enough fluid in it, it grows sclerotic, it calcifies. And if the soul does not know anything about the world of the spirit, it ends up with an understanding that is of no use at all. And that is the destiny humanity is moving towards, unless nourishment comes to them all the time from the world of the spirit. So the only real way is for people to begin to take an interest in the world of the spirit. You see, that is how one has to answer the question put by Mr Dollinger. One has to put things in a fairly radical way, but that is how they hang together. I have to go to Stuttgart next week, but I'll soon be back. I'll get them to tell you when our next session will be.

From Mammoths to Mediums

The deeper reasons for the disastrous World War

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA350/English/RSP2000/19230616p02.html

Dornach

16 Jun 1923

GA350-6

Question concerning earthquakes. Rudolf Steiner: You probably mean the earthquakes they have in America at the moment? With regard to questions like this, volcanic phenomena are especially important that are not so intense, I'd say, not so immediately powerful, but show in their details that something is also happening in the course of time from the cosmos that surrounds the world. And here I'd like to draw your attention to something else, something that may be less striking, but something that is much more of a personal experience for many people than those single events which have, of course, been terrible for the people in the area, but really are of less concern for the greater part of humanity. Just remember that in recent years one could really say that weather conditions have been unusual. We cannot deny that we have not had the proper, long summers, especially not in our part of the world. But this applies to a large part of Europe and beyond. When the subject comes up, people will usually talk of vast icebergs in the northern oceans and of waves of cold coming from those mighty floating icebergs. You'll perhaps also remember that when there were such cold periods last year, mariners reported that these gigantic floating icebergs were to be found everywhere if they set their course just a little to the north in the Atlantic Ocean. We have to understand that things like these certainly do not come from the earth only, but have to do with the whole of cosmic evolution. And so we have to ask ourselves what the situation really is with the distribution of heat and cold on our earth. Here I'd like to draw your attention to something which I may well have mentioned before, but in a different context, something that may be important in considering this question. You'll probably have heard that above all in northern Siberia, that is over yonder in Asia, soil conditions are rather special. To put you in the picture, let me just say the following. If we have the map of Europe like this [ drawing on the board ], you get Norway here, then the north coast of Germany, and going on to Holland, and so on; this would be Ireland, England, and there, on the other side of this large peninsula, we'd already be in Asia. This is the border between Asia and Europe. This is Russia. Here we come to Asia and this would be Siberia. Over yonder is the Arctic Ocean, as it is called. I've merely drawn this to give you an orientation. A long time ago, animals rather like elephants 26 Mammoths were found in the soil of Siberia. They no longer exist today, but they did exist on earth a very, very long time ago. And you know, of course, that there are no animals like elephants living by the Arctic Ocean today. Animals like elephants belong to much hotter regions. But the strange thing is that when these elephant-like creatures were found deep down in the soil, they were still so fresh that one could have eaten the meat even today, providing one likes elephant meat. The creatures were there in the icy ground as if people intended to eat the meat today and had kept it there to preserve it. So for millennia these animals have simply been preserved, as one says, there in northern Siberia, keeping the meat fresh. Now you see, gentlemen, it is impossible for this ever to have been a slow process. For if the animals living up there had simply died and got into the soil, they would of course have rotted away long since, and the most one would find today would be bits of bones, the way one also does else114 where. But there one finds whole fresh animals. The only possible way in which this could have happened was that a wave of ice came over the creatures that lived there with tremendous speed, enclosing them, so that they were preserved for millennia in just that state, with the meat still fresh. So you can see that there must have been a situation on earth at one time when a powerful push came from the south, throwing the water up into that region of ice. The water froze instantly, the creatures were instantly in that vast Siberian ice cellar, and were preserved there for millennia. Now you'll all admit that the earth doesn't have any reason, of course, to do such a thing all of a sudden. For where in the earth would the energies to do such a thing come from? Such things can only happen under the influence of heavenly bodies beyond the earth. So if you imagine that this is the earth [drawing on the board], and these are the southern regions, the equatorial regions — southern only with reference to the north, of course — then the stars must have been in particular positions here at one time, and this simply threw the water up here. So it was due to the position of the stars that this water was thrown up there, freezing immediately and burying these creatures. You can really see from such things that the relative positions of the stars have a tremendous influence on the distribution of land and water and ice on earth. Now the other day 27 See lecture of 2 June 1923 in this volume. I spoke of the way volcanoes, too, come from things beyond this earth, with matter that is below ground being fetched up from the inner earth. So we can also say that if, for example, there is now a tremendous eruption from Mt Etna, things are not thrown out from below, but the stars are in a position up above that will bring those fiery masses up from the inner earth. We see from this that very many things act together today, and on the one hand that is the reason why we have these cold periods. The cold periods are therefore definitely caused by things outside this earth. And volcanic eruptions and earthquakes also come from there. But we can never wholly judge such a situation unless we understand that the human being himself is closely connected with all the conditions that exist beyond this earth. You see, I'm sure you've heard of people having haemorrhages, with the blood no longer going the way it should inside them but coming out of their mouths instead. That's called a haemorrhage. Such haemorrhages happen particularly when people are at a particular time of life. We have to ask ourselves: 'What exactly is the connection between a haemorrhage and something that happens outside?' Now if you remember that the human being consists not just of a physical body, which we may touch with our hands, but of a physical body, ether body and an astral body and I-body, you'll have to say to yourself: 'Yes, of course, the physical body is something we can lay aside. It is heavy, a heavy mass, and is connected with the earth. But the ether body is connected with the surrounding world.' Looking at things the way they are in the human being. we find that the moon in particular has a powerful influence on the human being. But the way things are now, the moon does not have such an influence on man, and we have to go back again to very early times. In early times, the moon had a tremendously powerful influence on man. People had to do something specific when the moon was waxing, and they had to do something specific when it was waning, and so on. And above all human procreation depended very much on the moon in those earlier times. It is so interesting to see how people who still preserve ancient traditions think about these things. And the moon then also influences the whole of human development, but in such a way that the human being has these moon influences inside himself. So it is not a direct influence when there's a full moon, or the like; but we see the moon wax, wane; at one time this had an influence on human beings, and this has remained and still continues. So it is not the present-day movements of the moon that have much of an influence, but something that is similar to the earlier movements of the moon. It is an old hereditary element that has a great influence. And so we can certainly say that the moon does have some influence. But we would not have any blood at all in our head if this moon were not there. We'd all go about with absolutely pale faces, horribly pale faces, if it were not for the influence of the moon. The moon draws the blood in our body up to the head. That is the moon influence, that the blood actually consents to go up into the head. This is extraordinarily interesting. The blood only goes up into the human head because the influence of the moon is there. Otherwise it would always go down. When someone grows so weak in his whole body that he can no longer offer sufficient resistance to the powers of the moon that draw the blood up to the head, the blood rushes up into the head too powerfully, and this causes the haemorrhage. We always have to have that influence, but if it gets too strong, the blood rushes too strongly up into the human head and the blood then comes out. And you see with this haemorrhage in the individual human being we have the same principle as with the kind of business, for instance, where water rushes up there [ pointing to Siberia ] or things come out of a volcano in the natural world outside. Only in that case it is not the influence of the moon, but of other heavenly bodies. You have to imagine that we are continually exposed to other influences simply in our development as human beings. Let me illustrate this for you. Once again imagine this to be the earth [ drawing on the board ]; here is the moon moving around the earth. I'll draw it the way it looks. So there the moon moves around the earth, and initially has a powerful influence on the human being. But beyond the moon are the other stars — Venus, Mercury, there's the sun, Mars, Jupiter and so on, and then the fixed stars. Now you have to understand that there's a difference when, let us say, Mars is behind the sun, or has already moved on and is beside the sun. When Mars is behind the sun, it has less influence on the earth, because the sun blocks out its influence. When Mars is in this position [beside the sun], it has a greater influence on the earth. And so it always depends on the positions of the stars how much the earth is influenced. This science of the positions of the stars has been very little developed today, and people therefore only consider what is happening on earth — icebergs and so on — and they do not look out at the stars. Now it actually is not possible to explore these things from the earth, and we must understand that these things have to be explored by considering the human being. These things must definitely be investigated via the human being. Now I'd like to tell you something. If you follow the evolution of humanity in more recent times, you'll see enormous changes in it. We won't go very far back, but let us go back, say, 600 years. Going back 600 years — it is now 1923 — we come to 1323. Now you have to consider that if you had lived then, you'd have had no idea that places such as America, Australia exist. People did not know any of this. They only knew about Europe and Asia and a little bit of Africa, a very small bit of Africa. Six hundred years before our time, therefore, people only knew about a small part of the earth. And above this earth they saw the moon rise and go down, the sun rise and go down, the stars, and everything was such that the whole of life was lived within a small space. Yes, gentlemen, people knew little of the earth then, and they also had no idea of the movements of the heavenly bodies. But they did know something about the spiritual influences of the stars. This was because they lived in such a limited area. People were influenced by those limited conditions. Now you know that not long after this, in 1492, Christopher Columbus of Genoa 28 Christopher Columbus (1451-1506). set out with a number of ships, and he believed one could go right round the world. Christopher Columbus actually did not intend to discover America, but it was his opinion that the earth must be spherical. Before that, people had thought the earth was flat. In his opinion, the earth had to be spherical. And so he fitted out a number of ships. There was resistance, but he did get those ships from the government, fitted them out, and believed he could go round the earth. That is what he thought. He said to himself: 'If we go from Europe over to the East, we find Asia there [pointing to the drawing], down there is peninsular India, and there's Indo-China.' He knew, therefore, that going that way by land one would come to India. He now wanted to go round the earth from Spain and reach India from the other side. That was his intention. He wanted to go round the world, for he was hoping to see the first practical use made of the earth's spherical nature. He wanted to go round and discover India from the other side. So he set out and came to America and absolutely believed it to be the other side of India. That is also why this area was called the West Indies, a name still used for part of it today. So you see that the earth's spherical form gradually became knowledge through human thinking, and people only gradually discovered that they had reached the other side of America and that this was not India but a new continent. It was therefore in 1492, 431 years ago, that America was discovered. But the discovery of America also meant something very, very different. To understand what it means, please consider the following. You see, as I told you, it was in 1493 that Christopher Columbus first set out and discovered America. In 1543, Copernicus 29 Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543). His theory, first developed in 1507, was published in 1543. first presented the view that the sun stood still and the earth moved around the sun like the other planets. Something every child learns at school today has therefore only been known from that time. Just think — how many years would that be? It's only 380 years! So it is only since then that people have had the merest inkling of something which is taught in primary school today. Before that, people knew nothing of all this. But they gave all the more thought to the moon's influence on the human being. They knew that the moon drives the blood to the head, as I've just told you. They perceived the influence on the human being. Now you have to consider what the discovery of America really meant. You see, people talk about things without giving it much thought and in history it is also presented like this: discovery of America; a stroke of genius! Yes, gentlemen, but you have to think of it also in a very different way. What kind of people do you think lived in America at the time when Columbus got there? Less than 500 years ago, copper-red native Americans lived there, and these American Indians did not think the way you do today in Europe, for example. They knew a great deal about the influence of the stars. So there was a population in America at that time who knew an extraordinary amount about the influence of the stars. They lived entirely according to the influence of the stars. And then the Europeans arrived, civilized humanity. Now you see, even in the nineteenth century the American Indians would still say that the Europeans always brought along such a strange thing, something white with tiny spirits on it. But those, they said, were very harmful spirits, terribly harmful spirits, and the Europeans would use them to cast spells on the Americans. That was what the American Indians thought. And do you know what it was that they were so afraid of and which made them think the Europeans were such dreadful people, causing such havoc with it? Those were books — pages of white paper with letters on them. The American Indians saw them, believed them to be magic, and said: 'These people use them to cast spells on us.' That was how human beings encountered one another. And there followed the eradication of the American Indians. But where did the people come from who eradicated the American Indians? They came from Europe! And if the people who had lived in Europe would have got to America in 1323, their views would have been much more like those of the American Indians. For in 1323 people in Europe still knew about the influence of the stars. They would have had much more in common. But the people who actually went there later on no longer had anything at all in common with the American Indians, and all they could do was to eradicate them. And European people then lived and developed in the place where the American Indians had been. So you have to consider this. The Americans who developed there are really Europeans. You see, the ideas people often get from what they learn at school are sometimes really quite idiotically stupid. I'd just like to draw your attention to one thing. Today people talk a lot about the French. But the people who live around Nuremberg today are still called Franconians. The French are simply ancient Germans who migrated there and adopted a variant of the Latin language. So all the things people keep saying when they do not know how things have come about, and the angry things they say because of the way things are taught in history lessons are sometimes extremely foolish, infinitely stupid. And in that case, too, we have infinite stupidity. People fail to consider that people from Europe, people who developed in Europe in the last three centuries, went over to America. The really major immigration only came much later, in the eighteenth, nineteenth centuries. That was when the settlers went to America. And what kind of people went there? Well, illiterate people also went, but they did not have much of an influence. The people who went there and had a major influence were people who had been educated in Europe, above all in science, people who had learned the Copernican theories, and took a completely different view of the stars. Just think how it all fits together in world history. On the one hand the earth was shown to be spherical, and people found that it was possible to go round the earth. And on the other hand it was shown that the sun did not rise there and then went down again, but that there was space everywhere and the earth moved around the sun; that the earth was not flat, that the sun did not go down into the water at night but that the earth moved around the sun. You see, people do not give thought to the connection between the discovery of America in 1492 and Copernicus' new view of the stars in 1543. There is a close connection. Please do not think that what happened could have happened unless the stars had an influence on human beings The stars played a role when Columbus thought: 'Now I'll go west.' You just have to consider how nebulous it all was. He did not know he was going to discover America. He merely wanted to go round the earth. It's just like a blind hen finding a grain. We can't say it was his rational mind that did it, for in such a situation people are driven by influences. And it is the influence of the stars that drives them. So we also have to say to ourselves when we ask ourselves why Copernicus thought about the stars: 'We must look for the reasons in the influence of the stars.' There was a time during the Middle Ages — I told you it was still like this 600 years ago — when people's ideas still related to a very small world. And then they suddenly had ideas that went right round the earth and went right round in the heavens. All their ideas floated apart. Yes, gentlemen, there we have to think a bit more deeply about what is going on in the human being. We have to go into these things in a truly scientific way. I have by now told you many things about the human being. I'll now tell you something that has been thoroughly confirmed again, so that you may see how things are. An Austrian poet, Robert Hamerling, 30 Robert Hamerling (1830-89). The event described by Rudolf Steiner has been published in an essay by Hamerling entitled 'Was mir bei einer Hellseherin begegnete' (Hamerlings samtliche Werke in sechzehn Banden, hg. v. Michael M. Rabenlechner, Leipzig o. J., 16. Bd, S. 67 ff, bes. S. 70-73). See note 7. was appointed to teach at a secondary school in Trieste at a particular time, in 1855. He took a great interest in everything that went on. This Robert Hamerling was also very interested at the time in all kinds of swindlers who would always be passing through Trieste, people who produced abnormal things and were called mediums. He liked to go to such meetings, not being at all superstitious, but he really saw the swindling and cheating that went on with most of these things. But once, when he saw someone with a particularly remarkable medium, he thought he'd really check this out. Now before Hamerling went to Trieste he knew a young girl in Graz, where he then lived, and this girl died soon after. He had a lock of her hair. He'd made the lock of hair into a small circlet, tied it and fixed it to a small piece of paper which he put into a little box. He kept this as a memento. It had become quite precious to him when the person concerned had died. He had taken it with him to Trieste among other things. No one knew about it. He never told anyone about it — he remembered this very clearly — and had actually never shown the little box to anyone. Conditions were such, anyway, that he would not have liked to show it to anyone. It was something he felt rather embarrassed about. So he had a secret little box, as it were, with the memento inside it. He put this in his pocket when he went to the meeting with the medium. And what happened was that people would give the medium all kinds of things, putting them into envelopes or boxes. The medium would take this in her hand, touch it and tell what was in the box. Now there is often a lot of cheating going on with such things; one must have a very open mind in such cases. I was at a meeting once, for example, when a medium was also brought in, and the person called the manager went around among the audience and asked them to write all kinds of things on bits of paper. He'd take these, but stay where he was. The medium wore a blindfold. And as he went on standing there he'd just say: 'What have I got in my hand?' and the medium would immediately say what it was. So if someone wrote down his own name and gave it to the manager, he'd read it and then crunch up the piece of paper. The medium could not see anything, but she'd say what it said on the piece of paper. Now you see the people around the table where I was sitting were terribly curious — for they were truly amazed — and they decided we should write something down that the fellow would not be clever enough to communicate; for they all thought he was communicating with the medium by some kind of signs. So I wrote the name Spinoza and the title of a work by Spinoza, the Ethica , for the people thought the manager would not know, of course, who Spinoza was. But he accepted Spinoza and his Ethica just as well, and the medium promptly gave the correct answer. People were really amazed by this. But, you see, the matter was quite simple. The manager was a ventriloquist, and the medium only pretended to answer as the manager spoke from his stomach in the medium's voice. Things really are like this and one simply must not allow oneself to be deceived. I have to stress this again and again. One must not allow oneself to be deceived. And that is exactly the difference between superstitious people who easily believe anything, and people who are able to form an opinion about these things. But Hamerling took his little box and no one knew anything about it. He handed this little box, which no one knew about, up among all the other things. The medium was sitting at a table and he handed the box up. Now the other things were dealt with first. The medium did it quite briskly. And the moment she came to his little box, she picked it up and flung it away. Hamerling thought that they probably had some kind of arrangement with all the other things, whilst in his case there could be no arrangement, so the medium could not discover what was in it and therefore flung it away. He then went and said he would nevertheless like to know what was inside. The little box was picked up once more. The medium flung it away again. It was picked up again. And then the medium said, in something of a stammer: 'A lock of hair and a small piece of paper.' Now it was for him to be surprised, of course. There could be absolutely no question of cheating. So he asked why she'd flung it away again and again. And she said: 'Because it comes from a dead woman.' He was even more amazed then. So that was a case — I am only speaking of cases which you find in the literature, otherwise there'd be hundreds more I could mention — where there was no question of heating. What was behind this? At the time, the medium must not know what is there, but has to search for it from her unconscious. A quite specific influence was behind this. I once told you that the influence of cooked buckwheat in the basement may sometimes still show itself on the third floor. You'll remember my telling you about this. Such an influence lies behind this, which only affects the head. And the medium will then say what's inside — why? Because the medium is someone whose blood is more subject to the influence of the moon than other people's are. The influence is not so strong that a haemorrhage will occur, but the blood is drawn towards the head, more so than in other people. This has a powerful influence; this is how such an influence can be there. Considering this, you'll say to yourself: 'Yes, the mighty influences from the stars do of course affect the human being all the time.' And everything Europe has experienced in relation to America and the whole earth has been under the influence of the stars. But what is the nature of this influence? Well, gentlemen, you have to consider the following. Imagine this to be the earth [ drawing on the board ]. There was that small part of the earth which was all people would know in earlier times. Above it were the stars — I'm of course only showing this schematically. People were under the influence of these stars. It was the time before the discovery of America. People had very definite ideas. If you look at the pictures and portraits of the aldermen of those times, you can see how definite their ideas were, how firmly they stood with both feet on the ground. That was because the relative positions of the stars were such at the time that the stars were close together. Since then the relative positions of the stars have changed. If this is the earth, the stars are much more at an angle, as it were, again drawn in a highly schematic way. If one were to draw it in detail, each would of course stand out, as it were. You'll say: 'But surely the fixed stars have not changed?' But they have, though not as much. So you see from this that the spaces in between have increased during the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The ideas have dissolved. And now a time is coming when the spaces in between are getting less again, with the stars coming more closely together. This is only a very little bit so with the fixed stars, but it is the case, nevertheless. If one draws the fixed stars one can see that they, too, must change their relative positions. And people are exposed to this, having acquired ideas under the influence of stars that were far apart. Now they have to get ideas under the influence of stars that are closer together again. The relative positions of the stars in the world are quite new now. You can see this if you have been wide awake in life from the last century into the present century. You see, I was born in 1861, and have therefore known the times of the 70s, 80s, 90s and now the twentieth century. Yes, it was very different when I was a boy than it is today. When I was a boy people simply did think differently from the way they do today. Everything has changed, and it has changed particularly in one area. When I was a young boy of 12,1 did not have much money to buy books, but we were given a school programme every year as a present; it gave the most important ideas used in physics in those times. Now at first I really had to knuckle down to this. They were really hard to grasp. I had to study differential calculus in order to understand these things. But I do know the ideas which were then used in physics. Today things are completely different. Someone studying physics at the university learns something completely different from what we would learn when we were boys. And it is possible to see from what has happened there that the ideas used in physics have dissolved. Today's physicists simply no longer know what ideas to work with. In those days we spoke of space and time as two different things. Today physicists speak of four dimensions, taking the first, second and third to be dimensions in space and the fourth dimension to be the equivalent of time. Most people have no idea of what is taught today. People outside the universities still live with the ideas I learned when I was a boy. But today's physicists are talking about something completely different. It shows that the ideas have been thrown into confusion. The modern physicist has not the least notion as to what he should do. Everything has become confused. Well, gentlemen, the things going on in the human head show you that the relative positions of the stars are different now. For the situation is that modern people all have more blood in the head than people had in their heads for centuries, the moon now being supported by stars that once again are more close together. So if we study the evolution of man, we find that a wave of blood has gone up to the head because of the relative positions of the stars. But this wave exists not only in the human being but on the whole earth. And it is the same influence through which cold was once pushed up from south to north in the distant past, burying the mammoths in a kind of vast ice cellar, so that their meat is still fresh in Siberia today. And just as that cold was thrown up north in those times, just as the blood is driven up into the head by the moon, so today's volcanic eruptions are thrown up by the stars. We thus have the effect of the relative positions of stars today that comes from the other side of the earth. It passes across through North America, through Greenland, pushes the cold air across, so that vast masses of cold air are today thrown from west to east because of the relative positions of the stars. And as I have told you, 31 See note 7. going to Italy all one needs to do in some places is to light a piece of paper and vapours will rise from the ground. It is not the earth which throws up the vapours, but they come up because I heat the air above and so make it thinner. And now the relative positions of the stars are pushing air masses from west to east. We an exposed to this here, and this creates the climate we now have. It goes like this from west to east. And because of this the soil down below is made to throw up its masses, its fiery masses. They are first of all thrown up over there in America, where they have huge volcanoes, enormous earthquakes. Now it is moving further east. Etna, Vesuvius are all starting to be active, for the wave is going that way, and things become elastic down below. It is not pushed up from below, but brought to the surface by the relative positions of the stars. In human beings the blood is pushed up into the brain, and on earth air masses are pushed across and transported to other places. It is the same thing. It all comes from the stars. If people understood why they are now thinking differently, they would also understand why Etna is spewing fire and flames. But then people must first of all also know that this is not something one can consider on its own; it has to be seen in connection with the whole universe. That is indeed how it is. And people have completely forgotten how to consider things within the universe. It is really interesting that the animals are much more intelligent in this respect than people are, as I have told you before. Animals usually go away before there is a volcanic eruption or the like; people stay put. Why do the animals move away? Yes, when the different influence comes, the different influence from the stars, it is like this with the animals. An animal is essentially made in such a way that it has its legs there [Fig. 15], there its spine, the spinal vertebrae, and there its head. As the stars move along there, the whole spine is always exposed to the stars, vertebra by vertebra exposed to the stars, and they belong together; they belong together so much that we have 28 to 31 vertebrae in the spine and the moon takes 28 to 31 days to complete its orbit. The connection is as close as that. But humans walk upright. With them, only the head, this little bit of head, is exposed to the starry heavens. Their spine has been lifted out. So in humans only the blood is exposed to the star influence and not the nervous system. In animals, the nervous system is exposed to the star influence. This is why an animal will notice the star influence much sooner than a human being does and move away when earthquakes or volcanic eruptions are about to happen. The human being stays put. The very fact that the animal is able to move away, thus showing us that the influence of the stars affects it, is proof that we are not dealing with waves arising from the earth in some way, but that the stars are bringing their influence to bear from outside. Man is not just a creature of this earth, he is a creature relating to the whole world of the stars. Now this will of course also make us understand that humanity, having lost its old knowledge of the stars, must gain it anew. So I'd say that it is truly the case that with anthroposophy we must give the human race something again in a new way which they need, otherwise they'll remain in a state of confusion. For the stars which are now closer together no longer fit the ideas held in earlier times; only the kind of ideas anthroposophy is able to give will fit. I was actually given four questions today. We'll try and move on with these the next time we meet. I may have to be away on Wednesday and I'll then ask people to tell you when we'll have our next session.

From Mammoths to Mediums

Effects of relative star positions on the earth and on human beings

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA350/English/RSP2000/19230625p02.html

Dornach

25 Jun 1923

GA350-7

A few questions were put to me last time. I will now answer them, but in a somewhat different order than they were asked. The questions are: What is the relationship between coming to see the secrets of the universe and one's conception of the world and of life? How far must one go before one finds higher worlds on the path of natural science? Do the forces from the cosmos influence the whole of humanity? What connection do plants have with the human being and the human body? These are, of course, very complicated questions and so I would like to organize my remarks in such a way that the answers emerge gradually. One cannot do otherwise with such complicated questions because if you ask, How can I come to see the secrets of the universe? — this means, How can I arrive at a true spiritual science? Now, you must not imagine that this is something easy to do nowadays. Most people, when they hear that something like Anthroposophy or spiritual science exists, think to themselves: Very well, if that is so, I too will acquire for myself the capacity to see the spirit. I will manage it within a week then I will be able to know everything for myself. Needless to say, it is not as simple as that. One has to realize that a great deal is required to master even ordinary science. In order to undertake the simplest observations, one must first learn how to use the instruments. Of course it is comparatively easy to use a microscope, but if one wants to investigate something with the help of a microscope one cannot simply say: I will now put a piece of muscle or the like under the microscope and look into it; then I will know what goes on in the muscle. If you were to proceed like that, you would see nothing. To see something under a microscope, one must first prepare the slides. A piece of muscle is no use by itself: one must make very thin slices with a fine razor, and sometimes a little must be removed and another cut made so that finally one has a very thin film. And very often even then the microscope does not help. For if you have such a sliver of muscle or cell under the microscope, you will probably still see nothing. What one must do is ask oneself: How can I make visible what is under the microscope? Then, often, what one must next do is color what one wants to see with certain dyes to make it visible. But then one must realize one has changed something. One has to know how it would be if one had not changed it. But these things are still really quite simple. If one wants to observe the stars with a telescope one must first learn how to handle a telescope, although this is much simpler than a microscope. You know there are people who set up telescopes in the streets for people to look through. By itself, this does not help much. For this again requires lenses and a clock, which in turn one must then also learn to handle, etc. These are only examples to show you how complicated it is to investigate the simplest things in the physical world. Now, to investigate the spiritual world is really much more difficult, for more preparation is necessary. People imagine they can learn to do it in a week. But this is not so. Above all, one must realize that one has to activate something one has within oneself. What ordinarily is not active must be made active. To make things clear for you I must explain that in all investigation of the spiritual world, as in normal science, one must frequently start with some knowledge of what is not normal. You can only learn how things really are if you know how they are when they are not normal. I once gave you a particular example of this. We have to consider this because people in the outside world call people mad who investigate the spiritual world, however normal they may be. We must therefore set about our investigations in such a way that in the end we arrive at the truth. Of course one must not think one can achieve anything by concerning oneself overmuch with what is diseased and abnormal, but one can learn much from it. For instance, there are people who are not normal because they are, as is said, mentally deranged. What does this mean? There is no worse word in the world than "mentally deranged" ( geistesgestört ) for the spirit can never be deranged. Consider the following case for instance: If somebody is deranged for twenty years —this happens — and afterward recovers, what has occurred? Perhaps for twenty years this person says that he is being persecuted by others — that he suffers, as one says, from paranoia — or he says that he sees all kinds of specters and apparitions which are not there, etc. This can continue for twenty years. Now somebody who has been deranged for twenty years can become normal again. But in these cases you will always notice one thing. If someone was deranged for three, five or twenty years and recovers, he will not be quite the same as he was before. Above all you will notice that he will tell you, after he has recovered, that throughout the time he was ill he was able to look into the spiritual world. He will tell you all sorts of things that he saw in the spiritual world. If one then pursues the matter with the knowledge one has gained of the spiritual world as a completely healthy person, one finds that some of what he says is rubbish but. that also much of it is correct. This is what is so strange, someone can be deranged for twenty years, recover, and then tell you that he has been in the spiritual world and has experienced these things. And if one knows the spiritual world as a healthy, normal person, one must admit that he is right in many instances. If you speak to him during his mental ill-ness, he will never be able to tell you anything sensible. He will tell you the nonsense he experiences. People who are mentally disturbed over a long period do not actually experience the spiritual world during their illness. They have not experienced anything of the spiritual world. But after they have recovered they can, in a certain way, look back to the time they were ill, and what they have not experienced appears to them like glimpses into the spiritual world. This conviction that they have seen much of the spiritual world only appears when they have recovered. One can learn much from this. One can learn that the human being contains something that is not used at all during the time he or she is insane. But it was there, it was alive. And where was it? It was not in the outer world for the person told you that the sky was red and the clouds green — all kinds of things. The sick one saw nothing properly in the outer world, But the inner being, which the person cannot use in the deranged state, is in the spiritual world. When he or she can use the brain again and can look back on what the spiritual being lived through, then spiritual experiences come. From this we see that a human being who is mentally ill lives spiritually in the spiritual world. The spirit in the person is perfectly healthy. What, then, is ill in a mentally ill patient? It is, in fact, the body: the body cannot use the soul and spirit. When a person is called mentally ill, there is always something ill in the body, and obviously when the brain is ill one cannot think properly. In the same way, when the liver is ill, one cannot feel properly. This is why "mentally ill" ( geisteskrank ) is the most incorrect expression that one can use, for "mentally ill" does not mean that the spirit ( geist ) is ill. It means the body is so ill that it cannot use the spirit which is always healthy. Above all you must be quite clear that the spirit is always healthy. Only the body can become ill, with the result that it cannot use the spirit in the right way. When someone has a diseased brain it is like having a hammer that breaks with every blow. If I say to someone who does not have a hammer, You are a lazy fellow, you are not even able to strike a blow — then this is, of course, nonsense. He could well strike a blow but he does not have a hammer. It is therefore nonsense to say someone is mentally ill. The spirit is perfectly healthy, only it lacks the body through which to act. A good example of what one can learn in this way comes from considering how our thinking works. From what I have told you, you will see that, though one has the spirit, one needs a tool for thinking, and this is the brain. In the physical world one needs the brain. It is not particularly clever of materialism to say one needs a brain. Obviously one needs a brain. But this postulate explains nothing about the spirit. We can also learn that the spirit can completely withdraw itself. In the case of mental illness the spirit does withdraw completely. And it is important to know this, because this shows that people today — and now I am going to tell you something that will really surprise you — cannot think at all. They delude themselves that they can think, but they cannot. I will show you why people cannot think. You will object: But people go to school; nowadays one already learns to think quite well even in grade school. So it seems, at least. Nevertheless, people today cannot think at all. It only appears as if they could. In grade school we have grade school teachers. These have also learned something; ostensibly they have also learned to think. Those from whom they have learned have, as one says in Stuttgart, "swollen heads." These are very clever people according to present ideas. They have been to a university. Before they went to university they went to high school. There they learned Latin. If you think back a bit you might say: But my teacher did not know Latin. Perhaps not, but he learned from teachers who did. And what they learned was entirely under the influence of the Latin language. Everything one learns today is under the influence of the Latin language. You can see this from the fact that when someone gives you a prescription, he writes it in Latin, It stems from the time when everything was written in Latin. It is not so long ago, only thirty to forty years, that if one went to university one was obliged to write one's thesis in Latin. Everything one learns today is under the influence of Latin. This is because in the Middle Ages, up to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries — this is not so long ago — all teaching was in Latin. For instance the first person to lecture in German was a certain Thomasius 1 Christian Thomasius (1655-1728), philosopher and jurist, delivered the first lectures in the German language at Leipzig University in 1687. in Leipzig. This was not long ago, it was in the seventeenth century. Everywhere lectures were given in Latin. Everybody who learned anything had to go through the Latin language and in the Middle Ages everything one could learn was in Latin. If one wanted to learn anything new one had to learn Latin first. You may protest: But surely not in the grade schools. But there were no grade schools before the sixteenth century. Only gradually, as the vernacular was adopted by science, did grade schools come into existence. So, you see, Latin influences our whole thinking. All of you think like people who have learned to think under the influence of Latin. And if you were to say that the Americans, for instance, could not have learned Latin so long ago — well, today's Americans emigrated from Europe! They too depended on the Latin language. Latin has a certain peculiarity. It was developed in ancient Rome in such a way that it thinks by itself. It is interesting how Latin is taught in high schools. One learns Latin; and then one learns thinking, correct thinking according to Latin syntax. So one's whole way of thinking does not depend on anything one does, but on what the Latin language does. You understand, don't you, that this is something quite significant. Anybody today who has learned something does not think for himself: the Latin language thinks in him, even if he has not learned Latin. Strange as it is, one meets independent thinking today only in the few people who have not been to school very much. I am not suggesting that we return to illiteracy. We cannot do this. In no realm do I advocate going backward, but one must understand how things have become as they are. Therefore it is important to be able to go back to what the simple person knows, though he has not had much schooling. He is not very forthcoming because he is used to being laughed at. In spite of everything, it is important to know that contemporary human beings do not think for themselves, but that the Latin language thinks in them. You see, as long as one cannot think for oneself, one can in no way enter the spiritual world. This is the reason why modern science is opposed to all spiritual knowledge; because through Latin education people can no longer think for themselves. This is the first thing to learn — independent thinking. People are quite right when they say: the brain thinks. Why does the brain think? Because Latin syntax goes into the brain and the brain thinks quite automatically in modern humanity. What we see running round the world are automatons of the Latin language who do not think for themselves. In recent years something remarkable has happened. I hinted at it last time, but you may not have noticed it, because it is not easy to see. Something remarkable has happened in recent years. Now, as you know, besides the physical body, we have the etheric body. (I will not speak for the moment of the rest.) The brain belongs to the physical body. The etheric body is also in the brain and one can only think independently with the etheric body. One cannot think independently with the physical body. One can think with the physical hotly only when—as with Latin — the brain is used like an automaton. But as long as one only thinks with the brain, one cannot think anything spiritual. To think something spiritual one must start to think with the etheric body — with the etheric body which, in the case of the mentally ill, is often not used for years. It has to be awakened to an inner activity. This is the first thing one has to learn: to think independently. Without independent thinking, one cannot enter the spiritual world. But it is, of course, necessary first of all to find out that one has not learned to think for oneself in one's youth! One has only learned to think what has been thought for centuries through the use of the Latin language. And if one really grasps this then one knows that the first condition for entry into the spiritual world is this: Learn to think independently! Now we come to what I wanted to point out when I said that in recent times something remarkable has happened. The people who, more than anyone else, thought along Latin lines were the people of learning — those who, for instance, created physics. They worked it out with thoughts derived from Latin and with the physical brain. When we were small, when I was about as old as young E. here, we learned physics which was worked out with a Latin brain. We only learned what was thought out with a Latin brain. Since then a lot has happened. When I was small the telephone was just being invented. Until then it did not exist. After this followed all the other great inventions that everyone now takes for granted as if they had always been there. They only appeared in the last decades. This caused more and more people to become involved in science who were not Latin trained. This is rather a strange thing. When one looks into the scientific life of the last decades one finds more and more technicians of this kind involved in science. These people had not had much to do with Latin and so their thinking did not become so automatic. And this non-automatic thinking was then picked up by others. This is why today physics is full of concepts and ideas that fall apart. They are most interesting. There is, for instance, Professor Gruner 2 Dr. P. Gruner, Professor of Theoretical Physics, gave the Presidential Address, entitled New Guidelines for Physics (1922)," at the eighty-seventh Founder's Day celebration of the University of Bern on the 26 November, 1921. in Bern who two years ago spoke about the new direction in physics. He said that all the concepts have changed in the last years. The reason that one does not notice this is because if you listen to lectures on popular science people tell you what was thought twenty years ago. They cannot tell you what is thought today because they themselves cannot think yet. If you take the thoughts of thirty years ago as valid, it is just like taking a piece of ice and melting it; the ideas melt away. They are no longer there if one wants to follow them exactly. We must see this. If someone learned physics thirty years ago, and sees what has become of it today, he wants to tear his hair out, because he has to confess: I cannot handle all this with the concepts I have learned. This is how it is. And why? Because in recent years, through the development of humanity, the human being has reached the point when the etheric body is supposed to begin to think, and human beings do not want this to happen. They want to go on thinking with the physical body. The concepts fall apart in the physical body, and yet human beings do not want to learn to think with the etheric body. They do not want to think independently. Now you see why, in the year 1893, it became necessary for me to write the book The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity , 3 The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (also called The Philosophy of Freedom ). First published in German in 1894 and in English in 1916, this basic work of Rudolf Steiner exists at present in two English editions: Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, New York, 1986 (translated by William Lindemann) and Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1988 (translated by Rita Stebbing). It is not the contents of this book that are so important, though obviously at that time one wished to tell the world what is said in it, but the most important thing is that independent thinking appeared in this book for the first time. No one can possibly understand this book who does not think independently. From the beginning, page by page, a reader must become accustomed to using his etheric body if he would think the thoughts in this book at all. Hence this book is a means of education — a very important means — and must be taken up as such. When this book appeared in the nineties people did not know at all what to make of it. It was as if someone in Europe wrote Chinese and no one could understand it. It was of course written in German, but people were completely unaccustomed to the thoughts expressed in it, because all connection with Latin was purposely cast off. For the very first time, quite consciously, it was intended that there should be no thoughts in it that are influenced by Latin, but only independent thoughts. Only the physical brain is a Latin scholar. The etheric body is no Latin scholar. And therefore one has to try to express such thoughts in a language one can only have in the etheric body. I will tell you something else. People have noticed, of course, that concepts have changed in the last decades. When I was young the professor filled the whole blackboard with writing. You had to learn it all and then you did well in your exams. But recently, people have begun to notice what Gruner said in his inaugural lecture: none of our concepts would remain valid if there were no solid bodies, only fluids. If the whole world were liquid, as Gruner imagined in his lecture, then our concepts would be invalid and we would have to think quite differently. Yes, of course one would have to think differently if there were no solid bodies. In that case you, as you sit here, could do nothing with the concepts you learned in school. If you, say, as a fish, suddenly became clever and had the idea that, as a fish, you wanted to attend a human university, then you would learn something that does not exist for a fish, because it lives in water. A fish only has a boundary sensation of a solid body; the moment it touches the body, it is immediately repulsed. So, if a fish began to think, it would have to have thoughts quite different from those a human being has. But a human being likewise needs such different thoughts, because other thoughts escape him, so that he has to say to himself: If everything were liquid I would have to have quite different thoughts. Well, have I not told you about the condition of the earth when there were no solid bodies and when everything was fluid, even the animals? I have told you of this condition. Can you not then understand that present day thinking cannot reach back to these conditions? It cannot think them. So present day thinking cannot make anything of the beginning of the world. Naturally, then, a human being today begins to say to himself: Good heavens! If the world were fluid we would have to have quite different concepts. But in the spiritual world there are no solid bodies. So, with all the concepts with which Latin has gradually schooled us, we are unable to enter the spiritual world. We must wean ourselves of these concepts. Here is another hidden truth. In Greek times, which preceded the Latin era (the Latin era only began in the fifth or sixth century B.C. but the Greek period is much older), in Grecian times there was still a knowledge of the spirit, One could still see into the spiritual world. When Rome emerged with the Latin language, this was gradually extinguished. Now I must again say something you will find curious, but you will understand it. Who has used Latin, only Latin, throughout the centuries? More than anyone, the Church. It is precisely the Church that claims to teach humanity about the spirit that has contributed the most to drive out the spirit. In the Middle Ages all universities were ecclesiastical. Of course one must be grateful to the Church for founding the universities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but it founded them in Latin, and Latin thought has no possibility of attaining the spirit. And so it gradually came about that human beings only have concepts relating to solid bodies. Just look at the Romans, they only introduced dry, prosaic and unspiritual concepts into the world. And this was the reason that all ideas became so material. How would the Greeks have described the sacrament of the Eucharist? They would certainly not have described it as if the elements were actually blood and flesh. This stems from materialism. So even the concept of the Eucharist has become materialistic and this is connected with the Latin language. Latin is entirely logical. I have worked with many people who were Latin in their whole attitude to life, although they spoke German. If one wanted to make something clear one quickly translated it into Latin, because since the time of Christ only in Latin does one think logically. But this logical thinking only applies to solid bodies. If one wants to enter the spiritual world one needs fluid concepts. There is for instance the Theosophical Society. It also wanted to reach the spiritual world. The Theosophical Society says that man has a physical body, an etheric body, etc. But these people are materialistic because they think the physical body is dense, the etheric body is a little thinner and the astral body thinner still. But all these are still bodies, they never become spirit. If one wants to reach the spirit one has to find concepts which are constantly changing. Even when I draw something on the blackboard you will notice that I take this into consideration. When I draw the physical body I try to portray physical man as he is. But if I try to draw the etheric body, I would never dream of representing it in the same way. I would do it like this. The human being has an etheric body which expands. But you must know that this is not so much the etheric body, but the picture of one instant. In the next moment it is different. So if I wish to draw the etheric body, I would have to draw, quickly wipe it off, draw differently, again wipe it off, draw again and wipe it off. It is in constant movement. With the concepts we have today, we cannot catch up with these movements. This is what you have to keep in mind, concepts must become mobile. People must get into the habit of it, This is why it is necessary that thinking become completely independent. But this is not enough. I will tell you something more. As you know a human being develops, but one does not usually notice it. However, when a person is quite young, one does notice it. One knows that a child who is only four years old can neither write nor read nor do sums. An eight year old child can perhaps do these things. Here one can see development. But in later life when we have made our way, we are so terribly superior that we don't admit that we can still develop. But we do, throughout our lives, and it is remarkable how we develop. Our development goes like this: Imagine this is man: I will draw him diagrammatically. When the child is quite young its development proceeds from the head. After the change of teeth, the development proceeds from the chest. Therefore one must watch how a child between seven and fourteen breathes — that it breathes adequately, etc. So this is a picture of the older child. (Nowadays one would have to say it differently. Children do not like to be called children any more. From fourteen onward one must call them "young ladies" and "young gentlemen.") Only at puberty does the development proceed from the limbs and from the whole human being. So one can say that only when one has reached puberty is one developing from the whole being. And this goes on throughout our twenties and thirties. But when one becomes older — some of you can already see it in yourselves — there is a certain retrogression. This need not be the case if one has adopted a spiritual mode of life, but in normal life there is a certain retrogression as one gets older. It is just the task of Anthroposophy to see to it that in the future one does not regress as one gets older. Slowly and gradually this must happen. Now there are people whose mental capacities diminish alarmingly. But the mind, the spirit, cannot diminish. It is again only the body. It is interesting that often it is the most brilliant people who regress very much in old age. You may have heard that Kant was reckoned to be one of the wisest men, but in old age he became feeble-minded. His body regressed so much that he could not express his wise mind any more. And so it often is. Especially the very intelligent become feeble-minded in old age. It is an exaggerated form of what happens to everybody. Eventually in old age there comes a point when one can no longer use the physical body. The reason for this is mainly be-cause the arteries harden with excessive deposits of calcium, And the more this happens, the less one can make use of the physical body. As, up to the fortieth year, development proceeds from the head into the whole body, so, in the same degree, the process reverses. As one proceeds from the forties to the fifties one comes back to using the chest more, and in old age one goes back to using the head. So if one becomes really old, one again has to use one's head much more. But now one would have to use the finer head — the etheric head. But this is not learned in Latin education. And it is just those who, in the last decades, had a materialistic Latin education who were most strongly affected by senility. In old age one must go back to childhood. There are people in whom this is very noticeable. They become mentally weaker and weaker. The mind, the spirit, however, remains completely intact. Only the body becomes weaker and weaker. In the end such people can no longer do the things they first learned to do in life. Such things happen. Let us say somebody gets old. He can no longer do the work he used to do. He can only do what he did as an older child. Finally he cannot even do this. He can only play and can only understand ideas he learned when playing. There are even very old people who can only understand what their parents or their nurse told them in the very first years of their lives. The saying about returning to second childhood is well founded. One really does return to childhood. Actually it is not a misfortune, that is, if one has developed a spiritual life. In fact it is rather fortunate, for as long as one is a child, one can use one's etheric body. If a child tears around and shouts and does all kinds of things, this is not done by the physical body — except if it has a stomachache, but even then the stomachache has to be transferred to the etheric and astral bodies so that the child throws itself about as a result. What tears around is not the physical body. Now one grows old and returns to childhood. Gradually one has learned not to tear around any more, but one no longer uses the etheric body like a child, but for something more sensible. So it can be fortunate that one returns to childhood. This is the second point. The first was that in order to enter the spiritual world one has to learn to think in the right way. We shall have to speak further about how one achieves this. The matter is very complicated. Today we have to concentrate on the question why there has to be independent thinking. One must break away from much in modern education, for what one learns in modern education is not independent thinking, it is Latin thinking. Do not imagine that the thinking emerging from socialist theories being developed today is free thinking! It has all been learned from what originally came from Latin, but people do not know it. The worker may have this or that intention in his will, but when he begins to think he thinks in bourgeois concepts and these originate in Latin thinking. So the first thing one has to learn is independent thinking. The second thing is that one must learn not only to live in the present moment, but to be able to turn back into the life one led in childhood. If you want to penetrate into the spiritual world you must continually remember to ask yourself how it was when you were twelve years old. What did you do? One must not do this superficially, but imagine it in great detail. Nothing is better than to begin to try to picture: Oh yes, there I was twelve years old — I can see it quite clearly — there was a pile of stones by the roadside and I climbed up on it. Once I fell off it. There was a hazel bush and I took out my pocket knife and cut off some branches and cut my finger. It is important really to visualize what one did so many years ago; in this way one gets away from just living in the present. If you think the way one learns to think today, you think with your present physical body. But if you turn back to when you were twelve, you cannot think with your physical body as it then was, for it is no longer there (I told you the physical body is renewed every seven years) so you have to think with your etheric body. If you think back to something that happened twelve or fourteen years ago, you call on your etheric body. This is the way to call up inner activity. Above all, one should get accustomed to think in a new way, different from one's usual thinking. How do you think? You know we met here at nine o'clock. I began by reading to you the questions on the slips of paper. Then I proceeded with various observations and we have now arrived at saying: We have to think back into the life we lived when we were twelve or fourteen years old. Now when you get home, you can, if you find it really interesting, think through these thoughts again. One can do this. Most people do it. They go through it once again. But you can do something different. You can ask yourself: What did he say last? The last thing he said was that one should think back to one's early life, to the age of twelve or fourteen years. Before that he said one has to have independent thinking. Earlier still he described how Latin gradually took over. Before that, how a person who was mentally ill for a time and then looks back on it, says he has experienced extraordinary things. It was further explained to us how the inner being cannot be mentally ill — only the body can be ill. Now you have run backward through the whole lecture. But in the world things do not run backward. I could possibly have given you the lecture backward in the first place, but then you would not have understood it. One has to begin at the beginning and then look at the whole as it gradually unfolds, but once one has understood it, one can think it backward. But things do not run backward. So I tear myself free from things. I say: Just to be contrary, I will think things exactly not the way they go in the outer world, but I will think them backward. This requires a certain strength. When I think backward I have to make myself inwardly active. A person who wants to look through a telescope has to learn how to handle it. In the same way a person who wants to see into the spiritual world must learn how to handle it. He must think backward many times. One day the moment will come when he knows: Ah, now I am entering the spiritual world. You see, throughout your whole life you have accustomed your physical body to thinking forward, not backward. When you begin to think backward your physical body does not take part in it. Something strange happens. This is the first advice to those who ask: How can I reach the spiritual world? You can also read this in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment . 4 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment . First published in book form in German in 1909. English editions appeared in 1909 and 1910. Two versions are currently available in English: Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, New York, 1983 (translated by Henry B. and Lisa D. Monges); and Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1985 (translations by Max Gysi (1909) and Clifford Bax (1910) revised by D.S. Osmond and C. Davy). What is said there repeatedly is: At least learn to go backward through the course of the day; then other things, People have, of course, only learned to think with their physical body. They notice this and have to make a great effort to think backward, but they have only learned to think with the physical body, not with the etheric body. Now there is an all-out strike by the etheric body; yes, a real "general strike." And if people would not fall asleep so easily, they would know that, if they began to think backward, they would arrive at the spiritual world. But the moment the vision begins, they fall asleep. People fall asleep, because the effort is too great. So one must exert one's entire will and all one's strength not to fall asleep. In addition, one must have patience. Sometimes it takes years, but one must have patience. If somebody could tell you what you experienced unconsciously when you went to sleep after thinking backward, you would see that it was something very wise. The most stupid people begin to have extraordinarily wise thoughts in their sleep, but they do not know anything about it. So today I have drawn your attention to the fact that one must first learn to think independently. Well, one can do this. I do not want to say — for I am not a conceited fool — that only my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity serves this purpose, but it was quite consciously written in a way that would lead to independent thinking. Independent thinking; thinking backward accurately over things that happened when you were ten or twelve years old, or over other things one has experienced — with these we have at least begun to describe how one tears oneself free from the physical body and how one finds one's way into the spiritual world. We will pursue this further and eventually deal with all four questions.

Learning to See in the Spiritual World

The Development of Independent Thinking and of the Ability To Think Backward

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA350/English/AP1990/19230628p01.html

Dornach

28 Jun 1923

GA350-8

We will now continue to answer the questions we took up last time. You must be quite clear that the answers to these questions are among the most difficult. I will try to make them as easy as possible. I have already mentioned that, to find a way to spiritual vision, first one must become accustomed to completely independent thinking. Second, one must have the ability to think backward. You must therefore attempt to think backward those things that normally occur in daily life in a 1, 2, 3, sequence. For instance, as I told you last time, when I give a lecture, you should try to think it through backward, from the end to the beginning. These two aspects constitute the absolute first steps. In connection with the second question I want to explain something else. As you know, a human being can live only within a specific temperature range. When it becomes very hot in the summer, one sweats but can still tolerate it. However, were it to become progressively hotter, a point would be reached when one would no longer be able to live. Similarly, a human being can tolerate a given degree of cold, and if it gets colder than that, one freezes. The fact is that one cannot see spiritual beings between the two extremes within which the human body lives: i.e., between the cold at which one freezes and the heat that is still barely tolerable. Within these extremes, where human life is possible, we cannot see spiritual beings. It is not surprising therefore that one cannot perceive spiritual beings when one is in the body. As I told you last time, when we begin to think backward and approach the point of consciously seeing spiritual beings, we often fall asleep. Unless they have trained themselves to stay awake, most people go to sleep. One can also perceive spiritual beings at temperatures higher than those normally tolerable. One could see spiritual beings at such higher temperatures, but of course one cannot tolerate them. At lower temperatures likewise one could perceive spiritual beings if one could transform oneself into a snow-being, but of course one would freeze in the process. Thus, what seems so unlikely to people is actually a fact: spiritual beings withdraw themselves from the temperatures that are tolerable to humanity in its physical body. A human being cannot tolerate those temperatures in his body, but he can tolerate them in his soul; but of course the soul goes to sleep. The soul does not freeze, the soul does not burn, the soul goes to sleep. There are two ways to gain an idea of what it would be like to experience the extreme temperatures outside those one ordinarily lives in. I will give you an example. When one has a fever, one reaches inwardly a temperature that one cannot bear. One does not immediately reach so high a temperature that one dies because the warmth is created from within, one is able to bear it. However, when one's fever enters these higher temperatures one may speak in a way that is not normal on the earth. What people babble in their fever has no relation to what we are used to on earth. Now, the materialist may say: Yes, but there are nevertheless untrue thoughts produced that are cooked up in the heat of fever. A person, when he enters into a state of high temperature, first of all feels feverish, then speaks nonsense. The soul cannot speak nonsense. Even when the soul is living in a high fever, it cannot speak nonsense. It seems or appears to speak nonsense at higher bodily temperatures because the body is not in order. You can verify the truth of this by the following example. Let us think about our experience with those glass spheres one sometimes finds in flower gardens — a sphere that is actually a kind of mirror in which the environment is reflected. If you look at yourself in one of these, you will find yourself with a face that you would rather not have n reality. (He sketched this.) You would hate to have that kind of face. You will not say, however, "Oh no! What kind of a thing did I turn into?" You would not believe that this is really your own face, just because it looks changed in the sphere. Similarly, if your soul talks nonsense when you have a fever, you will not say that your soul is talking nonsense; but rather you will assume that whatever is said by your soul seems nonsensical because it is spoken out of a sick brain — just as your face looks distorted and flattened out because it is reflected by a false mirror. So you must say to yourself: When I have a fever and speak nonsense, it is my soul that is speaking through a sick brain. When I see myself reflected in a glass sphere, it is not that I have another face, but that my face appears distorted. In the same way the speech of one sick with a fever appears distorted because it is spoken out of a sick body and a brain that is not working properly. Now, we might ask why the brain does not work properly? It is because the whole blood circulation is too fast. You can verify this by feeling your pulse when you have a fever. The blood circulation produces warmth which rises to the head — you feel a fever —and your soul now appears reflected as by a distorted mirror. The opposite can also happen, but this will not happen as a result of lying in the snow and letting oneself freeze, because then one would actually die of freezing. This opposite experience can happen, but only as the result of something spiritual. We come now to a strange subject. Carefully consider the following: Let's assume one begins to concentrate, to think powerfully about the smallest things (it is better to think about the small things that most people wouldn't even want to give time to) — for example, a triangle. Let us say we have a triangle, and we divide it into four equal parts so that we have four equal triangles. (He draws on the blackboard). You can see that the whole triangle is greater than the four smaller triangles. From this I can make a general statement and say: The whole is greater than the parts. (He writes the sentence on the blackboard.) But now let's assume that a well-fed stockbroker comes by and I tell him: Hey, just think, the whole is greater than its parts. He will say, No, that is too boring for me. He would say it again if I continued to speak to him and said: the blackboard is a physical body with a given size and extension, the table is also a body with a given size and extension, and I then constructed the general statement: All bodies have extension — are extended in space. (He writes the sentence on the blackboard.) If a whole conference were given to you, if a lecture was given consisting in the single statement "all bodies have extension," you would walk away, saying, Gosh, that was boring! Let's say I were to come to you and make other obvious remarks like the meadow is green, the rose is red, these things have colors, and yesterday there was a trial in court and the judge passed judgment, the judgment had no color. Then I went to another place and there also was a trial and a judgment, and it had no color either. And therefore I said: judgments have no color. (He writes the sentence on the blackboard.) Let's assume someone stood in front of you for an hour and told you: judgments have no color. You would think to yourself: I have spent a whole hour listening to someone bore me. This is the ultimate boredom. But why are these statements so boring? I should not be telling them to you humorously; I should be standing before you stiff and severe like a professor, announcing: Gentlemen, today we will consider the statement, "Judgments have no color," and then of course I would have to lecture for a whole hour to prove that judgments have no color; all bodies have extension etc. I could also give you another instance: draw a line from one point to another; this is a straight line. All others are curved, and when you look at it you would immediately say the straight line is the shortest way; all others are longer. Here again I could write down a general statement: The straight line is the shortest distance between two points. Again, if I were to speak for a whole hour on the subject, you would find it exceedingly boring. THE WHOLE IS GREATER THAN ITS PARTS ALL BODIES HAVE EXTENSION JUDGMENTS HAVE NO COLOR THE STRAIGHT LINE IS THE SHORTEST DISTANCE BETWEEN TWO POINTS There is a German professor who said that it is quite possible to perceive things of the spiritual world, but that the only things that we can perceive of the spiritual world are what reside in such statements as: the whole is greater than its parts, judgments have no color, bodies are extended, and the straight line is the shortest distance between two points. This, he says, is all one can know of the spiritual world. Of course, most students are extremely bored by his lectures. It is also the case that people today have come to believe that science has to be boring, and therefore many of the students are actually excited by this professor! This, of course, is just an aside. The real story is the following. Taken by themselves, sentences such as "the whole is greater than its parts" and "the straight line is the shortest distance between two points" cause the back of our head to become cold. This is what usually happens: the temperature drops and the area at the back of one's head becomes cold. When the temperature drops you begin to freeze and you want to get away from such statements — they are so boring. It is a fact — boredom causes a drop in temperature at the back of the head — not the whole body, but just at the back of the head. What cools it down is not snow or ice but something of a spiritual nature, insofar as there are subjects that hold no interest for the human being. It is of course possible to make fun of these sentences, but the fact remains, that patiently to think such thoughts over and over again means to put oneself, again and again, deliberately into a state of dreadful boredom, and this is a good way to reach in the direction of a true spiritual perception. It is remarkable that the very things men do not want in general are the things they must practice if they wish to have a real look into the spiritual world. Mathematics for many is boring; it causes a drop in temperature at the back of the head; and precisely because it is a cold subject for most, and precisely because they have to work at it, those people who do, have the least trouble reaching into the spiritual world. Those who overcome this resistance and experience again and again the truth of these statements are those who can create artificially a state of boredom in themselves. They have the easiest way into the spiritual world. I have told you already, when one has a fever one's pulse speeds up. One warms up, and this warmth reaches into one's head and into one's brain, and in this way the warmth causes one to talk nonsense. If, on the other hand, one struggles with such statements as we have mentioned, this causes one's blood to slow down, and there is an accumulation of salts deposited in the back of the brain. Most people react in one of two ways to this. Some get a stomachache and they notice this right away, as soon as they start to think of these statements, and so they stop. One can go on thinking, as for example Nietzsche did. He always tortured himself with such statements when he was a young man, and the salts accumulated in his head, and in his case he suffered dreadful migraines. The objective is to be able to think such thoughts without causing a migraine or a stomachache. One must find a way to be completely healthy while at the same time artificially producing in oneself a state of boredom. Thus, if someone were to tell you quite honestly how to reach into the spiritual world, he would have to tell you first of all to learn how to create boredom artificially in yourself. Short of this you have no hope of reaching the spiritual world. But look now at our contemporary world. What is it that people want at this time? People today are constantly trying to drive away boredom. Just look at all the things and all the places people run to in order not to be bored. They always want to be amused; but what does that mean, to want to be amused all the time? It means that they really want to run away from the spirit! It has no other meaning; and people today always want to be amused, which makes it clear that wherever anything spiritual might be present people of our time always run away from it immediately. People are not conscious of this, they do it unconsciously, but the fact remains that they want amusement and to run away from the spirit. Well, gentlemen, only those can reach into the spirit who are not afraid of renouncing amusements and of living in such sentences. When one can manage to live artificially in those sentences without getting a stomachache or a migraine, but can actually tolerate living in such sentences for many hours at a time, then it becomes possible to contemplate the spiritual world. An additional change must take place in this act of holding oneself consciously in these sentences. One notices, if one has been living with these sentences for a while, that they start to turn around. If I think about the sentence "the large triangle is greater than its parts" for a long time, if I think about it for a very long time, there comes a point when the sentence somehow turns around. It even starts to become interesting, for I start to have the following perception: If I have a triangle here, and I consider one quarter of that triangle and take it out, it somehow begins to grow with me and it no longer remains true that the whole is greater than the parts. Suddenly that quarter part is larger for me, I see that it has grown, so that I now must say: The whole is smaller than the parts! (The sentence is written on the blackboard.) By doing this, I have worked myself into a position where I can see how things work in the spiritual world. Things there are the opposite of the way they are in the physical world. In the physical world, the whole is always greater than its parts. In the spiritual world, the part is greater than the whole. It is impossible to know a human being without knowing that the part is greater than the whole. Contemporary science always wants to look at the smallest parts, the components of things. If, for example, we study the liver of a person, we find that it is smaller than the person in the physical realm. But if we start looking at it from a spiritual point of view, we find that it grows and grows to gigantic proportions; it actually becomes a whole world in itself. If one cannot see this, then it is impossible to perceive the liver at all in a spiritual way. Therefore you must first honestly arrive at the statement: the whole is smaller than the part, or the part is greater than the whole. In the same way, if you think for a long time —long enough — about the statement: All bodies have surfaces, or are extended, then there is a danger that the back of your brain will freeze. If you think upon this sentence in this way, all the bodies shrivel into one; they stop having surfaces — external surfaces — and in the end you arrive at the statement: Bodies do not have surfaces, they are not extended. (The sentence is written on the blackboard.) Now I will take a funny example, funny for the physical world, but of the highest seriousness in the spiritual world. It could seem that there is nothing more foolish than to say: in Buxtehude there was a trial, and judgment was passed — it has no color. In Trippstrill, judgment was passed in the course of a trial — and this also had no color. But if you think about judgments for a long time, they in fact acquire color. Just as you can say the rose is red, so you can say the judgment in Buxtehude was a kind of dirty yellow, and the judgment in Trippstrill was red. There can even be some judgments that are a beautiful red, although this is rarely the case. As you begin to understand this, you begin to grow into the sentence: All judgments made by human beings have color. (The sentence is written on the blackboard) Only now does one reach the point of being at all capable of thinking about the spiritual world, because it has the opposite characteristics of the physical world. The straight line is the shortest path between two points. This is true to such an extent that all geometry is built upon it. It is one of the first statements in geometry. It is as true in the physical world as anything ever can be true in the physical world. But if one thinks about it long enough — if some being goes from village A to village B, and that being is not a physical but a spiritual being, the way will seem very short if he walks in a half circle. The sentence then changes to: The straight line is the longest way between two points.(The sentence is written on the blackboard.) THE WHOLE IS GREATER THAN ITS PARTS ALL BODIES HAVE EXTENSION JUDGMENTS HAVE NO COLOR THE STRAIGHT LINE IS THE SHORTEST DISTANCE BETWEEN TWO POINTS You must admit there is something here that astonishes you, but the world as a whole does not like these kinds of things, and people will say: If someone says that judgments have color, he must have a fever or he is mad! Of course, the whole point is that one reaches these things in full consciousness without the use of one's body. The spiritual world has characteristics that are the opposite of the physical world and one may come to this realization through the simplest statements, for the simplest statements are the hardest to believe. As you know, if someone starts telling you interesting things about the spiritual world, everybody starts listening; for instance, if someone starts talking about ghosts. But if someone tells you first that you must get used to creating boredom in yourself artificially — it has to be artificially — this doesn't seem so interesting. If you are just naturally bored by external science, nothing comes of it; it has to be done artificially, through an inner effort that enables you to reach the state of boredom without getting a migraine or a stomachache. The body must not participate in that state of boredom. The moment your body is involved, it is clear that you will get a migraine or a stomachache. Don't listen when people tell you, Do not let professor so and so bore you. Such advice will be of no help, it will not make you see into the spiritual world. What you must do is gradually overcome both migraines and stomachaches. You see, the student is sitting here — the professor bores him to death — he should be getting a migraine or a stomachache, but he doesn't. What happens in this case is that other organs come into play which do not hurt. People, in fact, do get sick when the physical body is involved in the boredom. If you induce the boredom in the way contemporary science does, it only makes people sick. If one teaches people in the right way, one gives them the ability to produce, through their own powers, in total freedom, the boredom which, when penetrated, will gradually allow entrance to the spiritual world. One must take hold of absolutely basic judgments in the physical world and see how they are turned upside-down in the spiritual world. There is one extremely good way in which it is possible to work on oneself. For example: let us say you have experienced something very boring, so boring that you walked away from it because it was so boring, so boring that you could not stand it anymore, (you were so happy when it was over!) In such a case it is important that you start very, very slowly thinking it through again. Let me tell you that I have learned a great deal from this kind of exercise in my life. When I was young, I listened to many dreadfully boring lectures; but before it even started, I would look forward to a boring lecture, because it brought about the kind of result sleep normally does in life. I was very happy. I would tell myself: You are going to listen to a few hours of boring lectures. When the lecture started and the professor started to speak, I often had the feeling: He is talking too much, he is disturbing me in my boredom. But afterward I would think very deeply about every single thing he had said, not that it interested me — it didn't interest me at all — but I relived every single hour. I relived it from the very beginning exactly the way it had been presented. Sometimes I went over it so thoroughly that it would actually take two hours. I would have two hours of artificial boredom. In this process, one can make an extraordinary discovery. This kind of discovery is one that could be made at the end of the nineteenth century. Imagine that you have come out of a lecture by a giant rhinoceros — this can happen! — and that you have been bored to death. Now you can meditate, as the saying goes, on this boring lecture, bringing everything that was boring back into yourself, into your soul. Then suddenly, behind that giant rhinoceros of a man who was presenting you with all this boring stuff, a higher man, something like a completely spiritual human being, will emerge. The whole lecture hall is thereby transformed for you. I am putting this in a way you can understand rationally. The lecture hall becomes transformed in such a way that behind the professor the spiritual — a truly and deeply intelligent man — appears. I knew many professors of the nineteenth century with whom this was the case; but of course I don't want you to talk about this, because people would think it a terrible thing. For the truth is that humans are not inwardly as unconscious or as stupid as they pretend to be. Often they are quite smart. The dumbest are often quite smart, and the opposite is also true. But they don't know their own intelligence. It is a very deep secret: behind a person there often stands the true nature of his soul and spirit, which he cannot perceive in himself. This is already a way of reaching into the spiritual world. As you know, at the end of the nineteenth century there existed a materialistic natural science, and people today still adore this materialist science. I must admit however, that this science was tremendously useful to me. What it did, from start to finish, was bring up the most boring statements. It is as if the modern scientist licks his fingers with enjoyment when he thinks he has discovered that all humans descended from apes. But if one thinks about this statement again and again, with complete energy, it changes! It changes into another statement that is spiritually correct. That is to say, humans do not descend from apes but from a spiritual being. There are different points of view here. A child was once sent to school. There he heard for the first time from his teacher that humanity is descended from apes — too early as it turned out. When he returned home, he said to his father, "Hey, I heard today that humanity is descended from apes. Just think of that!" "Well," said his father indignantly, "You're certainly a stupid fellow. That may be the case for you, if you like, but not for me!" You see, for the father — he took it with reference to the soul — the story was quite unbelievable. From all that I have told you you will see that one can find one's way into natural scientific thinking in two ways. If you have not studied natural science, as many did in the nineteenth century and indeed still do, instead of simply parroting the conclusions, you can think about them — but think about them in a meditative way. Think them over for hours and hours, and you will find that what is true in the spiritual world comes forward. If you think for a long time about plants and minerals, and you have thought all the things about them that people tell you these days in such a dreadfully materialistic way, then you finally come to the meaning of things like the meaning of the zodiac, the meaning of the stars, all the secrets of the stars. The surest way to this goal is to start with those simple statements that are taken for granted, and proceed forward from there. The part is greater than the whole, bodies have no extension, judgments have color, the straight line is the longest path between two points. In saying these kinds of sentences you tear yourself away from your physical body. When you have experienced all this, you come to the point where you can use your etheric body instead of your physical body. You can then start thinking with your etheric body — your etheric body thinks everything upside-down, or in the reverse of the way it appears in the physical world. It is the etheric body that gradually brings one into the spiritual world. At precisely this point, however, very often one gets stuck: one must still accustom oneself to one thing more. You may know that one can read very strange things these days. I was in a small southern Austrian town (which is no longer in Austria) and I found an evening paper. It had a so-called editorial; it was a very interesting story, in all detail — every particular — a political story. There were three columns — it was all very interesting. Then at the end — still on the same page, there was a small disclaimer that said: We are sorry to notify our readers that everything in today's editorial article is based on false information and therefore not a word of it is true! This is the kind of thing that can happen to you today. This of course is rather an extreme case, but whenever you read newspapers it can happen that on every single page there is something that is not true at all. At some later point what one is now reading will be exposed as untrue. My feeling is that most people have become dreadfully insensitive in such matters, and they take in, quite evenhandedly, both truth and lies. The mind has become blunted in this way, so that truth and lies are both taken in the same way. This makes it impossible to reach into the spiritual world. I told you last time that when someone becomes crazy, only his body is sick; the soul is not sick, it remains healthy. I told you that when someone hallucinates in a fever, it is only his thoughts that become caricatures — for the soul itself is intact. One must get used to these things, if one wants to penetrate the spiritual world. One must get used to feeling pain in one's soul when something is not right, and to finding that something that is correct gives one a spiritual joy. One must rejoice about the truth the way one would if one were to receive a million dollars. One must be happy when one is told some truth. The opposite case is that when something is discovered to be a lie, a suffering is felt in the soul — not in the body — suffering as if one had a dreadful illness. The suffering need not be so severe that the soul has to become sick, but it must be possible for the soul to experience pain and joy just as, when the body is disturbed in a physical way, one feels pain and joy. This means that one must come to the point where one feels the truth in the same way that one experiences happiness, cheerfulness, and general pleasure in the physical world. One must eventually come to the point where one suffers such pain in the face of untruth that one's soul becomes sick — as one can be in a bodily way. If someone heaps lies upon you, you must be able to say inwardly: Damn it, this person has just sold me deadly nightshade. This must be true in an inner way. Now of course, if you look at the current world — for instance, at the newspapers —one eats that deadly nightshade all the time. You must constantly nourish yourself spiritually, for the soul has to remain healthy. You must continually be spitting out what is bad, spiritually, if your spirit is to remain healthy. One has to get used to this fact, because one cannot be without newspapers. Once you come to the spiritual world, you will have to be used to the bad taste of newspapers; and to feeling joy when you read something exceptionally good — the same kind of joy, in my opinion, that you would have when you eat something that tastes very good. Truth, and the striving for truth, must taste good to you; and lies, once you are conscious of them, must taste bitter and poisonous. You must not only know that judgments have color, but also that printer's ink nowadays is mostly wild cherry juice. You must be able to experience this in all honesty and rectitude, and once you can do so you will be in a state of spiritual transformation. People read these days about alchemy, and believe it in an external way. They believe that they can change copper to gold, and there are charlatans who will tell you all kinds of superstitious variations of this. Of course, in the spiritual world these things are possible; but one must believe in the truth of the spirit. One must be able to tell oneself that the printer's ink used is the same everywhere, materially, whether it has printed a true book or a lying newspaper. In the second case, the printer's ink is really the wild cherry juice, and in the other it is like liquid gold. Things that in the physical world are exactly the same are quite different in the spirit. Of course, if intelligent people today hear the statement "printer's ink can be liquid gold or wild cherry juice" they will tell you that you are only speaking 'metaphorically'. It is only a metaphor! But the meta-phorical must become spiritual reality and one needs to understand how metaphors become spiritual. I will give you an example — it actually comes out of the history of the Social Democratic party. You probably did not experience this as much in this country. At one point the party split; on one side were those led by Bernstein — happily making all kinds of compromises with the middle class — and on the other side, led by Bebel, were the radicals. 5 Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932), socialist theoretician, writer, and politician, who rejected revolution and established revisionism as a moderate, evolutionary path for socialism in the 1890's. August Bebel (1840-1913), co-founder of the Social Democratic Labor Party with William Liebknecht in 1869, writer, politician. I am sure you have heard about Bebel in books. At one point in Dresden there was a party convention, and Bebel got angry about the others and said he was going to put some order into social democracy. He gave a big angry speech. In the course of it he said: Well, if this or that happens on the other side, it feels like a louse running across my liver. Now everybody would say this is only meant metaphorically. Of course there is no such thing as a louse on his liver! But then one can ask: Why use such an expression? Why is it possible to speak in terms that suggest a louse walked on your liver? For the most part it is extremely unpleasant when people have lice, it is extremely unpleasant; it is actually a distressing feeling. Not everyone is as lucky as a certain sorry fellow who was always picking lice from his head. Someone asked him once, "How is it that you are so skillful and always manage to find a louse?" He answered, "Its easy. If I miss the one I'm aiming for, I get the one beside it." It does not happen to all of us to aim for a louse and miss and still get one! Generally, when people have lice, it's terribly unpleasant — a horrible feeling. I remember a case when I was a tutor and one of the boys entrusted to me came home after being out. He had been sitting on all kinds of benches in a big city and he started to have dreadful pains in his eyes. Everyone was wondering which specialist to take him to for his terrible pains but I said, "Why don't we first try a lice-killing cream on his eyebrows?" Indeed, it was then noticed that he was full of lice, and once the cream went to work, his eyes stopped tearing. Now, you should have seen how upset people — the mother and the aunt — looked when they suddenly discovered that he had lice. Their feelings were so intense that they had repercussions in their livers; they had pains in their bellies. They said, "My God, our child has lice, what a terrible thing!" When this happened, the sensation was really as though they had lice running across their livers. In the case of the Social Democratic party, it was not a matter of people getting lice, but rather of some people doing things that seemed so awful, so repugnant to the others, that the sensation was the same — the same as would have been experienced in earlier times, or would still be experienced in some classes of society, at the thought of having lice on one's liver. So you can see, in the way the expression was formed, it did correspond to a reality. Latterly, however, these expressions have been used in a way that only refers to spiritual matters or matters of the soul. But again, one has consciously, deliberately, to make those connections. One must really be able to experience, not just the sound of the phrase, but the actual sensation that it came from. Let us say I have a newspaper in front of me: most of the things that are printed in it must be felt by me as if the printer's ink was a somewhat toxic deadly nightshade juice. I wonder what people would do if they truly experienced that these days? Think for a moment how much deadly nightshade juice is used when, for instance, people talk about war guilt — Germany's war guilt in the first World War, or Germany's innocence in the war — and the fact that people, just by reason of belonging to this or that nation, feel comfortable when they claim innocence, using all manner of untruthful statements. They feel good doing this, but not because what they say is actually true. So, how in today's world can one reach the spirit? One must, first of all, make a firm decision, a very intense commitment, to be very different from these contemporaries — and yet get along with them. For of course it is not going to be very helpful to just stand on a stage and insult people. One way or another, one has to find an avenue for truth. This is extremely difficult, as I have shown you today. Today I had to present difficult things so that you would see that it is not easy to enter the spiritual world. You will see that it is good to work with difficult things. Later on we will come to things that are easier, less strenuous. Next time, I will show you the whole way into the spiritual world.

Learning to See in the Spiritual World

The Uses of What Seems Boring: The Spiritual World as the Inverse of the Physical

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA350/English/AP1990/19230630p01.html

Dornach

30 Jun 1923

GA350-9

In the last lecture I told you that contemporary humanity cannot know anything because our thinking nowadays does not lead to real knowledge. In earlier times, say a thousand or fifteen hundred years ago, whoever wanted to learn anything had to undergo special training in thinking. People did not believe that they could understand anything of the spiritual world with their ordinary, everyday thinking, and therefore there existed a kind of schooling of thinking. Today, on the other hand, none of the education we receive enables us to educate our thinking in any real way. This means that we are quite unable to think. I will give you an example that you probably saw in the newspaper a few days ago. 6 The report appeared in the Basler Nachrichten, July 5, 1923. There was an article on a very common dream, a recurrent dream of flying. We can all remember dreams of flying, floating, or falling. Such dreams often occur soon after we go to bed. But you know all this. In this article a writer, versed only in today's natural scientific thinking, attempts to explain this kind of dream. You will see that this kind of thinking leads nowhere in such matters. He says: "This dream of flying, according to Dr. Richard Traugott, is actually induced or triggered by a contraction of the body." What is the writer saying here, what does he believe? He thinks that at the time of going to sleep the body contracts or twitches. But, I ask you, has it not happened to you that you have had this same experience when you are awake? And when does it happen to you? As far as my own experience goes, this kind of sudden jolt or start happens when you are afraid. It is when you experience something startling or frightening that you experience that kind of bodily jerking or contracting. The same thing can happen if, let's say, you go out onto the street and you see a man whom you believed to be in America. At the moment you notice him, your body is jolted — because you are surprised. Now you could not imagine that starting with what has just been described you would feel yourself flying! The problem is that people can invent all kinds of ideas, but those ideas do not particularly fit the observation. The thoughts seem to fit as long as one makes experiments in the laboratory with lifeless matter; but the minute one tries to explain something real, they don't fit anymore. Let us continue with this writer. He says: "The cause of this contraction resides in the difference of muscle tension in sleeping and in waking. In the waking state there is a constant flow of energy from the central nervous system to the muscles." He assumes that in the waking state there are constant electric currents moving between the muscles and the nerves. "These energy currents create the muscle tension necessary for the maintenance of the bodily balance that the harmonious interplay of the musculature requires. In sleep this muscle tension largely disappears. During the period of going to sleep the reflexivity of the spinal cord actually increases, and thus the relaxation of the muscle tension, or rather the stimulus that this process exerts on the spinal cord, easily leads to this twitching reflex." So presumably, in the nervous system of the spinal cord there is a stimulus that is continuous and that increases the muscle tension. The writer goes on: "Other sensations that exist in our organs, particularly the rising and falling movements of the chest musculature and the rib cage, may even more directly influence the development of this feeling of flying, floating in the air, or swimming." In other words, muscle tension increases, contracting the body to such an extent that finally, when we are asleep, we experience a condition like that of flying or swimming. Now, after all this, just think back in your own experience to when you were breathless (panting) and your chest was tight. Did it ever occur to you that you were having a swimming sensation — not to mention the sensation of flying? On the contrary, in such moments you feel particularly heavy. The article goes on to say other things. For instance, attention is called to the amount of pressure and resistance we feel, when awake, on our bodies where they rest on something. Then, supposedly, when we fall asleep, we become aware of the lack of pressure and resistance. But really, gentlemen, this doesn't make sense. After all, when we are awake and walk, we actually are supported only on a very small surface! We feel that we are walking on the soles of our feet. Of course, when we sit down, we are resting on a larger surface than the soles of our feet. But even if you were to add the surface area of both these places where the body contacts the outside world, this still does not compare to the surface we need when we are asleep. So, as you can see, this kind of thinking really leads one to talk nonsense. This kind of thinking is what passes for science today. Our same scientist tells us that the electric currents in the nerves are stronger when we are asleep; they stimulate the muscles, and they cause the sensation of flying — so that one believes one is flying. Or he tells us that the support disappears when we sleep! One can hardly believe what he goes on to say, for he speaks of: "the disappearance of the perception of pressure and resistance, that in the waking state is present in all the parts of the body that need a support . ." It is not to be believed that he could fail to take into account that there is a much larger surface being used in sleep. But he doesn't care about this, because contemporary thinking never really reaches any real explanations or clarifies what really happens when we go to sleep. Let me now clarify what really happens when we go to sleep. From this you will see how one can really achieve insight into the higher, spiritual world. First I will show you this in an image. Remember that this is only an image! Let's assume you have here someone's physical body. (He draws it on the blackboard, left) Within it, there is an etheric, supersensible body — I will draw it in yellow. This fills out the physical body and is invisible. When we are asleep, these two bodies remain behind in the bed. When we are awake, the astral body is also within those two bodies — I will draw the astral body in red here. Within the astral body there is the ego, the fourth member — I will show it in violet. This, then, is the human being when awake: physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego — inserted one within the other. Let us now look at our sleeper: when he is in bed, he has only a physical body and an etheric body (drawing, center). Outside these are his astral body and ego (drawing, right). What lies in the bed therefore may be compared to a plant, for the plant also has a physical body and an etheric body. If a plant had no etheric body it would be a stone, and it would not be alive and could not grow. So what is lying in bed is like a plant — the plant does not think, and what lies in bed does not think in the sense of conscious thought. But it is also true that thoughts are in there somewhere, as I have already explained to you; and sometimes these thoughts are even more clever than those we use when we are conscious. However, there are no daytime thoughts such as we are used to, and in this respect what lies in bed is like a plant. But when we describe what lives outside that which lies in bed, this feels no boundaries. You can start to have an explanation of this, if you notice that when you leave the boundaries of your body, your consciousness disappears. When you are in your physical body, your astral body has to be as big as it is; but when you leave it, then your astral body suddenly grows — it grows to gigantic dimensions, because the physical body no longer contains it and makes it small. At the moment you go to sleep, at the moment you move out of your physical body, you feel as if you were growing larger and larger. Now, let's say you drink a glass of something. I guess I'd better not talk about a glass of alcohol, or else the word would be spread that I speak in favor of alcohol. As you know this is a rather unpleasant issue in Switzerland these days. So let us say you drink a glass of water with a little raspberry juice. If you put some raspberry juice in a glass of water, you can taste the raspberry juice easily. If, however, instead of a glass, you take a small bucket containing the equivalent of five bottles of water, and if you put only the same amount of raspberry juice in it as you put earlier in your glass, the raspberry juice is diluted — spread out over a much larger amount of water. You have much less of the raspberry taste. When I was a little boy, I grew up in the vicinity of a winery. There were big cellars with barrels of 400 buckets of wine. If we had filled one of these with water instead of wine and had added a little raspberry juice and stirred it, you could have drunk the water without at all realizing there was raspberry juice present. This is clear, I am sure. Now, gentlemen, as long as the astral body is as small as the physical body it is like the raspberry juice in the glass of water; your astral body expands only to the limit of your physical body. But when you leave the physical body in sleep, it no longer contains the astral. The astral body spreads out, just as the raspberry juice spreads out in the 400 buckets of water. Therefore in your astral body you have no consciousness. Consciousness is created through the fact that the astral body is concentrated or contracted. Here you have a true explanation for what actually happens when you go to sleep. As long as we are awake, our astral body is in our fingers and our toes, in all our muscles. When we feel the astral body in our muscles, we have the feeling of being dependent on our physical body. The physical body is heavy. We feel the heaviness of the physical body. In the moment we leave the physical body, we leave behind its heaviness. In this brief moment before consciousness has completely disappeared in sleep, we no longer feel the heaviness. We do not feel that we are falling, for in fact we are rising; we feel, rather, that we are floating into the air. This sense of not being bound to a physical body, this sense of enlargement, is what we experience as flying or swimming. We can feel ourselves moving freely until consciousness disappears and we go to sleep completely. In contrast to what has just been described, all the natural scientist can say is: our muscles twitch. And, as you well know, when our muscles twitch we feel them more than we usually do, and when that happens, it does not make us feel that we are flying — on the contrary, that is when we feel most narrowly tied to the physical. Another example is that when someone is surprised — Wow! — his mouth gapes open. This is because he is then so much connected with his muscles that he can no longer control them. The experiences of one's muscles twitching in surprise, or loosing control when "wowed," are the opposite of those prevailing when we go to sleep. When we go to sleep, we leave behind our muscles; therefore there cannot be a contraction of the muscles. When we lie down and rest on a larger surface of our bodies, there is rather a relaxation of the muscles. We do not need to hold our muscles together by means of our astral body. They relax, they do not become tenser. Because we no longer need to exert an influence on them, we believe that we are free of our muscles, and because of this we fly away with our lighter astral body. Now consider for a moment what I told you last time about learning to think in a way opposite to our everyday thinking. Here you can see how today's ordinary thinking, when trying to explain the human being, results in the opposite of the truth. Therefore the first thing you must do is to think correctly — which really means being able to think the opposite of what holds true in the physical world. People have lost the habit of thinking correctly. They can no longer think in such a way that they can reach the spiritual world through thinking. There are many people today who speak our language, and this language contains the word "spirit," so they use it. The problem is that they no longer have any real picture of what the word "spirit" means. They can make mental pictures only of physical things. But if we want to think of the spiritual, we come to something without physical characteristics, and therefore to something that you cannot perceive in the physical world. But thinking nowadays is so tainted that people actually wish to see the spiritual world in a physical way. As a result of this, they become what we call spiritists. They say to themselves: If a physical body can move a table, the fact that I can do this means I exist. Then they continue: If a spirit exists, it must also be able to move a table. And this is how the practice of "table-tapping" originated. People rely on table-tapping for signals from the spiritual world. This is because their thinking has become twisted or warped. Their thinking is materialistic in nature. It says: I must have the spiritual, but I must have it in a physical guise. Spiritism is the most materialistic concept of all, and it is very important to understand that. Now perhaps someone will say: But I have been present where people sat around a table and linked hands in a chain, and the table started to move and hop around, and all kinds of things of that sort. The external facts are true. It is quite possible to sit around a table, to make a chain of hands, and at some point the table will be set in motion. But this is the case when any small motion in some way starts a larger motion. If we have a railroad train with a locomotive and an engineer, the driver does not get out of his engine and go to the back of the train and start pushing it when he wants to start moving. In fact, he would not be able to do that. He would never be able to set a train into fast motion in this way. As you well know, the engineer makes a very small motion, and the train soon starts to move very fast and pull many cars. Why? Because the connections are established in the right way so as to result in the train moving. In this way, physically, a very small motion starts a larger motion. This is the case in the purely physical process of people creating a chain of hands around a table. They then start to twitch very slightly and, lo, and behold! from these small motions a larger motion results. This motion is transferred through the material plane. But this is really a very ordinary physical event. Now, if there is one person among those present at the table-tapping who has any thoughts in his subconscious, then these thoughts are translated into the twitching of the finger tips, causing a response, which forms letters which we can then read. However, what we read as an answer in such cases was always present somewhere in the subconscious of one of the people there. This is true, no matter how clever the answers seem to be. I have explained to you that when a person enters into the subconscious, he is entering something much more profound than his ordinary consciousness. This is can be seen in the practice of table-tapping. Nevertheless, the fact of people turning to spiritism is proof of the strength of materialism in our time. Ordinary thinking does not bring us to any true explanation of what a human being is. That was obvious from the newspaper article I mentioned here today wherein there was an attempt simply to explain a flying dream. The author of the article explains it in exactly the opposite way to which it should be explained. People no longer seem able to study things of real interest. I have often talked to you about dreams. Let me now repeat a few important facts. Let's say someone dreams he is in Basel in some town square. Suddenly — in dreams everything is possible — he finds himself standing in front of a fence. The fence has pickets: here one, there another; and here one is missing and there is a gap; and then another picket, and another gap. Now he dreams that he wants to jump over the fence, and he impales himself on one of the pickets, and this hurts — hurts so much that he wakes up and notices that he has not been impaled, but rather that he has a terrible toothache. He has a toothache and it wakes him up. He has a missing tooth in his upper jaw and he also has another missing tooth and this is what he saw in his dream picture as missing pickets in a fence. There was an exact correspondence to his upper jaw and its missing teeth. He then touches one of his teeth and he finds out which one hurts him. There is a cavity, and it hurts. One can certainly have such a dream. What is really happening here? This whole episode was actually played out in the dreamer's waking life. You can really say: So long as I was asleep, I was happy; I did not feel my awful toothache. Why not? It is because the astral body was outside the physical body, and the etheric body does not feel the toothache. You can hit a stone as much as you want, and even break little pieces off it, but the stone as such does not feel it. You can tear a plant and the plant will not feel it, because it does not have an astral body — it has only an etheric body. You would soon stop picking roses and other flowers in the meadows, if the plants were to hiss like snakes because it hurt them. However, it does not hurt the plant, and a human being, when asleep, is like a plant. As long as we are asleep, the tooth does not hurt. But when the astral body slips back into the physical body, as soon as this happens, we 'inhabit' our teeth. Then, you see, the astral body is in the teeth. Only when we are completely in our body do we feel what hurts our body. When we are not quite within our body, what hurts appears to us as an external object. Say, for instance, I burn a match: when looked at from without I will see it burning white. But if I had somehow lived within that match with my conscious astral body, I would not have only seen it externally. I would have felt it as a pain! In the case of the teeth, until I am fully in my body, when I first slip in, I feel them as if they were external objects, and I therefore make an external picture of them for myself that in some way resembles some aspect of them. Since I cannot make quite the right picture, which I could do only through spiritual science, I make a picture of a row of pickets instead of a row of teeth. Where there are gaps in my row of teeth, I have gaps in the row of pickets. As you can see, as a result of the confused picture that arises as a consequence of not quite being fully in the body, there is an error. Because when we are asleep we are outside our bodies, the inner is interpreted as the outer. I have been able to study what happens in such cases when observing little children as I taught them. They have no feeling as yet for the correct use of speech and I have often experienced that a child who has just started to write "Zahn," the word for tooth, will instead write "Zaun," the German word for fence. Such a child has to be told that this is false, wrong. Somehow the child was scared entering his body — not leaving it, but entering it. This does not cause a flying dream but a fearful dream, a nightmare. The child has a nightmare and somehow expresses this in the form of the fence dream. There is a connection between the child's misuse of words and the images of the dream. The images of the dream come into existence through words. There are always verbal connections. These help us to see more clearly what is really happening. The man I referred to before — Richard Traugott —has written a great deal about dreams, most of it is as absurd as what he wrote about the flying dream. 7 For example: The Dream, Psychologically and Cultural-Historically Viewed , Würzburg, 1913. When he speaks, equipped with ordinary science, he says exactly the opposite of what is actually the case. He does not understand that because the astral body grows larger when leaving the physical body it perceives itself as flying, and that when it is forced to shrink on reentering it pictures itself as someone (or something) who is squeezed somehow. The muscles tighten, causing an anxiety dream. The anxiety dream occurs precisely when the man who wrote the article would claim that there should be a flying dream. It is also possible to have anxiety dreams when the process of going to sleep does not proceed properly. Let's say, for example, that you are lying down and you have the sensation that you are being strangled by someone. This can happen if you are in the process of going to sleep and somewhere there is a disturbance, so that you cannot go to sleep, but you keep trying to do so anyway. You pass in and out of sleep, and returning into your body correctly is not quite possible because you are still tired. This can be felt as a strangling sensation, because the astral body is being forced in some way, and cannot quite enter correctly. Knowing this kind of thing, you can explain all these matters much better. This brings us to the fact that one more thing is necessary if we really want to know the spiritual world. One must be absolutely clear about the fact that the physical body is not involved here. One must be able to live in the astral body alone, in a way that does not involve the physical body at all. If one wants to know the spiritual world, one must induce a sleeplike condition in oneself. In ordinary life this occurs only when one slips out of one's physical body, which is viewed externally as the condition of sleep. But as I mentioned in my example of the raspberry juice in the large casks of water, in sleep the astral body (or juice) normally becomes gigantic and this must not be allowed to happen. The astral body must be held together through an inner effort of another body. Do not think now about the astral body and the human ego, just think again about the image of the drops of raspberry juice. Create a vivid image of a glass of water with only one drop of raspberry juice in it. The raspberry juice expands in the water to the limit of the glass, but it is still perceptible. But if you assume a container a hundred thousand times larger, then you would not be able to perceive anything of the juice, and this is comparable to our normal inner experience in sleep. Now, imagine for a moment that this drop of raspberry juice takes on an impish character. I put this impish drop in a cask with four hundred buckets of water; it has a real temper and says to itself: I am not going to let myself get mixed up in all this water, I am going to remain myself. Were this to happen, you would then have a huge casket with one drop of raspberry juice in it; and if you reached this drop with the tip of your tongue, if you went through all that water to the exact spot where the raspberry juice held itself together, then you would actually taste the sweetness of that single drop. I must stress here that I am speaking only metaphorically about the raspberry juice with its impish character. The opponents of Anthroposophy can be quite funny at times. There was once an article in a Hamburg newspaper in which Anthroposophy was insulted from all possible sides; and there, it is true, I was actually seen as an imp or devil, and in that case indeed it was meant very seriously, as if I myself were not just an imp but the devil's own helper — as if I were the very devil come into the world. To return therefore to the image I gave you: the drop of raspberry juice is only a devil's imp insofar as it can keep itself quite small when it is put into the water. In the case of the astral body, it is possible for it to stay as small when it leaves the physical body as it is when it is within the physical body; but it can develop the forces necessary to do this only by learning to think sharp, well-honed thoughts. I told you we must develop independent thinking. This independent thinking is much stronger than the weak thinking possessed by most people. The first requirement for knowledge of the spiritual world is very sharp and well-honed thinking. The second requirement is the ability to think backward. The outer physical world proceeds forward, therefore one needs to learn to think in reverse. This strengthens one's thinking. One must learn that truth which I told you about last time: the part is greater than the whole. This once again is something that contradicts what the physical world seems to indicate; but if one can do this one can put oneself into the spiritual world. All these things I have mentioned cause the astral body to remain small in spite of the fact it is not contained in the physical body — so that it does not simply flow out into the common astral ocean. All these requirements fit together, but you must be careful that all these things are taken with the same sobriety and the same scientific attitude with which the physical world is ordinarily examined. The moment we slip into fantasy, we are finished with the scientific. Our clear and definite approach must never be allowed to turn into fantasy. Let's take the case when one has a pain in one's big toe. You feel this pain through your astral body. If we had only a physical body, we would not feel the pain; and likewise if we had only an etheric body, we would not feel the pain. If this were not true, the plant would squeal when it was plucked! But we squeal when we have a pain in our big toe — of course, we don't actually squeal, but you know what I mean. We all feel like making a noise when we experience a pain of this kind. Why is this? Our astral body is spread throughout our whole physical body, and when our astral body reaches the spot where something in our big toe is out of order, this is brought up to the brain by the astral body, and we have a mental picture of our pain. But let's assume someone has a sick brain that does not allow him to register the pain in his big toe in that certain spot in the brain where it is normally felt. One needs a healthy place in one's brain to be able to register the pain in one's big toe. Assuming this spot in the brain is sick, and remembering what I have told you — that neither the soul nor the astral body can become sick — the pain in your big toe cannot be registered. What happens under these conditions? The specific place in the individual's physical brain is sick, but this still leaves the etheric aspect of the brain. The etheric aspect of the brain that remains is not properly supported by the physical part, and we may therefore ask: What will the etheric body do in such a case? The etheric body makes a great deal of this toe; not only does it notice it, it makes a mountain of it. The pain to the etheric body will appear to us as little beings, little mountain-climbing beings sitting in this mountain. So here we have the big toe transferred into a spatial picture, into a large space — just because the brain is sick. If this were to happen to you, you would swear that there was a mountain in front of you. In actuality this mountain is only your big toe, and it is clear that this is a delusion. It is very important to protect oneself from such sick delusions when one penetrates into the spiritual world, or else one can slip into total fantasy. How can we avoid these delusions? This has to be done through real schooling. We must learn what can result when the physical body becomes sick in any way, so that we will not be confused when merely physical manifestations appear to be real spiritual occurrences! For this reason we must learn truly active thinking, thinking backwards, thinking such as I described last time — a thinking very different from our ordinary thinking in the physical world. In this way one will be protected against delusion, and one will recognize the physical origin of what we have just described. In earlier times people were prepared so to penetrate safely into the spiritual world. There was a real method or art of preparation, which was called dialectic. This meant that people really had to learn to think. Nowadays, if one were to suggest to people that they must first learn to think, they would pull our hair out — for everyone is convinced that they already know how to think. But if one looks back to earlier times, it is actually true that there was a real schooling of thinking, or a dialectic. One had to be able to think both forward and backward, and one had to be able to form concepts in the right way. How, we might ask, did this training take place? It took place through the activity of speaking, and at the same time as one spoke, one learned to think. I have just given you an example of this, when I talked of children first learning to speak and then learning to think. But of course such thinking is at first entirely childlike. Nowadays this childlike thinking is preserved by people throughout life, although it is worthless in later life. If one were to continue to learn thinking through speaking this way, then one would have to ensure that with each in-breath and each out-breath the air moved correctly in and out for correct speaking is connected with correct breathing. For speaking to be rightly connected to the breathing process the air must come in and go out in the proper manner. Much depends on one's being prepared for correct speaking, because correct speaking prepares one for correct breathing. Whoever knows how to breathe correctly can also speak for a long time without becoming tired. Through the art of dialectic, one once learned how to speak and breathe correctly, and therefore how to think properly. These days, however, people are no longer able to think properly, for their breath keeps bumping into the organ of their breathing at every moment. Just listen to some academics when they speak. First of all, they do not speak very much in general; they usually read, and they use their eyes very much for support. But if you listen to an academic speaking, for the most part it is as if the person were short of breath. It is as if he were constantly bumping into his own body. For this reason everything that is said becomes a picture of the physical body. Whether one has a sick spot in one's brain, and consequently makes a mountain, with mountain spirits, out of a painful big toe; or whether one keeps bumping into oneself with one's breath whenever one thinks, with the result that true thinking cannot emerge — it is all the same. Because your breath is constantly bumping into your physical body, you will perceive the whole world as a physical phenomenon. Now, what really is the source of this materialism? Materialism comes from two facts: people do not know how to think correctly, and they do not breathe out correctly. It seems to them as if the whole world were made up of pressure and thrust —which they have in themselves — because they have not been prepared through right thinking. Therefore we can say: A person is a materialist because he cannot get out of himself; inwardly, he keeps bumping into himself. Let us return for a moment to Mr. Traugott. What he should really say is that the flying dream is caused by the fact that we go out of ourselves, and the astral body starts to grow larger. However, he does not conclude this. He thinks, indeed he thinks a great deal. And what happens if someone wants to think, and think some more, when in fact he is unable to think? What really happens? First of all, you will see him frown, and if this doesn't help he will hit his forehead and thus tighten his muscles, and then he tightens them some more, and he may even hit himself again so that his muscles are really tight. What is Mr. Traugott really doing when he is thinking about dreams. Instead of looking at things as they really are, he tightens his own muscles, and what he finds is what he himself is doing — muscle tension. I've got it he says: the dream is caused by muscle tension! He confuses his own attempt at thinking about dreams with reality. We can all learn something from Mr. Traugott. We can learn what is happening to him when he thinks about things, and when you yourself read the story. What happens today when we read what people print is that we learn what they themselves imagine is true. Whenever we read the newspapers today, we have to say we really learn very little about what is really happening in the world, but we do learn what the people who sit in the editorial rooms would like to be happening in the world. The same is true of today's materialistic science. Through it you will not learn what the world is; rather, you will learn what materialist professors think about the world. If you penetrate this a little, you will see that Anthroposophy has no intention of deceiving the world, but in fact it wants to put honesty in the place of deception and illusion, and in place of what is often untrue, very often consciously so. You may see from this discussion that honesty, inner honesty, is the fourth quality that must be present if we are to be able to reach into the spiritual world. If you contemplate the world in this way, you will see there is very little honesty operating in the world, and it is no surprise that not much of it can be seen in science. We have therefore seen four required qualities: independent thinking, thinking not linked to the outer world, thinking whose quality is completely different from the physical world, and thinking honestly. We will look at other characteristics next time.

Learning to See in the Spiritual World

Developing Honesty In Thinking

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA350/English/AP1990/19230707p01.html

Dornach

7 Jul 1923

GA350-10

There are many questions still pending from those asked recently, but I will tie in some of these with the recent subject of dreams. We shall start with a question that seems to have broken many scholars' heads, and that is the question of the lizard's tail. As you know, if we see one of these large lizards and grab it by the tail, the tail breaks. In fact, it is very difficult to catch such lizards because, when the tail breaks, the lizard runs away quite happily without its tail. The tail seems brittle and scientists attempt to establish whether the tail is really torn away or if it is somehow left behind by the animal. Contemporary science proceeds in a materialistic way and therefore tends to assume that the animal simply has weak muscles in that part of its tail and that these muscles just cannot hold together under the strain of being caught. But there is a little-noticed fact that is undervalued, which is that when the lizard is caught and kept in captivity for a long time it loses the ability to let go of its tail. It is as if the tail becomes stronger and therefore increasingly difficult to pull off. The peculiar thing is that when the lizard is in the wild he loosens his tail easily, and when he is in captivity he holds onto it. What is really going on here? You see, people direct their thoughts toward the musculature around the tail, instead of looking at all the facts, facts that would very easily give the answer to why the lizard in captivity does not lose its tail. The missing evidence is that the animal in the wild is scared when one tries to catch it, because it is very unusual for it to be caught and may actually be the first time this has happened to it. The first time a man comes into its vicinity the lizard is scared and becomes so brittle that it lets go of its tail. Once the lizard becomes used to the proximity of people — when people are constantly near it — the lizard loses its fear and likewise stops losing its tail. Even a superficial observation of all the facts in this situation leads us to conclude that fear plays a very important role in the case of the lizard. But we must examine this fear more carefully and say: The fear that this lizard has when people come near it to catch it — this somehow comes out of the animal when it is caught, though normally it remains inside. It is this fear that holds the matter in the tail together and makes it strong! Let me introduce here a remarkable phenomenon of human life. As you know, when people who are very dependent on their soul life become scared they get diarrhea. The fear causes diarrhea. How can we understand the meaning of this? This means that whatever is normally held in their intestines is no longer held together as it was. What was it that held things together in the intestines? When fear rises up in the soul it stops holding things together in the intestines, but when fear remains in the intestines it holds things together. The same thing is true of the lizard. If one looks at a lizard, it is like one's own lower body: it is completely filled throughout with the soul quality of fear. It is especially true of the tail that it is completely filled with fear; and when this fear is pressed out or expressed, the tail breaks. The fear, however, normally remains within the animal. The animal does not feel the fear while in captivity because it is used to people, and because of this the fear can remain in the tail and hold it together. Here we see a very important quality of soul that has a certain significance for the bodily constitution. Human beings also contain fear. We have fear in our big toe, in our legs, in our belly — there is fear everywhere. This is not everywhere the case however. Fear does not normally rise above the diaphragm — it does so only when we have nightmares. Nevertheless, fear does have a role to play: it holds our organism together. It is in our bones that fear lives most strongly. The bones are strong and hard because a terrible fear lives in them. It is fear that holds the bones together. When we feel our bones too much, our bones get soft. Those children who were fearful at the time when their bones were not yet completely hardened, develop weak bones — a condition called rickets. It is possible to cure children with rickets by reducing their fear through some soul work. But it would be quite false to say that this fear in us is something of the soul: that we need only approach the fear in a somewhat higher manner in order to have an experience of a higher kind of knowledge. To enter this subject in the wrong way would not be good, for we would make ourselves sick in body and soul at the same time. We must do something entirely different. In order to gain knowledge of the spiritual world —I have already given you various other means — we must learn to live correctly in the outer world. How do people really live in the outer world these days? As we said recently, we freeze terribly, and often we sweat a lot, and this is how most people normally experience living in the world. First they sweat, then they freeze. This is not the only way one can live into the outer world, however. Rather one should try to cultivate a certain capacity, so that when it is cold one isn't just cold but rather one becomes aware of a kind of qualitative experience that goes with it, namely that of fear. When one is aware of fear, one easily notices that with the return of warmth fear disappears. When a person cultivates a certain awareness of fear connected with the coming of snow; when the warm rays of the sun bring a certain pleasant comforting feeling — that person is in fact living into the outer world in a way that leads to higher knowledge. This belongs with the other requirements I have tried to describe to you. It is really true that whoever wants to gain higher knowledge must feel something when he comes close to a glowing piece of iron, and he must feel something different when he approaches a piece of flint. When he approaches the glowing iron, the feeling should arise: here is something that is related to my own warmth and is good. But when he picks up a piece of flint he should feel a sense of strangeness and a somewhat fearful mood. (You can see immediately that whoever wants to gain higher knowledge cannot be nervous, as we say these days, or else he would drop the piece of flint the minute he takes it into his hand, because he is afraid of it!) One must be brave and conquer the fear. At the same time we cannot be like a moth that takes so much pleasure in the light that it flies right into it, to its death The example of the insect flying into the flame gives you a good idea of the relationship of a flame to the spiritual world. We really must acquire a sensitivity to the inner feeling for whatever is at hand out there in nature. What will this produce? Let us examine things as they are now. Materialists assert above all that the earth has a crust of hard stone — they believe in this hard rock of the earth because they can walk on it and when they touch it, it is hard. Materialists believe in this hard rock, but whoever wants to gain higher knowledge should experience a certain fearfulness of this same hard rock. This fear is totally absent when a man finds himself in the warm air. I will draw the warmed air above the hard rock. (He draws on the blackboard.) When one considers the warm air, fear is totally absent. (To show the warmth of the air I will color it red.) Yet it is possible to enter a condition such that even the warm air would make one afraid. This is the case when one attempts to get closer and closer to the feeling that one gets from the warm air. In a person who feels more and more comfortable living in the quality of the warm air, the warmth too will eventually cause fear. It seems strange, but the better one feels, the more fearful one becomes! When one gets used to feeling completely at ease in warmed air, when one becomes more and more used to the warmth and is fully at ease inside all of nature, then one can find spiritual knowledge. At this point something quite remarkable happens — I will try to make it clearer for you. Most people try to keep cool, to cool off when they get warm — all they know is that it is very pleasant to get cooled off. But if, instead of this, one were to remain warm, if one were to soak up the good feeling of the warmth — then whatever it is that I have drawn here schematically (yellow) would start to fill itself with all kinds of images (upper light) and the spiritual world would literally arise: the spiritual world which is contained in the air, which one does not normally feel and is not conscious of, because in most cases one cannot tolerate the warmth in the air. When one becomes accustomed to seeing those beings in the air, one gradually reaches the point where one can tell oneself: when I take a stone in my hand, it is very hard; but when I become more and more aware of the spiritual, when I am able to penetrate into the spiritual, when there is more and more activity around me — not just the sensory world but also the spiritual world — I can do something more. I cannot slip into the hard ground with my physical body of flesh and blood, but with my astral body I can actually slip into the earth (lower red). This is very interesting — at the moment that one starts to perceive the spiritual world in the realm of the air, at that moment one slips so far out of one's body that stones are no longer perceived as obstacles — and one can actually dive into the hard earth the way a swimmer dives into water. What is interesting is that we cannot penetrate into the air as spirits, for there are already other spirits there, but in the earth, which is empty of spirit, it is very easy to gain entrance — one can dive under as a swimmer does. In between the solid and the gaseous elements we have the watery element (blue). This rises and falls as rain. Up above, as I am sure you have seen, there are sometimes formations of lightning (upper red). The water is between the hard earth and the air; it is thinner than earth and denser than air. What is the meaning here? This is something that is easiest to understand if we consider lightning. According to the scientists, lightning is an electric spark. Let us examine why, according to them, it is an electric spark. You probably know all this but I will repeat it. If we take a sealing-wax rod and we rub it with a leather strap, it becomes electric; and if we have little pieces of paper, they are attracted by the rod; and so it is possible to electrify all kinds of objects by rubbing them. This is often shown to children in school. But there is also the specific need for something else. If you do this experiment in a very humid room, you will not be able to electrify a rod or anything else. First you have to dry everything thoroughly with a dry cloth; then, and only then, can you produce some electricity, for water does not produce electricity. Now, according to the scientists there are clouds up above that rub against each other and somehow produce electric sparks. Even the child can tell you that in order to produce electricity you must remove all water, for if there is anything wet in the apparatus you will not be able to produce any electricity — even a child can tell you this. This is the kind of nonsense we are being told: it is clearly impossible to produce lightning by clouds rubbing against one another. Think for a moment whither the water evaporates — it rises and reaches higher and higher into the region of the spiritual; it moves away from matter empty of spirits here-below and rises into the spiritual world above. It is actually spirit that produces what looks like our electric spark. For, as we rise, we move higher and higher into the regions of the spiritual. Matter is present only in proximity to the earth. Higher up, it is surrounded by the spirit. Therefore, at the moment when the water vapor rises and reaches the region of the spiritual, the flash is produced. The water First becomes more spiritualized and then it falls down again, "densified". If one observes nature correctly, one is forced to come to spiritual subjects; but if one absolutely refuses to take the spiritual into consideration, one is then left with no alternative but to make all kinds of absurd statements like the ones you heard about the flying dreams or the lizard's tail or the cause of lightning. Everywhere we can look, it is clear that it is impossible to explain nature if one does not bring in the spiritual. We will now try to proceed further. When one stands on the earth, starting from the feet and moving up, one is always related to the lower spiritual beings, and one can dive in like a swimmer. When we move out of our physical body with our astral body, we can actually penetrate into our solid surroundings and find ourselves within solid matter. (We cannot however do this with the surrounding air.) We can actually wander around, but this wandering around in the solid element has very important aspects. When we conduct ourselves correctly in relation to warmth then we come to the point of seeing spiritual beings in the air. But when we go out of our body at night and unite ourselves with the earthly in a spiritual form, then it can happen, when we awake, that we can still sense something around us of what we experienced when we were in the hard matter of the earth. Something remains in the soul. Some of you may have noticed on awakening that it is easy to hear very soft sounds; and if, as you wake, you are really attentive you may have an experience similar to hearing someone knocking at the door. It is quite remarkable that when we live into the air with our soul there arise images, and when we live into the solid earth — into matter — with our soul, as a swimmer does who dives into water, then we experience tones. It is very important to know that all hard matter continuously produces sounds that of course we cannot hear if we are not inside of it. All solid matter continuously contains tones and we can hear them on waking up only because we are still half in our surroundings. These sounds can have a very special meaning in certain cases. It is completely true, for example, that it sometimes happens, when a person dies at some distance, that someone else may hear on waking what sounds like a knocking at the door. This knocking sound is related to the dead. Now of course it is very difficult for one to understand these things properly. But just think: You would all be unable to read, that is, to make sense of signs or letters on paper, if you had not first learned to read. In the same way one cannot immediately understand the wonders at work when one hears tones on waking up. You do not of course have to believe that there is actually a dead person standing at the door knocking with his fingers. But the dead do reside on earth in the first days after death, and they do live in the solid material of the earth. The fact that tones arise in connection with solid bodies does not necessarily have to seem very remarkable. It was quite widely known in the past when people paid attention to such things. People can have a premonition when someone at a distance dies. This means that someone has died and is still bound in his soul to the solid earth. Tones arise out of the dead when they abandon the earthly realm. It is just as easy to hear the sounds that are made at a distance as it is to read a telegraph message from someone who has transmitted from America. These kinds of long distance effects transmitted through matter are present on earth and are always there, and in days when people paid attention to these things the connection of the spiritual with the earthly was well known. This is not some fairy tale it is actually something that was perceived in earlier times. As you can see, we are now entering an area that is described nowadays as superstition. But it is actually possible to explain these things scientifically, just as other scientific things are explained only you must know how to do this accurately. One could come to the point of perceiving the spiritual world in the air: that is, if men were not so "poor me" as they so often are today. (The more civilized men become, the more depressed and plaintive they become in a certain way.) Those whose daily work forces them to live in great heat have no time during work hours to perceive the spiritual world and so they lose the opportunity to perceive the spiritual world contained in the air. The fact that one can see spiritual beings in the air is not in itself a dangerous thing; everybody could perceive those beings without further delay and without it in any way being dangerous. However, in the case of hearing, if that seizes a person too strongly, and one enters a condition where one hears all kinds of things — that is a danger. The reason is that there are people who can come gradually to the point where they hear all kinds of things —they hear all kinds of things told to them. Such people are on the road to madness. There is a simple reason why there is never a danger in seeing the spiritual beings that are in the air. I will make it clear by using a comparison. If you were in a boat and you fell into the water you could drown but then, if someone pulled you up, you could have all kinds of experiences, except that of drowning: you would not actually drown. In the same way, if the human soul goes out and up it can see all kinds of things; however if it sinks into solid matter, it does in a way drown spiritually. This spiritual drowning happens when people lose their own consciousness in that they give it up to all kinds of things that are told to them inwardly. It is not a very serious danger when a man sees the spiritual outwardly. This is the same as walking around in the world, and just as a man is not afraid of a chair that is in front of him, so gradually he stops being afraid of spiritual beings and actually enjoys what he sees. But when things are heard inwardly, then we sink into the solid earth with our whole spiritual life, with our whole soul life, and it is possible to drown in that —one stops being truly human. Therefore one must always look with some caution and wakefulness at those people who say that all kinds of things have been told to them inwardly. That is always dangerous. Only the human being who is firmly rooted in the spiritual world and knows his way about can understand what is really being said, which amounts to this: it can never be higher beings speaking in a case like this it can only be spiritual beings of a lower nature. I have told you these things in great detail so that you can see that as human beings we must come to a completely different conception of the outer world if we want to penetrate into the spiritual world. Of course there are people who can say: Why have the spirits made it so difficult for us to get to know them? But gentlemen, just think what kind of being a human would be if one didn't really have to make an effort to penetrate to the spiritual world — if one was always within it. One would be a purely spiritual automaton. A human being only comes to a proper relationship to the spiritual world, to the degree that he or she has really worked at it. It does indeed take the hardest inner effort in order to research and explore the spiritual world. It is not difficult to take one's ease at a laboratory bench and to make all kinds of experiments. It is quite easy to cut up corpses and thereby learn all manner of things but it takes inner work to really penetrate into the spiritual world, and for this kind of work the contemporary, educated world is too lazy. Because of this laziness people say: I have made these exercises on how to reach knowledge of the higher worlds — but I didn't see anything. The problem is that such people believe that these things have to be given to them outwardly, not that they have to work and conquer them inwardly. This indeed is in keeping with what people nowadays want — they want everything to be ready-made for them. As I have mentioned to you already, human beings these days want to put everything on film. They want to make a film of everything so that they can look at everything from the outside. If we want to make progress — real progress, spiritually — we must make sure that no matter what we take up from the world, we will work it through. Therefore, in the future, those people will penetrate most deeply into the spiritual world who will as much as possible avoid having everything on film for their comfort. Rather they should choose to think everything through for themselves, to think along, so that when people tell them things about the world they will be participants in the thinking. As you can see, I have not shown you a film! Even if we had time for it, I would not attempt to present things to you with a film. I have done a few drawings, but these were done at the time and you could see them being made, so you could see what I was trying to do with every stroke and were able to think along with me. This is also what needs to be introduced in the education of children. As few finished drawings or pictures as possible should be given, and as many as possible that are done in an impromptu manner, because in this way the child works inwardly with the teacher. In this way people become awakened to an inwardness that leads to a deeper living into the spiritual and thus enhances their understanding of the spiritual. Also one should not give children finished theories this makes them dogmatic. What really matters in all cases is that they are brought into autonomous activity this in turn will make the whole body freer. I want to mention one other subject which arises from the questions I received from you. Many of you have read that potatoes were introduced into Europe at a particular time in history, for the people of Europe were not always potato-eaters. In fact a rather interesting story is related to this. There is an encyclopedia, in which I myself collaborated — but not in the article in question, for in this there is something comical, namely: According to the article, it is universally said that Drake introduced the potato into Europe. There is in Offenburg, which is now occupied by the French, a Drake monument. I looked it up in a conversational dictionary, 8 Pierers Konversation-Lexicon , Seventh Edition, in twelve volumes, Berlin and Stuttgart, 1888-1893. and there it stood: The monument was erected to Drake in Offenburg, for it is rumored (wrongly) that he brought potatoes to Europe. One can say if anything is even attributed to a person, people in Europe will build a monument to him. But this is not what I wanted to talk about rather, that at a particular time potatoes were introduced. Let us now take a closer look at potatoes. When we eat potatoes we are not really eating a root the roots are the little things dangling off the potatoes, and these are removed along with the peel when one cleans them. The potato itself is actually a thickened stem. An ordinary plant grows and it has a root and then a stem — and if the stem becomes thicker, as is the case with the potato, there arises a kind of knot or tuber, which is really a thickened stem. You should remember this when you are eating a potato — you are eating a thickened stem. We should ask, what does it mean for us that with the introduction of the potato into Europe we learned to like the taste of thickened stems? If you look at a whole plant, it is made up of root, stem, leaves, and flower. (This is drawn.) A plant is something quite remarkable. The roots down there become very similar to the soil insofar as they contain many salts; and the flower up here is very similar to the warm air, so that it is as if through the heat of the sun the flower were continuously cooked. As a result the flower contains many oils and fats. In other words, when we look at the plant we find roots at the bottom, and the root is rich in salts, whereas the flower is rich in oils. Therefore when we eat roots we introduce many salts into our intestines these salts in turn make their way to the brain and stimulate it. If for instance someone suffers not from migraine headaches but from ordinary headaches — the type that seem to fill your head — it is very good for that person to eat roots. One can see how a certain salty sharpness is present in those roots, and this can already be established by the taste. If you eat a flower, the plant is in fact already half-cooked; the oils are already on the outside and this is what primarily fattens the stomach and the intestines and, in turn, affects the lower body. These are the kinds of things doctors have to take into account when they prescribe teas. There will never be a very strong influence on the head if someone cooks flowers in the tea on the other hand, if you cook the roots, they will have a strong effect on the sick person's head. So you can see that when considering the human being we pass from the stomach to the head or from the bottom to the top. With plants, we must do the opposite. To find the correspondence, we must proceed from the flower to the root. Remember — this may enlighten you as to the meaning of potatoes — that the root is connected with the head. The potato has a tuber, which is something that is not entirely turned into a root. Thus when you eat potatoes you are eating, by preference, plants that have not quite become roots. If one limits one's self to the eating of potatoes — too many potatoes — it is not possible to pay a proper amount of attention to the brain, so that all these potatoes stay down below in the digestive tract. This is why we say that potato-eaters neglect their heads or brains. You will only perceive this connection if you are an adept of spiritual science. But one can say that ever since the habit of eating potatoes has become firmly established, the head has become less capable, and it is the tongue and throat that have been particularly stimulated. This is why the potato is particularly appreciated as a side dish for people, because it stimulates the body below the head, leaving the head itself unburdened. If, on the other hand, we eat red beets, we develop a great craving for the activity of thinking. This happens unconsciously. Potatoes only make one crave the next meal. Potatoes make one hungry because they don't quite reach the head. In contrast to this, the red beet satisfies so quickly because it actually reaches all the way to the head, and that is the most important thing. Of course it is very unpleasant for people to disturb their ease with thinking. Therefore they will very often eat potatoes more readily than red beets just for this reason: that to do so does not stimulate their thinking. They become lazy and their thinking becomes lazy. The red beet on the other hand stimulates thinking — it is a true root — insofar as it actually makes one want to think, and anyone who does not want to think does not like red beets. If you need to have your thinking stimulated, the salty stimulation of radishes, for instance, might be necessary. Anyone who is not quick in the head will get good results eating radishes — because the addition of radishes to his meals will set his thoughts into movement. So we can now see a remarkable thing: the radishes stimulate thinking, and it is not necessary to be really active oneself thoughts come naturally as a result of eating radishes thoughts so strong that they also stimulate very powerful dreams. On the other hand, one who eats a lot of potatoes will not have strong thoughts, and his dreams will make him heavier. If you habitually eat potatoes, you will find yourself constantly tired and always wanting to sleep and dream. You can see that there is enormous cultural and historical meaning in what foods people actually have access to. One could say from what I have shown you: The way things really are we live completely in matter, from matter, and yet this is not true. I have often told you that human beings have a totally new body every seven years it is constantly being renewed. Whatever matter was in our body eight to ten years ago is nowhere to be found now: it has been expelled. We have cut it away in the form of our nails and with our hair it has run out of us with our sweat — it all goes out. Some of it goes out more quickly and some more slowly, but eventually it all passes out. So what is the true story? Well, this is more or less the way it goes. I will start by giving you a schematic drawing. Let us say this is the human being, who is constantly producing tissue, and expelling it, and always absorbing new matter and of course it is easy to think: Well, it comes in through the mouth and it goes out in feces and urine. In this way the human body is seen as a kind of tube. The matter enters while we are eating, and then is expelled after we have held onto it for awhile: this is more or less the way digestion is presently thought of. But in the real human being nothing at all of earthly matter naturally goes in — this is an illusion. What really happens is the following: Let's say we eat potatoes. This does not mean that we actually absorb anything from the potatoes. Something in the potatoes stimulates us, it stimulates our throat, it stimulates our larynx etc. — everywhere the potatoes go to work, and the result of this is that we receive the strength to expel the potatoes again. In this process of expulsion, something from the earth comes into us, but it comes from the ether, not from solid matter, and it is this that builds us up in the course of the seven years. We are really not built up from earthly matter. When we eat, we do so in order that we may be stimulated. In reality we are built from what is above us, so that all the ideas and conceptions people have of food coming in and food going out again, with the side effect of leaving some material inside, do not at all fit the situation. To repeat: what is really happening is that a stimulation occurs and in response to this stimulation a counter-force enters from the ether, and our whole body is built up from the ether. Nothing that we have in us is built from earthly matter. It is like this: when we push at something and there is a counter-push and a kind of reflexive push coming back to us, we must not confuse the pushing with the reflex action. We must not be confused by the fact we need food. The actual purpose of food is that we do not become lazy in the reconstitution of our bodies. We must not confuse this stimulating activity with the fact we happen to be taking in material food. Now of course there can be all kinds of irregularities that enter the normal situation — such as, if we eat too much, the food stays in us too long, and we accumulate matter that should not be there — fat. And if we take in too little, then we are not stimulated enough and we absorb too little of what we need from the spiritual world, from the etheric world, which is so necessary for we do not build ourselves from the earth and its matter but rather we actually build ourselves up from what is outside the earth. If it is the case that within around seven years the body is renewed, the heart is also renewed. The heart that I carried in me eight years ago is not there anymore. It has been completely renewed by what surrounds the earth — by light. Your heart is actually compressed sunlight, and what we have taken in as nourishment has only given us the necessary strength to concentrate the sunlight. All our organs are built from our light-surroundings. All that we eat, that we take in by way of nutrition, affords only stimulation. The only thing that food does give us is that it builds a kind of inner chair, in which we feel ourselves, as we would feel the pressure against us of a chair. In ordinary life, as a result of this resistance we have the feeling of our self, our ego, and this is related to the physical material we have in us. You feel your body as you are constantly pressing upon what you have made out of the cosmos. When you sleep, you do not feel it, because you are constantly outside yourself. You feel your body, for it is like a kind of resting bed that is made for you. In some cases it can be hard and bony and in others it can be softer, but it is really like a bed in which one goes to sleep. Of course you know the difference between a soft feather bed and a wooden bench — we feel a difference as a result of which one we have. However, we also feel in the one condition as in the other that this does not concern the real, essential human being. The real human being is what sits inside of it all. I will explain to you next time how all this is related to higher knowledge. When people nowadays want to reach knowledge, they do not deal directly with human activity rather, they concern themselves with whatever it is that their 'chair' offers them.

Learning to See in the Spiritual World

Learning to Live Correctly in the Outer World

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA350/English/AP1990/19230718p01.html

Dornach

18 Jul 1923

GA350-11

If we take the things we considered the last time a bit further, we come to the following. In the days when I was young, very young still, there would be a lot of excitement when a travelling hypnotist would give performances with people. Now we need not give special praise to people who make a public show of extremely serious things, and I certainly would not want to sing great praises of Hansen, 42 tralia in 1853, where he gave performances as a mesmerist. Later he made hypnotism widely known with performances in the Scandinavian countries, Germany and so on, though he did not contribute to the scientific investigation of hypnotism. a man who in the 1870s and 1880s, especially in the 1880s, gave public performances on a subject which scientists had not at all been considering in those days and about which nothing was known in science at that time. But scientists have since taken up the subject, particularly as a result of Hansen's public performances. Let me first of all tell you of an experiment that had long been forgotten when Hansen started to do it over and over again, to the amazement of his audiences. He would take two chairs, place them at some distance from each other [drawing on the board], and then hypnotize someone simply by the power of his own personality, as people put it, that is, get him to enter into a sleep-like state to begin with. It was a sleep-like state, however, that was much deeper than ordinary sleep. He would then take this person and position him in such a way that his head would be on one chair and his feet on the other. Now you know that if this happens to someone when they are in their ordinary state of consciousness, they'll simply fall between the chairs. This person did not fall between the two chairs to begin with. He lay where he was put, as stiff as a broomstick. But that was not enough. Hansen, quite a hefty fellow, then went and boldly stood upright on the person's stomach. So there he would stand, this man Hansen. The person did not stir, but lay there like a plank of wood, in spite of the fact that Hansen stood on him. So this is certainly something that can be done, has been frequently done since then, and scientists cannot doubt it, having known nothing about it earlier on and having to be shown it by Hansen, who was not a particularly pleasant person. You see, someone in this state is said to be cataleptic. When something like this happens, that someone may lie there like a plank of wood, and someone else may even stand on him, and it is a temporary state, brought about under the influence of that other person, it is just an experiment and not a very serious matter. But we can certainly say that this condition also exists in everyday life, though on a much smaller scale. You'll sometimes come across it. It will then, of course, only be apparent to someone able to observe it as a physician. It occurs when people develop a particular condition which is called a mental illness. There are people, for example, who have been resolute and effective in their work and then suddenly begin to think in a way that is as if all their thoughts were frozen. It may happen that someone went to work regularly at 8 o'clock in the morning, let us say. Suddenly he finds it is very nice to stay in bed. He wants to get up but cannot find the will to do so. And if fear finally takes over — he's got his watch lying there, it shows a particular time — and he has got up at last, he cannot find the will to eat his breakfast, and then again to leave the house. He finally comes to say to himself all the time: 'I can't do it; I can't do it,' finally behaving like a stick, unable to decide on anything. And it will go so far that he gets into a state where one can also see it in his body; he's rigid. Before he'd have moved his arms quickly, now he moves them slowly; he'd walk at a lively pace before, now he finds it difficult to take one step and then the next. The whole person grows rigid and heavy. This is a condition which sometimes develops in people when they are still quite young. It is the selfsame condition, only not so marked and now not occurring all at once but very gradually. When someone begins to be cataleptic, you won't be able to put him across two chairs in the same way and stand on him, or to sit on him. But the condition is such that he can no longer manage his body in the right way. This is the one state. But Hansen also showed people other experiments. These would be copied a great deal in those days, and scientists have now also taken note of them. They did not take them up until Hansen, amateur and showman, drew their attention to the matter. These other states were like this. Hansen would ask a member of the audience to come up. Some fools would say he'd arranged this beforehand, but that's nonsense, of course. He would spot the people who'd be suitable for this among the members of the audience. It can't be done equally well with everyone; but he'd developed an eye for those who would be right. He'd let a member of the audience come up and again bring his personal influence to bear. He would stand there, his own thick legs firmly placed on the floor. His eyes were such that people would think they'd enter into and go right through you, a penetrating gaze as one says. And he'd always have the eye like this, you see [drawing on the board]. When he looked at someone, the eye would be such that the white of the eye was visible both above and below; the eye would be open in that way. Now usually the lid covers the white, so that one does not see the white above and below the pupil. But he had developed a fixed look, as one says. This would of course make a tremendous impression on the individual he had picked to be his victim, who'd immediately start to be a little bit unconscious, as one says. He lost consciousness, but something very strange would happen. Hansen would then say: 'You can't move from the spot. Your feet are fixed to the floor.' The man would try — he couldn't move, could not take a single step. He simply could not do it and stood where he was. Hansen would also say to suitable victims: 'Now kneel down!' The person would kneel down. 'Look, an angel is appearing up there.' The person would put his hands together in prayer, and be transported as he looked up to the angel. Hansen would do all these things with people he picked for his victims. He would of course pick people whose conscious minds were not very strong, and with them he could do all these things right before the audience's eyes. There would be no deception — many people said he cheated — but these things have since then been done at scientific institutes and so they are valid. Then he'd also do the following, for instance. He'd take a chair and put it there for someone who no longer had no thoughts of his own but only the thoughts Hansen gave him. Hansen would stand there and say: 'Here's an apple.' You know apples are good, they taste good. But he'd take a potato and give it to the man who'd bite into it with the greatest pleasure, eating the potato as if it were an apple. Hansen therefore was not only able to persuade people that they were seeing an angel, but also that a potato was an apple and could be eaten as an apple. Then he'd take some water, for instance, and say: 'I am now giving you some very special sweet wine.' And one could see the man delighting in the sweetness. Those were the kinds of experiments Hansen made. It was the other kind of experiment he did. What did he do when he stood on someone? He had killed the person's will, so that he no longer had any will at all. With the people he treated the way I have told you just now he only influenced their thoughts. They just had to think the way Hansen said; if he said, 'That's an apple,' and so on, they had to accept his taste, and if he said, 'That's an angel,' they would follow his thoughts and see the angel. And you see, Hansen was able to do many other things as well. He'd do the following, for example. He'd ask someone from the audience to come up who he thought would make a good victim, and he'd first of all hypnotize him, that is, make him such that he had no conscious mind of his own, that he'd take up any ideas Hansen would present to him. He'd then say: 'There'll be an interval of ten minutes. After those ten minutes I'll wake you up. You'll then go to the man who is sitting in that corner over there and take his watch from his pocket like a pickpocket.' He'd wake the man first — in the meantime Hansen had done all kinds of other things with other people — and the man would grow restless, get up, go to the man sitting over yonder in the comer and take his watch from his pocket. People will use Latin names, of course. As I told you, Latin can always be used if one wants to use logic. And the first kind of experiments I described are called hypnotic experiments, whilst those where the man has been woken up and then does the thing afterwards are called post — post meaning 'after' — they are called post-hypnotic experiments. People now speak of hypnosis and post-hypnosis and it is known that people can be in such states. These things give deep insight into human nature, however, for at a later stage the post-hypnotic element in particular was taken much further. If you put someone into a deep hypnotic state and tell him to do something or other three days later he will do it — if he has the right kind of personal make-up. These experiments have been done. Now you know that these things are never as acute as that in ordinary life. But they do occur in a milder form, as I have shown you in the case of someone unable to move. The other state also occurs in ordinary life. You'll have known not only people who are completely paralysed and no longer know what to do with themselves, so that in a sense they are cataleptic, but also people who suddenly begin — before that they were really perfectly sensible people — to be extremely talkative. You can't keep up with them; their thoughts pour forth, they talk, talk, talk, like a running wheel. With them, the situation is just as it is with someone who'd eat a potato thinking it to be an apple, except that in this case Hansen was in control, whilst the people who keep pouring forth their thoughts depend on their own bellies. For this is what is so interesting, that the belly — I have told you a great deal about the way the liver and so on goes on thinking in the belly — thinks much faster than the head. And when someone gets so weak in the head that he can no longer put up the necessary resistance to the thoughts that come from the belly, cannot slow them down sufficiently, the thoughts will just pour forth. These people are therefore hypnotized by their own bellies. This is altogether a remarkable thing in life. Man has these two opposite organs, his head and his belly. Both of them think. But it is certainly true that the head thinks slowly and the belly thinks fast. The head thinks much too slowly, and the belly much too fast, but as you know very well, if you pour together a thick liquid and a thin one you get a medium thick liquid. And that is how it is with the human being. The conditions in the head slow down those in the belly, and conditions in the belly make those in the head go faster, and a balance is created. You see, the things that go on in the world all depend on the interaction of opposite states or conditions. Much still has to be learned about this in modern science today. Let me tell you something about this. Imagine you have someone who is reasonably normal. If he lives to an age of about 72 years he will have lived 25,920 days — you can work this out, I have spoken of it before. That's 72 years. People normally live that many days. And if you count the number of breaths people take, you'll find that they take exactly that number of breaths in a day. Someone who lives a normal life and whose organism is not destroyed too early — in which case he can't reach the age of 72; someone who does not live to 72 has been destroyed in some way — has as many days in his life as the number of breaths he takes in a day. That is how human beings live. Every day, from one sunrise to the next, they take 25,920 breaths, and all things being equal, they reach patriarchal age, living for 25,920 days. Now what does it mean that we live for 25,920 days normally, reaching patriarchal age? It means that we go 25,920 times through day and night here on earth. We go through days and nights, an experience we may have 25,920 times. What does the earth do when it goes through day and night? Now you see, gentlemen, the important thing — Goethe already had some idea of it, and today we can be definite about it — is that when dawn comes, the earth draws the powers of light, powers of the cosmos, to itself in the place where we happen to be. It is different in the other hemisphere; there it is the other way round, but it is the same process. The earth and everything that is in the earth thus breathes in light. It breathes out again when it is night. The earth does within a day what we do with the air in the short time needed for breathing in and breathing out. You can see therefore that the earth is very much slower than we are, terribly much so. We take as many breaths in a day as the earth does in the whole of our life. This is what you can see. Now if we consider this more fully we discover something special in relation to man. Human beings breathe in such a way that the blood needs the breath. The blood is produced in the intestines, that is, in the belly, and the abdomen therefore wants to breathe that quickly. We are therefore able to say that human breathing has to do with the abdomen, the belly. You see, if we consider the head in a truly scientific way, as scientifically as only the belly is studied in modern science today, the situation in the head is that the head is really always trying to hold the breathing back a little. The breathing also goes up into the head. The head wants to breathe in such a way that it only takes one breath each day, breathing in and out only once in a day, though we actually breathe in and out every four seconds. The head really wants to slow the breath down, make it much slower. We are therefore able to say that the head is really doing cosmic breathing; only the breathing from the body is all the time rushing up to the head, fast, and the breathing then goes slowly from the head to the body. Now if you have someone whose will is inhibited, someone who grows rigid, what happens in his case? The breathing in his belly is not functioning properly, and the slow head breathing wants to spread to the whole body. So the fellow lies there and Hansen stands on him. The head breathing wants to control the whole body and he grows rigid. But when someone is talking and talking and talking, the head breathing no longer tends to function properly, and the fast body breathing comes up, and he talks. In that case we have not hypnosis but flight of ideas, as it is called. Now you may say — yes, you may truly say this: 'But the world is really not at all well organized, for with our head-breathing not in tune with our body-breathing we are all the time in danger of becoming imbeciles, with either the body-breathing or the head-breathing not getting its due.' So that's a serious problem. We are always in danger of becoming imbeciles because of this. You may say: 'Well, really, the world is not at all well organized!' But let me tell you something else, gentlemen. Consider women, for instance. Since a woman is a human being, her body-breathing is faster and her head-breathing is slower. The slower breathing is the cosmic way of breathing. But the woman only does this in the head. In the rest of her body she has the fast body-breathing. The two merely influence one another. But let us assume the woman conceives. What happens then? You see, head-breathing is brought into a small area in the body-breathing area, in the womb, by the matter with which she is inseminated. During her pregnancy the woman therefore has the slow breathing in the head, but she also has slow breathing in her pelvic region. Slow head-breathing is brought into the body-breathing, and she then has head-breathing twice over. And what develops? First of all the head. So what has come into the body when she conceived? You see, the cosmic breathing which we otherwise have only in the head has come in there. The human being takes in the whole world in the breathing process. What happens when a woman conceives is really that where the human body normally only has the human body-breathing, cosmic breathing is implanted in the body for a period of nine months, the kind of breathing human beings only have in the head otherwise. There you see the relationship between the human being and the whole universe. At the place where the human being develops in the womb the mother wants to breathe in such a way that a single breath takes a whole day. In this way she slows down the processes in that area and so is able not only to live but also to produce a new human being. With those slow processes in the head we have a life span of 72 years. When we say that human beings normally live for 72 years, and when we see that it takes nine months for a new human being to develop, it is not at all surprising that a new human being develops in nine months, for human beings live for 72 years and we merely compress the 72 years in the breathing process, and then a new human being develops. This is something that lets you gain deep insight into the whole of nature and may also give you a foundation for the other kind of thinking. Consider the earth and the plants in the earth. Let us say this is the root of the plant, this the stem with the leaves, and up above the flower [Fig. 24]. When you look at the root, it has salts everywhere around it in the soil. You have salts everywhere down there. These salts are heavy. The root is therefore wholly within gravity. But it is a strange thing with gravity. For it is overcome. If you were to take human heads that had been cut off, they would have quite a weight. The human head is heavy. Or take a pig's head — it is heavy. You don't feel the weight of the head as it sits on your shoulders, because gravity is overcome. In plants, too, gravity is overcome. For if the plant were to feel heaviness in its leaves it would not grow upwards but more and more downwards. But a plant grows upwards, overcoming gravity. In overcoming gravity the plant opens up to the light. The light becomes active in it, and the light comes down from above, which is the opposite direction to gravity. The light is active in it, and the light comes down from above, in the opposite direction to gravity. The plant thus goes more and more up into the light, grows more and more. As a root it was implanted into the salts of the earth; now it is exposed to the sun and its light. As it is exposed to the sun and its light, fertilization occurs here. The ovary develops and the seed, and a new plant develops under the influence of the light. The cosmic breathing of which I spoke in human beings, implanted at conception, is brought to the plant year by year through the light. The plant thus grows from gravity to light and thus also fertilization. We shall say, therefore, that something which we can only discover in human beings by using our mind, so that we know that cosmic breathing comes in there, and a little bit of head develops then in a particular place inside the human body, we can also see with our eyes when we look at slants. This is extraordinarily interesting. Looking at a flower, one is able to say: 'There the universe — the cosmos is also the universe — fertilizes the flower.' The rest of it, with the pollen grain coming in and so on, is merely by the way; it has to be there because in the physical world everything has to happen physically. But in reality it is the light which comes from the universe and fertilizes the flower, and this creates the seed for the new plant. But, gentlemen, surely you can see what is really happening? We cannot really see what happens because it is so small. But we can see it after all! Let us consider what is happening with the plant in a completely different way. Let us assume this is the earth [Fig. 25], Don't look at a plant now, but at the earth, how mists rise at a distance — maybe looking at it from a mountain, there it is easiest to see. There the mists are rising. They consist of water. If you were to look at a plant, the situation would not be all that dissimilar, it would be similar. Looking at such a plant — you'd have to sit there for a long time, however, observing all the time — you'd see that to begin with it is low, then it rises, opening out into leaves. But the mists also open out as they rise. So look at the earth here. It is only water which rises, not the solid parts you get when a plant is growing. But the water is rising. When the plant reaches a certain point up there it is fertilized out of the cosmos. When the water, here rising as mist, reaches a certain point, it is also fertilized out of the cosmos. And what happens then? Lightning develops, gentlemen! It does not happen all the time, of course, but when fertilization occurs and things are as clearly apparent as they are in summer — the lightning also comes at other times, but then it is invisible — the water is fertilized with light and heat by the universe. The same process which occurs in the plant also happens up there, and lightning makes it visible. And when the mist has been fertilized up above it comes down again as fruitful rain. So when you see a cloud of mist rising it is really a gigantic but extremely thinly spread plant. This opens up its flower up there in the cosmos, it is fertilized, contracts, and the fertilized droplets come down again in the form of rain. This explains lightning for you. People imagine huge Leiden flasks up there or giant electricity generators; but that is not so. In reality the waters of the earth are fertilized out there, so that they can fulfil their function on earth again. And the process which happens in the plant only happens much lower down because the plant is more solid. You always get these tiny flashes of lightning up here in the region of the flower when it is the right time of the year; it is just that we do not see them. But these tiny flashes of lightning cause fertilization to occur. The rain and mists show you the same phenomenon which also occurs when a plant is fertilized. And this then also goes as far as the human being, where cosmic breathing, the breathing of the universe, which normally is only in the head, occurs in the human abdomen. Now take a cataleptic person. What has happened in his case? Well, gentlemen, if one were to examine the cataleptic body one would find that it has grown particularly rich in salts. It has grown similar to a plant root, particularly in the head. If our head gets as rich in salts as a plant root, we grow imbecile, with the rigidity of the head spreading to everything else. So if you see people who cannot decide to go, or even to lift a hand, or get out of bed in the morning — they've got too much salt in their heads, have grown too much like the root of a plant. If you see people who are always talking and talking, they have grown too much like a flower. For when we talk we really only say part of what we know. But the people who keep talking all the time really always want to tell us everything they can. They would really always want to create a complete human being, because it is really their belly which is talking. And in drawing the world to itself, taking it into itself, the belly then becomes a head. But it is going too fast then, the way it does in the belly and in human breathing. We are therefore able to say that Hansen made the people he placed across two chairs before he stood on them too much like a plant root in their heads. There you see the relationship between the human head and the plant root. One can actually make the whole head similar to a plant root. And he made the people whom he persuaded to eat a potato as if it were an apple similar to a flower. There you see the similarity between the belly human being, that is, the abdominal human being, and the flower. The things Hansen showed to the scientists are still being done today, but people have not yet found the explanation, an explanation which bit by bit takes one into the whole universe. So, now we can also answer the question if nature is really so badly organized that we may grow imbecile by breathing wrongly either in the head or the belly, on the one hand cataleptic with head-breathing, on the other hand talkative because we suffer from flight of ideas and cannot use the will. Now if someone considers this extremely stupid and says that if he had had the task of creating the world he'd have made it a bit differently, so we would not face the danger of growing imbecile in one of two possible directions, we can say to him: 'If this were not the case, if we were not able to have head-breathing also in the human abdomen, the head-breathing that develops when we grow rigid, the human being could never develop and there could be no fertilization. So then there would be no human beings on earth.' You see therefore that the risk of growing imbecile is connected with the fact that we are actually able to come into existence. So if there had been the intention anywhere in the natural world that there should be no human beings, then, you see, there would also be no problem about people growing imbecile. But as there had to be human beings there also has to be the risk of growing imbecile. We have no reason to rail at nature because we can see how things are connected. After all, someone might also come and say: 'Really, how silly it is that 2 times 2 makes 4.1 wish it would make 6, for then I'd have more.' But this cannot be. And in the same way it cannot be that the human being exists on earth without there being a risk of growing imbecile. We simply have to understand these things properly. We shall then also be able to see things in the right way everywhere. Looking at lightning, one would then say: 'Is the lightning only up there?' Oh no, the lesser lightning is there all summer as the plants are fertilized — passing over the pastures, over the woodlands. And finally there is a lightning that always happens in us. Everywhere within us we have the same phenomena which we see occasionally when there's lightning, for our thoughts flash up like lightning in us. But compared to the tremendous flash of lightning outside, the process in our thinking is only a faint one. But now you'll also be able to say to yourselves: 'It does mean something to say, as I look at the lightning, that I am seeing cosmic thoughts. For this is the same process which is also inside me.' You need to look at things scientifically and not in a superstitious way. You see, it is certainly interesting that by the end of the nineteenth century scientists had reached a point where such important things were not taken note of, and it needed a charlatan, a mountebank like Hansen to come along and show them. It was only after this that attention was paid to these things. You can see, therefore, that science was not as good in the last third of the nineteenth century as people like to say it was. Yes, major discoveries were made in outer ways, X-rays and so on were discovered, but people actually had no desire to know anything decent about the inner life of human beings, and still do not have the desire to this day. Because of this our modern science does not apply to human beings and does not help at all when it comes to humanity. You may build as many universities as you like, the processes that are active in the human being will not be explained to you if you go to them. At the same time they also won t tell you what really happens when plants are fertilized. And when mists rise and rain falls the explanation is that it is not much different from when you cook something on a stove — the vapours rise and then come down again. But that's not how it is, for when the vapours rise they reach a sphere up above where they are fertilized by the universe. And lightning is proof that they are fertilized. And there we actually see fertilization take place, a process that also happens elsewhere. The situation is that this has great significance. Take a year. You have winter and summer in a year, just as you have day and night within 24 hours. And a human life has 25,920 days. If you take 25,920 years you get the time when the earth did not yet exist and when it will no longer be. We are now more or less a little bit beyond the mid-point, with the earth in existence for something above 13,000 years. After another 11,000 years or so it will perish again. Just as man lives 25,920 days, so does the earth live 25,920 years, the way it is now. It changes. It was young once, is now getting old. And it is extremely important for us to know that the waters need to be exposed to the universe year after year. At some point, in some place on this earth, the water must be exposed to the universe every year, otherwise the earth would not be able to live. The earth lives with the universe as we live with the air. If someone were to take away the air that is around us on earth, we would not be able to take our 25,920 breaths each day. If someone were to take away the sun, that is the light, the earth would not be able to live. Thus the earth lives with the help of the whole universe, just as we live with the help of the air that surrounds us. It would thus be right to say that we go for walks on the earth, and the earth goes for walks in the universe. We breathe on earth; the earth breathes in the universe. You see, we could develop a peculiar science. The human head is round, as you know [ drawing on the board ] and has hairs on it here, unless a person is very old. Now there are creatures in these woods — this may not be desirable, but it happens. Let us assume they take the dandruff here and create a place where the cleverest of them always get together to teach the ignorant ones. That would be a louse university on the human head itself. Well, we can imagine such a thing. What would the clever lice teach the ignorant ones? They would teach: 'The head is lifeless, for we walk about on it. Lifeless dandruff develops. Digging down a bit we come to lifeless bone.' The clever lice would explain all this to the ignorant lice at their louse university up there. They would explain the human head more or less the way we explain the earth at our human universities. The louse professors — forgive me, I do of course mean the ones up there on the head — would therefore have no idea that the head is alive. They would develop a geology of the head and declare the head to be dead. But gentlemen, this is what people do in our universities! The earth is declared to be dead. They know nothing about its breathing. For one would never discover anything about human breathing at the louse university and therefore nothing about it would be explained. They would say: 'Man is dead; the human head is a dead sphere.' And unless the head lice were to make contact in some way with the body lice, the head lice would never know that there is a body. And that is how it is. Unless human beings on earth make contact with other entities of a higher kind they'll never discover that the earth sends its waters out into the universe and is fertilized, that it breathes and is fertilized. Yes, taking the idea of the kind of science taught at the university on our head, we can really get an idea of what science on our earth is like. For that is truly how it is. And you can see from this that it will indeed be necessary for us to go beyond the things we can easily understand. We have to go beyond. And a true science of the spirit that proceeds in an equally scientific way will be able to take us beyond and therefore also explain the things which Hansen first presented in his day. Well, gentlemen, we've not yet finished with this question of hypnosis and with the rest of it. I'll say a few things about them the next time we meet, for they need to be compared with the situation in natural sleep. At 9 o'clock next Wednesday I want to talk to you about what happens when people sleep, what happens when someone develops catalepsy — for in ordinary sleep you can't lie on two chairs and be trodden on — the difference between sleep and hypnosis, the difference between catalepsy and flight of ideas.

From Mammoths to Mediums

Human and cosmic breathing

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA350/English/RSP2000/19230720p02.html

Dornach

20 Jul 1923

GA350-12

Well, gentlemen, if you have something you want to discuss or ask today, please do. Question: Conscience is a marvellous thing people have. If you've done something, you'll think of it. And even if you are no longer thinking of the things that lie in the past, you do know you have a conscience. It would be interesting to know if the conscience can also be killed, so that it may be forgotten. The way people are today one would assume that conscience is dead for a large part of the human race. Rudolf Steiner: You see, gentlemen, that is really a big question, but it does relate to the things we have been considering in the previous talks. I have tried to explain to you, step by step, that the human being, consisting of physical matter, also contains an ether body — which is a body of a very different kind that cannot be perceived or seen with our ordinary senses — an astral body and I organization, or one might also say I body. The human being has these four parts. We now have to think about what happens when a person dies. As I have told you on a number of occasions, when a person sleeps, the physical body and the ether body remain lying in his bed. The astral body and the I go outside, so they are then no longer in the physical body and ether body. But when a person dies, the part that is laid aside is the physical body. It is then a real physical body; the other three parts — the ether body, the astral body and the I — go out of it. As I told you, the ether body remains connected with the I and the astral body for a few days. Then it separates from them in the way I have told you, and the human being then lives in his I and his astral body. He lives on and on in the world of the spirit which is the one we really seek to discover in our life on earth through the science of the spirit. We are therefore able to say that now, whilst we are on earth, we know something of a world of the spirit; then we shall be in that world. We come down to earth again after a time, however. Just as we go from birth to death in life on earth, so we then go through a world of the spirit and finally come down again. We assume the physical body which is the gift of our parents and so on. So we come down from the world of the spirit. This means that we were spirits, let us say, before we came into this world. We have come down from the world of the spirit. You see, gentlemen, it is extraordinarily important for people to know that they come down from the world of the spirit with their I and their astral body. Otherwise there can be no reason at all for people to talk about spirit in any way as they grow up. If they'd never been in the realm of the spirit they simply would not talk of the spirit. You know there was a time on earth when people did not talk about life after death as much as some people do today. But they would talk a lot about their life before they came down to earth. In earlier times people did altogether talk more about the way things were for human beings before they assumed flesh and blood than about the way things were afterwards. In earlier times people felt it was much more important to remember that they were souls before they became human beings on earth. Now, the evolution of the human race on earth is something of which I have not said so much until now, but because of the question that has been asked, let us talk a bit about this today. Going back in time by 8,000 or 10,000 years, let us say, we would find conditions here in Europe to be pretty wild still. But at that time, about 8,000 years before our time, life was extremely highly developed over in Asia. There's a country here in Asia [drawing on the board] that is called India. This would be the island Ceylon, up there would be the Ganges, a mighty river, and up there a mountain range, the Himalayas. The people who lived in this India — as I said it is over there in Asia — had a highly developed cultural life. I'll call them Indians today. At the time the name did not yet exist. But today we call the country India and so I'll use the term. Now of course, if we were to go back and ask those people, 'What do you call yourselves?' they would say: 'We are the sons of gods,' for they would be speaking of the land in which they were before they were on earth. There they themselves had still been gods, for in those times people would have called themselves gods when they were spirits. And if you had asked them: 'What are you when you are asleep?' they would have said, 'When we are awake we are human beings, when we go to sleep we are gods.' To them, to be gods merely meant to be different from the way you were when awake, to be more in the spirit. These people therefore had a highly developed civilization and it was not so important to them to talk of life after death but rather of life before one is born, of this life with the gods, as they put it. You see, no written records have come down from these people. But they did, of course, continue — you know there are also Indian people today — and at a much later time they wrote great literary works called the Vedas. The singular is 'Veda'. It really means 'the word'. People said to themselves: the word is a gift of the spirit, and in the Vedas they wrote down what they still knew of the other world. They did know much more in earlier times, but today we have only the Vedas as physical records that can be studied. They were written much later. But from them, from these things written down much later, we can see that those people still knew quite definitely that the human being was in a world of the spirit before he came down to earth. If we now go back to about 6,000 years before our time we find civilization to be much less highly developed in this area. Civilization in India was then going down. The ancient Indian civilization of which scholars still speak today will by then have gone down from its original high level. But there, to the north of it [drawing on the board] — this would then be Arabia — there to the north, up there, a civilization was developing in an area that would later be Persia. I have therefore called it the Persian civilization. A completely different civilization developed there. It is quite remarkable. You see, if we go back to the ancient Indians who lived 2,000 years before these people here, we always find that they really thought very little of the earth world. They would always be mindful of having come to this earth world from the world of the spirit. They knew this very well. They did not think much of the earth world; they only had regard for the world of the spirit, and they would say they felt as if they had been cast out. Anything that existed on earth was not particularly important to them. But here in this place, that is, 6,000 years before our time, in the area known as Persia today, esteem for the earth arose for the first time. They had regard for life on earth in such a way that they would say to themselves: 'Yes, light is indeed most valuable, but the earth, too, is valuable in its darkness.' And the view gradually developed that the earth is equal in value and that it fights against heaven. And this struggle between heaven and earth was what people considered particularly important for 2,000 or 3,000 years. Then, going back just 3,000 or 4,000 years, we come to a country over there, going from Arabia across to Africa, where the Nile is — Egypt. The Egyptians were the people who were more towards the west over there in Asia, more towards Europe, and they liked the earth even more. Going back 3,000 or 4,000 years we thus find these Egyptians, we might say a third kind of people — Indians, Persians, Egyptians — building those enormous pyramids. But the main thing they did was to manage the Nile. The river would flood the land with its rich soil year after year, and they channelled it in such a way that those floods would prove a benefit in every direction. They developed geometry, as it is called. They needed this. Geometry and the art of the surveyor were developed. People came to like the earth more and more. And you see, to the degree in which people came to like the earth when on earth, they were less able to see that they had come from a world of the spirit. I'd say they forgot this more and more as time went on, for they came to like the earth more and more, and in the same way it also became more important to them to say that one lives on after death. Now, as we have seen, life after death is a certainty for human beings, but in earlier times, before the Egyptians came along, people did not give so much thought to immortality. Why? Because they took it as a matter of course. Knowing they had come from a world of the spirit, and had merely assumed a physical body, they never had any doubt but that they would be in a world of the spirit again after death. But here, in Egypt, where people were not giving so much thought to being in the realm of the spirit before life on earth, the Egyptians got terribly afraid of dying. This enormous fear of death is something which has not really existed for more than 3,000 or 4,000 years. The Indians and Persians had no fear of death. We can actually prove that the Egyptians had this terrible fear of death. For you see, if they had not had this appalling fear of dying, it would not be possible for English people and others today to go to Egypt and then exhibit mummies in their museums! People were embalmed in those times, using all kinds of ointments and substances. They put people in their coffins looking the way they had looked in life, carefully preserved. People were embalmed and made into mummies because it was thought that if one kept the body together the soul principle, too, would remain for as long as the body still existed on earth. They preserved the body so that the soul principle would not suffer any kind of harm. So there you have the fear of dying. The Egyptians would use all the powers in earthly matter to bring about immortality. They also knew a great many other things that later came to be lost. The next people to attract our attention were a bit to the north of Egypt, in Greece, in what is Greece today. Ancient Greece was very different, however. You see, the Greeks had almost completely forgotten about life before birth. Only a few individuals in particularly advanced schools called the 'mysteries' would still know of it. But generally speaking, people in Greek civilization had forgotten about their life in the spirit before birth, and they loved life on earth more than anyone. A philosopher who lived in ancient Greece in the fourth century before the Christian calendar began was Aristotle. 43 Aristotle (382-322 bc) You see, we are now close to the Christian era. Aristotle presented a view that had not existed before. The view he presented was that when a child is born it is not only a body which is born but also a soul. So it was in ancient Greece that the view first developed that the human soul is born with the body, but that it is then immortal, that is, goes through death to live in the world of the spirit. Aristotle then developed a peculiar view. He had really forgotten all the wisdom of earlier times and his view was that the soul is born together with the body. But when someone dies, the soul remains, having only one life on earth behind it. And it then has to look back on that one life on earth for all eternity. Just think what a terrible prospect that must have been! If someone had done something bad here on earth, he would be unable to make this good for all eternity, but would always have to look back, always see the scene where he did something bad. That was the prospect Aristotle offered. There followed Christianity. During the very early centuries people understood Christianity a little bit. But when the Roman Empire absorbed Christianity, which then had its firm seat in Rome, people no longer understood it. People did not understand Christianity. Now the Christians always held Councils. High Church dignitaries would meet and decide what the large herd of the faithful were to believe. You know, the view was then that there are shepherds and sheep, and the shepherds decided at those Councils what the sheep should believe. At the eighth of these Councils the shepherds decided for their sheep that it would be heretical to believe that human beings lived in the world of the spirit before they were born. And so Aristotle's earlier views became the dogma of the Christian Church. Humanity was literally forced to know nothing in this way, never even to think that the human being has come down from the world of the spirit with a soul. This was forbidden. When materialists say today that the soul is born with the body and is nothing but a bodily element, this is exactly what people have learned from the Church. The thing is, people think they go beyond the Church in becoming materialists. But no, people would never have become materialists if the Church had not got rid of perception of the spirit. At that eighth ecumenical Council in Constantinople the Church got rid of the spirit, and this continued all through the Middle Ages. It is only now that we have to discover again, through the science of the spirit, that the human being existed as soul before he was on earth. This is the important thing, the most tremendously important thing. Anyone who looks at human evolution on earth can see very clearly that people originally knew that human beings exist in the spirit before they come down to earth. It was merely forgotten as time went on, and later was actually forbidden, following the decision made at the Council. Now we have to understand what this means. Just think, people who lived until Egyptian times, that is in early millennia, knew: 'Before you walked about on this earth you were in the world of the spirit.' Yes, they did not just bring down some kind of vague, general knowledge from the world of the spirit, but an awareness of having lived there with other spirits. And their ethical impulses also came from this. 'I can see what I am meant to do here on earth from the way things are here on earth,' those ancients would say; 'and as to anything else I am meant to do, I merely need to remember what was before birth.' They brought their ethical impulses down with them from the world of the spirit. You see, if you had asked people in those ancient times, 'What is good? What is evil?' they would say: 'Good is what the spirits want with whom I was before I was on earth; evil is anything they do not want.' But every single one of them would say this to himself. Today, gentlemen, it has been forgotten. In Greece, the situation was a strange one. People had so much forgotten that there is life before birth that Aristotle was moved to say: 'The soul is born with the physical body. The ancient Greeks therefore no longer had any idea that they had had a life before birth. But they felt something of that life in them. You know, whether one knows something or not really does not influence the real situation. I can say for as long as I like, 'There's no table behind me, I don t see any table' [stepping back and bumping into the table], but the table is definitely there, even though I do not see it. Life before birth continued to be there, and people felt something of this inwardly. And in about the fifth century before the Christian calendar started they began to call this their conscience. In about the fifth century before the Christian calendar started, the word 'conscience' first came up in Greece. It did not exist before that. The word 'conscience' thus came into being because people had forgotten life before birth and gave a name to something of it which they still felt inwardly. And it has been like this ever since. People sense life before birth in themselves but they'll say, 'Well, that's how it is. It comes into existence somewhere down there and then it comes popping up,' but they don't take any real note of it. You see, that was a good thing for the Church. For what was it then able to do? Well, gentlemen, in early times, when people knew they had lived as souls before they came to earth, they would say: 'Ethical principles lie in the things we know of our earlier life, of life before earth.' Now the Greeks only had a sense of conscience. And then the Church came in and controlled people's consciences. You know, the Church took hold of the situation and people were told: 'You do not know what you are meant to do. The sheep do not know this; the shepherds do.' And rules were established to control their consciences. You see, there was need to do this, to get rid of the spirit by decision of a Council, for it was then possible to control the conscience which was what remained of the spirit for people. And the Church then said: 'No, nothing existed of the human being before he existed on earth. The soul is born with the body. Any who do not believe this serve the devil. But we, the Church, know what goes on in the world of the spirit and what human beings are meant to do on earth.' This is the way in which the Church took control of human conscience. It is possible to give chapter and verse for this. For you see, this continued to play a role even in the nineteenth century, sometimes in a most terrible way. There was someone in Prague, for instance, in the 1830s and 1840s whose name was Smetana. 44 Augustin Smetana (1814-51), canon regular of the Holy Cross and suppl. professor of philosophy in Prague. The full story is given in Geschichte cities Excummunicirten . Eine Selbstbiographie von Augustin Smetana. Aus dessen Nachlasse herausgegeben ... von Alfred Meissner, Leipzig 1863. He was the son of a Roman Catholic verger who, of course, was a good Catholic. The father felt that one must believe what the Church says. He had a son. People were rather ambitious in those days and sent their children to grammar school. But they did not really learn very much at the kind of grammar schools they had in Prague in those days. Basically they learned very little. Young Smetana was thus educated at a grammar school. And the way things were in those days was that anyone who really wanted to learn anything would become a priest. Young Smetana therefore also became a priest. The situation in Prague and also in the rest of the Austrian Empire in those days was that grammar schools, too, would be staffed by priests. And when he had to teach others himself, Smetana would read somewhat different books from those that were prescribed reading for priests. The result was that he gradually came to doubt things, above all one particular dogma. He said to himself: 'Surely it is a terrible thing that a person is said to be born, live his life on earth and then go through death, and if he was an evildoer he must then look only at the bad things he has done on earth for all eternity — the Church would illustrate the matter as required — and never be given the opportunity to change for the better!' Now you see, this man Smetana lived in an establishment of his order. But when he became a teacher, he felt too confined there and moved into a temporal home where he gradually read more and more — anthroposophical books weren't available then — of Hegel, Schelling and so on, people who wrote at least some sense, the beginnings of sense. Smetana then began to feel more and more in doubt about the eternal nature of punishment in hell, for according to Aristotle an evildoer goes through death and must then live on as an evildoer for ever and ever. The dogma of eternal punishment in hell which was then adopted by the Church at its Council came from this idea. It is not a Christian dogma but came from Aristotle. It is not at all true to say that it is a Christian dogma, this dogma of punishment in hell; it came from Aristotle. But people did not know this. Smetana did come to see it, however. He then started to teach something that was not entirely in accord with the teaching of the Church. It was in 1848 that he taught something that was not quite in accord. He was first of all given a serious warning, a long letter written in Latin in which he was told to repent and return to the bosom of the Church, for it had made the shepherds extremely angry that he was teaching the sheep something that had not been laid down by the shepherds. He replied to that first letter, written in Latin, that he felt it was hypocritical to say something that went against one's convictions. A second letter in Latin brought an even more severe warning. And when he did not reply to this, for that would have been pointless, it was proclaimed in all the churches in Prague one day that a most important ceremony was to be performed at which one of the lost sheep, who had actually become a shepherd, would be excluded from the Church. Old father Smetana, the verger, was one of the people who had to distribute the notices. He was still a faithful Catholic. You can imagine what it meant that the whole of Prague was called on to come and condemn Smetana's son, who was to be excluded from the Church for all eternity, and so on, and the father had to take the notices around himself! The church had never been as full in Prague as it was on that day. All the churches in Prague were full. And it was proclaimed from every pulpit that the apostate Smetana was cast out by the Church. The consequence was — the Smetana family did of course have a disposition for tuberculosis — that first of all Smetana's sister died of grief, then the old father died of grief, and soon after Smetana himself died of grief, of the pain. But this is not the point for us, is it, but the fact that Smetana no longer proclaimed eternal punishment in hell, the way he saw it. All this has to do with the idea of conscience evolving in human beings. Something human beings have retained in them from their life before earth lives in them and speaks as the voice of conscience. And when it comes to conscience, we can say to ourselves that conscience cannot have originated in the physical matter of the earth. For just imagine someone has a tremendous yearning for something, let us say. Such a thing has been known to happen. It is the material substances in his body, the physical matter of the earth, which urge him on and keep pricking so that he develops this yearning. His conscience will tell him: 'You must fight such desires.' Well, gentlemen, if the conscience had also come from the body this would be just as if someone were supposed to walk forward and back at the same time! It's nonsense to say our conscience comes from the body. Our conscience is connected with something we bring with us to earth from the life we have in the spirit before we are born. But, as I said, the awareness that our conscience comes from the world of the spirit has been lost to human beings, and in the case of someone like Smetana it began to dawn again in the nineteenth century because of this terrible business of punishment in hell. Conscience belongs to the human being himself. He has it in him. What good would be all the conscience one has in one if one were to go through death and then had to see for ever and ever how bad one has been? One would not be able to help oneself in that situation, and in that case, having a conscience would be quite pointless! We can say, therefore, that if this is the human being [ drawing on the board ], his conscience lives in him. His conscience is something he has brought with him from the world of the spirit into life on earth. The voice of conscience in him says: 'You should not have done that, and you should not have done that!' A human being on earth says: 'That is what I want to do; it is my wish.' His conscience says something different, for it comes from the eternal human being. And it will only be when the human being has laid aside his physical body that he will realize: 'It is you yourself that always spoke with the voice of your conscience. It is just that you did not notice this during the time you lived on earth. Now you have gone through death. Now you have become your own conscience. Your conscience is now your body. Earlier, you did not have a conscience. Now you have your conscience and you live on with it after death.' But the conscience must also be said to have a will. You see, all the things I have told you about have happened. The Greeks had forgotten about life before earth. The Church had made it a dogma that people must not believe in a life before earth. The conscience was completely misunderstood. All this had come to pass. And then there have of course always been great scholars. But the great scholars of medieval times did, of course, think there could be no life before earth, for the Church had forbidden people to believe this. One man who had to face this dilemma, for example, was Thomas Aquinas who lived from 1225 to 1274. Being a Roman Catholic priest, he had to adopt the dogma of the Church. But he was a great thinker. And he had to say, with regard to the things I have told you about today: 'When someone dies, he will see only his past life on earth, in all eternity, never anything else. He will see just this.' So what did Thomas Aquinas do? He said people had only their thinking mind for all eternity, but no will. They had to look at their life when they had died but could no longer change anything. Thomas Aquinas was one of the great Aristotelians of the Middle Ages exactly because he said: 'When someone has done something bad on earth, he will have to look at it for ever; when someone has done something good, he'll for ever see the good.' The soul was said to have a mind, therefore, but no will. This is not in accord with the truth. The truth is that after death we do look at what we have been, be it good or bad, but we still have the will, the whole power of soul, to change this. And so it happens that when we look at our past life we shall, of course, see it as it has been, but we then go on to live in the world of the spirit and see what should have been different. And it will then be quite natural for us to want to come down again and make amends. We'll get things wrong again, of course, but there will be further lives still, and we shall reach the goal of developing into a complete human being. In the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas was only able to believe in the mind and its insights and not the will. And nineteenth-century people like Smetana still suffered from this. The result was that other people then came in the nineteenth century who got really angry about this idea of the mind and its insights. For it still went back to the dogma of punishment in hell, though these people did not realize this. Schopenhauer, 45 Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher. See his The World as Will and Idea (1819, final version 1859,2 vols). for example, got really angry about it all, and he then said it was all a matter for the will. Yes, but if you say it all has to do with the will, then this will is too stupid and foolish. Schopenhauer therefore said the whole of creation and everything was due to the will. People who thought about things would get caught up in a terrible inner dilemma, as Smetana did in Prague. There were many such people. That was just an excellent example, where the difficulties have been put down on paper. But there were many such people. And so we have to understand that human conscience is an inheritance from life before earth. The spirit speaks in our conscience. Something we were before we came to be on earth has entered into the flesh and speaks as our conscience. And when we shall have laid our bodies aside, the soul will continue to speak as our conscience after death, but it will not be powerless; it will have a will and need to make amends, to continue doing things. You see, that is the difference between anthroposophy and all the things that have become Christian dogma today, for example. There nothing is known about the power possessed by the human soul to be active. There the human being dies and can then only look for ever on the things he has done in one life on earth, for it is said that the soul is born with the body in that one life on earth. To show it in diagrammatic form one would therefore have to say: 'If this is one human life on earth [Fig. 26, upper part, circle], it also has soul from its beginning, and when the individual dies — this is his birth, this his death — the life of his soul goes on for all eternity. I won't continue the drawing across a second board, for that comes too expensive, though I'd actually need a third as well! It goes on for all eternity. And the mind is said to look at the badness of that one life on earth for all eternity, for the mind was born together with the physical in life on earth. The man who established this was really the first materialist, and that would in fact be Aristotle. Well, in anthroposophy we find that there is not just the one life on earth but that there are the lives that went before and those that follow as well. The individual has always something that is left over from the previous life; he does not know it exactly, but it is there inside him. That is his conscience. He then lays his body aside and lives on in his conscience. There [Fig. 26, lower part, red, left] he is basically all conscience until he is born again. Here [circle in the middle] conscience is again inside as a voice that speaks; and then [red, to the right] it lives in the outside world; it is there again. It is actually the human being who creates new lives on earth for himself again and again on earth. This does, of course, go completely against the grain for a teaching where man is said to be nothing at all, and man is in all respects seen only as a creature. He is no mere creature, however, for he has creative powers himself. And that is the difference between anthroposophy and those other views. In anthroposophy, investigations show that those creative powers are also in man; man is creative. And the most creative part of him is indeed his conscience, which is a sacred inheritance from life before earth and which we take out into the other world again when we go through death. Modern science here still takes its views from the Church. And it is an area where we should see things very clearly. For the matter went like this. Only things that were logical on the one hand and materialistic on the other went over to Rome. Modern nations then adopted it. But in the German language we sometimes still have something that has come down from the past, even if people do not realize this. This is truly strange. We can see from this how the human being is connected with events that happen on a large scale. If we look at these countries up there in Asia today [ pointing to the board ], we have Siberia there. Those are regions with small populations now, but there was a time when they had large populations. The rivers would have been much, much bigger then. Siberia is a country that has gradually dried out, rising up higher, and people then went to the west, over to Europe. This was because the ground rose in Siberia. As a result many ideas people had in Asia came across to Europe, and these ideas live on in the European languages. And we have to say that the further west we go the less do we find of this idea of conscience. Yet the very word does show that among the people who created it there was a feeling that there was something there in the human being. What does the word 'conscience' really mean? We have just said what the matter itself means: it is our inheritance from life before earth, something that remains part of our humanity. But the word 'conscience', what does it mean? You know, if we look at life on earth we say to ourselves there is no certainty about events that will come in two or three years' time; but one thing that is certain is that the human being has a spirit in him which existed before he came to exist on earth and which will continue after his existence on earth. And the word 'conscience' also relates to this 'knowing with certainty', 46 German for conscience is Gewissen, and to be certain of something is gewiss sein. Translator. it is the most certain tiling there can be. So the word actually points to something in the human being that is eternal. It is highly significant that the German word has a different content than the English 'conscience', for example, or other words used in the West. 'Conscience' is what comes together as knowledge on earth, knowledge massed together on earth. 47 British reference works on the origin of words say 'conscience' means to 'know together', and therefore also 'together with oneself', 'privity of knowledge', 'inward thought'. This may, of course, be arguing from hindsight. Translator. But the principle in us that is called 'conscience' in German is the most certain thing there can be; it is not indefinite but absolutely certain. And it is absolutely certain that human beings on earth do not only believe in a life after death — which is the view held by Aristotle and the Church's believers — but also develop the will to shape it better and better, to shape the earth in an ever better way out of the spirit, meaning that the will lives on after death just as the mind does. Thomas Aquinas knew only of the mind living on. Now we must understand that the will lives on. You see, gentlemen, it really is like this. We truly do not have to belittle a great scholar such as Thomas Aquinas was in the thirteenth century because he taught these things at that time. But it is a different thing for Thomas Aquinas to teach the only thing that could be taught in the thirteenth century than for people founding a Thomasian Society in Paris today to teach the same thing as was taught in the past — and indeed for Pope Leo XIII to instruct all priests and scholars in the Roman Catholic Church in the nineteenth century to speak only of the things which Thomas Aquinas taught in the thirteenth century. 48 In 1879, Leo XIII declared Thomas Aquinas to have been the first teacher of the Roman Catholic Church. Thomas himself would no longer say the same today! These two things are now in opposition in the world, something like the Thomasians in Paris, who want to take people back to the past, and anthroposophy, where things are taught the way they are at the present time. When we consider something like human conscience, the most important thing about it is that it makes us see the eternal in the human being. But you cannot understand the eternal rightly if you do not also consider life before earth but think only of the idea of life after earth, called 'immortality', which has really only come into existence in Egyptian times. You see, gentlemen, it was only 3,000 or 4,000 years ago that people started to talk about being immortal, meaning that their souls do not die when their bodies do. Before that people would say they were not born as souls when the body was born. They had a term we have to call 'unbornness'. That was the one side of it. And immortality is the other. Modern languages only have the word 'immortality'. The word 'unbornness' needs to come into existence again. Then people will say: 'Conscience is something in the human being that is not born and does not die.' And it is only then that people will really be able to value their conscience. For it only has meaning when we are able to appreciate its true value. We'll continue at nine o'clock on Saturday, gentlemen.

From Mammoths to Mediums

How conscience developed in the course of human evolution

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA350/English/RSP2000/19230725p02.html

Dornach

25 Jul 1923

GA350-13

Good morning, gentlemen! Have you thought of anything else you want to ask? — If not, I'd like to say something that relates to our previous subject, so that you may see how proof that the soul principle is present everywhere in the human physical organism, that is, in the human physical body, can be now found whichever way we approach the matter. Let us look at the human blood circulation from a particular point of view. As you know, blood flows in the blood vessels in our bodies. It goes from the lung, which has its arteries and in which oxygen is taken up as we breathe, to the heart, from the heart to the rest of the body. It is red during all this time but becomes more bluish as it passes through the body. This blue blood goes back to the heart and the lung where the oxygen makes it red again, and so the blood circulates, we might say, through the whole body. Let us hold on to the thought that the blood flows through the body. A very simple flow cycle can serve to illustrate it. Just think we have a circular tube [Fig. 27]. Into it we put some red fluid so that it will show clearly. Now if we have such a tube in the outside world we need to have some kind of pump somewhere to set the fluid in motion. Let us imagine, therefore, we have some pump or other here [arrow] and that sets the fluid in motion. If I leave a hole at the top, the fluid will, of course, spray out there. But I don't want that, and so I add a tube up there. And now I set the fluid in motion so that it keeps going round and round. Can you imagine this? The fluid is made to go round. Now consider this. If the fluid is driven round by a pump here, then a small amount will rise in the tube here [at the top]. But it will only be a small amount as we keep the fluid moving. If I make the pump powerful, the fluid will rise a bit higher here; if I apply only little pressure it will rise less high. I am therefore able to measure the pressure in the circulating fluid by the height of the fluid up here. Now you see, I can do something similar to this with human blood. If I insert such a little tube somewhere in a blood vessel the blood will rise some distance in that tube. I can thus insert a tube into some blood vessel — but not all of them. Imagine I have an artery somewhere — in the arm, let us say — and put in a tube here that is rather like an ampoule [ drawing on the board ]. The blood from the artery will flow up the tube a little bit; it goes through here and into the tube here. This small tube will be such that, depending on the person concerned, the level of blood in it will be higher or lower. With some people the blood will rise to a very high level, with others it will be less high. This shows that people have different blood pressures, for it is the pressure which is applied that shows itself in the tube. So you see, if the blood exerts a bit more pressure on the blood vessels, it will rise higher in the tube, if it exerts less pressure it will rise less high. The materialistic view is that human beings also need a pump to drive the blood around. But this is an external instrument I have been drawing for you. In reality human beings do not have such a pump anywhere in their bodies, nor is the heart a pump. Human beings do not have a pump, but the blood moves because of something else. This is what we want to consider today. But let us first of all consider the difference in height in this column of blood by which we measure the blood pressure. In a healthy person it is always at a particular level, between 120 and 140 mm, let us say, when someone is between 30 and 50 years of age. If the column is only 110 mm high, for example, when we apply such an instrument — we may call it a manometer — the person would be sick. He'd also be sick if it were 160 mm. If it is 160 mm, his blood pressure is too high; the blood is pressing too hard in his body. If it is only 110 mm, his blood pressure is too low, the blood is not pressing hard enough. You can see from this that we always have to have a specific blood pressure in our bodies. The blood must always exert a specific pressure. We have this blood pressure everywhere inside us. If we climb a really high mountain, the air around us will get thinner, of course, and because the outside air gets thinner the pressure from inside gets much greater. The blood will then come out through the pores. That is mountain sickness. You see, therefore, that we have to go around the world with a quite specific blood pressure. Let us first look at people whose blood pressure is too low. People with low blood pressure grow extremely weak, tired, pale, and their digestion suffers severely. They grow feeble inside and do not properly manage to perform their bodily functions, and so they will go into a gradual decline. If the blood pressure is too low, therefore, people grow tired and weak and sick. Now let us look at people whose blood pressure is too high. There you sometimes see quite strange things. You see, if you push something like this instrument — it has to have a sharp point in front — into the skin, if you measure a blood pressure that is too high with it, you can be sure that such a person's kidneys will gradually grow useless. The kidneys start to develop their blood vessels, everything there is inside them, in a way they should not be. They calcify and grow enlarged; they degenerate, as people say. They no longer are the shape they should be. If you cut out the kidneys of such people with very high blood pressure after they have died, they look quite dilapidated. The question is, where does all this come from? This connection with blood pressure and kidney disease is not really understood at all by those who think in materialistic terms. We have to realize that our astral body — I have told you about this; it is an invisible body in us — lives in this pressure we have in us, in the blood pressure. It is not true at all that the astral body lives in some substance, some form of matter; it lives in a force, in our blood pressure, and the astral body is healthy when our blood pressure is right, that is, between 120 and 140 mm in mid-life. If we have the right blood pressure, our astral body enters into the physical body as we wake up and feels well in there. It can spread in all directions. So if the blood pressure is right, about 120 mm, the astral body really spreads out in our blood pressure, and it can enter into every part of the physical body when we wake up. And whilst we are awake the whole astral body spreads everywhere in us if we have this 'normal' blood pressure, as it is called. You see, it is the astral body which makes sure that our organs always are the right shape, the right configuration. Gentlemen, if we were to sleep all the time, so that the astral body would always be outside, the way it is when we sleep, our organs would soon grow fatty. We would not have proper organs. We need the astral body to stimulate the ether body so that we'll always have organs that are sound, having the right configuration. The astral body therefore always has to have the right blood pressure so that it may spread out. Let us imagine someone goes into a room that is filled with carbon dioxide rather than air. He'd collapse; he'd be unable to breathe. The astral body and the I cannot live in such a body where the blood pressure is not right. They have to go out every time we go to sleep. Let us assume the blood pressure is too low. If the blood pressure is too low, the astral body does not enter properly into the physical body when we wake up. There is little astral activity in there then and the individual feels something rather like a continuous slight state of unconsciousness inside him. He will be weak as a result and his organs cannot be developed in the right way, for they have to be newly developed all the time. You remember I told you the organs have to be made new every seven years. The astral body must always be able to function in there. Let us assume the blood pressure is too high. Now if the blood pressure is too high, what will happen? You see, I once told you that if the mixture of oxygen and nitrogen in the air were different we would find it hard to live. The air contains 79 per cent of nitrogen, the rest is mainly oxygen. The amount of oxygen is small, therefore. If the air contained more oxygen we'd be old people at the age of 20. We would age rapidly. It therefore also depends on the astral body if the body ages early or late. If the blood pressure is too high, the astral body likes being in the physical body. It is really in its element in our blood pressure and will then go in really deep. And what is the consequence? The consequence is that we have the kind of kidneys at 30 that we should only have when we are 70. We live too fast when the blood pressure is high. The kidneys are sensitive organs, and so they will degenerate early. Growing old has to do with the organs growing more and more calcified. And if the blood pressure is too high, the sensitive organs will calcify too soon. The kind of kidney disease one gets with high blood pressure is really a sign that the person has aged too soon, that is, whilst still young he has made these sensitive kidneys be the way they should only be in old age. Now you see, gentlemen, the whole of this explanation which I have given you allows you to see that the human being does have something like a soul principle in his physical body, something I call the astral body, which goes out during the night. And so we may also say: Man lives in the forces that develop in his body. He lives in those forces, not in the physical matter. Wherever you look, therefore, you find materialistic science has nothing to offer when it comes to the kind of thing I have just been explaining to you. It does not help people to discover what this is about. You'll always find it says in the books: if the blood pressure is high one must always fear the individual has kidney disease. But, it says in these books that they cannot show the connection. In reality they are therefore saying that they do not want human beings to have something that is supersensible in them, something spiritual, something with soul quality. They are saying they do not want this. But we cannot explain these things without it. And this is really why people do not know where to turn today and have to admit this to all the world. It truly is the case, gentlemen, that the things that happen today, the overwhelming misery in the world which will get much, much worse in the immediate future because people simply do not want to accept anything that is of the spirit — for you must first of all know about something — this misery has come because people are not prepared to know anything about reality. And you cannot know anything about reality unless you consider the spiritual aspects. The way things have gone in the nineteenth century is that people were really only taught about superficial things. No one took care to see that they understood something about the soul element, about the spirit. And so people go about today and really have no idea at all that the elements of spirit and of soul do after all exist in this world. You see, gentlemen, something extraordinarily important has happened as a result. One day, when much time will have passed and they are prompted by circumstance, people will overcome their reluctance and come to look at things again in the light of the spirit. Those people will say, at that future time: 'Yes, something tremendously important happened in human history at the beginning of the twentieth century.' Everything one is able to tell about the wars of earlier times is nothing compared to what has actually happened here in our day. Sometimes it is really quite unbelievable how people fail to realize that compared to what has been happening from 1914 right until now all those wars we read about in our history books are mere trifles. Those historical events are not at all great compared to what has been happening between human beings in the times we live in. And you see, to see what this is really about we have to look deeply into the reality of it all. But people don't do this today. Now one thing to which I drew your attention is that the potato only came to Europe at a particular time. Now if you ask what do people eat most of today, the answer is: potatoes! And if you see the threat of starvation somewhere, the first thing people think of is how to get hold of potatoes. Today it is really so that people think of potatoes as something that has always been there. Well, gentlemen, if you'd lived five centuries ago you would not have eaten potatoes at all in Europe, for there weren't any! You would have been eating something else. But when one knows that everything depends on the spiritual realm one also knows that eating potatoes or not eating potatoes depends on the spiritual realm. And that is also how it is with many other things. There have been tremendous changes in human history in recent centuries, and all that talking in theories is of no value to us. You can have the best possible theories — Rousseau's theories, Marxist theories, Lenin's theories, anything you like, but these are all thought up, and you can't do anything with them if you lack the right knowledge. Thoughts only have value if you know what to do with them. All these people who have developed such excellent thoughts were utterly ignorant, if the truth be known. And it is a characteristic of our present time that people are really utterly ignorant. They want to present theories to people as to how to make the earth into paradise, yet they don't even know what happens to the human body when people eat potatoes. This is what causes one such heartfelt concern today, that people have not the least desire to know something. Now the masses are, of course, unable to do this, for they are persuaded that the knowledge possessed by those gentlemen at the university is absolutely right. And so schools are created for the people and they want to know what the others know today. But the truth is that exactly the people who ought to know things, who have made the business of knowing their profession, actually know nothing at all. And because of this people talk about all kinds of things today, but basically no one knows anything at all. Now the potato is not, of course, the only thing, there are many other situations, but I am mentioning the potato because it is a particularly extreme example. An awful lot has really happened in these last centuries, and now, I'd say, it has led to a major discharge at the beginning of our twentieth century, so that enormously many things have happened. Today let us consider one of the things that happened, something that is extraordinarily important. You see, gentlemen, I am going to mention something that may well make you laugh at first, but it is a serious matter nevertheless. You see, when a young fellow goes to university today or some other kind of college, he will be taken to a laboratory. He has to study there — he'll loaf around quite a bit as well — but you know, he has to study because he'll have to sit his exams later. You can more or less imagine how it all goes. But if we now go back to the people of whom I also told you also the last time we met, let us say to the ancient Indians — you'll remember the drawing I made for you, Asia — there the young fellows who were to be taught were not taken to a laboratory or a hospital but they would be told that above all else they must with great patience examine their inner parts. They had to sit down, their legs crossed, and always look at the tip of their nose, not look out into the world but always look at the tip of their nose. Well, gentlemen, what did this achieve? This was of course already at a time when the matter was falling into decadence. But there are still people who do this today, even in Europe; they want to get particularly clever inwardly and so they copy this. But it will achieve nothing today. But the people who did this in earlier times shut themselves off from the whole of the outside world in this way, for as you can imagine, you don't see much in the tip of your nose. All you practise is getting a squint in your eyes, if you always look at the tip of your nose. And if you don't walk but take all the weight off your legs, you also do not have gravity inside you. These people therefore eliminated gravity, eliminated all sensory impressions, they firmly plugged their ears and gave themselves up completely to their own bodies. That was what it was all about — not a matter of looking at the tip of your nose, which after all is not all that interesting, but of closing oneself off from the outside world. This completely changed their breathing, however. It was the breathing, the lung, which became different in these people. When they used such a procedure to make their lungs function in a different way, images would arise in their mind's eye. They did indeed gain specific knowledge by this means, and were then able to tell people how things really are. Those people did know, for example, what happens with a plant, the way I have told you, because they had gone through this procedure. Today our young fellow at the university would say 'thank you very much' if they were made to sit in a row along the wall and asked to look all the time at the tips of their noses. People would consider that nonsense today. But you see, the only difference I get when I make experiments with things outside or on human beings is that when I do laboratory experiments I get to know about physical matter; when I do experiments on the human being I get to know the human being. Those people of old know the human being better than modern people do. And what was it they insisted on particularly, those people? That their lungs would function in a different way. And the lung would in turn stimulate the brain. In those earlier times it was thus truly the lung from which all the great knowledge and early wisdom came. So it would be reasonable to say that if we have the lungs here in the human being [Fig. 28], and between them the heart, knowledge went from the lungs up into the head in those early times. This is in fact the secret about knowledge, that the human head is really quite unable to do anything. The head does not really know much of the world, it only knows what is inside. Gentlemen, if we had only the head and neither eyes nor ears, but just a head that was closed off all round, we would know a great deal about ourselves, but nothing about the outside world. And the most important thing that comes into us from the outside world is the air. The air also stimulates the head, through the nose if nothing else, but very thin air also comes in everywhere through our eyes, through our ears everywhere. It is the air which sets the head in motion. We are thus able to say that if we go a long way back to those early millennia of which I have told you the last time, 6,000, 8,000 years back, we find people practised their breathing a lot in order to gain knowledge. They knew they had to press the air into the head in a different way and then they'd gain knowledge. All people know today is that if they get air into their lungs it will vitalize them. But those ancients knew that if they drew in the air in a special way, as they looked at the tip of their nose, the muscles of the nose would be compressed, the air would be drawn in in a special way, and then knowledge would come in the head. But you see, it went on like that until the Middle Ages, and even most recent times. Four hundred years after the birth of Christ, people then ceased to know anything. The knowledge vanished. But they still had things to remind them in their books. For that is the difference between earlier times and the times that began in about the eighth or ninth century before the birth of Christ. In those earlier times people had heads with which to know things, and in later times they had books by which to know things. That is indeed the difference. You know, in those ancient schools called mysteries it was not considered important to write down everything they knew. They would train people so that they were able to read in their heads. Someone who had been truly educated would be able to read in his head to know what was out there in the vast air space. His head would be a real book, we might say, but of course not in the sense in which we speak of bookish people today. Through breathing, the head had become something where wisdom could be found. Then came the times when human heads were no longer worth anything. People did still have them, of course, but they were empty, and everything was written down. For some centuries before and also at the time of the birth of Christ, much, very much still existed in writing of the ancient wisdom. These things were burned by the Church, for they did not want this ancient wisdom, which people gained from their heads, to be passed on in any way to their descendants. You see, the people of the Church really had a terrible hatred of that ancient wisdom, and they eradicated it. With anthroposophy, the aim is to give people a head again that is not just an empty vessel. But it is something the Church really hates. Well, you can see that it does not exactly like it! Gentlemen, human beings are to be in a position again where they know things that you cannot find in books at all today, for the ancient wisdom has vanished, it has been burned, and the new things people have written in books is only about superficial things. Well, everything people were thinking until the nineteenth century was really only inherited from earlier times. It was, if I may put it like this, stimulated by the lung. Lung knowledge, we might say. The head stimulated by the lung, by the breathing — lung knowledge. You see, the nineteenth century brought great scientific discoveries, but no thoughts. The thoughts were all taken from earlier times. It is really true that thoughts only existed in earlier times of human evolution. On the surface, great discoveries were made in the nineteenth century, but people were only thinking the old thoughts. That was still the old lung knowledge. And it seems rather amusing that we are able to say to a modern scientist: 'You despise the ancient Indian who would sit down, cross his legs, and look at the tip of his nose in order to have thoughts about the inner life. You don't do this any more. But you do use the thoughts he had, for they were written down, and you used them to discover X-rays, and so on.' It really is like that. All this was discovered with the old thoughts. In the course of the nineteenth century, the human lung became completely unable, however, to give anything to the head. The human lung altogether went through a major change in the nineteenth century, and something else, the organs called the kidneys, actually became much more important than the lung in the course of the nineteenth century. These are in the first place strongly connected with the functions of the heart. The stimulant effect has moved from the lung to organs that lie lower down in the human being, and this has caused the great confusion in which humanity finds itself. You see, the world of the spirit is, in a sense, still keeping an eye on the lung. When human beings had lung knowledge, they would be breathing in air and in doing so receive the stimulus for knowledge. Today people have to depend on getting the stimulus for knowledge from the kidneys. But the kidneys will not give anything to the head of their own accord. You have to make an effort first, as I have described it in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds . 49 Steiner, R., Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, How is it Achieved? (GA 10). Tr. D. S. Osmond, C. Davy. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1976. Also as How to Know Higher Worlds. A Modern Path of Initiation. Tr. C. Bamford. Hudson: Anthroposophic Press 1994. So in the first place we have to say that when the lungs still provided a stimulus for the human head, people were able to gain knowledge because a spiritual principle was still flowing into their lungs. Anything of the spirit that flows to the kidneys is at an unconscious level, so that people cannot know about it unless they go through the things in mind and spirit which I have described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, doing so in a fully conscious state. What happens if people are not prepared to make such an effort? Well, gentlemen, the lung will remain in a condition where it provides no stimulus, and people will be completely dependent for anything they are able to know on their bellies, their kidneys. The change from lung to kidney knowledge has happened now, in the twentieth century, the time we live in. Lung knowledge still had a spiritual quality. Kidney knowledge has no spiritual quality for the human being unless we give it a spiritual quality. Man has thus gone through a major change. This happened in the two decades we have lived through. Such an important thing has not been before in human nature, that the whole apparatus for gaining knowledge has slid down from the lung into the kidney. The astral body then did not find anything in the kidneys, and that is why there is such confusion, such a materialistic chaos, in all human heads. So what would one say if one wanted to describe the real reason why there have been so many people in the twentieth century who did not know their way about in the world, who did not know what to do, and finally, when this was admitted, we got ourselves into this giant war? What was really going on there? If we want to find out what was going on, we must first take a bit of a look at the time that went before. You see, gentlemen, in the Middle Ages and later, terribly many people went to a particular place of pilgrimage called Lourdes, or to other places where the idea was copied. They went there because the clergy told them that they would get well if they did, if they had the water of Lourdes. Well now, only the name has really changed. In the nineteenth century the clergy would persuade people to go to Lourdes to get well, and more recently the medical profession have persuaded people to go to Karlsbad or Marienbad or Wiesbaden or some such place. What did it all lead to? It really all came to this. The doctors would tell people: 'Well now, dear patients, your kidney system is not functioning properly. You need to drink as much of the waters at Wiesbaden or Karlsbad or Marienbad as possible,' — it all goes through the kidneys — 'and you have to push it through there.' So that for many people the state of health was such that during the winter they gave themselves up to their kidney functions, and it was the activity of the kidneys that would really think in them; during the summer they had need — for this really will not work unless there is a stimulus in mind and spirit, which they did not want, of course — to go to Karlsbad or Marienbad or to Wiesbaden, and there they would get their kidney system into a better condition again. As time went on, this business, where it was really always the abdomen for which people would take the cure, became a superstition. Now you know what this was really about was that people should have developed an interest inwardly in activity, stimulus in mind and spirit. This is what they should have been looking for, for if there is no stimulus in mind and spirit at all the disorders which develop in the kidney region cannot be restored to order. And in the twentieth century the situation then was that all the people who should really have been thinking by means of their souls were merely thinking by means of their kidneys. Gentlemen, a time will come when people will see more clearly, and the few who manage to keep a clear mind in the general confusion will say to themselves: 'What was it really, this great war at the beginning of the twentieth century? It was a kidney disease in the human race.' You see, what matters is that we really discover the way things go together in reality. Then we'll know how to bring up young people, we'll know that it is quite unacceptable to teach them only the things they are being taught today. We'll know that we must use those wonderful years of youth, of childhood, to teach the young people something quite different. But the people of the nineteenth century were actually proud to say they knew nothing of soul and spirit, and the result was that this gigantic kidney disease developed which is still skulking about the world today. At a future time people will ask: 'What clouded the minds of people at the beginning of the twentieth century? A kidney disease that went unnoticed.' This is what concerns us so deeply today. And we can decide to go in two directions. We can let things go on the way they are going now. The doctors will then have a great deal to do one day. People will be less and less able to use their common sense. They will come to think less and less of making sensible arrangements that will take them forward. The whole of the senseless way of going about things, which has really developed to a very high degree today, will reach its highest level. People will be weak, and the physicians will examine their urine. They'll find all kinds of nice things in there, you know — proteins, sugar, and so on. They will only discover that the kidneys are not functioning properly. For when you find all those things in the urine, the kidneys are not functioning properly. And they'll find: 'Strange, isn't it, that the world has never before produced as much sugar and protein as it does now!' But they won't know the real situation. At best some clever, crafty industrialist will get the idea of using the vast amount of sugar produced in his industry. So that is one direction. The other direction is this. Let us stop talking about all the external arrangements and systems to begin with, and reform the people's life in mind and spirit, giving people decent ideas relating to the spirit. People will then discover how they should do things in outer terms so as to live properly. For it will only be if people have sensible ideas that we can hope they will be able to live the right kind of life in outer terms. But, gentlemen, we'll not be able, of course, to achieve this by going on the way we have until now. It calls for a radical rethinking. And today's world will not get better by any kind of outer measures, but only if people begin to know something. You see, materialists imagine they know a lot about physical matter. But this is exactly what they know nothing about. This is the strange thing, that materialists do not know anything about physical matter. They will say for example: 'What has brought about this misery? Well, the misery is due to economic conditions.' Well, you see, that is just like someone saying: What causes poverty? Poverty is caused by impoverishment. Just another word, isn't it? Economic misery is just another word for what we have today. It is just words, for people have created the economic misery, and man creates this because of the way he is. Today incredibly many people feel the urge to be racketeers, let us say. And all this is simply because the part of the human organism which is of a lower order and is setting the pace today should really be given a stimulus in mind and spirit. Materialists will merely say: 'Oh yes, this part of the organism which is of a lower order is important!' But we only realize why it is important through things we learn through mind and spirit. And so materialists are good at taking one's blood pressure, but they do not know what it means if the blood pressure is too high or too low, and that a low blood pressure means that the astral body and the I do not enter sufficiently into the physical body, whilst high blood pressure means that the astral body and the I enter too deeply into the physical body. And today it is indeed the case that in the course of human history the blood pressure has very slowly and gradually grown too much, and people suffer from high blood pressure today. It really is the case that when a person wakes up today his blood pressure is too high; this then snatches at the astral body and the I, as it were. The result of this, of the blood pressure snatching at the astral body and the I, is that they go completely into the physical body. This has to be balanced out again by giving the person mental stimulus, so that he really takes some interest in things of the mind and spirit. It is not enough to learn anthroposophical theories. If one only knows anthroposophical theories, it is merely the way people learned to read in the nineteenth century, the way they took up ideas in a superficial way. It should not be like this. The things we take in should be such that we make them our own inwardly. You see, gentlemen, if you have been in stale air and go out into the open air, you take pleasure in this inwardly. And in the same way you should feel pleasure inwardly, experience interest, when you leave all the stuff that is called knowledge today and come into the fresh air of the soul, being told things of the spirit once more. Inner gladness, deep interest, is what we need for the life of the mind and spirit. And when people are full of interest the blood which has grown too heavy — the blood has grown too heavy in everyone today — will grow lighter again. The kidneys are made spiritual and the result will be that things will be better in the world when people want to know something again about the things that have been taken away from them for centuries. This is something one has to say over and over again, something I have to tell you in every possible way, for it is important for us to look the truth in the face and not let ourselves be blinded by science that is not science. I therefore wanted to add a few things today to the things I had told you on the previous occasions. Much can still be said about these things, but they will get clearer all the time. We have to have a short break now in the series of talks. I have to go to England and will get someone to let you know when we can continue with this. But what I wanted to make clear to you, especially at the end today, is how the great events in human history really have to do with what human beings are inwardly, and that this is the starting-point. Humanity therefore must first of all be enlightened, but enlightened about real things, not empty phrases. So this is what it is.

From Mammoths to Mediums

Lung knowledge and kidney knowledge

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA350/English/RSP2000/19230728p02.html

Dornach

28 Jul 1923

GA350-14

Gentlemen, it's been a long time since we were able to meet. Have you perhaps been able to think of something special, questions you'd like to discuss, during this time? Member of the group: I would like to ask if the rite as it is celebrated today still has a connection with the world of the spirit, and how the rites of different nations relate to one another. Rudolf Steiner: Well, gentlemen, here it will be interesting to consider the reason why a rite actually comes into existence, and what the intention is. Perhaps I might just tell you something on this occasion which is of current interest because it has to do with my recent trip to Britain. It was really most appropriate that the course in Penmaenmawr 50 See Steiner, R., The Evolution of Consciousness. As Revealed through Initiation Knowledge . Penmaenmawr. Thirteen lectures. Tr. V. E. Watkin, C. Davy. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1966. was given near an ancient mystery site. This was on the west coast of Britain, in Wales. There is an offshore island called Anglesey and there you still have ancient sites everywhere in the hills. They are in decay, and today one really only sees broken stones, I'd say, but if one knows one's anthroposophy one can certainly see what they once meant to people in that very place. You see it would be just like going out into our hills here and finding such sites in them. Over there you find them everywhere, as it were, in the hills, and above all if a hill levels out at the top, so that you have level ground and even a slight depression. That is where those ancient sites would be. Today they are heaps of stones, but you can still see quite clearly what they looked like in the past. The smaller ones consist of stones that were probably carried there once in the ice, and then dragged to the particular site where people wanted to have them. They were arranged in a kind of square, one beside the other, like this [Fig. 29]. Looking at them from the side, it would look like this. A large stone on top covered the others [Fig. 30]. The big mystery places would have similar stones [Fig. 31] placed in a circle, exactly 12 of them. The rite probably was at its height 3,000 or 4,000 years before our time, at a time when the area was only thinly populated, and there would be hardly anything except agriculture and animal husbandry. Writing and reading were quite unknown at the time when this rite was at its height. Writing and reading—they never even imagined that there might be such a thing. Now we may ask what the significance was of that rite. Let me emphasize again that there was no reading and writing in those days. Now you know that when we want to get crops to grow in the field, to do really well, they have to be sown at particular times, and different things have to be done with them at particular times. And people also have to know the right times for getting their animals mated, and so on. This has to do with the way the earth relates to the whole of the cosmos around it, and I have told you about this on several occasions. Now today people have their farmer's calendar and they'll look it up. It'll tell them what day of the year it is, and so they tend to forget that it is not a matter of arbitrary choice. You can't fix the dates whichever way you like, but have to fix them according to the movement of the stars, the position of the moon, and so on. Today's calendar makers calculate these things by following tradition. Calculations are made to show when this or that particular day will be. People are now working it out like this because at one time the days were calculated according to the position of the sun. You can still do it according to the sun today, but the people who generally observe these dates do not go by the position of the sun or of the stars but simply by the calendar, as it has been calculated. In those earlier days that would have been unthinkable, for people could not read or write then. Such things only came later. So this takes us back 3,000 or 4,000 years, as I said. And reading and writing only came a little over 2,000 or 3,000 years ago in those regions. Those were early times, and the kind of reading and writing people had later on does not compare with what we have today, so you can't really say it existed then. At least the majority of the population did not know it in those days. If you look at such a stone circle up on a hill you may think: The sun apparently — we know it is standing still, but you know we can put it like this because that is how things are, after all — the sun thus moves in orbit in cosmic space. It therefore casts a different shadow of this stone all the time, and you can follow this shadow all through the day. You can say that when the sun rises in the morning the shadow is there [ drawing on the board ], then it moves on a bit and the shadow is there, and so on. But the shadow also changes in the course of the year because the sun is always rising in a different place. It was like this in March, and a bit later on like this. And the wisdom of the learned person or the priest, if you like, the Druid priest who was appointed to observe such things in those times, lay in being able to judge this shadow. He would be able to know, therefore, that when the shadow reached this point here, this or that needed to be done in the fields. He was able to tell people this. He could see it from the position of the sun. Or if the shadow reached this point, let us say, the bull had to be taken around, the beasts had to be mated, for this had to be done on a particular day of the year. The priest would thus observe and know what needed to be done all through the year. And so the whole of life was really governed by the movements of the sun. Today people never think that they are doing the same thing, because they look in the calendar, as I told you. But in those days you had to go to the actual sources, you had to discover these things by considering the universe, as it were. At any particular time, let us say in autumn, for example, it would be clearly established what had to be done in the fields, and the 'bull festival' would also be laid down for a particular time in the year from the things these people said. Then the bull would be taken round; at other times it would be kept away from the cows, and so on. The feasts of old were also fixed accordingly, and they would be very much in connection with these things. Today such an arrangement of stones would be called a Druid circle. This here [Fig. 30] is a dolmen or cromlech, with the stones characteristically standing like this, and covered at the top, so that the inside is in shade. Now you see, gentlemen, people know, more or less, that the sunlight is sometimes more and sometimes less powerful, for they can feel it from the way they sweat or feel cold. What people do not know, however, is that the shade also varies, just as the light does. It varies in accord with the way the light varies. But people are not in the habit today of considering differences in a shadow. In those earlier times, people first of all developed the ability to tell the differences in a shadow. Within the shadow you see the spiritual aspect. The sun's rays have not only physical qualities but also spiritual qualities. And the Druid priest would observe the spiritual quality of the sun's rays in there, and it would depend on this if it was better to grow one particular plant in a particular country or another, for this depended on the spiritual quality that came down to the earth from the sun. The shadows also gave excellent opportunity to observe the moon influences. These play a particular role when it comes to mating farm animals, for example, so that the time for mating could be determined. And the whole year was really considered according to those observations made of the sun. Now if we were to dig down underneath such a cromlech, we would find that it also served as a burial place. These stones were set up in places where people were also buried. The significance of this is that when a human being has left his body, that body has a composition which is different from everything else. The soul, the spirit, has dwelt in the body for a whole lifetime. When the body dissolves, the powers in it are different from those in the rest of the hills. And those powers would stream up and make it easier for people to see things rightly inside, in the shade. Those people still knew powers of nature that were very different from the powers people were to know later on. And when one sees individual stones raised high up in some hilly regions — this is something one also sees in other parts of Britain; I saw it in Ilkley, for instance, where the first course was given during my visit to England 51 See Steiner, R., A Modern Art of Education (GA 307). Tr. J. Darrell. L13 by G. Adams. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1970. — with the site well chosen — one had a wide view over the area from up there — you'll find such signs there [Fig. 32], swastikas, a symbol used to create much mischief in Germany today. This swastika is now being worn by people who have no idea that it was once a sign used to indicate to people who came from a long way off that the people in that place saw not only with their physical eyes but also with the eye of the spirit. In my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds I have described them as lotus flowers. The intention was to let people know they were able to see with these lotus flowers. So you have a rite here which essentially consisted in people wanting to bring the spiritual element from the cosmos down to the earth for their social and life situations. You can still see it there today, and it makes the area extraordinarily interesting. These were the last of those ancient sites, places on the west coast to which people withdrew at the time, for after this, people came from the east and writing was introduced. That early form of writing was called runes. The runes were sticks that would be put together to form letters; very different therefore from today. And only then did Norse mythology develop, which is what we call it today — Odin, Thor and so on. This only came later, and it came because writing was transplanted to that region. You need not be all that surprised to hear me talk of the shadow like this, for even an animal sees something in a shadow. Just watch the strange way a horse will behave when it is standing somewhere along a road at night, where there are lights, and looks at its shadow on a wall. One just has to know that an animal, a horse, does not see its shadow the way we do. Our eyes are set in such a way that they look ahead. The horse's eyes are set in such a way that they look to the side. Because of this the horse does not actually see the shadow itself, but perceives the spiritual element in the shadow. People will of course say the horse is afraid of its shadow. But the fact is that it does not see the shadow at all, but perceives the spiritual element in the shadow. And those primitive peoples also perceived differences in the shadow all the year round, just as we note differences in the sun's heat and in cold temperatures. So that was a rite which people had then. And you can realize from what I have told you that the rites which developed in ancient times were something that was really needed. They existed because people needed them. They took the place of all the things that could later be read, and at the same time it was a matter of communion between human beings and the gods. People did not pray so much, but they made these things known to others, and this then became part of life; it had a relationship to life, a significance in life. Now to another rite, remnants of which you still find above all in Central Europe where you find sacred sites and specific images. The images show a bull, with a kind of rider on the bull wearing a Phrygian cap, a kind of revolutionary cap. This was later adopted from those origins. And down below in the same picture you'd see a kind of scorpion which is biting into the bull's genitals. Then one also sees the individual who is sitting on top thrusting a sword into the front part of the bull's body. And if it is like this [ drawing on the board ], with this rider up there, the scorpion here, there the thrusting sword, you see from it how the starry heavens are configured up above. Up there are the starry heavens. These rites were known as Mithraic rites. So the first ones were Druid rites, and what I am describing now are the Mithraic rites, as they were called. The Druid rites were on the west coast — one does also find them in other areas, but I have just been telling you of an area where I have been able to see this for myself. These other rites, the Mithraic rites, once spread from Asia across and along the whole of the Danube, through southern Russia as we know it today, Bulgaria, Hungary, Bavaria, the Odenwald, Black Forest areas, and so on. And this meant something quite specific. For you see, why did they have a bull just there? This is the first question we have to ask ourselves. I have told you that the sun rises in a particular constellation in the zodiac in spring, today essentially in the Fishes. The astronomers still give the Ram. This is wrong, however, for in reality it is the Fishes. For a long time, a period of 2,000 years, the sun would rise in the constellation of the Ram, and before that in the Bull. And people would then say to themselves: Tn the spring, when things begin to grow, the sun always rises in the Bull.' and they quite rightly connected the principle that above all has to do with growth in the human body — not in the head, but in the rest of the body — with the fact that the sun's rays change, and that behind this is the constellation of the Bull. And so they would say: 'If we want to refer to the animal human being, we have to draw a bull, with the actual human being, who is governed by his head, sitting on the bull.' The bull thus represents the lower, animal human being, and the one who is sitting up there, wearing his Phrygian cap, represents the higher human being. The whole is however really just one human being — lower human being and higher human being. And the people would say to themselves: 'Oh, it is bad when the lower human being rules, when the human being gives himself up completely to his animal drives, only obeying his passions which come from the belly, from his sexuality and so on. The higher human being must govern the lower one.' And they would put it like this: 'This one, who rides on top, has the sword and thrusts it into the flanks of the lower human being. This means that the lower human being has to grow small compared to the higher human being. And then there is also the scorpion, biting into the genitals to show that if the lower human being is not made small by the higher one, lower human nature also harms itself, for the powers of outer nature come upon him and destroy him.' The image therefore showed the whole of this human destiny between the lower and the higher human being. Above were the starry heavens. It is highly significant that the starry heavens spread above. The sun rises in a particular point in the spring, in those days in the constellation of the Bull. But it moves on a little bit day by day. This movement happens in two ways. In the first place the spring point moves on. The following spring the sun will rise a little bit further along from the point where it rose the previous spring, so that 3,000 years ago it would have risen in the Ram, and even earlier than that in the Bull. Today it rises in the Fishes in spring. And so it gradually goes all the way round. In the course of 25,920 years the sun goes right round. But it also goes around within each year, so that it will not rise in the spring point the next day — it only rises there on 21 March — the next day it will have moved on a little, and so on. It also moves through all the constellations of the zodiac in the course of a year. Now the people who served in the Mithraic rites had to observe when the lower human being, the animal human being, was more difficult to control — when the sun was in the Bull, that is, encouraging mainly the powers of growth. Yet when the sun was in the Virgin, 52 The reference to the sun in the Virgin in this passage is puzzling. When the Bull stood at the spring equinox the Virgin was adjacent to the summer solstice, then occupied by the Lion. The Scorpion stood at the autumn equinox and the Waterman at the winter solstice. It would make more sense, therefore, if the passage read 'Yet when the sun stood in the Waterman ...' (which it would have done in December). Three of these zodiacal regions are reflected in the Mithras myth —the Bull, the Scorpion and the Man (Waterman) on the bull's back. The Lion represented a grade of initiation in the mysteries of Mithras while the sun in the Waterman has always been a symbol of resurrection and rebirth. Since Steiner was not in a position to check the transcript of these lectures for accuracy himself, it is important that attention should be drawn to what appear to be errors of fact. Editor. let us say, which would be in October — at that time more towards December, actually — the lower human being would not be so powerful, and less control would be needed. The people in general had no feeling for these things, but those who observed the Mithraic rites had to know them. And so the people who served in the Mithraic rites were able to say: 'It is more difficult to control the lower human being now that it is spring; and now again it is easier, for it is a particular time in winter.' And so the human being himself was used in those rites to get to know the seasons of the year, and of course the whole way the sun and moon would move through the zodiac. With the Druids, it was more the outer signs that were used, the shadows; here, in the Mithraic rites, it was more the effect on the human being which was used. And so the Mithraic service was also very much related to life. All kinds of different rites thus existed. We have to understand of course that to observe the kind of thing the Druids once observed one needs to have quite specific regions on earth. You can still see this today. Living over there in Wales — the course of lectures took a fortnight — one always had rapid changes in the weather from small cloudbursts, I'd say, to sunshine and back again. It changes by the hour, so that the air there is quite different from the way it is here; it is always more full of water. If you have air like it is over there, where the Druids were, you can make such observations. You could not have made such observations in the regions where the Mithraic rite was more widespread, for there the climate would be different, and you had to take your observations more from the inner human being. People were more sensitive to such things then. And the rites therefore differed according to the region. The Mithraic rites were common in the region of the Danube, in Bavaria and also in this part of Switzerland, though less so, even in earlier times, I think. It continued for a long time even when Christianity was coming to these regions. The last remnants were still to be found when Christianity had come to those regions, especially the Danube region. You still find these images in caves there, in the rocks. For those observations and rites were made and held in caves. They did not need the outer light of the sun but the stillness and quiet of a cave in the rocks. The spiritual influences of the sun and the stars go into those places as well. Now that I have told you about two different rites you can see the meaning of ritual altogether. The Negroes still have their rites today. These are simpler, more primitive, but in their simple way they also show the desire to learn about the spiritual cosmos that surrounds us. At one particular time — this was about one and a half or two millennia ago — something developed from all the different rituals that were followed above all in Asia and Africa. They fused, as it were. Something was taken from one rite, something else from another, and the fusion of many different rites, above all the Egyptian, Persian rites, resulted in what you know as the Roman Catholic rite today. It is a fusion of all those things. You can see that it is a fusion if you look at the altar, for instance. You need not go very far and you'll see that today's altar is something like a tombstone. Even though there is no dead body beneath it, the form is that of a tombstone. In earlier times people knew that powers arise from a dead body, and this is still reflected in the shape of the altar today. It is interesting to note that in Roman Catholic churches you also find a hint of the relationship to the sun and to the moon. You'll know that for particularly solemn celebrations the monstrance, the holy of holies, is placed on the altar [Fig. 33], This, gentlemen, is in fact a sun, with the host, conceived as a sun, at the centre of the sun, and down below here the moon, a sign that this rite comes from a time when. people sought to observe sun and moon directly, as I have shown when I told you of the Druid rites. This has been forgotten. When writing came and everything that goes with it, people no longer looked out into the vast spaces of nature. They then looked in a book, and the Gospels are of course also books. But a memorial remains in the sign of sun on moon which we see when the monstrance is placed on the altar. It is therefore possible to show in every single detail that the Roman Catholic rite in particular goes back to the ancient rites that still related to the great universe. People have completely forgotten this, of course. The situation was that in the first three or four centuries after Christ people everywhere still knew a great deal about this real meaning of the rite, for the present rite was developed in Rome at that time and spread from there. It was made up of many different individual rites. In this part of Switzerland, too, and above all in the region of the Danube, the Mithraic rite was still known. One could see that it still related to the universe. In those early centuries, everything that still survived of the ancient rites was systematically eradicated, eaving only rites that did not show their relationship to the universe. And people look at the Roman Catholic rite today, you see, and it is considered most important that they actually do not understand, that they do not realize that it once related to the sun and the moon. For in ancient days religion and science were one, and art, too, was part of it. A time did come, of course, when people said to themselves: 'Well, what is the point of it all? Surely it means nothing at all! The festivals, the seasons when particular things need to be done — they can be found in the calendar!' People therefore said it meant nothing. And the iconoclasts came, the image-breakers, Protestantism, the Protestant principle, going against ritual. Reflecting on this, we can now see why on the one hand everything once happened for people through their rites, and how on the other hand they all turned against ritual. At the time of the Druid rites — well, gentlemen, the enthusiasm people sometimes have for some movement or other today simply does not compare with the tremendous enthusiasm people had for their Druid rites in those days. They would have let themselves be stoned or beheaded for those Druid rites. The question is, why? Because they knew that one simply cannot live unless one has proper knowledge of what happens in the universe, one can't celebrate the bull festival at the right time, one can't sow one's grain, one's rye, at the right time. Later it all became blurred, and then people said: 'But things must have a purpose in life!' Human attitudes to these things differ greatly at different times, and we can only understand this if we realize that things have been happening, such as the matter being completely forgotten, so that today we can only see how things once were from these symbols, as they are called. Understanding is at its weakest where you have symbols in a place, for you do not need symbols if you have the real thing. When an altar was built the way the Druids did in order to observe the sun itself, they would not put an image of the sun on it! And it is this, for example, which has made certain rites, apart from the Roman Catholic ones, persist to the present day with hardly any change. You see, this Druid rite was solely connected with agriculture and animal husbandry when it was at its height, for these made up people's lives then. Later on, skilled crafts or trades also developed in areas where until then people had lived solely from the agriculture and animal husbandry which had given their rite its full justification. Tilling the soil and looking after animals was all there was when the Druid cult had its flowering. People dressed in skins, and so on. Craft skills — there were no machines as yet — were such then that everything they made was made to meet a need. If a man had the time, he'd make something he needed to wear, or an object such as a knife made of very hard stone, for example, which he would work on, and so on. The important things were the crops and the animals, and for these, people wanted to know from their gods when they should do particular things. Gradually, however, trade skills became more important. Now you see, gentlemen, skilled trades do not relate as strongly to the starry heavens as do crops and animals. On the other hand, habits had developed, and so a kind of rite was also developed for crafts; it was taken from the ancient rites that related to the heavens. One of the rites that has persisted and hardly changed at all is Freemasonry. It is all symbol, however. People really no longer know what these symbols refer to. Indeed, when civil engineering came in they applied the rites they habitually used for mason's work also to civil engineering. With architecture there is some point to it, if one wants to do really fine work. The designs are based on what the stars are saying, and so on, if one wants to do proper building work. And so Freemasonry developed. But when the rite developed people no longer knew the meaning of the individual Symbols. And today it is all symbols, with people having no idea what they refer to, and saying the wildest things about them. I think it is fair to say that the more a rite is carefully maintained, the less do people know about things. And the most widely used rites today are really the ones where people understand least of all. But you see, those earlier people used the rites for their life in the outside world. If we want to have rites again today — we are working on this, on a renewal of Christianity, and there are already some churches under Dr Rittelmeyer 53 Friedrich Rittelmeyer, PhD (1872-1938), German Protestant pastor; well-known preacher at Nuremberg from 1902 to 1916, later at the Neue Kirche in Berlin; co-founder and first leader of the Christian Community when this was founded in 1922 (movement for religious renewal). in Germany — well, if you want to do this today it has to mean something a bit different from those ancient rites. For the ancient rites served an immediate purpose; today we simply know these things from calculations in ordinary astronomy — which particular day, 21 March, and so on. The ancients were not able to do that. They had to point to the shadow in their time, as I have described it for you. But today we need something different. What is needed today is that people altogether find a way again to understand anything whatsoever of the things that exist in the spiritual universe. No astronomy, nothing in the world will tell people today what is going on in the universe! People fall into the greatest possible errors. They'll use telescopes to look at the world of the stars, for example, and they'll see a star when they look in a particular direction. And, gentlemen, if I move the telescope I'll see another star that is in another direction [ drawing on the board ]. On the other hand people calculate that the stars are so far away that one can no longer see this clearly but has to calculate in light years, which means the speed at which a ray of light travels. 54 The distance light travels in a year (at a rate of c. 300,000 km/ s) is approximately 9.46 x 1012km. They calculate the distance travelled by a light ray in a year. This is even more difficult to put in figures than paying for your midday meal with inflation money in Germany today — which is certainly difficult enough to put in figures! But the figure needed to say how fast a light ray moves, the distance it covers in a year, is thousands of millions. A star is so far away that the light would need so and so many light years. And so I turn my telescope in that direction, gentlemen, look into it and see the star. It needs 300,000 light years, let us say, to get here; the light needs that long. Another star may be a very long way off, taking perhaps 600,000 light years. When I look in that direction I am not at all seeing the star as it is now, but only the way it once was. And if I look there, what I see is actually not the reality. The star presents itself, but I am only seeing what it once was, because it took the light 300,000 years to get to me. So I am seeing an object which in reality is not there at all, having taken 300,000 years before it became visible! So you see, looking at the world through a telescope you simply do not see the starry heavens as they are! So that is one thing. The other is this. People think when they see stars that there is something there. But the truth is that there is nothing there, for the ether actually comes to an end there where we see stars. This is not so with the sun and the moon — with the sun a little bit, but the moon not at all. With a star there is nothing there! There's a hole in the universe. It is indeed remarkable that this is exactly where we seem to be coming together with conventional science. When we established our institutes in Stuttgart, 55 Der Kommende Tag Scientific Institute (including a biological department), and Der Kommende Tag Institute of Clinical Medicine. I said that one of the first things we had to do was to show that nothing at all exists in the place where a star is, that a nothing is shining there. It is because there is something all around it there that we see a kind of light in the place where there is nothing. Now you know, we are really poor people with our research institutes, and the Americans are rich. And news has since come from America that in conventional science, too, it has been found that there is really nothing there in the places where the stars are. Anthroposophy is thus actually working with the most advanced science. But it is easier to judge things with anthroposophy. You know, I am telling you this because you can see from it that people really do not know anything about the universe today. They judge things wrongly all the time. And why is that so? You see, gentlemen, this is for a particular reason. Imagine this is a human head [ drawing ] and there's the brain. When someone perceives something on the outside, using his eye, for example, he takes note of it, using his brain to enable him to do so. But inside the brain is a small brain, right back there [Fig. 34]. This is built in quite a different way from the big brain. If you cut through it, it is as if it was made up of leaves. And this is back there. This small brain does not perceive anything that comes from the outside. We need the big brain — I've made it green here in my drawing — to get impressions of things outside. The small brain perceives nothing that comes from outside. But when someone deepens his inner life — I have shown how to do it in my books — this small brain begins to be particularly active and you get an inner feeling as if this small brain were getting bigger and bigger, as if it were growing. So it grows, and little by little you feel as if you were standing under a tree. This is why Orientals speak o| Buddha under the Bodhi tree. He still experienced this small brain, called the cerebellum, as an organ of perception, and this is something we are rediscovering today. This small brain begins to be active if one does inner work as a human being. You do not perceive the material things that are outside, however, but the spiritual element. You begin to perceive the things of the spirit again with your cerebellum, and the laws and so on that belong to it. These must be part of the rites we create today. The inmost life of the human being needs to be made part of a ritual today because it is this inner part of the human being, this small brain which is separate from the big one, which is the organ that will take him out into the world of the spirit. Today this way of developing a ritual out of the inmost life of the human being can at most only be a beginning. It was through the Druid rites that people knew how to garland the bull, set the time for the bull festival, walk the bull through the local village so that reproduction would be properly regulated, and if we develop a rite that will serve to develop perception in the spirit sustained by the cerebellum, we shall know what needs to be done in social life. Until then there can only be speculation, people will think things up, will do the kind of thing that is now being done in Russia. When it can be admitted that we must first of all know in the spirit what has to happen in the human world, because it flows from the universe, we will at last have a proper social science, and this will be something willed from the cosmic world that surrounds us. That is how we must learn to think. And when one sees such things as the ruined stone monuments today, with only traces to show how things once were on Anglesey or in the other places on that coast, in Penmaenmawr where the course was held — yes when one finds such things one can see that much of what we need has been lost to humanity, and today we need new insights particularly when it comes to things of the spirit. We have to have new insights with which to work. This is what I wanted to say in answer to your question. I think you can see from it that originally a rite was needed just as much as one needs a knife in everyday life, and that later on when it had become useless that it was actually wiped out; yet people would continue with it though they no longer understood it. I have to go to Stuttgart again, but will be back in a few days. I'll ask them to tell you next week when we can meet again.

From Mammoths to Mediums

Druid wisdom. Mithraic rites. Roman Catholic ritual. Masonic rites

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA350/English/RSP2000/19230910p02.html

Dornach

10 Sep 1923

GA350-15

Protein, Fats, Carbohydrates, Salts (Dr. Steiner asks if anyone has a question. A question is asked about nutrition and about the potato as a foodstuff in Europe and elsewhere.) DR. STEINER: We will think about the general question of nutrition and its relation to the spiritual world. As you know, it was not until the modern age that the potato was introduced as a foodstuff: I have told you that in earlier times people in Europe did not eat potatoes but food of quite a different kind. The subject cannot, of course, really be understood without studying the relation of the spiritual world to the whole process of nutrition. You will remember that I once spoke to you of four substances upon which man's life essentially depends. Firstly, there is protein. Protein is a constituent of all food; it is found in its most characteristic form in the hen's egg, but it is present in all foodstuffs. Protein, then, is the first of these four essential substances. Then there are the fats. Fats are consumed not only when the flesh of animals is eaten; all foodstuffs contain fat. Other substances, too, as you know, are transformed into fat-containing foodstuffs, for example, milk into cheese. Carbohydrates are the third essential constituent of food. Carbohydrates come from the plant kingdom; they are of course present in other foodstuffs, too, but essentially in substances like wheat, rye, lentils, beans, potatoes — especially in potatoes. Finally there are the salts. Salts are usually considered to be mere accessories but they play a particularly important part in man's life. The most common form, of course, is cooking salt, but all foodstuffs contain salts. It may therefore be said: In order that man may be able to live at all, his food must contain protein, fats, carbohydrates and salts. I will now speak of how these different substances nourish the human being as constituents of the various kinds of foodstuffs. First of all we will think about the salts. Even when salts are consumed in tiny quantities they not only add flavour but are an extremely important means of nourishment. We take salt with our food not only to make it tasty but really in order that we may be able to think . The salts that are contained in food must reach the brain if we are to be capable of thinking. If a person is so ill that all the salt in his food is deposited in the stomach or intestines and not carried by the blood into the brain, he becomes stupid, dull-witted. That is the point to which attention must be called. We must of course be quite clear that the spirit is a reality, but if spirit is to be an active power on the earth, it must work in the earth's substances. In Spiritual Science, therefore, we must be able to perceive how the spirit works in the various substances. Otherwise it would be like saying: Oh, but we are spiritua1 people and machines are entirely material; we do not want anything material, therefore we shall not buy iron or steel but make machines entirely out of spirit. That, of course, is sheer nonsense! Substance is absolutely essential. The spirit working as the creative power in nature needs substance. And if spirit is prevented from making use of substance — for example, if salts are deposited in the stomach and intestines instead of reaching the brain by way of the blood — then a man becomes stupid and dull. Needless to say, things are not as simple as all that. Man cannot derive nourishment from salt in the form in which it is present in external nature. If you were to make a tiny perforation in the brain and let salt trickle in, it would be quite useless. The salt must pass into the stomach and intestines and be brought into a finer and finer state of solution — even on the tongue it begins to dissolve. The result of what the human organism does with the salt is that it is already in a spiritualised condition when it reaches the brain. The process is by no means one of simply introducing salt into the brain — it is by no means as simple as that. But if a man's condition is such that the effects of salt cannot work in his brain, he becomes dull and stupid. Now let us think of the carbohydrates. When we eat peas, beans, wheat, rye or potatoes — above all potatoes — we consume carbohydrates. The carbohydrates have a great deal to do with shaping the human form. If our food contained no carbohydrates, all kinds of distortions would appear: malformations of the nose or the ears, for example. It is due to the carbohydrates that we bear the outward stamp of man . If a person's constitution is such that the carbohydrates are not carried into the brain but deposited in the intestines and stomach, we shall see him becoming shrivelled and feeble, as though incapable of holding himself erect. The carbohydrates, therefore, help to give the human form its proper shape. You see, therefore, that it is important for us to get hold of the right kind of foodstuffs. The salts work mainly upon the front part of the brain, the carbohydrates farther back. A man who cannot thoroughly digest the carbohydrates, whose organism is incapable of carrying them into the proper area of the brain, will very soon become permanently hoarse and be unable to speak with a really clear voice. Therefore if you have in front of you someone who used to speak quite normally but has suddenly developed hoarseness, you may surmise that he has digestive trouble of some kind. He cannot thoroughly digest the carbohydrates; they do not reach the right area of the brain and the consequence is that something goes wrong with his breathing and his speech. And so we may say: the salts work mainly upon thinking. The carbohydrates work, for example, upon speaking and the organic processes allied with it, and are an essential constituent of food. The carbohydrates help to give our human form its proper shape, but if left to themselves their tendency would be to make us into a mere form and leave it at that. They do not fill out the form — that is done by the fats. The carbohydrates have, so to speak, merely outlined the form and the fats provide the filling material. That is their function — to provide us with material substance. In fat itself, of course, this material has a definite character. I have told you that the human being consists of an “I,” an astral body, an etheric body and a physical body. Fat, needless to say, accumulates and is deposited in the physical body. But the all-important function of enabling the fat to be deposited and at the same time to remain living fat, is performed by the etheric body. Feeling and perception, however, depend upon the astral body . When a man is awake, the astral body is within him; when he is asleep the astral body is outside. When he is awake and the astral body is working in the etheric body, fat is assimilated and absorbed all the time. Fat acts as a lubricant for the whole body. When a man is asleep and the astral body is outside him, fat is not assimilated but deposited. During waking life, fat acts as a constant lubricant; during sleep, fat is deposited. And both are necessary: deposited fat and lubricating fat. If someone passes his days in a kind of continuous sleep ... such cases are less frequent now than they used to be, but think of some leisured gentleman who does no work at all. Fat is actually deposited during what is called his waking life — although it really amounts to sleep! Such a man grows very corpulent and fat accumulates all over his body. Healthy depositing of fat, therefore, depends upon proper assimilation and absorption, for fat is being produced inwardly all the time. A man who consumes just the quantity he can assimilate, keeps healthy; but if anyone goes on eating, eating, eating, and assimilates nothing, he will become corpulent, pot-bellied. Country folk know these things by instinct. They know that when pigs are being fattened the life of these animals must be so arranged that their bodies are no longer lubricated and that everything they eat is deposited. It may, of course, be impossible for fats to be properly deposited in the organism; if this is the case, a man is ill. In this respect a man of leisure is healthy. But another trouble may be that the carbohydrates are not deposited and then the voice gets hoarse. It may also be that the fats are not deposited in the right way but simply pass away in the faeces; when this happens there is too little fat in the organism and therefore inadequate lubrication. This is what happens, too, when our food is insufficient and we suffer from actual hunger. Fat is the material we supply to the body. What happens to a man who has to go hungry or whose digestion is such that instead of the fats being deposited, they pass out of the body in the faeces? A person who has not enough physical material in his body becomes more and more spiritual. But this is not the right way to become spiritual, for under these conditions spirit consumes him, burns him up. Not only does he wither and become more and more emaciated, but gasses form in his organism and this condition leads, eventually, to actual delusions. There is always some disturbance in the spiritual life when a man is ill. Inadequate absorption of fat leads to wasting — or consumption as it may also be called. Now let us speak about protein . The presence of protein is essential from the very outset. It is present in the egg before a human being or an animal comes into existence. We can therefore say that protein is the substance which really builds up the human body and is the basis upon which it develops; it is the primary and fundamental substance out of which everything else in the body must unfold. Protein is present in the mother's womb as a tiny egg; the fertilisation of the egg enables the protein to become the basis of the human body. But man needs protein all the time; it must be a constituent of his regular food. If his organism contains too little protein, or he cannot thoroughly digest it, he will gradually waste away; but if at any moment of his life he were without protein he would immediately die. Protein is essential both for the beginning of existence and for man's very life. Absence of protein means death. Now let us think again about the different kinds of foodstuffs. The salts have a special connection with the front part of the head; that is where they are chiefly deposited. The carbohydrates are deposited a little farther back. Upon the carbohydrates depends the proper shaping of the human form. The fats are deposited still farther back and from there they begin to fill out the body. The fats do not enter directly into the body but pass from the blood into the head and are distributed to the body from there. All the substances, including protein, pass through the head. Now there is a great difference among the carbohydrates. In foodstuffs such as lentils, beans, peas, rye, wheat, it is the fruit that is the source of the carbohydrates. The wheat we get from the earth is the fruit of the plant; the lentil is fruit. A property peculiar to fruits is that they are already digested in the stomach and intestines and it is only their forces that reach the head. Typical conditions which follow the eating of lentils and beans are evidence to us all that the whole process of digestion is taking place in the intestines. The characteristic of fruits is that they are already fully digested in the intestines. But we cannot eat the fruit of the potato plant, because it is poisonous. There is a difference between the potato as a foodstuff and lentils, beans, peas, rye, wheat, etc. What part of the potato plant do we eat? We eat the tuber, the bulb. Now the bulb is just that part of a plant or root which is not digested in the intestines. Fruits are digested in the intestines. But the fruit of the potato plant cannot be eaten, and the bulb is not a root in the real sense. Very well, then, when a potato is eaten it passes into the stomach and intestines where it cannot be digested; the blood carries it upwards in an undigested state. Instead of reaching its own area of the brain in a fine, etherealised condition and being at once sent down into the body — as happens with foodstuffs like rye or wheat — the digestion, properly speaking, has to take place in the brain. When we eat bread made of pure rye or wheat, it is fully digested in the stomach and intestines; the onus of digestion does not devolve upon the head but the head is left free for its task of providing for the distribution over the body. On the other hand, when we eat potatoes or potato-bread, the head has to cope with the actual digestion. But when the head has to be employed primarily for the digestion of the potatoes, it becomes incapable of thinking in the real sense, because in order to think its forces must be kept free; the abdomen should relieve it of the task of digestion. So if potatoes are eaten in excessive quantities ... this is a habit which has been steadily on the increase since the potato was introduced as an important foodstuff in Europe ... the head is gradually thrown out of gear for the purpose of really active thinking and little by little man loses the capacity to think with the middle part of his brain; he thinks, then, only with the front part of the brain — which is dependent on the salts. This tends more and more to make him a purely intellectual, materialistic thinker. The front part of the brain is incapable of genuinely spiritual thinking. It is through the front part of the brain that man becomes intellectualistic. What has happened is that really deep and inward thinking began to wane in Europe from the moment the potato became an important constituent of food. We must realise, of course, that the human being is not a product of the forces of the earth alone. I have told you many times that man is created by the forces of the whole surrounding universe, by the forces of sun, moon and stars. When a man feeds on potatoes, the middle part of his head is used solely for the purpose of digesting them. The result is that having shut himself off from the universe around, he no longer acknowledges its existence and declares: All this talk about spirituality streaming down from the universe is so much twaddle! ... And so it may be said that too much potato food has helped to drive the modern age into materialism. Needless to say, it is chiefly the poor who are obliged to fall back on potatoes simply because they are cheap; the well-to-do can afford to buy food containing substances like spices and salts which work upon the front part of the head. Spices have the same effect as salts in the front part of the head. And so these people become thorough-going intellectualists; and the others, being incapable of really active thinking, can easily be imposed upon. The potato as a foodstuff is related in a very special way to man's spiritual activity; it has actually furthered materialism. Thinking now of the different members of man's being, we shall say: the physical body originates in the first place from protein. Protein is connected with the birth and death of the physical human being. The etheric body is at work in the fats, the astral body in the carbohydrates; the “I,” or Ego, in the salts. It is the astral body that enables man to have feeling and perception. When I feel a blow on my hand, it is not the physical body in which the feeling arises; if it were, then everything physical would have the faculty of feeling. The flesh is pressed back, and then the muscle; the flesh in the muscle is forced away from the astral body and then I feel something — in the astral body. All feeling arises in the astral body. But the astral body must be able to carry out its functions in the right way. I have told you that if the astral body, even by day, is in a sleepy condition and not actively at work, corpulence sets in and deposits of fat accumulate. Or again — if a man is active only in his head, in his intellect, fats are deposited. But the astral body which is also at work, for example in speech, needs the carbohydrates to be present all over the body, not only in the head. The astral body has to move the legs, the hands, and so on. It needs the presence of carbohydrates all over the body. If a man's food contains carbohydrates in the form of rye or wheat, the forces of these substances stream into the whole body; but if the food consists only of potatoes, the forces accumulate up there in the head and the man becomes weak and debilitated; his astral body cannot be as active as it ought to be. So that what is spiritual in the human being becomes exhausted, less and less active, when he cannot provide his organism with carbohydrates. This is impossible if he feeds entirely on potatoes because the head has so much to do that the body has to suffer. And now let us consider how science sets to work. Investigations are made in order to discover what quantities of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, sulphur and other substances — the four named being the main ones — are contained in protein. It is then found that carbon or hydrogen are present in protein in such and such percentages; in fat the percentages are different and in the carbohydrates different again. But science has no idea of the significance of substances in themselves ; science only knows the percentages in which the various constituents are present. But that does not really lead anywhere. The constituents of the potato and the constituents of rye or wheat work in quite different ways. The important thing to know is that when the flower or fruit of a plant is eaten it is digested in the intestines; when a root is eaten it is really digested in the head. Upon no other basis can these things be applied in medicine. Anyone who can think in a truly therapeutic way will know that a medicament prepared from flowers, or seeds, or fruits, has its main effect in the intestines; a preparation of roots, on the other hand, will have a remedial effect upon the head. When we eat roots, an effect is made upon the head — a material effect. It is very important to know this. But we can go further. If a human being has been so debilitated by feeding on potatoes that he is not only incapable of moving his hands and feet properly but is so exhausted that the organs connected with propagation are no longer active, then the matter becomes still more serious. Let us suppose that the effect of feeding on potatoes is so overpowering that the organs of procreation in the female are weakened and impaired. ... Man, as you know, is not only a product of his ancestors but as a being of soul-and-spirit he comes from the spiritual world; this being of soul-and-spirit unites with what is provided by the ancestors. I will make a rough sketch — everything of course is very much enlarged. ( Dr. Steiner makes a sketch on the blackboard .) The human being originates from the fertilised female ovum. Star-like formations then appear, cells separate off and from these separated cells the body gradually takes shape. But no human body can form unless the being of soul-and-spirit coming from the spiritual world unites with what is developing here. Now if circumstances are such that the mother or the father has been eating too much potato food, the seed from which the embryo develops will from the outset be of such a nature that a great deal of work devolves upon the head. If the father and mother have been properly nourished with bread made of rye or similar substances, the embryo will have more or less this appearance. ( Sketch .) But if potatoes have been eaten in excessive quantities the following happens. The preponderating part of an embryo is the head — it is a round dome. The soul-and-spirit must penetrate into the head and, once there must begin to be active. The soul-and-spirit works chiefly on the head while the human being is still an embryo in the mother's body. If the soul-and-spirit finds in the embryonic head elements which derive from the rye- or wheat-components of the mother's food, then it can work in the proper way. For you see, the flowers containing the grains of rye or wheat have grown upwards from the earth and the Spiritual has already streamed towards the plant, is already allied with the plant. The being of soul-and-spirit is able to work when conditions arising from food composed of the fruits of plants are encountered in the mother's body. It is a different matter altogether if the being of soul-and-spirit finds an embryonic head that is the result of the mother having eaten excessive quantities of potatoes. ... For just think of it: the potato lies right down in the earth, it is covered by the soil, has to be dug up from the ground; it grows in the darkness, it has no bond with the Spiritual; the being of soul-and-spirit descending from the spiritual world encounters a head that is a product of darkness; the spirit cannot penetrate it, and the result is hydrocephalus — water on the brain. The embryo develops a gigantic head ( sketch .) For if the spirit is unable to make any real approach, the Physical grows apace and hydrocephalus develops. If the spirit is able to approach, the water is held in check; the spirit is able to work in the physical substances and the head develops in its proper and normal proportions. The gigantic heads often to be seen in embryos are the outcome of faulty nutrition for which potato food taken in excess is often responsible. And so this kind of food not only causes exhaustion and weakness in the adult human being but even at birth the soul-and-spirit was not, in the real sense within the physical body. You know that man consists of physical body, ether body, astral body and “I” but these members of his being do not interact in the same way at every age of life. Until the age of seven, ether body, astral body and the “I” are still only making their way down into the physical body of the child. When the ether body has penetrated fully into the physical body, the second teeth appear; when the astral body has penetrated fully into the physical body, puberty is reached. Therefore if potato food taken in excess has made it difficult for the soul-and-spirit to enter into the embryo in the real sense, this will also have an injurious effect upon what happens at the age of 14 or 15. All through his life such a human being will go about as if his body did not really belong to him, as if it were hanging about him like a bag. The effect of too much potato food may therefore be that human beings are born without sufficient strength to cope with life and its demands. These are matters of tremendous importance! Social conditions depend upon many factors other than those mooted at the present time. Social conditions depend, too, upon really wise cultivation of the fields: for example, not using the soil for the production of more potatoes than people can consume if their strength is to be maintained. Social science must go hand in hand with a true knowledge of nature. That is absolutely essential. To speak only about surplus values, capital, and so forth, is of no fundamental value. If Communism ever succeeded in wiping out capital and assuming control of everything ... well, it would all come to nothing if the science at its disposal did not know how to utilise the fields wisely, did not know that potatoes are not so good for the stomach, as rye or wheat. These are the kind of things to bear in mind. Continual talking in circles leads nowhere. What we need is a real science, a science which understands how the spirit can work in matter. Anthroposophy is obliged, quite against its will, to battle on two fronts. And why Scientists to-day are occupied only with matter, with the percentages of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen contained in protein and so forth. But this tells us nothing essential about matter itself. Physical science does not really understand matter, because to understand matter one must know how the spirit is working within it. Suppose a man wants to know all about a watch. He says to himself: This watch is made of silver. The silver came from such and such a mine; then it was taken by train to such and such a town and delivered to merchants. The watch has a china face inscribed with figures. The china was manufactured in such and such a town, then sent somewhere else ... and so on and so on. But at the end of it all he knows nothing essential about the watch! Nor will he until he knows exactly what the watchmaker did. To understand why a watch goes, it is not at all essential to know how and where the silver was mined; what is important is to know how the watchmaker made the watch go, how he adjusted the wheels and so forth. To know in the abstract that foodstuffs are composed of so much carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, fat, carbohydrate, makes no difference at all to health and disease; but what is very important for health and illness is to know, for example, that potatoes nourish the mental life of human beings as little as they nourish their physical bodies. For other purposes it is, of course, quite useful to know about the silver coming from mines and the rest of the process, but for any understanding of health or sickness among men this kind of knowledge is of no importance. Because it does not realise its own shortcomings, science puts up a fight when Anthroposophy tries to provide what is lacking. The one battlefront is therefore against materialism which declares that the explanations given by Anthroposophy are sheer fantasy and reproaches it for speaking of the spirit. That is the one front. The other front is constituted by the attitude of theology and of the representatives of religion. A great deal is said about the soul reaching heaven through prayer and the sacraments. Well and good ... but if a man is not able to make proper use of his body and therefore lives in the physical world without being rightly adjusted to the conditions of earthly life, then it will be very difficult for him to find his bearings after death. Of this, however, the theologians do not speak. Man must be able to cope with practical life; he must know how to take hold of matter. Religion and theology talk a great deal but do not succeed in making the human being so strong in earthly life that after it is over he can find a firm basis. Prayer that has no foundation in knowledge actually sidetracks men from recognising the essentials of a really healthy life. It is hardly likely that you will ever have listened to sermons on subjects like the respective merits of potatoes or wheat as food! At any rate it will not be your experience that most clergymen think it important to preach about the effect of rye or wheat upon health. They attach no importance to these matters because in their opinion they are not sacred. To pray or to expound the Gospels, that and that alone is sacred according to their way of thinking. ... But the Divine is at work in the whole of nature, not only when men pray or converse on the subject of Holy Writ. The Spiritual is an active power in nature. If man prevents the Spiritual from having access to his head because by eating potato food to excess he gives the head too much to do ... well, he may pray, but it will be to no purpose because he has been sidetracked from the Spiritual. That too is something that escapes notice. God did not find the earth as a clod out of which all things were then made; the Divine Power is active everywhere, in every single particle, and it is there that we must seek for its manifestations. But when this is done, the theologians accuse us of materialism! By the scientists we are called deluded spiritualists, by the theologians, materialists. This shows how much weight can be attached to such statements! It was just the same in 1908 when Anthroposophy was said to be under Jesuitical influences; it was stated that anthroposophists were being delivered by their leaders into the hands of the Jesuits. In the meantime things have changed and now the Jesuits are saying that anthroposophists have been delivered into the hands of the Freemasons! But these are not the things that really matter. What does matter is that men shall acquire a kind of science able to explain, for example, why hydrocephalus develops in the embryo instead of a perfectly proportioned head. You will be saying to yourselves that after all there are plenty of people who show no signs of hydrocephalus. That, of course, is true, because other forces counteract the tendency and then, at the time of birth, the head is not as disproportionately large as it was in the embryo; it may actually be quite small but still hydrocephalic. The fact is that since the introduction of potato food, embryonic heads are always much too large. In the later stages they contract but this very contraction has an injurious effect because they are not able to take in what is needful — they can only take in water. When the human being has been born, hydrocephalus is not only indicated by the size of the head. Typical hydrocephalus, it is true, is to be recognised from the size of the head, but the point of real importance is whether water is serving its proper purpose or whether other elements are playing a part. This is just as important as anything else that may be brought to the knowledge of mankind by science on the one hand or theology and religion on the other. But it is something that must be approached from the right point of view. What sort of treatment is meted out to Anthroposophy to-day? A little while ago, people who called themselves “non-anthroposophical students of Anthroposophy” held a kind of congress in Berlin. They state that they are not Anthroposophists but desire to know about Anthroposophy. Well ... a certain Dr. G. who was here at one time but subsequently left us, had a great deal to say. He addressed an audience of clergyman, licentiates, professors. And now, on the basis of what he said, people are lecturing against Anthroposophy here, there and everywhere. You will suppose that what Dr. G. told these people convinced them that Anthroposophy is very harmful. But I ask you — just think of the average mind of a typical clergyman or professor to-day, and then listen to what Dr. G. said to them. He said: Anthroposophy is particularly harmful because the anthroposophists are being duped ... what Dr. Steiner and Frau Dr. Steiner would really like would be to cut off a portion of the earth, make a planet of their own and together with all the anthroposophists establish a planetary colony in the universe! That is what Dr. G. said to these enlightened people. As you can imagine, none of them really believe it, yet they act as if this kind of talk had convinced them of the harmfulness of Anthroposophy. What lunacy it is! But these same enlightened people participate in many different kinds of meetings as well, where destinies are determined. At these meetings they are no shrewder than they were at the other ... and so one cannot help wondering what kind of people are ruling the world to-day! The hostility to Anthroposophy is really hostility to truth. People are determined not to allow these things to come into the open. So they say that Anthroposophy is very secret. But how, I ask you, how can it be anything else? There is, in reality, no greater secrecy about it than there is when a man has stolen something and bidden it; until it is found it is secret. Anthroposophy is secret in the same sense — because it has been cast into obscurity by science and the other branches of cultural life. That is why Anthroposophy seems to suggest a kind of secrecy. But it ceases to be secret the moment it is found! Anthroposophy has no desire at all to be mysterious but to bring into the light of day things that have been obscured and hidden by other influences. ... Now I have to travel to Vienna and I will let you know when we can continue these lectures.

Cosmic Workings In Earth and Man

On Nutrition

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/CosmicWorks/19230922p01.html

Dornach

22 Sep 1923

GA350-16

This lecture is number one of fifteen in the lecture series entitled, The Functioning of Spirit in Nature and in Man – The Being of Bees . Translated by A. Innes Well, gentlemen, have you had any ideas? If not, I will talk to you about something which links up quite well with matters I have already discussed. In observing Nature — as a rule people do so rather without thinking — the moment we begin to reflect about the things of Nature, so much points to the presence of the spiritual that our curiosity cannot fail to be aroused regarding the actual working of this Spirit, we cannot help becoming curious about it. In the case of the beavers' lodge and other such things I have repeatedly drawn your attention to the amount of spiritual activity to be found in Nature. Now today I am going to point to something further. At a certain time in summer when man walks in the open and sees the lovely iridescent play of butterfly wings, he does not stop to query the origin of this manifold many-coloured fluttering of butterflies moving so freely. You see, this is even of great practical significance. In fact, I am convinced that were we to attempt new experiments in the field of aeronautics, here in our Goetheanum precincts, they would not be staged as they are when based on materialistic science. Experiments are continually being made based on the flight of birds, dragon-flies, and so forth, but experimenting along the lines of butterfly flight has never been considered. Aviation, however would only assume its right form could it on a large scale base its experiments on the butterfly flight. But people today do not think of this, because they are unable to discern the true facts. Even in regard to the practical side of life these things are only grasped rightly when the spiritual is considered. Now today I am going to point out something regarding butterflies which does not really belong to aeronautics but which will shed light on the subject. You see, a butterfly does not start life as such, but evolves by means of a very complicated process. We will start from the fact that when autumn approaches the time is now ripe for the butterfly to lay an egg. Thus the starting point of the butterfly is the laying of an egg. It is not a butterfly that comes out of this egg. What emerges from this egg is not an ordinary butterfly — the swallow-tail, for instance, which looks like this (drawing) — but something which is commonly called a grub; in other words, a caterpillar is hatched. Now this caterpillar is hatched from the egg. Here is its head, here at the other end the sting (drawing), and it crawls around lazily. Outwardly it appears to be a sluggard. Inwardly however, it is far from sluggish, for from its own body it spins threads out of which it forms a hard covering. Gradually the caterpillar completely disappears into this covering, and disintegrates; thus it spins itself a cocoon which it attaches to a tree where it hangs. It first attaches the threads and then vanishes into the cocoon. So we first have the egg, then the caterpillar and now the Chrysalis — for that is its name. This chrysalis remains suspended for a certain length of time, after which an opening appears in some part of it and the butterfly emerges. Thus before the butterfly exists as such, four things are required. First of all the egg, secondly the caterpillar, thirdly the chrysalis, and fourthly the actual butterfly. The egg is laid in some place. The caterpillar crawls around, the chrysalis remains quite still, and the butterfly gaily flutters forth into the air. It can then lay another egg and the same story is repeated in the course of the year. This is what happens. Now people see this and learned folk explain it by observations under a microscope or other such means. The matter, however, is not so simple. One has to take into account where and how the egg can live, how the caterpillar and chrysalis live, and finally how the butterfly lives. If the egg is to reach the stage of hatching out a caterpillar, it above all requires moisture — often just a drop in which a little salt is dissolved. No egg can thrive without a certain amount of humidity in which salt is present. For this reason the butterfly's instinct must lead it to lay the egg where it will find moisture containing some salt. Otherwise nothing happens. What I am telling you in regard to butterflies applies also to bees. It is likewise necessary for bees to lay their eggs where salt — even if very little — has penetrated. It suffices for mist to seep in, as mist always possesses a certain amount of saline moisture. Nature comes to the rescue. Such things do not always dawn on human understanding. Nature indeed is far cleverer than man. The egg, however, always requires moisture containing a certain amount of salt. This is necessary to the butterfly, too, as it enables the caterpillar to be hatched. So the egg just requires this moisture containing salt; it has no eyes, so sees nothing and just lives for itself in a world of total darkness. The moment the caterpillar is hatched it meets the light and remains in it. It has some organs, has reached the light, and now becomes quite another kind of creature than it was as an egg. The egg has entirely transformed itself into a caterpillar. Inner sensation is produced in the caterpillar because it is exposed to the light and has sense organs. Such things are made evident in the case of certain phenomena. You have no doubt noticed the astonishing fact when a lamp has been lit that all sorts of insects flutter around in the room, feel drawn to the light, and are even so stupid as to hurl themselves into the flame and get burnt. Why is this? Of course this does not happen in the case of the caterpillar, but it has the same urge. I may say that the caterpillar is drawn to the sunlight by the same urge as that felt by the insect who plunges into the candle flame, only the caterpillar cannot rise to the sun. Could it rise from the ground and fly to the sun, very soon we should no longer have any caterpillars. They would all fly up and away to the sun. For that is their urge, gravity only binds them to the earth. So when we see a caterpillar we know that it really has the urge to follow the light. This is impossible, so what does it do? Just imagine that here is the beam of light and here the caterpillar (drawing). As the caterpillar crawls along, it spins a thread in the pattern of the beam of light. It spins in exact accordance with the beam of light and at night when there is no light it rolls up the thread. It spins it out in the sunlight and rolls it up again at night. In this way it forms its sheath. The caterpillar completely surrenders to the light, it dies in the light. Just as the insect surrenders to the flame, so the caterpillar dies into the light, but being unable to reach the sun it does not enter the sunbeam. However, it spins its own body into these threads and so forms the cocoon — as threads spun in this way are called. The silkworm spins the silk according to the light, so when you take its silk you can certainly say: This is spun light! Earthly matter is spun in the pattern of light rays, and when you come across a chrysalis you are really seeing pure sunlight spun around this earthly matter in the pattern of the sunbeam. We have now reached the point where spun light surrounds the chrysalis, and naturally something different occurs from what does in the case of the insect which burns by plunging into the flame and so can accomplish nothing further. In the short time the insect takes to hurl itself into the flame, could it but spin such a cocoon modelled on light, a new animal would arise from the fire. This is only hindered by the burning. By reason of this it is interesting to learn the real impulse of the insect which flutters around the room at night and plunges into the flame. Its urge is indeed to propagate itself and perish in order to re-emerge as a new being. Only it deceives itself because it cannot create a cocoon so rapidly. The caterpillar, however, has the time to create this sheath, to hang it up, so the sun forces, imprisoned inside, can now create the butterfly which is then able to fly out and enjoy the activity of a sun-being. This is the way to observe things in Nature. First, quite a significant idea is implied in what I have told you. One might think that the insect by plunging into the flame just has the urge to perish, whereas this is not the case. It wants to reappear in another form. It would fain be transformed by the flame. This is always so in death. Death does not annihilate, but when it comes about in the right way it transforms the creature. This is the first thing we see. The second is the deep connection between all things in outer Nature. The butterfly you see is created out of light, but light had first to take up matter, form a case and be turned into threads inside the chrysalis. All animal entities are created out of light. This applies to man as well, by reason of the fertilisation of the female ovum. A sheath encloses the light within the mother's body, so man is really created by this light. So the possibility arises for man to be born out of light. Thus we see how the butterfly arises from light which has first been imprisoned. Now the butterfly flutters about in many different colours. These colours are seen to be prevalent where the light is most effective. In regions where the birds have wonderful colours the sun has greater power. What effect is produced by the action of imprisoned sunlight? In every instance colour is produced and this applies to the butterfly as well. The butterfly owes its colour to the action of imprisoned light. The butterfly is understood only when viewed as a complete creature of light which is responsible for its manifold colours. But you see this cannot be accomplished by the sun alone. The matter stands thus: In the case of the egg, we see that moisture and salt play their part. Salt is earthy moisture in water. So we can say that to thrive, the egg needs earth and a little water. The caterpillar creeps into the light. By nature the caterpillar cannot thrive in just earth and water (in other words, dissolved chalk and water) but it requires moisture, water, and also air. This moisture and air the caterpillar demands is not merely the physical substance required by the egg, but in this moisture lives what is known as ether — what I called ether-body in referring to man. The caterpillar acquires an ether-body through which it breathes. This ether-body enables it to take in the spiritual present in air. The egg is still entirely physical, whereas the caterpillar already lives in both physical and etheric, but this it finds difficult as it contains far too much earthly matter. When the content of the caterpillar comes into contact with the light, one sees that it spins the light out of itself in the form of a cocoon. The caterpillar has an urge towards the light, but it is held back by the strong forces in it. It cannot deal with this task. Its urge is to soar, to pour itself into the light and to live there. So what does it do? Well, it isolates itself, envelops itself in its sheath along with the sunbeams. In the chrysalis the caterpillar altogether isolates itself from the physical earth forces. Inside the chrysalis where the grub has vanished, astral forces are now present — no longer earthly or etheric forces, but astral forces which are entirely spiritual and live in imprisoned light. Imprisoned light always contains spiritual astral forces, and these create the butterfly. As the butterfly consists entirely of astral forces it can now fly about in the air which was impossible for the caterpillar. It can follow the light. Being no longer subject to gravity the butterfly can simply follow the light. Through its surrender it has eliminated gravity to which it is no longer subject. So it can be said that it has matured as far as the ego. It is an ego in which we see the butterfly flying around. We men have our ego inside, whereas that of the butterfly is outside. The ego is actually light and is responsible for the butterfly's colour. In thinking this over there is something that must be clear in your minds. You are continually saying “I” to yourself. What does this signify? Every time you say “I” to yourself a little flame lights up in your brain, only it is invisible to ordinary sight. That is light. When I say “I” to myself I kindle this inner light. In saying “I,” I kindle the selfsame light that colours the butterfly's wings! It is really most interesting to note that when I say “I” to myself, could I allow this “I” to expand over the whole world of Nature, it would be light. It is only my body that keeps this “I” imprisoned. Were I able to let it expand, this ego, this light, would permit me to create real butterflies. The human ego actually has the power needed to create real butterflies and insects in general. You see, men imagine everything to be so simple, but in olden times when people had knowledge of these things, they spoke accordingly. In ancient Jewish times a word such as Jahve had the same meaning as “I.” In old Hebrew, Jahve could be pronounced only by the priest, because he had been prepared to understand its significance. For as he spoke this word he saw himself surrounded by a flight of butterflies. If he failed to do so he would know that he had not spoken with true inner feeling. But when he pronounced the word with right inner feeling he saw actual butterflies. He could not impart this to others however, for it would have unbalanced their minds. He had first to prepare himself for such an experience. It is none the less true. Well, gentlemen, how can this be explained? Just picture a large eiderdown filling the space between the reading desk and the point where I am standing. The down inside is rather sparse. So from where I stand I try to push on towards the desk, pressing the down together. But I am unable to reach the desk, I have to stop half-way, because I cannot compress the down any further. I cannot reach the desk but can feel pressure when I lean against the eiderdown. In the same way, gentlemen, you have the urge to express the “I” — in fact to produce real butterflies, because the ego consists of light. But this you cannot do. Instead, you feel the resistance just as I do when I press forward. This is due to your thoughts. Your thoughts impede you from creating real butterflies by means of light. The ego thinks thoughts and these thoughts are really just pictures of the butterfly-world. You see, the same thing would happen today as in ancient Jewish times when just anyone who said Jahve could have seen the whole of the butterfly-world. People would have said: “Of course he is crazy!” It would moreover have been true had he been too immature to behold spiritual things. But today if one states that the “I” and light are identical, that light when imprisoned creates butterflies, and that the same thing in our specially adapted brain creates thoughts, again people will say: “The man is mad!” All the same it is true, and this is just the difference between truth and mere madness! So when we see the bright butterfly in the air we must realise that the same impulse works upon us when with the right inner feeling we say “I.” Neither the butterfly nor even the higher animal can say “I,” for in their case the ego works from outside. When you see a lion, it is the animal's buff colour that its ego works upon from outside. The whole world of nature is responsible for the lion's existence. Because we think from within outwards we do not acquire our colouring from outside, but acquire from within the colour of our skin which, in painting, it is very hard to reproduce. Our “I” with the help of the blood is responsible for giving our body this wonderful human tint, only reproduced in painting when one succeeds in mixing and blending all the colours correctly. You see Nature is forever at work on the creature, but she works in a spiritual way. I have told you here that there must be a transition from moisture containing air to light. Now here is the chrysalis living in air and light; as caterpillar it lived in water and air; here as chrysalis in air and light; then it shuts itself off more and more from the light which is imprisoned, and it turns to the astral which now works upon it. Just take another look at this: caterpillar and chrysalis. Now think of an animal not able to spin threads from its own body, Let us imagine a special kind of caterpillar which, having become such, has the urge to reach the light but is unable to do so because its body cannot spin threads. The animal cannot turn its body into one capable of spinning threads outside. The caterpillar really spins itself to death. It ceases to be, for its whole body is consumed in the spinning. An empty framework is all that is left. But suppose you had an animal that did not possess the physical substance with which to spin. What will the creature do if it is in this plight, if exposed to strong light? It cannot spin a cocoon for itself. What does it do then? It will do the spinning inside its body, and what it spins will be the blood vessels! The blood of such an animal which lives in the air is inwardly spun, just as the butterfly, or rather the caterpillar, spins the cocoon outside. We should then have an animal which as it lived in the air-water element would have a blood system suited to that element. If it lives for a time in the light it alters the form of its blood vessels; they become quite different. It now spins them inside its own body because it cannot spin outside. Now let us make a clear picture. Imagine there is an animal that breathes through gills — as it must in water — and that this animal moves in the water by means of a tail. Then his blood vessels extend into gills and tail. Thus the animal swims in the water where it can even breathe. The fish has gills, with which it is possible to breathe in water. But imagine the animal often rises to the air, gets out on the bank, or the pond itself dries up. Then it is more exposed to the light and loses the watery element. New regions appear where it must have light and air instead of water and air. What does the animal do then? Now look — I will draw this with dots. The animal withdraws the blood vessels from the gills which increasingly vanish, and it spins these blood vessels in here. The animal spins its own blood vessels and those which were directed to the gills are now inserted here. The blood vessels formerly belonging to the tail are withdrawn and thus feet are grown. The blood vessels formerly in the tail now go to the feet enabling them to walk, and they are spun differently from those in the tail. You can see this in Nature — this is a tadpole and that a frog! The frog starts life as a tadpole with tail and gills, and can live in water. When it reaches the air it inwardly performs what the caterpillar does outwardly. The tadpole which is a frog, able to live in water, spins a network out of its own blood system. This spreads out in its body, and what once formed part of blood vessels and gills now becomes lung. Where gills once were, we now have lungs, spun there by the animal. In place of the tail we have feet and, as the movement of the blood has already evolved a heart, these feet move by means of the blood circulating from heart to lung. So the same path from water and air to air and light, followed by caterpillar to chrysalis, is also taken by the frog in its elements of air and water. In this case, however, air penetrates, as the animal must be exposed to both air and light. Light and air create lungs and legs whereas water and air create fish tails and gills. The fact is that activity not only takes place within the animal but the whole cosmic environment always plays its part as well. What attitude is taken by the scientists? What did we do in trying to make our picture? Well gentlemen, what we have done is to look at the world. We have viewed the world as it is and have observed Nature! What does the scientist do? Generally speaking he takes scant notice of Nature when he seeks to discover these things. Instead, he starts by going to an optician and ordering a very powerful microscope. It will not be taken out into the world of nature where it would be of little use, but will be shut up in a room where butterfly eggs will be laid. The scientist has little feeling for the butterfly fluttering in the light. He puts the egg on a specially prepared plate and observes it through the microscope (drawing). He keeps his eye on it and takes note of what happens to the egg after he has dissected it. Nature no longer acts, but the scientist cuts up little bits and examines the particles flattened out on a piece of paper under the microscope. These tiny particles cut with a razor blade are examined, and investigation is based on just that. This is how investigations are often made today. Think of a university lecture. The professor assembles as many people as possible into his study and allows them in turn to view what he has dissected. Of course, he often takes them for outings as well, but has little to say about what exists out-of-doors because he does not know much about it. His entire knowledge consists in what he sees under the microscope after having chopped up little bits and pieces. What wisdom does he acquire in this way? He discovers everything already present in the egg only in infinitesimal quantity. Well, gentlemen, that is all one can find when one begins by chopping it up with a razor blade and examining it under the microscope! One forgets all that is active outside in air, light and water. We just have the little specimen all ready and place it under the microscope. It is impossible to investigate in this way. All one can say is that the butterfly lives in the open, and here under my microscope I already have the whole butterfly in miniature. Today people no longer believe what follows, but formerly they would say: Here we have a woman called Annie who has a mother called Maria. Now Maria gave birth to Annie. Very well, but the entire Annie was already present in the ovum inside the mother Maria. So we must imagine it thus: here is the ovum of Anna and here the ovum of Maria in which is Anna; but Maria herself derives from Gertrude who is Annie's grandmother. Now if Annie's ovum was contained in Maria's, it must also have been in that of Gertrude. Now Annie's great grandmother was Katie; so the ovum of Annie, Maria and Gertrude must have already been present in that of Katie, and so it goes on right hack to the first ovum of all, which is Eve's. So people said — it was of course the easiest solution — that a person alive today was already present in the egg-cell of Eve. This was known as the theory of pre-formation. The theories we still have today are just a little more nebulous. They no longer reckon on going back to Eve, but the idea is identical, and they have not really progressed if they say: The whole butterfly is already present! — and light, air and water which after all play their part are no longer considered. You see, when one considers the scientific method pursued by the professor who takes people into his study to demonstrate these very learned matters — which in regard to Nature's activities are mere folly — one realises that after all light, air and all the rest should be taken into account! The professor ignores all this and enters his dark room where artificial light is introduced, when possible, so that daylight may not disturb the microscope. And the thought comes to us: Good gracious! He still believes in the egg as containing everything; and present-day science just dismisses all the rest. It is all shelved and has nothing left to do. Contemporary science no longer has any knowledge of what works in air, light and water; it knows nothing at all about it. You see, this is something which already sorely rankles in our social life — this fact that on the one side we have a science that really disregards the entire cosmos and only has eyes for what can be seen through the microscope and, on the other side, a State that takes no interest in a pensioner nor has further use for him beyond paying his pension. The same thing applies in the case of the scientist who extracts means of nourishment from Nature, but no longer understands its working and only concerns himself with the microscope, in other words just with parts. Science today really regards the whole cosmos as an idler who has been pensioned off. This is a dreadful state of affairs, for the masses are unable to see any further. The general public says: these are the people who ought to understand such things. One already thinks of turning tiny children into scholars, and they are sent to school to be taught. From then on today they make great efforts to learn. Up to the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight they keep on studying; surely what they acquire must be the truth! Naturally, the general public cannot form an opinion and allows itself to be guided in these matters by the “learned,” and has no idea that what is taught no longer has any connection with Nature. Nature is referred to as someone now “on the shelf.” Thus the whole of our spiritual life is being swamped, and the time has now come when we must emerge. We do not progress for the simple reason that the general public finds it easier to accept what it hears. The truth today is told only by Anthroposophy! Nowhere else will you hear what I have just told you. Nobody will say such things. The general public simply pays no attention to them any longer. Anyone saying them is considered mad. It really is mad that this should be so! It is not the really mad who are considered so, but anyone speaking the truth is deemed mad. People really view this the wrong way round. In this connection I will tell you another little story. There was once a medical commission that arrived at the entrance of a lunatic asylum where they wished to do some research. They found a man by the door who received them in such a way that they took him to be the director or the doctor in charge. So they said: Will you be so kind as to take us round your cells and explain everything? So the man at the door took them round the cells explaining each case, saying: Here is a mental case who has remarkable visions and hallucinations along with epileptic fits. In the next cell he explained that this patient suffered from abnormal impulses of the will. He described it all quite clearly. They then came to the genuine lunatics who suffer from obsessions. You see, he said, here is a case who is always being pursued by ghosts, and here another who is pursued by human beings, not ghosts. Now I will take you to the worst case we have. So he took them to the greatest lunatic of all and said: This man suffers from the fixed idea that he is the Emperor of China. Of course this means that ideas have solidified in his head. Instead of these ideas just remaining as thoughts, in his case they have solidified. He explained this with great precision and added: But you must realise, gentlemen, that this is nonsense for I myself am the Emperor of China! You see, he had explained everything. He had led them around, but instead of leading them to science he had led them by the nose. For he himself was mad. He had told them that the other man was mad because he believed himself to be the Emperor of China, whereas he was that himself! The Commission had been conducted round by a complete lunatic. Thus where science is concerned it is not always possible to discern whether someone is mad or not. You would be surprised by the cleverness of some things lunatics tell you when you come into contact with them. For this reason the Italian natural scientist Lombroso has stated that there is no hard and fast distinction between genius and madness. Geniuses are always slightly mad, and madmen always possess a slight amount of genius. You can read about it in the little book called “Genius and Madness” published in a popular edition. When one is sane of course he can distinguish between genius and madness. But today we have reached the point where whole books can be found — such as Lombroso's — where science itself states that it is impossible to distinguish genius from madness. Of course this state of affairs cannot continue or spiritual life will be completely swamped. Nature, now neglected, must once more be reckoned with. Then one will notice the development from the egg to the caterpillar, and from the caterpillar to the chrysalis. One will see how light is imprisoned there as in us it is imprisoned — the gaily coloured butterfly darting forth. This is what I wanted to link with what we have already discussed, so that you may see how light contains creative spirit. For the worm or caterpillar has first to disappear for the butterfly to arise. It arises inside where the caterpillar has perished. The spirit creates. In every instance matter must first be destroyed and vanish, thus enabling the spirit to create the new being. This same thing applies to mankind. Fertilisation signifies that matter has first been destroyed. A minute quantity of this destroyed matter remains, and here spirit and light create the ego in man. If you give this a little thought you will grasp what I have told you. Instead of going on blindly, observe the tadpole and the frog and realise why the latter has a heart, lungs and feet, and why the tadpole can swim in water. All these things are interconnected. The matters we shall be studying further will show you that a genuine science which understands them can only arise out of Anthroposophy.

On the Nature of Butterflies

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA351/English/Singles/19231008p01.html

Dornach

8 Oct 1923

GA351-1

Iron, Sodium, Carbon, Chlorine (Dr. Steiner asks if anybody has a question.) Questioner : I believe that we are expecting Dr. Steiner to make some further remarks about the stars. DR. STEINER: Well, I will just try to connect my remarks with what I said last time and then build further on it. I will go over it again very briefly. We heard that everything which takes place with regularity in the universe, for instance, day and night, the course of the sun or the sequence of the seasons, is all connected with what is necessary in human life. The regular intake of food is necessary within the rhythm of sleeping and waking; the regular rhythm of breathing, circulation of the blood, and so on, is necessary. When we consider all this, we see that it is connected with what can be calculated through Astronomy. On the other hand, all that which happens less regularly — which certainly can be calculated but still happens less regularly, for example, comets and meteors — all these phenomena are connected with what is free will in man, with what gives rise to free will in man. First and foremost we must turn our attention to a substance which is particularly important, which is abundant on the earth and indeed in the universe, and is present in the meteors which fall on the earth. This substance is iron. Iron exists in such abundance on the earth that the whole of our modern culture and civilisation may be said to be based on it. Just think of all the purposes for which iron is used! It is only quite recently that people have begun to manufacture all sorts of things from substances other than iron. During the last two centuries all the great advances, as well as our social conditions, have been due to iron. We must assume that iron is everywhere present in the universe because when anything falls to the earth from the heavens, it is found to be of iron. Now let us consider the iron in our own bodies. It is very remarkable that at the beginning of his earthly life the human being drinks a substance which contains practically no iron — namely, milk. The mother's milk contains hardly any iron. So we can say: it is only in the course of his life that man begins to take in iron with his food. What does this mean! Think of a baby: it kicks a lot and certainly dreams; but it has neither independent thought nor any free will in the real sense. In the measure that it attains freedom of will, its instincts call for iron. Iron is really necessary for free will. And if you come across a man who is hoarse or has a very weak voice and you want to know what is really the cause of it, you must above all find out if he is getting enough iron, for a man who gets too little iron shows this in the lack of will as expressed in speech. When you come across a man who can literally bellow when he is talking, you need not worry whether he is getting enough iron. But in the case of a man who can hardly make himself heard, you are perfectly right to consider how far iron is lacking. Man's need of iron for his free will is shown outwardly. We can therefore easily understand that the iron which is everywhere present in the universe and in the earth is connected with man's free will. Now everything that happens influences everything else and we must be clear that iron alone does not form us or the universe — otherwise we should be iron men ... which would certainly make for strength, but if we were iron men we could not do many other things. So we must look for something which can form compounds with iron. I told you recently that soda is especially important for everything in us that has to do with thinking . For soda is sodium carbonate and sodium carbonate has a stimulating effect upon the head. Everything that is connected with our thinking, with our head, with our inner light, has to do with soda. You will remember that I recently explained this. In order that a substance like soda may be present in us, we must take in the oxygen contained in the air. This we do in breathing, for the air consists of oxygen and nitrogen — of many other things too but they play a less important part. We take in the oxygen with our breathing. What about the carbon? We form carbon in ourselves out of the food we take. Carbonic acid is formed and we then get carbonate of soda. Soda is very important for our heads. We have sodium carbonate — soda — within us, and it is all the time passing into our heads. In propagation, too, it has its part to play as I once told you. So you see soda is of great importance to us . And now I will tell you something else. I spoke to you once — it was some time ago — about colours. The chief colours are to be seen in the rainbow: violet, blue, green, yellow, then orange and then red, in order. These are the colours of the rainbow. Nature creates these colours in the rainbow, but man can also create them by admitting just a tiny shaft of light through the window of a dark room. ( Sketch .) Here is a window, here a small hole where the shaft of light enters. Here you place a glass prism so that the light passes through it and in this way you can get the colours as in the rainbow. You can then project them on a wall. Now this succession of colours, this spectrum which appears here in the prism, as in the rainbow, has this peculiarity: it is only properly shown when one uses a glass prism, or sunlight. When one uses other bodies, one does not get this sequence of colours but only single colours. For example, under certain circumstances it can be dark everywhere, except for a fine yellow line in the middle. How is this? If you put sodium into a flame and let it burn in the flame, then you get this yellow line, not the red line, but the yellow. Thus when you take a flame, let the light pass through a small hole and take a prism, you do not get a spectrum of the sun, but a yellow line. When you take a tiny bit of sodium and bring it into this large space ( sketch ) you get the fine yellow line. There need not be much sodium — everywhere there are these fine yellow lines — even the very tiniest amounts of sodium give these yellow lines. ... Sodium is widely, very widely spread in the universe. If you ask yourselves, why is sodium so widespread, then you must answer: in order that this sodium carbonate, this soda, can come into existence. It is spread everywhere in order that human heads can exist. Iron is everywhere present in the universe in order that we can have free will. Sodium is everywhere in order that we can have heads. Were sodium not present in the universe, it would be quite impossible for us to have heads. Now what must be present in order that we, as human beings, can have heads? There must be carbonic acid, that is to say, carbon and oxygen; and there must be sodium. Sodium, as I have told you, is present everywhere in the universe. Carbon we have in ourselves. It is all the time being created in us from our food; only it is transformed because we do not want to be dead carbon men, but living men, who destroy substance and then re-create it. And especially we create carbon. Thus we have the carbon ourselves, we take the oxygen from the air and the sodium from the universe. These must be present, in order that we may have heads. You see now that in this way, if these things were present which I have described, we could have heads and we could have our free will. But how would this free will help us as earth-men if we had not arms and legs so that we could use it? We must also be able to nourish ourselves. In order that we can be built up from the materials of the earth, we must be able to take in food. This depends on the fact that we have in our lower organs something similar to what we have in our breathing. We breathe in oxygen; we breathe out carbonic acid gas. If we did not breathe out this carbonic acid, then the plants would not have carbon, for it is taken from the carbonic acid of men and animals. Thus plants are formed by what is breathed out by men and animals. Moreover, the oxygen takes our carbon away — it combines with our carbon. But first we must produce the carbon, we must first have it. To this end we must take food. Oxygen is frightfully greedy for carbon. If we did not give up our carbon to the oxygen, we should at once get fits of suffocation when the carbon cannot get out — that is to say, when the carbonic acid cannot get out. We should suffocate at once. Oxygen is really greedy. Our stomach must also take in food. Just as the oxygen takes up carbon and carbonic acid is formed, so must our stomach greedily take in carbon. Our stomach literally craves for food. Now we might imagine that if oxygen were in our stomach, it could get out through the mouth and nose. The oxygen is there inside: it absorbs the carbon. There must thus be something in the stomach which also serves the process of the taking of nourishment. And so there is: a substance very like oxygen is in the stomach and is continuously being secreted, namely, chlorine . I have told you already that soda is used for bleaching and especially for washing. But chlorine is also used for bleaching, is in fact, contained in washing blue. It also is a material which has light in itself, which carries light. Chlorine is very similar to oxygen. In the breathing organs it is the oxygen of the air which continuously extracts the carbon from our bodies. In the stomach there is chlorine which, because it is greedy, frightfully greedy, similarly attracts to itself all hydrogen. And together with the hydrogen it forms hydrochloric acid. This hydrochloric acid flows about in our stomach and it is greedy for food. When we take food into our mouths it must first be dissolved by the acid in the saliva — ptyalin. This ptyalin is similar to hydrochloric acid. Then, when the food gets to the stomach, there is pepsin, which is somewhat similar to hydrochloric acid. But pepsin is hydrochloric acid which is alive . It absorbs food greedily. If a man has too little hydrochloric acid he has a bitter taste in his mouth. Why? Because hydrochloric acid takes up all foodstuffs greedily and dispatches them to all parts of the body. So when the hydrochloric acid does not work properly, the food which a man has eaten remains in the stomach. Then he has a bitter taste in the mouth when it comes up as gas, and a coated tongue. Some hydrochloric acid must always be active inside us, especially if we are to build up our limbs. And so we can say: Iron would not really help us unless we could use it in the operations of free will. We must build up our limbs. In order to do this, chlorine and hydrogen must combine to form hydrochloric acid. We must have this in us. Now consider: Apart from all else, you have everywhere in your bodies hydrochloric acid, and carbon, and much else. You must look at man like this. If this is a man ( sketch ), there is hydrochloric acid everywhere. This must take up tiny particles of iron from the blood. Then a man can develop a free and powerful will. So much depends upon how a man combines the iron in himself with what comes from the hydrochloric acid, from the chlorine. This process must always take place in the right way. Now it can happen that young girls at puberty have to expend so much energy that they have not enough left to combine the hydrochloric acid with the iron. Then, on the one hand, there is iron which makes them heavy and cannot combine with what comes from the chlorine because there is not enough energy to make this possible. It is useless simply to give iron to such a girl; for very likely she has enough iron already. She has anaemia, which young girls get, not because they have too little iron, but because the iron cannot combine with the chlorine. So you see this power to combine the iron with the chlorine must be developed in us. Now think of iron and then look out into the cosmos. Iron is connected with Mars. Mars is really the creator of iron in our planetary system. Man is related to Mars and the forces of Mars in many ways. I have already spoken about these things and shall do so again. Iron is connected with Mars. When we ask: What is it that has a great influence on a man when he does not properly produce his hydrochloric acid, when his stomach does not function properly, we find that it is Mercury, the planet Mercury, which is connected with chlorine. So that in the case of a young girl who is anaemic, we can say: the Mercury forces (which should work on the stomach and its appendages) and the Mars forces are not working well together. Mars creates in us those forces which make it possible for us to have iron. Mars must be there in order that we may have the power to use iron. And iron must be there in order that we may have the power to exercise free will. Mars gives us the power of the iron; meteors, since they are all the time giving up iron to the air, supply the substance of iron. Mars is that body in the cosmos which enables us to use in the proper way that iron which the meteors and comets bring to us in an irregular manner. It is actually the force of Mars together with that of the comets and meteors which enables us to speak . ... People just take human speech casually, and see nothing special in it. They do not really think , indeed they cannot really think, because they turn their attention to something which is not reality. Quite trivial matters are evidence of this. Just recently we have had a fire alarm test here. Naturally in such tests everything is done as it would be in the case of an actual fire. The Catholic Sunday paper announced that there had been a real fire here which was soon extinguished. You see, people are willing to think about something that didn't happen but not about something that did! That is just what is peculiar to-day: people think about all kinds of things that have never happened and have no inclination to think about what did. But a man who is always thinking about things which haven't happened loses all sense of reality. And that is so general nowadays. It is crippled thinking ... after all, when people continuously lie what is it but crippled thinking! Thus free will in man is produced by the Mars force and comet force. This, however, must work properly with the Mercury force within him. It is Mercury which causes in our stomach the right hydrochloric acid combination. Just as we make use of soda in our heads, so in our stomachs we use what comes from hydrochloric acid. Soda gives light to the head, and also to the embryo which is, for the most part, head. When the human being reaches puberty, the hydrochloric acid is taken over by those parts which are connected with the stomach. And if the hydrochloric acid combines with the soda which is everywhere present, we get ordinary salt. In our heads we need soda, with which we also bleach. In our stomachs we need ordinary salt. This is not only taken in with the food but is always being created, so that down there in the body too there may be light. For both soda and salt are carriers of light, are transparent to it. Now it is not without purpose that we add salt to our food. We salt our food in order to adjust ourselves properly to nature because we always secrete rather too little of our own salt. Thus the Mars force and the Mercury force must work together properly; if this happens, the iron that is necessary in our limbs will be at the disposal of our will, and we shall be able to use them with healthy, free will. You can see in the case of an anaemic girl, for example, that what comes from the stomach and depends on hydrochloric acid does not properly combine with the iron. Now we must investigate, and perhaps it will be found that the fault lies with iron — perhaps there is too little iron (which may well be the case in anaemia); or perhaps there is too little chlorine (which may also be the case). Then we must try to remedy this. But the trouble in most cases is that the two do not combine: Mars and Mercury in the human being do not combine. That is usually the cause of anaemia. In modern medicine people always want to find a single cause of disease ... but diseases may look identical outwardly and inwardly be quite different! If a girl has anaemia we must not only ask: has she too little iron? too little chlorine? ... but we must also ask: or do they not combine properly? If the girl has too little iron, we must see to it that she is given iron in the appropriate form. Well and good, but that is not so easy as it seems. For if, as usually happens, iron is introduced into the stomach, the chlorine must have the inclination to combine with this iron, otherwise the iron is left in the stomach, passes away through the bowels and does not get into the organism. Thus a way must first be found of bringing the Mercury force, the chlorine force, into the human being. And so it is of great importance not simply to give the iron as iron, but to introduce the iron into the stomach in such a form that it may somehow be taken up by the chlorine. But for that purpose a special medicine must be prepared, for example from spinach. Spinach contains iron. One can also make a medicine from other things, for example from aniseed and so on; but especially from spinach — not as ordinary spinach though it may also help if eaten just as it is. ... A medicine must be prepared from the iron in spinach, for it is then in a form in which it can be properly taken up by the blood. So, in a case where one finds that there is too little iron, one must try in this way to introduce more. But the disease may also be due to the fact that there is too little fat in the stomach to create hydrochloric acid. A certain scientist has discovered that in anaemia too little chlorine is created and so the disease has also been given the name of Chlorosis. But the real connection is not understood. One must not just try to introduce hydrochloric acid into the stomach for perhaps there is already enough of this, especially if it is brought in from outside. But what is important is that the chlorine should be produced in the stomach itself, that the stomach should have the capacity to produce chlorine. Man needs his own chlorine, not that which is introduced from outside. And for this it is necessary to introduce into the stomach something prepared in a special way from copper. This will make the stomach more capable of creating chlorine. ... So you see, things must be looked at from all sides. Usually in anaemia it is not the iron which is lacking, or the chlorine, but the trouble is due to the fact that the two cannot combine. Mars and Mercury in man cannot come together. In the cosmos, between Mercury and Mars, stands the Sun ( diagram ). Just as Mars is connected with iron, so is Mercury connected with quicksilver or with copper. If when there is a lack of chlorine one needs the Mars forces, and when there is a lack of copper the Mercury forces, so when the two cannot come together one needs to strengthen the working of the Sun forces which lie between them. For it is the Sun force in man which brings chlorine and iron together. And this Sun force can be stimulated by giving gold in tiny quantities. When one tries to cure with gold — naturally in specially prepared forms because otherwise it lies in the stomach and is not absorbed — one can bring Mars and Mercury together again. So you see, in illnesses of this character three kinds of medicine come into consideration. One cannot cure the disease merely from its name, but one must give a preparation of copper or of iron taken from a plant, from spinach for example. Or gold — in the appropriate form — may be necessary to bring them together. It amounts to this — when one only knows what happens here on the earth, one can know nothing essential about man ... and things that outwardly appear to be identical are called by identical names. But that is just as if we wanted to use a razor for cutting meat, simply because it is a knife. ... Anaemia's are not always the same. One form is due to poverty of iron, another to poverty of chlorine; and a third form is due to the fact that they do not harmonize properly ... there are different kinds of anaemia, just as there are different kinds of knives — razors, table-knives, pen-knives. But people always tend to mix everything up. A man may say of the condiments on the table that they are all additions to food, and so he salts his coffee, since salt is a condiment and so is sugar! This is on a par with the people who proclaim to the world: anaemia is anaemia. It is just as nonsensical as saying: condiment is condiment. For when one tries to cure an anaemia that is due to disharmony by means of iron, one does the same as when one salts coffee. You see, it is a matter of looking for something which is not just at the end of one's nose. It can be said with truth that our science has progressed a nose's length, for when one looks in a microscope, one always knocks one's nose! In life it is not so simple. It is said of a man who does not see something that he sees no farther than his nose. (Those people to-day who are always looking through microscopes, they also see no farther than their noses). ... But one must look up to Mars if one wants to see what is important in ordinary iron. Why? The connections can only be discovered by looking out into the cosmos. It is not poetical fiction to say that Mars has this or that power. It is not that one develops a sort of dim, vague clairvoyance which looks up to Mars, but one must get to know many things: one must learn to understand the Mars force in man and then one can really speak of Mars; otherwise not. And so it is with the other planets. We can for example say: it will always be found that when something is inwardly lacking in a human being — as in the case of anaemia when the iron cannot be assimilated — this is connected with an irregular working of Mercury in the organism. If something is outwardly lacking, this is connected with an irregular working of Mars. There are, for example, girls who suffer from anaemia at puberty — this means that something is inwardly not as it should be. The Mercury force is too weak and we must strengthen it by means of the gold forces. There are also boys — you know, with boys at puberty something happens outwardly, namely the change of voice; sometimes a hoarseness appears; while with girls something happens inwardly — the periods commence. This hoarseness corresponds to the anaemia of girls — boys of course may suffer from it too and in that case there is also something wrong inwardly. But when the change in the voice does not take place properly and a certain hoarseness appears, as is often the case, then the real culprit is not the Mercury force, but the Mars force. Although iron comes not only from Mars but from the meteors, one must in any case strengthen the Mars forces — and this may be possible with gold. You see, the onset of puberty expresses itself in quite different ways: with girls, in that they come more under the Mercury forces; with boys, in that they come more under the Mars forces and are inclined to get hoarse; or if they are not always hoarse they become so every winter. These things must be investigated by Spiritual Science to-day. The other sciences have no idea at all of these things. When anaemia is caused by a poverty of iron, for example, it is a matter of introducing into the stomach in the appropriate way that which, in the plant, brings about the right divisibility of iron. We only really get to know the nature of man when we relate it to the whole of the cosmos. This is infinite, but we must realise that all the stars of heaven have their particular influence on man. This is of the utmost importance. We will deal with other matters next time. Perhaps something will occur to you in connection with these things. You might also ask yourselves: How is the people's food related to their health? Something may have occurred to you in connection with prevalent epidemics, and so forth. We might speak about this. Think it over and perhaps by next time you will have found something you would like to hear about in connection with nutrition.

Cosmic Workings In Earth and Man

Effects of Substances in the Cosmos and in the Human Body

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/CosmicWorks/19231027v01.html

Dornach

27 Oct 1923

GA351-6

Causes Of Infantile Paralysis (Dr. Steiner asks if anyone has a question.) Questioner : Dr. Steiner has spoken about epidemics and how they are to be fought. At the present time an epidemic has broken out — Infantile Paralysis — which attacks adults as well as children. Could Dr. Steiner say something about this? Second Question : Is it harmful for people to keep plants in their bedrooms? DR. STEINER: As for the question about plants in bedrooms, it is like this. In a general way it is quite correct that the plants give off oxygen which men then breathe in and that man himself breathes out carbonic acid gas. Thus man breathes out what the plant needs, and the plant what man needs. Now, if plants are kept in a room, the following must be remembered: When one has plants in a room by day, things happen roughly as I have said; during the night the plant does indeed need rather more oxygen. During the night things are rather different. The plant does not need as much oxygen as man, but it needs oxygen. Thus in the darkness it makes demands on that which otherwise it gives to man. Naturally, man is not deprived altogether of oxygen, but he gets too little and that is harmful. Things balance themselves out in nature: every being has something that others need. So it is with plants, if one observes carefully. If the plants are put outside the bedroom when one sleeps, then there is no unhealthy effect. So much for this question. * * * Now as to Infantile Paralysis which just recently has become so prevalent in Switzerland too. It is still rather difficult to speak about this illness, since it has only assumed its present form quite recently, and one must wait till it has taken on more definite symptoms. Still, from the picture one can form at present — we have had a serious case of Infantile Paralysis in the Stuttgart Clinic and one can only judge by the cases which have occurred so far — one can say now that Infantile Paralysis, like its origin, Influenza, which leads to so many other diseases, is an extraordinarily complicated thing and can only be fought if one deals with the whole body. Just recently there has been discussion in medical circles as to how Infantile Paralysis should be treated. There is great interest in this now, because every week there are fresh cases of the disease. It is called Infantile Paralysis because it is mostly children who are attacked. Yet just recently there was a case of a young doctor who certainly is no longer a child, who was, I believe, perfectly healthy on Saturday, on Sunday was taken with Infantile Paralysis and was dead on Monday. This Infantile Paralysis strikes sometimes in an extraordinarily sudden way and we may well be anxious lest it grow into a very serious epidemic. Now Infantile Paralysis is certainly connected, like Influenza itself, with the serious conditions of our time. Since we in our Biological Institute in Stuttgart succeeded in proving the effects of the minutest quantities of substance, one must speak about these things, even in public, in a quite different way than formerly. We have in Stuttgart simply shown that when one has any substance, dissolves it, dilutes it greatly, one has a tiny amount in a glass of water. One obtains, say, a 1 per cent solution. A drop of this is taken, diluted to a hundredth of its strength. It is now one ten-thousandth of its original strength. Again diluting this to one-hundredth of its strength, we have a solution one-millionth of the original strength. In Stuttgart we have succeeded in obtaining dilutions of one in a million, one in a billion — that is, with twelve zeros. You can imagine that there is now no more than a trace of the original substance left, and that it is a question, not of how much of the original substance is left, but of how the solution works: for it works quite differently from the original. These dilutions were made in Stuttgart and they are not so easily imitated. (Perhaps the German Exchange can do it, but nobody else!) This has been done with all sorts of substances. We then took a kind of flower pot, and poured into it in succession the various dilutions. First, ordinary water, then the 1 per cent dilution, then the .1 per cent, the .01 per cent and so on, up to one part in a trillion. Then we put a wheat seed in. This grows, and it grows better in the diluted liquid than in the non-diluted! And the higher the dilution the quicker the growth: one, two, three four, five dilutions — up to twelve. At the twelfth, the growth becomes slower again, then increases again, then decreases again. In this way one finds the effects of minute quantities of substances. It is very remarkable. The effect is rhythmic! If one dilutes, one comes to a certain dilution where the growth is greatest, then it gets less, then again greater — rhythmically. One sees, when the plant grows out of the ground, something works on it together with its substances, something which works rhythmically in its surroundings. The soil environment works into it. That is clearly to be seen. Now when we are clear that very minute quantities of substance have an effect, we shall have no hesitation in recognising that in such times as the present, when so many men take incorrect nourishment and then rot as corpses in the ground, this works differently. Of course, for the earth as a whole, the effect is very diluted, but still it is different from what happens when men live healthily. And here again, the food which grows out of the earth is a factor. Naturally, people with grossly materialistic scientific views do not understand this, because they say: What importance can the human corpse have for the whole earth? This effect is very diluted, naturally, but it works. It will be well if we speak about the whole plant. The health of men is completely dependent on the growth of plants and therefore we must know what really is involved. I have been greatly occupied with this point in connection with Infantile Paralysis, and it has turned out that one must really concern oneself with the whole man. Indications have appeared for all sorts of remedies for Infantile Paralysis. The subject is of great importance, since Infantile Paralysis may play a very grievous role in the future. It is naturally a question which occupies one greatly, and I have in fact given it a great deal of attention. There will probably have to be found a treatment made up of soda baths, iron arsenite (Fe As 2 O 3 ) and of yet another substance which will be obtained from the cerebellum, from the back part of the brain of animals. It will have to be a very complicated remedy. You see, the disease of Infantile Paralysis arises from very complicated and obscure causes and so requires a complicated remedy. These things have become of urgent importance to-day, and it is well that you should understand the whole question of the growth of plants. The plant grows out of the ground — I will represent it to-day with reference to the question which has been put. ( Dr. Steiner makes a sketch on the blackboard .) The root grows out of the seed. Let us first take a tree; we can then pass to the ordinary plants. We take a tree: the stem grows up. This growth is very remarkable. This stem which grows there, is really only formed because it lets sap mount from the earth, and this sap in mounting carries up with it all kinds of salts and particles of earth; and so the stem becomes hard. When you look at the wood from the stem of a tree, you have a mounting sap, and this sap carries with it fine particles of earth, and all sorts of salts too, for instance, carbonate of soda, iron, etc., into the plants and this makes hard wood. The essential thing is that the sap mounts. What happens, in reality? The earthy, the solid, becomes fluid! And we have an earthy-fluid substance mounting there. Then the fluid evaporates and the solid remains behind: that is the wood. You see, this sap which mounts up in the tree — let us call it wood-sap — is not created there but is already contained everywhere in the earth, so that the earth in this respect is really a great living Being. This sap which mounts in the tree, is really present in the whole earth: only in the earth it is something special. It becomes in the tree what we see there. In the earth it is in fact the sap which actually gives it life. For the earth is really a living Being; and that which mounts in the tree is in the whole earth and through it the earth lives . In the tree it loses its life-giving quality; it becomes merely a chemical; it has only chemical qualities. So when you look at a tree, you must say to yourself: the earthy-fluidic in the tree — that has become chemical; underneath in the earth it was still alive. So the wood-sap has partly died, as it mounted up in the tree. Were this all, never would a plant come into existence, but only stumps, dying at the top, in which chemical processes are at work. But the stem, formed from this sap, rises into the air, and the air always contains moisture. It comes into the moist air, it comes with the sap which has created it, from the earthy-fluidic into the fluidic-airy and life springs up in it anew so that around it green leaves appear and finally flowers . ... Again there is life . You see, in the foliage, in the leaf, in the bud, in the blossom, there is once more the sap of life; the wood-sap is dead life-sap. In the stem, life is always dying; in the leaf it is always being resurrected. So that we must say: We have wood-sap, which mounts; then we have life-sap. And what does this do! It travels all round and brings forth the leaves everywhere: so that you can see the spirals in which the leaves are arranged. The living sap really circles round. It arises from the fluid-airy element into which the plant comes when it has grown out of the earthy-fluidic element. The stem, the woody stem, is dead and only that which sprouts forth around the plant is alive. This you can easily prove in the following very simple way. Go to a tree: you have the stem, then the bark, and in the bark the leaves grow. Now cut the bark away at that point; the leaves come away too. At this point leave the leaves with the bark. The result is that there the tree remains fresh and living, and here it begins to die. The wood alone with its sap cannot keep the tree alive; what comes with the leaves must come from outside and that again contains life . We see in this way that the earth can certainly put forth the tree, but she would have to let it die if it did not get life from the damp air: for in the tree the sap is only a chemical, no giver of life. The living sap that circulates, that gives it life. And one can really say: When the sap rises in the spring, the tree is created anew; when the living sap again circulates in the spring, every year the tree's life is renewed. The earth produces the sap from the earthy-fluidic; the fluidic-airy produces the living sap. But that is not all. While this is happening, between the bark, still full of living sap, and the woody stem, there is formed a new layer. Now I cannot say that a sap is formed. I have already spoken of wood-sap, living sap, but I cannot again say that a sap is formed: for what is formed is quite solid: it is called cambium . It is formed between the bark which still belongs to the leaves, and the wood. When I cut here ( see sketch ) no cambium is formed. But the plant needs cambium too, in a certain way. You see, the wood sap is formed in the earthy-fluidic, the life sap in the fluidic-airy, and the cambium in the warm air, in the warm damp, or the airy-warmth. The plant develops warmth while it takes up life from outside. This warmth goes inward and develops the cambium inside. Or if the cambium does not yet develop — the plant needs cambium and you will shortly hear why — before the cambium forms, there is first of all developed a thicker substance: the plant gum. Plants form this plant gum in their inner warmth, and this, under certain conditions, is a powerful means of healing. Thus the sap carries the plant upwards, the leaves give the plant life, then the leaves by their warmth produce the gum which reacts on the warmth. And in old plants, this gum, running down to the ground, has become transparent. When the earth was less dense and damper, the gum became transparent and turned to Amber. You see, then, when you take up a piece of Amber, what from prehistoric plants ran down to the ground as resin and pitch. This the plant gives back to the earth: Pitch, Resin, Amber. And if the plant retains it, it becomes cambium. Through the sap the plant is connected with the earth; the life-sap brings the plant into connection with what circulates round the earth — with the airy-moist circumference of the earth. But the cambium brings the plant into connection with the stars, with what is above, and in such a way that within this cambium the form of the next plant develops. [See: Man as Symphony of the Creative Word , Twelve lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in Dornach, 19th October to 11th November, 1923, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Company .] This passes over to the seeds and in this way the next plant is born, so that the stars indirectly through the cambium create the next plant! So that the plant is not merely created from the seed — that is to say, naturally it is created from the seed, but the seed must first be worked on by the cambium, that is: by the whole heavens. It is really wonderful — a seed, a humble, modest little seed could only come into existence because the cambium — now not in liquid but in solid form — imitates the whole plant; and this form which arises there in the cambium — a new plant form — this carries the power to the seed to develop through the forces of the earth into a new plant. Through mere speculation, when one simply puts the seed under a microscope, nothing is gained. We must be clear what parts the sap, the life sap, the cambium, play in the whole matter. The wood sap is a relatively thin sap: it is peculiarly fitted to allow chemical changes to take place in it. The life sap is certainly much thicker, it separates off its gum. If you make the gum rather thick, you can make wonderful figures with it. Thus the life sap, more pliable than the wood sap, clings more to the plant-form. And then it gives this up entirely to the cambium. That is still thicker, indeed quite sticky, but still fluid enough to take the forms which are given it by the stars. So it is with trees, and so, too, with the ordinary plants. When the rootlet is in the earth, the sprout shoots upward. But it does not separate off the solid matter, does not make wood; it remains like a cabbage stalk. The leaves come out directly on the circumference, in spirals, the cambium is formed directly in the interior, and the cambium takes everything back to the earth with it. So that in the annual plants the whole process occurs much more quickly. In the tree, only the hard parts are separated out, and not everything is destroyed. The same process occurs in ordinary plants too, but is not carried so far as in trees. In the tree it is a fairly complicated matter. When you look at the tree from above, you have first the pith inside: this gives the direction. Then layers of wood form round the pith. Towards the autumn the gum appears from the other side, and fastens the layers together. So we have the gummy wood of one year. In the next year this is repeated. Wood forms somewhere else, is again gummed together in the autumn, and so the yearly rings are formed. So you see everything clearly if only you understand that there are three things: wood sap, life sap, and cambium. The wood sap is the most fluid, it is really a chemical; the life sap is the giver of life; it is really, if I may so express myself, a living thing. And as for the cambium, there the whole plant is sketched out from the stars. It is really so. The wood sap rises and dies, then life again arises; and now comes the influence of the stars, so that from the thick, sticky cambium the new plant is sketched out. In the cambium one has a sketch, a sculptural activity. The stars model in it from the whole universe the complete plant form. So you see, we come from Life into the Spirit. What is modelled there is modelled from out of the World-Spirit. The earth first gives up her life to the plant, the plant dies, the air environment along with its light once more gives it life, and the World Spirit implants the new plant form. This is preserved in the seed and grows again in the same way. So that one sees in the growing plant how the plant world rises out of the earth, through death, to the living Spirit. Now other investigations have been made in Stuttgart. These things are extraordinarily instructive. For instance, one can do the following, instead of merely investigating growth — which is very important, especially when one is dealing with the higher potencies, say of one in a trillion — one can do the following. We take metals or metallic compounds highly diluted in the manner previously described, for example, a copper compound solution, and put it into a flowerpot with some earth in it: we put it in as a kind of manure. In another similar flowerpot we put only earth, the same earth without the manure. Now we take two plants, as similar as possible, put one in the pot with the copper manured earth, and the other in the pot without the copper manure. And the remarkable thing is: if the copper is highly diluted, the leaves develop wrinkles on the edges — the others get no wrinkles, if they are smooth and had previously none. One must take the same earth, because many specimens previously contain copper. One dilutes it with copper; the same kind of plants must be taken so that comparisons can be made. Now we take a third plant, put it into a third pot with earth, but instead of copper, we add lead. The leaves do not wrinkle but they become hard at the top and wither when lead is added. You have now a remarkable sight. These experiments were made in Stuttgart, and you plainly see, when you look at the pots in turn, how the substances of the earth work on plants. You will no longer be surprised when you see plants with wrinkled leaves somewhere. If you dig in the earth there, you will find traces of copper. Or if you have leaves which are dry and withered at the edge, and dig in the earth, you will find traces of lead. Look at a common plant, say mare's tail, with which people clean pots; it grows just where the ground contains silicon; hence the little thorns. In this way you can understand the form of plants from the nature of the ground. Now you can see of what importance it is when quite tiny amounts of any substance are mixed in the earth. Naturally, there is a churchyard somewhere outside, but the earth is everywhere permeated with wood sap, and the tiny quantities penetrate everywhere into the ground. And having investigated how these tiny quantities work, of which I have told you, we say: That which disappeared into the earth, we eat it again in our food. It is so strong that it lives in the plant form. And what happens then? Imagine I had thus a plant form from a lead-containing soil. To-day it is said that lead does not arise in soil. But lead does arise in soil, if one puts decaying living matter in it. It simply does arise in soil. A plant grows out of it: one may say, a lead-plant. Well, this lead plant when we eat it, has a quite different effect from a lead-less plant. Actually, when we eat a lead plant, our cerebellum, which lies at the back of the head, becomes drier than usual. It becomes drier. Now you have the connection between the earth and the cerebellum. There are plants which simply through the constitution of the earth, through what men put into the earth and what then spreads everywhere, can dry up the cerebellum. As soon as our cerebellum is not in full working order, we become clumsy. When something happens to the cerebellum we become awkward and cannot properly control our feet and arms; and when the effect is much stronger, we become paralysed. Thus, you see, is the connection between the soil and paralysis. A man eats a plant. If it has something dying at the edge of the leaves, as I have described to you, his cerebellum will be dried up somewhat. In ordinary life this is not noticed, but the man cannot any longer rightly direct his movements. If the effect is much stronger, paralysis sets in. When this drying up of the cerebellum happens in the head, so that man cannot control his muscles, at first this affects all those muscles which are dependent on a little gland in the head, the so-called pineal gland. If that happens, a man gets influenza. If the evil goes further, influenza changes to a complete paralysis. So that in every paralysis there is something that is inwardly connected with the soil. And so you see knowledge must be brought together from many sides if one is to do anything useful for men. It is useless to make a lot of statements — one must do so and so! For if one does not know how a man has taken into his organism something dying, one may have ever such good apparatus and the man will not recover. For everything that works in the plant and passes over from the plant to the man, is of great importance. Wood sap develops in man as the ordinary colourless mucus. Wood sap in plants is, in man, mucus. The life sap of the plant which circulates from the leaves, corresponds to the human blood. And the cambium of the plant corresponds to the milk and the chyle in the human being. When a woman begins to nurse, certain glands in the breast cause a greater flow of milk. Here you have again something in human beings which is most strongly influenced by the stars, namely, milk . Milk is absolutely necessary for the development of the brain — the brain, one might almost say, is solidified milk. Decaying leaves create no proper cambium because they no longer have the power to work back into the proper warmth. They let the warmth escape outwards from the dying edges instead of sending it inwards. We eat these plants with an improperly developed cambium: they do not develop a proper milk; the women do not produce proper milk; the children get milk on which the stars cannot work strongly, and therefore they cannot develop properly. Hence this Infantile Paralysis appears specially among children — but adults can also suffer from it, because men are all their lives influenced by the stars. In these things Science and Medicine must work together: they must everywhere work together. But one should not isolate oneself in a single science. To-day there are men who specialise in animals — the zoologists; in men — the anthropologists; or in parts of men, with sick senses, or sick livers, or sick hearts — specialists of the inner organs. Then again there are the botanists, who study only plants; and the mineralogists, who study only stones; and the geologists who study the whole earth. Certainly this is very convenient. One has less to learn when one is merely a geologist or when one has only to learn about stones. Yes, but such knowledge is useless when one wants to do something for a man. When he is ill, one must understand the whole of Nature. It is useless merely to understand geology or botany or chemistry. One must understand chemistry and be able to follow its working right into the sap. It is really so. Students have a saying — there are in universities, as you perhaps know, both ordinary and extraordinary professors — and the students have a saying: the ordinary professors know nothing extraordinary, and the extraordinary professors know nothing ordinary! But one can go still further to-day. The geologist knows nothing of plants or animals or men; the anthropologist knows nothing of animals, or plants, or the earth. Neither knows really how the things upon which he works are connected. Just as man has specialised in work, he has specialised in knowledge. And that is much more dangerous. It is shocking when there are only geologists, botanists, etc., so that all knowledge is split up. This has been for men's convenience. People say to-day: a man can't know everything. Well, if one doesn't wish to take in all knowledge, one can despair of any really useful knowledge. We live at a time when things have assumed a frightful aspect. It is as if a man who has to do with clocks wants to learn only how to file metals, another how to weld them. And there would be another, who knows how to put the clock together, but doesn't know how to work the single metals. Now one can get a certain distance in this way with machinery, although at the same time a certain amount of compulsion is necessary. But in Medicine nothing can be achieved if one does not take into account all branches of knowledge, even the knowledge of the earth. For in the tree trunk lives something which is carried up from the earth (which is the subject of geology) to the sap. There it dies. One must also know meteorology, the science of air, because from the surrounding air something is brought to the leaves which calls forth life in them again. And one must also know astrology, the science of the stars, if one wishes to understand the formation of cambium. And one must also know what enters with the cambium in the food. ... So that when one eats unsound cambium as a child, one gets an unsound brain. In this way diseases are caused by what is in the earth. This is what can be said about the causes of such apparently inexplicable diseases: the causes are in the soil.

Cosmic Workings In Earth and Man

On the Growth of Plants

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/CosmicWorks/19231031p01.html

Dornach

31 Oct 1923

GA351-7

[In connection with a paper read to the work-people by Herr Müller] Good morning, gentlemen! I will add just a few remarks to the statements made by Herr Müller — remarks which may perhaps be of interest to you, though naturally, as far as the present day is concerned, the time has not yet come when one could really apply these things in practical bee-keeping. For the moment, on this side of practical bee-keeping, very little, or perhaps not even anything much can be said, since Herr Müller has already given you a beautiful account of the way things are managed nowadays. If you listened to him attentively it must have occurred the to you that this whole question of bee-keeping has something of the nature of a riddle. Obviously, the bee-keeper is first of all interested in what he has to do. Everyone must, in reality, take the greatest interest in bee-keeping, for in fact, more in human life depends on it than one usually thinks. Let us look at it in a wider sense. As you have heard in the lectures Herr Müller has given you here, the bees are able to gather what is already present as nectar in the plants. They really only gather the nectar, and then we men take away as honey a portion of what was collected for the hive — on the whole it is not a very large portion. We might say that what man takes away is somewhere about 20% — roughly speaking. But in addition to this the bee, by means of its bodily structure and organisation, can also take pollen from the plants. Thus the bee gathers from the plant something that exists there in very minute quantities and is difficult to procure. Pollen is collected by the bees, with the help of the minute brushes attached to their bodies, bees in the very, very small quantities in which, relatively speaking, it is available; this pollen is then stored away, or consumed in the hive. In the bee we therefore have a creature before us that collects a substance extremely delicately prepared by Nature, and having done so, makes use of it in his own household. Now we will go a step further, to something very seldom noticed because one does not stop to think about it. Having transformed the food by means of its own bodily substances into wax — this the bee produces out of itself — the bees now makes a special little container in which to deposit its egg or in which to store up food supplies. This special little vessel is, I should like to say, a really great marvel, It appears to be hexagonal when we look at it from above; looked at from the side it is closed in this way. (Diagram 1 and Diagram 2.) Eggs can be deposited there, or food can be stored. Each vessel lies next to another; they fit extremely well together, so that this “surface” by which one cell, (for so it is called), is joined to another in the honey-comb, is exceedingly well made use of — the space is well used. When the question is raised how can the bee instinctively build so skilfully formed a cell, people generally answer: “It is done that the space may be thoroughly well used.” That is true. If you try to imagine any other form of cell there would always be spaces, everything is joined together so that every part of the surface of the comb is completely made use of. This certainly is one reason, but you see it is not the only reason. We must consider how the little larva which lies within it is entirely isolated, and one must not by any means believe that anything exists in Nature that is without forces. This six-angled, six-surfaced dwelling has certain forces within it; it would be quite another matter if the larva were to occupy a round one. In Nature it signifies something quite definite that it lies within this six-surfaced little dwelling-place. The larva receives the forces of the form later it feels in its body that it was once in this hexagonally-formed cell, in its youth when it was quite soft. The bee is afterwards able to build similar cells out of the same forces which it thus absorbed. There lie the forces through which the bee afterwards works, for what the bee makes externally lies in its environment. This is the first thing we must notice. Now there is another very remarkable fact that has been described to you. In the hive there is a variety of cells. I think every bee-keeper can well distinguish between the cells of the worker-bees and those of the drones. This is not a difficult matter, is it? It is still easier to distinguish between the cells of worker-bees and drones and those of the Queens, for the latter have not at all this form, they are more like a sack. The Queen cells have no such shape, they are more like a kind of sack; also there are very few of them in the hive. So we must say: The worker-bees and the drones (the males) develop-in hexagonal cells, but the Queen is developed in a “sack.” She is not at all concerned to have hexagonal surroundings. (Diagram 3 and Diagram 4). Then we must consider something else. You see, the Queen for her development, i.e. until she is a complete full-grown insect, needs only sixteen days. She is then fully matured. A worker bee requires about twenty-one days to mature, which is a longer period. One might say that Nature bestows much more care on the development of the worker-bee than on that of the Queen. But we shall soon see that quite another reason comes in question. The worker-bee then, needs twenty-one days, and the drone, the male — which will finish its task soonest of all — needs twenty-three to twenty-four days. The males are killed when they have fulfilled their task. We have quite a new situation here. The different kinds of bees — Queens, workers and drones — all need a different number of days for their development. Well, let us consider these twenty-one days needed by the worker-bees. There is something very special about this. A period of twenty-one days is not without meaning for what happens on the earth. Twenty-one days are equal to the period of time during which the Sun, approximately speaking, revolves once upon its own axis. Now think, the worker-bee takes just that period of time for its development which the Sun takes to turn upon its axis. The worker-bee experiences one revolution of the Sun, and because it has experienced one complete revolution it enters into all the Sun can give. If it wished to go further it would always meet only with the same Sun-influences, for if you picture to yourselves here the worker-bee, [Dr. Steiner draws on the blackboard.] (Diagram 5) and here the Sun at the moment when the egg is laid, then here we shall have the point exactly opposite the Sun. The Sun revolves upon its own axis once in twenty-one days; then it returns again and the first point is again here. If this were to continue, only such Sun-workings would be there as had once been there already. So the worker-bee by the time it is fully developed has experienced all that the Sun can give. Should the worker-bee continue to develop it must leave the Sun and enter the earth development; it will then no longer be having a Sun-influence in its development because it already had this, and has tasted it to the full. Now it passes into the earth development, but only as a perfect insect, as a matured creature. I might say — the worker-bee occupies herself only momentarily with this earth-development, and has then finished with her Sun-development, is entirely a creature of the Sun. Now let us look at the drone. The drone, I might say, considers the matter a little longer. It does not think itself quite ready after twenty-one days, so before it is fully matured it enters the earth-development. The drone is thus an earthly being, whereas the worker-bee is entirely a child of the Sun. How is it with the Queen? The Queen-bee does not even go through the whole of the Sun-revolution, but stays behind and remains always a creature of the Sun. For this reason the Queen is much nearer to her larval state than the others; the drones (the males) are the farthest removed from the larval state. The Queen is thereby able to lay eggs. In the bees it is clearly to be seen what it signifies to be exposed to the earth-influence or to the Sun-influence. As you know, it depends entirely on whether the bee completes, or does not complete its Sun-development, that it becomes either a Queen, a worker or a drone. The Queen lays eggs, and it is because she remains always under the influence of the Sun and receives nothing from the earth that she is enabled to do so. The worker-bee goes a little further and develops for another four or five days; it tastes the Sun to the full. But then, just when its body becomes firm enough it goes over, just for a moment, as I said, into the earth-development. Thus the worker-bee cannot return again to the Sun, for it has already thoroughly absorbed its influences. Consequently the worker-bee cannot lay eggs. The drones are the males; they can fertilise; this power of fertilisation comes from the earth; the drones acquire it in the few days during which they continue their growth within the earth-evolution and before they reach maturity. So we can now say: in the bees it is clearly to be seen that fertilisation (male fecundation) comes from the earthly forces, and the female capacity to develop the egg comes from the forces of the Sun. So you see, you can easily imagine how significant is the length of time during which a creature develops. This is very important for, naturally, something happens within a definite time which could not occur in either a shorter or a longer time, for then quite other things would happen. But there is something further to be considered. You see, the Queen develops in sixteen days. Then the point which stood opposite to her in the Sun is perhaps only here ; [Drawing on the blackboard.] (Diagram 5) the Queen remains within the Sun-development. The remaining part of the Sun's course is gone through by the worker-bees, but they too remain within the Sun-development; they do not really pass out of it to the earth. And so, you see, they feel themselves entirely akin to the Queen because they belong to the same Sun-influence; the whole host of the worker-bees feel themselves related to the Queen. They say: — “The drones are betrayers; they have fallen to the earth. They no longer belong to us; we suffer them only because we need them.” For what are they needed? As you know, it sometimes happens that the Queen is not fertilised; nevertheless she lays eggs. The Queen need not necessarily be fertilised to lay eggs. Then we have what is called “virgin-brood.” This also happens with other insects; the scientific name for it is parthenogenesis. But only drones can emerge from these unfertilised eggs; no workers and no Queens. Thus when a Queen is unfertilised, worker-bees and Queens do not hatch out, only drones; such a colony is naturally useless. You see, in “virgin-brood” only the opposite sex is produced, not the same sex. This is a very interesting fact, and an important one in the whole household of Nature — namely, that fertilisation is necessary if the same sex is to come into being (this applies to the lower animals of course, not to the higher ones). With the bees it is the case that only drones emerge where fertilisation has not taken place. This fecundation of the bee is indeed a very special affair; there is nothing like a marriage-bed to which one retires, it all takes an entirely different course. It takes place openly, in the full sun-light and, though this may seem very strange at first, as high as possible in the air. The Queen-bee flies as far as possible towards the Sun to which she belongs. (I have already described this to you), and that drone alone which can overcome the earthly forces — for the drones have united themselves with the earthly forces — only that drone which can fly the highest is able to fecundate the Queen up there in the air. The Queen returns and lays her eggs. So you see, the bees have no marriage-bed, they have a marriage flight; they must strive as far as they are able, towards the Sun. One must have, is it not so, fine weather for this marriage flight which really needs the Sun? In had weather it cannot take place. Now all this shows you how closely the Queen remains related to the Sun. When fertilisation has taken place, then worker-bees emerge from the worker-cells; first the little larva appear, as Herr Müller has so well described, and then after twenty-one days develop into worker-bees. In the sack-like cells a Queen develops. Now if we are to go further, I must tell you something you may naturally receive with some doubt, for it needs exact study. Nevertheless, it really is so. I will link this further matter to the following: — The worker-bee now mature and ready, sets out on its flight, visiting the flowers and trees to which it attaches itself by the minute hooks on its feet. (Diagram 6) It gathers both nectar and pollen. The pollen is carried on the body where there is a special contrivance for depositing it; the nectar it sucks up with its tongue. A part of the nectar is used for its own food, but the greater part is retained and this, on its return to the hive, the bee spits out. Actually, when we eat honey we eat the spittle of the bee; we must be quite clear as to this, but it is a very clean and sweet spittle. Thus the bee gathers all it needs for food, for storing, and for further elaboration into wax, etc. Now we must ask ourselves, how does the bee find its way to the flowers? It finds its way to the flowers with absolute certainty, but one is quite unable to explain this by merely observing the eyes of the bee. The worker-bee (the drone has somewhat larger eyes), has only two small eyes, one at each side, and three quite minute ones on the forehead ( Diagram 7 ). The drones have rather larger eyes. But when one studies these two eyes of the bee, one discovers that it sees very little with them, and that with the three minute frontal eyes it sees, to begin with, nothing at all. That is the strange thing that the bee does not find the flowers by sight, but by a sense more like the sense of smell. It finds its way to the flowers by a sense which is between taste and smell, on its flight it already, as it were, tastes the pollen and the nectar. From far away it tastes them, so the bee has no need to use its eyes at all. Now make for yourself a clear picture of the following. Think of a Queen-bee born in the realm of the Sun, and not having tasted the Sun's working to the full, has remained, so to speak, entirely under the influence of the Sun. The whole host of the worker-bees, though it has completed the course of the Sun's revolution, has not actually passed over to the earth development. These worker-bees feel themselves united with the Queen, not because they were under the same Sun, but because they remained within the Sun-development; this is why they feel themselves so united with the Queen. In their development they did not sever themselves from that of the Queen. The drones do not belong to them; they have separated themselves. But now the following happens. In order that a new Queen can come into being, the marriage flight must have taken place. The Queen goes out into the Sun. A new Queen comes into being. At that moment a most remarkable thing happens to the whole host of the workers who feel themselves so united with the old Queen. Their tiny little eyes begin to see when the new Queen is born. This they cannot endure; they cannot endure that that which they themselves are, should come from elsewhere. The three minute frontal eyes, these three very small eyes of the worker-bees, are built up from within; they are permeated with the inner blood and so on, of the bee; they were never exposed to the external working of the Sun. But now the new Queen is born from out of the Sun, and brings Sun-light with her own body into the hive; now the bees become — I should like to say — clairvoyant with their little eyes. They cannot endure this light of the new Queen. The whole host of them prepares to swarm. It is like fear of the new Queen, as though they were dazzled. It is as though we were to look at the Sun itself. That is why the bees swarm. And now one has once more to re-establish the colony on the basis of the majority of the worker-bees which still belong to the hive — that is, to the old Queen. The new Queen must find a new people. A part of the population of the hive has of course, remained behind, but these are those born under different circumstances. The reason why the bees swarm lies in the fact that the workers cannot endure the new Queen who brings in a new Sun-influence. Now you might ask, “Why should the bees feel so sensitive towards this new Sun-influence?” This is indeed a very strange thing. No doubt you know that it is sometimes not at all pleasant to meet a bee; it may sting one. If one is so large an animal as man at the worst one gets an inflamed skin; all the same it is rather unpleasant. Smaller animals may even die from the sting of a bee. This is due to the fact that the sting is really a tube in which a kind of piston moves up and down, which is connected with a poison bag. This poison (very disagreeable to one who has to experience it) is however, of great value to the bees. It is by no means pleasant for the bee to have to part with its poison, and in reality it only does so because it cannot bear that any influence from outside should approach. The bee wants always to remain within itself, to stay within the sphere of its own substance. Every external influence is felt as disturbing, as something to be warded off by its poison. But this poison has at the same time quite another significance, for in the minutest quantities it continually passes over into the whole body of the bee; without it the bee could not exist at all. One must understand in studying the worker-bee that it is unable to see with its small frontal eyes, and that this is due to the fact that the poison continually permeates these frontal eyes. The moment the new Queen appears with her new Sun-influence, this poison is harmfully affected. It ceases to be active, and the small eyes suddenly begin to see, for the fact that the bee lives its life in a perpetual twilight is due to the poison. If I were to describe to you in a pictorial form what the bee experiences when a new Queen slips out of her sack-like cell, I should have to say: “The bee lives always in the twilight, and finds its way about by means of a sense between taste and smell; it lives in a twilight congenial to it. But when the new Queen appears it is exactly like when we walk in the twilight of a June evening, and the little glow-worms are shining.” Even so does the new Queen shine for the swarm, because the poison does not work strongly enough to keep the bees in their twilight seclusion from the world. It keeps within it even when it flies out, because it is then able with its poison to keep within itself. It needs the poison when it fears something from outside may disturb it. The whole colony desires to be entirely within itself. Indeed, in order that the Queen may remain in the sphere of the Sun she may not dwell in an angular cell, but within a circular one. There she remains within the Sun-influence. Here we touch upon something that makes bee-keeping so extremely interesting for everyone. For you see, in reality, things go on in the hive in exactly the same way as in the human head, only with a slight difference. In our head, for instance, the substances do not grow to such dimensions. In the human head we have nerves, blood-vessels, and the separately situated round-shaped cells which are always to be found. We have these three varieties of cells in the human head. The nerves consist of separate cells which only do not grow into independent beings because Nature encloses them on all sides; in reality, however, these nerves would like to become little animals. If the nerve-cells of the human head could develop in all directions, under the same conditions as those of the hive, then the nerve-cells would become drones. The blood-cells which flow in the veins would become worker bees; and the single free cells which are, above all, in the centre of the head and go through the shortest period of development, may be compared with the Queen bees . So in the human head we have the same three forces (Diagram 8) as in the hive. Now the workers bring home what they gather from the plants, and work it up in their own bodies into wax, of which they then build the wonderful structure of the combs. The blood-cells of the human head however, do the same thing. From the head they pass into the whole body. When you look for instance, at a bone, at a piece of bone, you will find hexagonal cells everywhere. The blood that circulates through the whole body carries out the same work that is done in the hive by the bees. It is similar with the cells of our muscles which, once more, correspond to the wax-cells of the bees, but these cells being softer, dissolve more quickly, so it is here less noticeable. A study of the bones shows it very well. Thus, the blood has the same forces as those of the worker-bee. One can even follow their development through the course of time. The cells which you find first developed in the human embryo, and which subsequently remain unchanged, are those that already exist in the early stages of embryonic life. The others, the blood-cells, come into existence somewhat later, and finally the nerve-cells are developed — just as with the bee-hive. Only man builds up a body which obviously belongs to him; the bee also builds up a body, but for the worker-bees, this body is the honey-comb — the cells. This building of the comb corresponds to what happens within our bodies, — namely, that the blood-cells in reality do this out of a kind of wax — but here it is not so easy to prove. We ourselves are made of a kind of wax, just as the honey-comb forms the marvellous structure we find in the skep or hive. So this is how it is. Man has a head, and this head works upon his great body which is actually a “bee-hive” and contains in its relationship between the albuminous cells (which remain round) and the blood, the same connection that exists in the bee-hive between the Queen and the worker-bees. Our nerves are continually destroyed; we continually use up our nervous system. We do not immediately kill our nerves — as the bees kill the drones — for in this case we should die every year, but, none the less, our nerves get weaker every year, and it is through this gradual weakening of the nerves, that man really dies. We are then no longer able to experience our body rightly; a man is actually always dying from the wearing out of his nerves. When you look at the head — which represents the hive — you find that here all is well protected. If one injures one's head, it is a serious matter; the head cannot bear it. Equally, what happens through the presence of the new Queen — who is there by reason of the marriage flight — is something the bees cannot endure; they prefer to go away rather than remain with her. This is why bee-keeping has always been regarded as profoundly significant. Man takes away from the bees — perhaps 20% of their honey — and one can justly say that this honey is extremely valuable to man, for with his ordinary food he gets very little honey because honey is distributed in such very small quantities in the plant-world. We get only minute quantities of honey into our bodies in this way. We also have “bees” within us, namely, our blood, which carries the honey to the various parts of our body. It is honey that the bee needs for producing wax, out of which it then makes the “body” of the colony. As we grow older, honey has an extremely favourable effect upon us. With children, it is milk that has a similar effect; honey helps us to build our bodies and is thus strongly to be recommended for people who are growing old. It is an exceedingly wholesome food; only one must not eat too much of it! If one eats too much of it, using it not merely as a condiment, one can make the formative forces too strongly active. The form may then get too rigid, and one may develop all kinds of illnesses. A healthy man feels just how much honey should take. Honey is particularly good for older people because it gives the body the right firmness. One should also adopt the plan of giving just the right quantity of honey to children suffering from rickets when they are nine to ten months of age, and continue this honey diet till the age of three or four years. Rickets would then not be as bad as it is, for this illness consists in the body being too soft, and collapsing. Of course, in the very first weeks children ought only to be given milk; honey would at that age have no affect. Honey contains the forces that give man's body firmness. These things should be understood. So one can say that much more attention should be given to the keeping of bees than is usual. The following is also possible. In Nature everything is wonderfully inter-related. In Nature the laws which man is unable to penetrate with his ordinary intelligence are the most important. These laws work — do they not? — always with a perfect freedom. This holds good for instance, with the proportion of the sexes on earth. This is not always the same, the number of men and women is not always, but only more or less an equal one; it is approximately equal over the whole earth. This is brought about in the wisdom of Nature. If it should ever come about — I believe I have already told you this — that men were ultimately able to determine the whole matter arbitrarily, then everything would fall into confusion. If in any country the population has been decimated by wars it will afterwards become more numerous. In Nature, every need calls forth the working of opposite forces. Now, when the bees seek nectar from the plants, they naturally take this from plants which have also other uses — which give us fruits and so on. But the remarkable thing is that fruit-trees thrive much better in places where bees are kept, than in places where there are no bees. When the bees take the nectar from the plants Nature does not remain idle, but produces more fruitful plants. So man not only benefits by the honey the bees make, but receives more from the plants visited by the bees. This is a law of great importance, and one we can well understand. Observing things in this way, one is able to say — in the whole inter-relationship of the bee-colony — of this organism — Nature reveals something very wonderful to us. The bees are subject to forces of Nature which are truly wonderful and of great significance. One cannot but feel shy of fumbling among these forces of Nature. It is becoming increasingly obvious today that wherever man clumsily interferes with these forces he makes matters not better, but worse. He does not make them worse all at once, for it is really so that Nature is everywhere hindered, though notwithstanding these hindrances Nature works as best she may. Certain of these hindrances man can remove, and by doing away with them can make things easier for Nature. For example, he seems actually to be helping Nature when he makes use of bee-hives which are conveniently arranged, instead of using the old straw skeps. But here we come to the whole question of artificial bee-keeping. You must not think that I am unable to see — even from a non-anthroposophical point of view — that modern bee-keeping methods seem at first very attractive, for certainly, it makes many things much easier. But the strong holding together — I should like to say — of one bee-generation, of one bee-family, will be impaired in the long run. Speaking generally today, one cannot but praise modern bee-keeping; so long as we see all such precautions observed of which Herr Müller has told us, we must admire them in a certain sense. But we must wait and see how things will be in fifty to eighty years time, for by then certain forces which have hitherto been organic in the hive will be mechanised, will become mechanical. It is not possible to bring about that intimate relationship between the colony and a Queen that has been bought , which results naturally when a Queen comes into being in the natural way. Only, at first these things are not observed. Of course, I by no means wish that a fanatical campaign in opposition to modern bee-keeping should be started, for one cannot do such things in practical life. To do so would be rather like something I will now tell you. It is possible to calculate approximately the time when there will be no more coal in the earth. The coal supply of the earth is exhaustible; one day it will come to an end. Now it would be quite possible to limit the amount of coal taken out of the earth, so that the supply would last as long as the earth itself. One cannot say that we ought to do so, for we should have a little faith for the future. One says “Well, of course we rob the earth of its coal, that is we rob our descendants of coal, but they will be able to invent something else so that they will not need coal any longer.” Naturally, one can say the same about the disadvantages of modern bee-keeping! Still, it is well to be aware of the fact that by working mechanically we destroy what Nature has elaborated in so wonderful a way. You see bee-keeping has at all times been highly valued; in olden times especially, the bee was held to be a sacred animal. Why? It was so considered because in their whole activity, processes reveal themselves which also take place in man himself. If you take a piece of bees-wax in your hand you are in reality holding something between blood, muscle and bone, which in man's inner organisation passes through the stage of being wax. The wax does not however become solid, but remains fluidic till it is transformed into blood, or muscles, or into the cells of the bones. In the wax we have before us what we bear within us as forces, not as substance. When men in olden times made candles of the bees-wax and lighted them, they knew that they performed a wonderful and sacred action: “This wax which we now burn we took from the hive; there it was hardened. When the fire melts it and it evaporates, then the wax passes into the same condition in which it is within our own bodies.” In the melting wax of the candle men once apprehended something that rises up to the heavens, something that was also within their own bodies. This awoke a devotional mood in them, and this mood in its turn led them to look upon a bee as a specially sacred creature, because it prepares something which man must continually work out within himself. For this reason, the further back we go the more we find how men approached the bees with reverence. Of course, this was when they were still in their wild state; men found it so, and they looked upon these things as a revelation. Later they brought the bees into their household. Quite wonderful riddles lie concealed in all that happens with the bees, and by much studying of them one can learn to know what happens between the head and the body in man. I have now told you a few of those things I wished to speak of. On Wednesday we shall have our next meeting, and perhaps many questions will have arisen. Something may occur also to Herr Müller. Today I only wished to make these remarks which, after all, are beyond doubt, for they are founded on real knowledge. But, there may still be much that can be made clearer.

Nine Lectures on Bees

Lecture II

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA351/English/SGP1975/19231126p01.html

Dornach

26 Nov 1923

GA351-8

Good morning, gentlemen! Has anything occurred to you that you would like to ask me? (An article was read from the “ Schweizerische Bienenzeitung ” of February–March 1923 entitled “Do Bees perceive colours invisible to Man?”) DR. STEINER. I will say a few words on this subject. You see, these experiments made by Forel and Kühn show so plainly how thoughtlessly experiments are carried out today. One can naturally not imagine anything more absurd than such an interpretation of these experiments as is given here. Think for a moment that I might do as follows: I might take a substance — there are such substances — specially sensitive to ultra-violet rays, i.e. , to colours lying beyond the blue and violet; for instance I take barium platino-cyanide. I exclude all the other colours, let us say, I exclude red, orange, yellow, green, blue — then the indigo would come in and the violet — these also I exclude (Diagram missing.) (Diagram missing.) Now I make a screen; I shut these off in the spectrum; then I have here the so-called ultra-violet rays which are invisible to man. If I now add this substance, this barium platino-cyanide (which is a white powder) then it begins to shine, In a darkened room we see nothing; now we let in these rays, screening them as they come in, allowing therefore, only the ultra-violet rays to enter, which become visible when I introduce barium platino-cyanide. Then one sees it. Then it lights up. Thus, according to this article, I must state that barium platino-cyanide is able to see with some kind of eyes because it shows an activity. But very much the same thing happens if one experiments with ants. Suppose that instead of barium platino-cyanide I take ants; then I exclude the light. The ants run towards the sugar; in the same way barium platino-cyanide lights up. I then say (according to this article) that the ants see the ultra-violet rays. But they need to see them just as little as the barium platino-cyanide needs to see in order to shine. All one can really say is, that given a certain substance it produces an effect on the ants. More than that one cannot assert. The scientists concerned are as thoughtless as it is possible to be and make statements that are pure phantasy. The only thing one can say is this, — that through the sense-organs (once more, according to this article this is proved by the fact that no effect is produced if the eyes of the ants are varnished) that through the sense-organs an impression was made on these insects. It is characteristic that the scientist applies to ants and wasps what he has observed with bees — and vice versa. This only shows how thoughtlessly these experiments were carried out. Now, one can add the following: you see, when one proceeds further [drawing on the black-board.] to the so-called ultra-violet rays — here you have red-orange, yellow, green, blue — then indigo would come in, and the violet — the ultra-violet rays. On the other side, the infra-red rays. We have here the ultra-violet rays (on the right hand side) and these have the peculiarity (so he himself expresses it in the article) that they produce strong chemical reactions. Whatever is introduced here (into the sphere of the ultra-violet light) is strongly affected chemically, with the result that if I now put an ant here it will at once experience a strong chemical reaction. It feels this; that is true. It feels this effect above all in the eyes. When the ant is brought into the sphere of the ultra-violet rays it feels this, just as barium platino-cyanide reacts when brought into the same sphere of chemical activity. If I completely darken a room and have only the ultra-violet rays there, then the ant would notice at once that something was happening. For instance, if one had ants' eggs or larvae they would be completely changed, they would be destroyed the moment this powerful chemical working occurred. This is why the ants rescue their eggs. What this article is really concerned with is effects of a chemical nature. The statement I made recently is quite correct. I said the bees have a sense which is intermediate between smell and taste; thus these things are sensed by the bees, and it is similar in the case of ants. So little are these gentlemen aware of the real question that they do not know, for example, that when man himself perceives colours, even in perceiving the ultra-violet rays, slight chemical changes take place in his eyes. Man's perception of colour tends to be of a chemical nature. All that has been investigated here is the reaction to the inner chemical change that takes place in the bees when they are in the ultra-violet light. Now all that is within the sphere of black, white, yellow, grey (and grey is only a somewhat darker white), or blue-grey, in all these colours there is no ultra-violet. Thus all these colours are freely perceptible to the bees. The chemical effects which the bees sense so strongly when they come to the ultra-violet are not present in these colours. But when the bee leaves the sphere of black, white, yellow and blue-grey and comes into this other sphere it feels in the ultra-violet rays something alien to it. There the bee can do nothing. It is thus so important to note that the bee has a sense between taste and smell. We men make a great distinction between smell and taste. The latter is primarily a chemical sense; it is entirely based on chemistry. The bee has something which is intermediate between taste and smell. This does not contradict the fact that the bee is able to distinguish colour when the front of the hive is painted in one way or another; for you must consider that as all colours differ in their chemical effects, so they can also be perceived in relation to their warmth or coldness. If, for example, you cover a surface with red paint and the bee approaches it, it experiences warmth. How should the bee not know that this is different from coming, for instance, into the sphere of blue! Near the blue surface the bee senses coldness. The bee senses the warmth of red and the cold of blue, and then it can naturally distinguish between them. But one is not therefore justified in concluding that the bee sees with its eyes in the way man does. This of course is utter nonsense. But so it is with many other things that people think. I have previously told you what all such experiments amount to. I once told you there is a certain plant, called the “Venus fly-trap” which immediately contracts its leaves when they are touched. Just as you make a fist of your hand when you are going to be touched — that is, when somebody means to give you a blow — so the Venus fly-trap waits for the insect and then shuts itself up. Then people say: this plant, the Venus fly-trap, has a soul like men have. It is aware of the arrival of the insect and shuts itself up. Yes, gentlemen, but I always say: I know of a certain arrangement so constituted that when an animal approaches it and touches something inside it, then it immediately shuts up and the animal is caught. This is a mouse-trap! If one ascribes a soul to the Venus fly-trap, one must equally ascribe one to the mouse-trap! If one ascribes sight to the bees because they do something or other in ultra-violet light, then one ought to ascribe sight to barium platino-cyanide as well! If people only took the trouble to think they would discover many quite remarkable things, for barium platino-cyanide consists of barium. This is a white metal belonging to the class of alkaline metals. Now it is interesting that such metals play a certain part in the life of man. As human beings we could not have the right working in our bodies of the albumen we take in if we had not such metals in our pancreas. They must be there. In barium we have something connected with our feeling comfortable in our digestive process. Platinum is an especially valuable metal, as you know; a metal that is also especially hard and heavy — it is a precious metal. All these metals have the property that they are, once more connected with feeling, with “sensing.” Now remind yourselves of another thing. Cyanide is also there. This is a certain kind of cyanic acid, of prussic acid. I told you before that man always develops a little prussic acid in the working of his muscles. This substance thus resembles what man is constantly producing in his body. You can gather from this that man is particularly susceptible in his body — not in his eyes — to what happens in ultra-violet light — i.e. , to the chemical components of light. We can judge for ourselves if we only pay attention to these things. But it is only Spiritual Science that can enable one to observe such matters as the fact that where barium platino-cyanide is affected a kind of feeling arises. This applies to the bees in the highest degree. The bees sense colours with especial intensity, but they only see the colours dimly shining on the appearance of a self-luminous organism. For this reason I say, that generally speaking, twilight surrounds the bees. But when the new Queen appears, she shines for the other bees as the glow-worms shine for us when June is here. This is so, only as regards the three small frontal eyes; the other eyes, the larger ones, have already some perception of light, but as in twilight. When it is in darkness the creature senses the presence of just those colours that work chemically, such as ultra-violet, or of one that does not work chemically at all — i.e. , the infra-red. At the end of this article in the bee journal, it is stated that further information as to the infra-red rays will be given later. Certainly, when the bees come to the infra-red, they will behave quite differently, for then there are no longer any chemical effects. As to the facts, the experiments are correct, but one must be clear that one cannot draw conclusions such as Forel and Kühn have actually done. To do so is a totally thoughtless way of following up the experiments. Then people say: “this has been proved beyond contradiction.” Naturally, but only for those who ascribe a soul to the mouse-trap! But for others who know how far one can go, how far one is able to think in such a way that things are rightly followed up, these proofs are by no means beyond contradiction. In ordinary life we are not in the habit of following things up accurately. When people experience some small matter or another, then, as the saying is, a gnat can become an elephant. And so it is with our scientists. When they get hold of something they don't stop their thinking, but carry it on, and apply it to what is immediately before them. This results in fantastic nonsense; a gnat becomes an elephant. When modern science makes such statements this is due to its authority, for what is thus brought forward meets, as a rule, with no contradiction, because all the periodicals are in the hands of scientific authorities. But in the long run, one will not be able to make much use of this nonsense. if you go over the whole ground of bee-keeping, I believe you will find that just the very best bee-keepers do not trouble themselves very much about the discoveries of Forel and Kühn; for bee-keepers must work practically, and then instinctively one does what is necessary. Of course, it is best if one has the right instincts. I seem to have noticed that the bee-keeper sometimes likes to settle down on a Sunday evening, when it is snowing perhaps, and to read some such article, because naturally, it interests him, but he cannot make much out of it because in an article of this kind there is nothing he can get hold of. But surely, gentlemen, you have other interesting things to ask me about? HERR MÜLLER: I should like to add something about the Queen. We have already described how she lays her eggs. Then we have the unfertilised Queens; for instance, in bad weather, and then only drones are hatched which have no value. Also, when a Queen dies and there is no young brood, then one of the worker bees is bred to be a Queen. It also lays eggs but only unfertilised eggs, from which only inferior drones come out. Then I should like to add something about swarming. At the time of the first swarm there is as yet no new Queen there. She is still asleep in her cell and cannot yet provide new brood. Only the older bees leave the hive with the Queen. I can take her out and put the whole swarm back in the hive. As to the sight of the bees, I should like to say that when we are at work in the bee-house and there is too much light there (for the bee-master himself there is always too little light), then the bees are terribly agitated. As to stinging when the bees are swarming, it is well known with us that the first swarm is rather ticklish; this is much less the case with casts. We hold the opinion that young bees do not sting, that they do not use their stings. There are certain districts where people do not harvest the honey before August 8, which is held to be a Holy day. August 8 is a honey day. It can happen that the swarm goes out and the Queen settles somewhere, and it seems that is an end of it, but it is not so — not altogether so. DR. STEINER: With regard to what I said, everything pointed to the fact that the old Queen leaves the hive when the new Queen shows herself and appears to the bees like a glow-worm. When the swarm goes out and the old Queen has been captured, then one can return all the bees into the hive, as you say, and they will go on working quietly. That does not mean that one cannot therefore say that the bees were first driven out by the strong effect of the light of the new Queen on their tiny eyes. This cannot be done away with. You must proceed quite logically here. I will give you an example from life. Imagine for a moment, that all of you here were employed somewhere, and you discover one day that you must all go on strike because something is wrong with the management. Let us suppose you all decide to go on strike. So you swarm out, gentlemen. Then a certain time passes and you find yourselves unable to procure the necessities of life. You reach the hunger-stage, and are obliged to go back to your work. I cannot now say that therefore you had originally no reason to run away! You must consider that if you take the old Queen out of the swarm and bring it back into the hive, then naturally, the bees must endure the new Queen after all, for the old Queen is no longer there. They must bite into the sour apple! What I said is therefore not wrong; it is a question of seeing these things in the right light. Then you spoke about the first swarm, when the new Queen is not yet there, when you cannot yet speak of her. Well, have you ever seen a first swarm when even the egg of the Queen is not there? HERR MÜLLER: Nine days before the young Queen has crept out. DR. STEINER: To begin with the young Queen is within her cell, as an egg. After sixteen days she is a full-grown Queen; then she creeps out. Nine days before this she is already there in the egg. The strange thing is that the egg shines brightest of all. Gradually it shines less and less, but the young Queen still shines for some time; she shines strongest of all in the larval state. Thus, it is quite comprehensible that you may have several swarms made up of the most sensitive of the bees which go out. It is to be explained by the fact that nothing happens before the young Queen is there. For what is the young Queen? She is already there when only the egg is there. As to an unfecundated Queen, when the Queen is not fertilised then no worker-bees come out but only drones, and as Herr Müller said, very bad drones at that. This is true. The brood of an unfertilised Queen is useless because there are no worker-bees. One must see to it that the Queen can make her nuptial flight under the influence of the Sun. You see, gentlemen, once more, what a great part is played by the chemical element. For what takes place on this flight is an effect on the sexual nature of the bee. But the sexual nature is entirely of a chemical character. When the Queen flies so high then naturally the impregnation is not brought about by the light, but by the chemical working of the light. Just in this instance you can see how delicately sensitive the bee is to the chemical element. You said further that while at work in the bee-house, as a man one naturally needs light, and this makes the bees restless. Try to form a vivid picture of the bee receiving chemical reactions from the light which it feels terribly strongly. When you, as a human being, approach and let the light in, suddenly making it light everywhere, this affects the bee as a strong gust of air affects you; it is just as if you opened the window and a strong draught were to blow in. The bee senses the light, it does not feel that it becomes light all round it, but it senses the light as a concussion, it is quite shattered by it. One could almost say, (though I have not actually seen the bee-keeper letting in too much light) the bees become terribly nervous, inwardly restless. They are thrown into these chemical workings of the light and begin to fly hither and thither almost like little swallows. They dance up and down as a sign of how restless they feel within. The bees would not behave in such a highly nervous way if they could see the light; they would then try to hide away, to creep into a corner where the light could not thus affect them. Naturally, in all these matters, we must realise how perfectly clear we need to be as to effects that everywhere exist, and must not be compared with the effects things have upon men. Otherwise we anthropomorphise everything, and cannot but conclude that because man sees in a certain way, the animals also must do the same. One cannot make such statements straightaway. Maybe you have observed the following. If one notices such things, one can often become aware of them. Imagine you are in a kitchen where the stove is nice and warm. The cat likes to sit on the warm stove; it curls itself up and falls asleep, has its eyes shut. Well, if there is a mouse somewhere under the cupboard, which the cat cannot possibly see with its eyes, it may happen that the cat suddenly springs down without opening its eyes, pounces with absolute certainty on the mouse, and before you have time to think the thing out to the end, the cat returns with the mouse already in its mouth. Now naturally, you gentlemen, will not say the cat saw the mouse, for it had its eyes shut, it was asleep. Some people say the cat has a very fine sense of hearing, and by means of this very sensitive hearing the cat is aware of the mouse. Well, apart from this, that one must now state that the cat hears best when it is asleep, which is a rather doubtful statement, because sight and hearing are those senses which play so great a part in waking life, whereas the sense of smell for example, plays an extremely important part in sleep. It works chemically. Within the nose, and the whole brain something chemical is happening. Moreover, when you hear something, can you pounce upon it with absolute certainty? This is not at all the case; hearing is not at all such that it leads one to orientate oneself quickly. Hence, it is not the hearing of the cat that is in question here. But what is very strongly present in the cat is a terribly fine sense of smell , which it has within its bristly beard. This terribly fine sense of smell is there because in each bristle there is a little channel, and within each bristle (see diagram 9) is a substance, and this substance is chemically affected by the presence of the mouse. When there is no mouse near, this substance has a certain chemical quality, but if there is a mouse anywhere in the neighbourhood of the cat, even some distance away, then the cat is aware of the mouse through the chemical reaction in its whiskers. I told you once that there are people who, though living on the third floor, are aware of some substance in the cellar, and can sometimes be made ill by it — for example, by buckwheat. People could easily convince themselves with what certainly the sense of smell works, for otherwise there could he no police dogs. These dogs work very little by sight, but much with their sense of smell. In the animal kingdom precision and sureness cannot be ascribed to the eyes, but to chemical activity ; under the influence of ultra-violet rays this activity is strongest of all. If you wished to be especially gracious to a police dog you would do well if, for instance, you went with him and constantly held a dark lantern in front of him so that you kept him always in the ultra-violet rays. The police dog would then be even more certain in finding things, for in its “smelling hairs” (for the dog also has smelling hairs) the chemical reactions would be still more certain. All that can be known about the animal points to the fact that the moment we enter the animal kingdom, one must not look for such conscious senses as those of man, but must descend into the senses of smell and taste — into the “chemical senses.” You indicated, Herr Müller, that young bees do not sting. This is easily accounted for, for young bees have not yet the organ of the sting as they have not fully developed their whole inner organisation. This comes only as they grow older. There is nothing especially remarkable in this, and it does not contradict what I have said. (Herr Müller asked about artificial feeding. He takes for this four parts of water, five of sugar, and then adds thyme, camomile-tea and a pinch of salt. What is the effect of this?) DR. STEINER: We are especially able to give you information in this matter, because our own remedies are partly based on the same principles as those that have been used instinctively here. Not all our remedies, but a certain number of them, are founded on similar principles. You see, when you feed the bees on sugar, this is certainly nonsense, for the natural food of the bees is not sugar but nectar or honey, and pollen. HERR MÜLLER: For example, one has to empty even the half-filled combs of honey that come from the woods, because otherwise the bees get dysentery; also when the bees have at times only 4–6 lbs., left over, this is not sufficient. DR. STEINER: Bees are not accustomed to feed on sugar but on nectar and honey. This is in accordance with their whole nature. The remarkable thing here is that in winter the bee changes whatever food it happens to get into a kind of honey. All food is changed by the creature that partakes of it. Thus, in winter the bee is able, in its delicate digestive processes, to transform the food it takes into a kind of honey. You can well imagine that this is a proceeding demanding much stronger forces than when you feed the bees on honey. They do not then need to expend the same amount of strength as when they must change sugar into honey. What kind of bees then will those be which within themselves can transform sugar into honey? They will only be the strongest bees, of which one can make good use. One cannot get weak bees to change sugar into honey; hence, they are more or less useless. Now I said just now that we can well understand why you take for example, camomile tea, because you thereby spare the bee something which it has otherwise to do in its own body. If you dilute the sugar with camomile tea, then you take that part of the plant which prepares the nectar. For the substance of the camomile tea has not only camomile in it, for every plant also contains potential honey (the camomile contains this process in a greater degree, and can for this reason not be used as a honey plant). Suppose you have a plant, with a great deal of so-called starch in it. The starch has a constant tendency to change into sugar. The camomile sap already works on the starch of the plant in such a way that it directs the sugar-sap of the plant towards the formation of nectar. If you give the bees camomile tea you support them in their inner honey-process. You make the sugar already like honey, when, you dilute it with camomile tea. We do the same with our remedies. When one takes some kind of metal, one cannot give it to a human being just as it is, because it would disappear in the course of digestion. You must dilute it with something so that it can be more readily absorbed, and so it is with the camomile tea which you add to the sugar. Salt must be added for the reason that salt especially makes otherwise indigestible things, digestible. Man instinctively puts salt into his soup, because salt has the property of spreading rapidly through the body, and makes food digestible.

Nine Lectures on Bees

Lecture III

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA351/English/SGP1975/19231128p01.html

Dornach

28 Nov 1923

GA351-9

Herr MÜLLER has handed me another number of the “ Swiss Bee-keeper's Journal ” with an article dealing with the results of certain experiments with honey-cures — (“Our further Experiences with Honey-cures in the Frauenfeld Children's Home, Amden,” by Dr. Paula Emrich. Weeson.) (No III of the “ Schweizerische Bienenzeitung ” March 1923). (Certain passages from this article were read aloud). Dr. Steiner: It will be quite interesting, gentlemen, to add today a few remarks on this article. In this Children's Home an attempt was made to give honey treatments to children found to be suffering from some form or other of mal-nutrition. As described here, the treatment was to dissolve the honey and stir it well into moderately warmed milk, not brought to boiling point but kept just below it. This mixture was given to the children. Excellent results were thus attained. The author, Dr. Paula Emrich, mentions the satisfactory result that the percentage of red corpuscles in the blood of these children increased to an extraordinarily high degree. For instance, two children were admitted belonging to the same family. On arrival the younger child had only 53% of red blood-corpuscles. On leaving, after a honey-treatment, the percentage had risen to 82%. The elder child had at first 70%, and on leaving this had risen to 78%. In this case there was thus less improvement, but still some improvement. The elder child had milk only, and benefited by it, but the percentage rose only from 70% to 78%; it was therefore, to begin with, not so weakly, but did not get stronger in the same proportion. There are still quite a number of very interesting experiments. As I shall refer to them, I should like to ask you to note carefully the ages of the children concerned. If one is to observe the effects of some special substance on a person, it is no use simply to make experiments in the laboratory; one has always first to find out the age of every patient; one must always note the age in any experiments in nutrition, or in healing. Here we have a boy aged 11; he went through a honey-cure lasting 8 weeks, with the result of a very considerable improvement in his glands. A case of catarrh of the upper parts of the lungs also improved, the red corpuscles — those really significant elements — increasing from 55% to 75%. Then again we have a boy aged 11. He shows a rise from 50% to 74%. Then a girl aged 11, with a rise from 70% to 88%. The rise is throughout, significant. She then gives the increase in weight also, which shows that the children became stronger. I will not read the further details. Mention is also made of a girl aged 10, of another of the same age; then a boy aged 13, a girl of 7, a boy aged 11, a boy aged 8, a boy of 12, a boy of 9 and a boy of 7. The experiments show that children of these ages, let us say roughly, the school-age, derive great benefit from a honey-cure. Now, this doctor tries to discover why the children benefited so remarkably from this treatment with honey. And here, gentlemen, he mentions something very interesting, something which in a most remarkable way condemns what is so largely applied in science today. For what does science do now-a-days when it tests food-stuffs in respect to their nutritive value? Science analyses certain food-substances to discover how many components of one or another chemical substance are to be found in it. This is what science does. Now the following thing happened — a pupil of the famous Bunge, the Professor of Physiology — (you very probably know him by name, he was at one time in Basel) — made experiments in feeding mice with milk. These mice had a good time of it, they throve extremely well when they were fed on milk. So now he made the experiment in another way. He said: — milk consists of casein — i.e. cheese-substance, fat, sugar and salts. He said to himself: — the mice throve splendidly on milk; milk consists of casein, fat, sugar and salts; consequently, I shall give some mice casein, fat, sugar and salts. This is exactly what is contained in milk. And behold! when he gave the mice casein, fat, sugar and salts, they died within a few days! They got the same things, but they all died. You see, gentlemen, the composition of the substance is not the whole matter. Those gentlemen ought to have said to themselves: something else must be in question here. But what did they say? They said: “substance is everything: substance must be everywhere where anything happens.” Well, yes, but the substances that are there in casein, fat, sugar and salts — well, they do not make milk . So the gentlemen said, evidently there must be a new substance here, in such minute quantities that it cannot be found by chemical analysis. This substance is what people now call — vitamin. Vita means life ; min is connected with “make”; therefore, vitamin “ makes life .” Once, gentlemen, when Heine wanted to mock at something, he said: “There are people who wish, for instance, to explain poverty, the cause of poverty. Well, the simplest way is to say — ‘ poverty comes from being Poor !’” One has found another term, but one has not explained anything! I was once in a society where people discussed the question where what is “comic” came from. Some of them had arrived at quite interesting ideas as to the source of the “comic” — of what one laughs at. Then however, someone got up and went to the platform in a way that one knew at once — “he has the feeling he has a great deal to say.” So then he brought forward his ideas of “comic” and said: — “The ‘comic’ originates solely from the fact that man possesses a ‘vis-comica.’ ‘Vis’ is force — ‘comica’ is comic . Man has the ‘comic force.’ This is where what is ‘comic’ originates.” This is just as though one should say in economics: — where does money come from? Money comes from the money-making force. Nothing is explained in this way. Well — in economics one would at once remark that anyone saying that money comes from the money-making-force was a queer fellow! But in science people do not notice it when someone asks: — where does the life-giving property of milk come from? and then answers: — from the vitamin! That is the same as saying that poverty comes from being poor! But it is not noticed. People think they have said something wonderful, but in truth nothing at all has been said. And that, you see, is what I should like to call the disturbing element in modern scientific methods. People claim to have something to say; they announce it in gigantic words, and everybody believes what is said. But if this continues further in the history of the world, things will come to a point where everything will dry up and perish. For the world depends on the fact that something can be done , not that things are merely discussed and many words made about them. Words must signify what is there in reality. And truly, gentlemen, in earlier times a kind of knowledge existed that was directly connected with practise. Today there is a science which no longer knows anything about practical matters. Often it merely spins out words. This has naturally come about because a new authority has superseded an old authority. You need only consider how short a time ago it is that we did not have so many journals on special subjects as we have today. Communications which were to be made on various subjects — let us say for instance bee-keeping — were given out at special bee-keepers' meetings. This was still so in my youth. At such a gathering of bee-keepers one could learn how things were being dealt with. One would tell the other what he knew from his own experience, and one felt at once whether a man was merely a wind-bag, or whether he had real practical knowledge behind him, which is a very different matter. When you hear someone speak, you know at once whether he knows something, or whether you can find it all in print somewhere. For printer's ink has come as a new authority in addition to all the rest. If anything is printed people believe there must be something in it! But there is something further to be considered in this article. This doctor has indeed achieved something of great value with her honey treatments. What she has done in her practical work is really admirable. But when she begins to think it all over on scientific lines, the result is really nil. Further she says this: — “It is much to be desired that these results of our experiments should be made known as widely as possible, and that more honey should be given, especially to the young ... For the moment our communications only give the results of our practical experiences; but we do not doubt that with the further development of the theory of vitamins the pharmacologists and physiologists will give their attention to the problem of the working of honey on the human organism.” The author also says at the beginning: “I feel obliged to give this account of the effects of honey-cures from the medical point of view. Our good results encourage us to seek their deeper connections, as I am well aware that I am far from having penetrated their innermost nature.” It is evident from her own words that this doctor is modest enough to admit that the whole theory of vitamins does not enable her to reach the real heart of the matter. And now let us consider very exactly the following question. Let us see on what these effects of honey-treatments really rest. You see, these experiments show us something; they show that the effect of honey is an especially strong one, and that further experiments will increasingly show this, not in the case of very young children, but with those who have reached the change of teeth, or with those who are well beyond it. This is shown by the actual experiments, and it is extremely important to take this into account. But the experiments indicate something further. They indicate that honey is most effective when one gives it in moderately heated milk. It is this admixture of milk and honey that has such especially favourable results with children. If one went a little further one would discover that honey is important even in the case of the younger children. One must then put only a little honey in the milk — more milk and less honey. With old people it is the honey without any milk that is good. Excellent results can be obtained with really old people if one persuades them to take honey without milk. We must say that milk and honey have very great importance in human life; these experiences make it evident. You see, the old wisdom, as I have often told you, was not so stupid as modern learning thinks. This old wisdom is sometimes expressed in very simple words, but it was really wise. In the ancient saying: — “This is a land where milk and honey flow,” the meaning is that it is a land of health, a country where men can live healthily. Thus, of old, men knew that milk and honey have a tremendously strong relation to human life. Nature often speaks in a very reasonable way. One observes her utterances if only one takes simple matters sufficiently simply. If one knows that Nature works with great wisdom, one does not need much proof of the fact that milk is good for little children, for were it not so, honey would flow from the breasts of women and not milk. This would by no means be beyond the sphere of Nature's possibilities, for the plants produce honey and it certainly might be possible that the glands of the female breast secreted honey. One must only take things simply enough. One must not say: — Nature is a bungler, she makes only milk to flow from the woman's breast and not honey, but one must say: — Behind this lies the knowledge that for the small child, milk above all else is necessary; one can add the honey as the child grows older. Well, then, surely we should not form such an idea as the above, which is nothing but mere words, and say to ourselves; “poverty comes from being poor; the comical from the vis-comica, and the life-giving power of honey from the vitamin!” One must look for what has reality in this connection. We will now, gentlemen, gather together some of the things we have long learnt to know from these lectures, for the important thing is that one should always observe things in the right way. When you go into the mountains you find, just where the rocks are hardest, where so to speak, the very hardest earthly substance pours in — there you find the quartz-crystals. They are very beautiful. You find many kinds of crystals. You will remember I drew these quartz crystals for you; they look like this: — (Diagram 10). When they are entire, they are formed below just as they are above, but usually, they are not perfect. They come out of the rock; they grow, as it were, out of the rock in the form I have just drawn for you here. What does this signify? It signifies that the earth permits crystals to grow out of itself which are hexagonal , growing to a point. Within the earth there is thus the power to build up this six-angled form. As I have so often explained to you, the forces that are within the earth and in the universe, are also in man. The earth in her turn receives this force from the universe; man has it from the earth. Man has the same force within him which, in the earth, drives out the crystal. How is it then within him? Truly, gentlemen, the human body is full of quartz. Quartz as you find it in the mountains is one of the very hardest of substances, But substances are not everywhere just as they present themselves to us here or there. In man there is something quite similar to quartz, but it is in a more fluid form. Why? You see, if one observes — and one must really observe in the right way, and with a true inner vision — what flows continually from man's head into his limbs (see Diagram 11), and this is most interesting, there streams incessantly downwards from the head what the earth once upon a time caused to flow from within outwards, and which became hard up above there, and settled down, for instance, as quartz crystals. It streamed out from the interior of the earth. In man it flows from his head through the whole of his body. It is quartz, or silicic acid. But the human body does not permit the quartz to become a crystal. That would indeed be a fine business if we were all to be filled up inside with quartz crystals! Only to a point where the quartz is about to become hexagonal does man allow the thing to go; there he stops it; he does not allow it to go any further. Thus we have only the beginnings of the quartz formation in our body, and then it is arrested; it must come to an end. Our whole life rests on this — that we are perpetually on the point of forming hexagonal crystals from the head downwards, but we do not permit it actually to come about. These hexagonal crystals always wish to take form in us, but in reality they do not do so. They are interrupted, arrested, and then we have, so to speak, the quartz fluid in the highest possible state of solution within us. If we had not this quartz-fluid within us, we could for example, eat ever so much sugar and we should never have a sweet taste in our mouth. This tasting of the sugar is brought about by the quartz we have within us, not by its substantiality, but by what is the will within it to become hexagonal like a crystal. That is what causes it; that is the essential. You see, in the interior of the earth this crystallising process is continued. Man arrests the silicic acid when it wants to grow spiky up above inside him. The earth allows it to become spiky up above. But man needs this force, this silicic acid force — i.e. , this power to bring forth hexagonal forms — man has need of it. I imagine that you are not all of you good geometricians. Geometry is not exactly familiar to you all; you could perhaps not straight away, draw a quartz crystal, or model one in clay. But your body is a very good geometrician, and wants always to be forming such crystals. We are prevented from doing this. All life consists in the holding back of death, and when we can no longer hold death back, we die. Now let us look at the bees. The bee flies out and gathers nectar. This it works upon in its own body, and in so doing provides its own life-forces. Further the bee prepares the wax. What does it do with the wax? It makes hexagonal cells. You see, the earth makes hexagonal silicic-acid crystals. The bee makes hexagonal cells, and this is extremely interesting. If I could draw the bees' cells for you — or if you remember Herr Müller showing them to you — then they look just like quartz crystals, only they are hollow. But in their form they are the same. You see, these cells are hollow (Diagram 12), but what is put in them? The bees' eggs are laid there. Where there is silicic acid in the quartz, here in the cell is a hollow, and there the bee places its eggs. The bee is shaped by the same force that is within the earth and forms the quartz. Here the finely dissolved silicic acid (Diagram 13) is at work. A force is at work there, though this cannot be physically proved. The nectar works in the body of the bee so that it can shape the wax in a form which man really needs, for man must have those six-cornered spaces within him. Man needs the same thing. Inasmuch as the bee is the creature best able to give form to this hexagonal force, the bee is the creature that everywhere collects that particular food which can best be transformed in the body into this hexagonal force. You need only eat some honey and you receive an immensely strengthening force. If you are too weak to develop this hexagonal force in yourself which has to pass from the head into the whole body, if you no longer have the power to give the blood so much firmness that this force is always present in it, then honey must intervene — or milk in the case of the child. The child has not yet got this hexagonal force; therefore, it must receive it from what is prepared in the human being as milk. Now you see, gentlemen, that you can give as much casein, fat, sugar and salts to the mice as you please — and they will die. Why? Because the animal also needs this hexagonally-working force. If one only mixes together chemically casein, fat, sugar, and salts, then the force present in the hexagon is not there. When you give the mice milk then it is there. Only in milk it is not so strongly present that when the milk is turning sour it crystallises hexagonally. If this hexagonally-working force were a little stronger in milk, one could drink sour milk and it would form little silicic-acid crystals on the tongue. This would taste as though the milk were full of tiny little hairs. But it does not go so far, because milk comes from the human or animal body, and there it remains fluid. This is sufficient for the child but not for the grown man. But to become adult is something that already begins in childhood, so we must give the child the more powerfully-working hexagonal force that honey contains. You see, gentlemen, it is very interesting that when you take milk, even if it comes from the human being, it is still something belonging to the animal-nature in man. In man it is animal. If you take honey, it comes from the plant kingdom — indirectly through the bee. But it comes from the plant world and has a plant nature. If you take silicic acid — quartz — then this has a mineral-nature; it has quite a definite hexagonal form. The wax which is produced within the bee itself through the food which is its nourishment, the wax has received its form; it does not originate it, it receives the form as developed in the hexagonal cell. In milk this form is dissolved again; only a shadow-picture of the hexagonal crystal remains in the milk (see Diagram 14). Thus, one can say that honey is a substance most suitable and health-giving for man. One might however, be inclined to think that it would be just as good if man were to take some silicic acid instead of honey, for then he would also obtain this hexagonal force. But the silicic acid which has been driven as far as the hexagonal form, as far as to evolve this silicic acid form, contains too powerful a crystallising force; it would work much too strongly in man. Now let us imagine the following. Picture to yourselves some poor child not so fortunate as to be given this honey-cure (as described in the article), at the age of 16 or 17, or at 13 or 14, when it is most suitable. This child has not had this good fortune and the iron-corpuscles in the blood get weaker and weaker. The percentage in the blood gets less and less. The child grows up, let us say to the age of 30, and has grown up into a weak man. The writer of this article describes this also when she says, “they collapse.” When the man is 30 years of age it may often be a very good thing to give him a honey-treatment, but he is already too much exhausted; he would have to eat so much honey to get any real benefit from it that his digestion would be ruined. Honey teaches man moderation; if you eat too much honey you ruin your stomach. This rests on quite a simple fact. Honey is sweet; it contains a great deal of sugar. The stomach especially needs acids, and when you put too much sugar into the stomach you hinder the working of the acids. Thus, briefly put, honey must only be eaten in moderate quantities, and when a man is already exhausted at the age of 30, one would have to give him so much honey, if a honey-treatment was to help him (and this it would doubtless do), that he would first get bad stomach disturbances and then intestinal troubles. Thus, one cannot do this, but one can do something else. One can at first give the man very highly diluted, pulverised quartz, that is, silicic acid as a remedy. When you have given him this highly diluted silicic acid as a medicine for a time, then after a time he will be able to benefit by small quantities of honey. The strongly diluted silicic acid will have called forth in him the power to make use of the hexagonal force, and then a small amount of honey can follow. The silicic acid has prepared the way for the honey. One might also help a man with whom the content of the blood in regard to hæmoglobin has become exhausted, by adding to the honey, suitable to an adult, some highly diluted silicic acid the honey can then take effect. In the case of a child one should give plenty of milk. You see, it is necessary to know these connections. One might ask: what then is it that works through the honey into man? It is the formative forces of the hexagonal principle. This is within the bees themselves. One can see it in the waxen cells of the comb, and it is this that makes honey so beneficial. It was for this reason that I said just now that it is primarily the force of milk that works in the child, and this can be further enhanced by the addition of honey, whereas in the adult person the forces of the honey are more especially active. Nevertheless, when a man has grown older this honey force must be strengthened by that of silicic acid, as I told you. Also, a milk and honey cure can be of use because the forces of early childhood still exist in the older man; this is beyond contradiction the good effect of a honey-cure remains undoubted. In practise, this is well-known, and one should really insist on making these things so clear to people, that a right amount of good honey should be available. On this matter people are very readily deceived. I do not mean this in a bad sense; I might say people are easily mislead by the conditions of present day civilisation. If you have ever asked for honey in hotels when travelling, it was certainly not honey that you were given there, it was sugar-honey, artificially produced. If people realised that this is by no means the same thing, for there can be no question of any hexagonal force being in such honey, they would never claim that imitation-honey could have the same effect as pure bee-honey. One could very well feed mice with pure honey, they would like it very well. But if you were to feed them on this artificial honey, they would die, though not perhaps in a few days. I have now added what I wished to say about this article on milk and honey cures. Now another interesting question has been put to me about which I would like to speak, and also to hear what you yourselves have to say about it; also what Herr Müller has to say to you. You see, there are so many matters to be considered that it will really be worth our while to discuss these things further next time. You will then be able to ask your questions, and Herr Mailer or I will answer them. I want first to touch quite briefly on two other points. They may seem rather strange to you, but I am really eager to know what you will have to say about them. Written Question: Among old-fashioned bee-masters there is a conviction that a certain soul-relationship exists between the bee-master and his bees. It is said that when the bee-father dies, then his death must be at once announced to all the bees. If this is not done, then the whole stock will die out in the course of the following year. That a certain relationship of soul does exist between the two is again indicated by the fact that one gets far more stung when one approaches one's work in the hive in an angry or irritable mood, then when one does the same work in a peaceful and harmonious one. Is there any objective reality at the base of this old idea of the bee-masters? DR. STEINER: It would be interesting if Herr Müller would tell us quite simply whether he believes such things to be quite in the air or no? Such things are customary among the peasant bee-keepers; they announce a death to the bees. But this soul-relationship, this connection between the bee-father and his bees, is what I now have in mind. Perhaps Herr Müller can tell us more. HERR MÜLLER: Two cases were cited which had occurred in Basel and in Zurich. In one family a woman who had helped a good deal with the bees had died, and in the course of a year all the bees were dead. In the other case, at Basel, it was also a woman who died who had given much care to the bees; the same thing happened. It was a very large apiary; in a year's time twenty-eight stocks were reduced to six. One cannot explain this by anything connected with the general conditions, or with the bees themselves. One could trace no disease that the bees may have had. It may have been a “soul” connection. DR. STEINER: Let us remember what I once told you about the relation between man and the animals. You may perhaps have heard, gentlemen (I have spoken of it before), that some time ago people talked a great deal about the so-called “counting” horses, horses which, for instance, were asked the question: “How much is four and five?” Then one counted — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 — and the horse stamped its foot at nine. Really remarkable and not inconsiderable sums were done in this way — by the horses. You may perhaps have heard of these “Elberfeld counting horses;” they were very celebrated. Whole delegations went to investigate the matter. I did not myself see these horses, but I saw another horse belonging to Herr von Osten that could count equally well. One could form an exact judgment of the whole matter. People simply racked their brains over these “counting horses,” for it is naturally something fundamentally terrible that horses should suddenly begin to count. Science itself was put to shame by such a thing! Naturally one was quite aware, for it is an obvious conclusion to reach, that a horse cannot count; one had to find out how it was that the horse stamped its foot at a correct number. In reality, it cannot count; it would be quite idiotic to think a horse could count. Even a University lecturer knew this who scientifically investigated the matter, but he constructed a theory. He said: “Herr von Osten makes a slight facial movement when he counts; the horse observes the lines in his face, and in response to those it stamps its foot.” But he himself then made the following objection: “Yes,” he said, “but in that case the horse should be standing in front of Herr von Osten, and be looking at him, observing his face so that it knows when to stamp.” So he then took this position himself and saw nothing. Still, he did not give up his theory, he merely said: “The change of face is so minute that I cannot perceive it, but the horse can!” Well gentlemen, it then follows that a horse can see more than a University lecturer! Nothing else can be inferred! The matter was naturally otherwise. If one is trained by spiritual science and then observes the facts, one does not then lay much stress on some small facial change, for it happened in this way: there on the one side stood the horse; there stood Herr von Osten, very lightly holding the bridle. In his right hand waistcoat pocket Herr von Osten had plenty of sugar. Now Herr von Osten perpetually gave the horse little lumps of sugar. The horse licked them, found them sweet, and loved Herr von Osten very dearly. It loved him ever more and more through these little lumps of sugar, and thus an affectionate relation was set up between the horse and Herr von Osten. The latter had no need to make faces, he had merely to think — nine is the correct number; then the horse could sense it, for animals have a most delicate perception for what is going on around them. They sense what is going on there inside man's head even if he indulges in no small grimaces which a horse might be able to see but not a man. The horse senses what is happening when the brain thinks — nine — and then it stamps. But if the horse had not had any sugar its love would be a little changed into hate, and it would not have stamped with its foot any more. Thus, you see, the animal has a very delicate perception of things; not of little grimaces, but of things actually not visible; for instance, with the horse, this sensing of what is going on in the brain of Herr von Osten. One has only to observe the facts, and then one knows how wonderful a sensitiveness the animals have. Just imagine for a moment that you go near a number of bees, and are very much afraid of them. The bees will feel this fear in you, that is undeniable. Well, what does it mean when one is afraid? When one is afraid of something or other one grows pale, fear makes people pale. When one turns pale the blood flows inwards, it does not go outwards into the skin. When the bee comes near a man who is afraid, it senses more than it normally does when the blood is in the skin. It senses the hexagonal force of the blood, and stings into it; it would like to get honey or wax from you. On the other hand, when a man works quietly and his blood is flowing evenly in his veins, then the bee senses something quite different. And now think of a man who is angry, and in his anger he goes to the bees. Anger makes a man red, and a great deal of blood flows into the skin, for the blood would absorb the hexagonal force. This, too, the bee senses in its delicate feeling and believes you would deprive it of this force — and it stings you. So fine are the subtle sensibilities of the forces of nature at work here. And now we come to the question of habit. Think of the bee-father, the bees do not see his approach as men would do, the bee “senses” — if I may use this expression — everything that emanates from him — how all this is constituted. The bees get used to this, and should the bee-father die they must re-adjust themselves, and this means a great deal to them. And now, for a moment, think what one finds even with dogs when the master dies. It has been known to happen that the dog will go to the grave and die there, because it cannot adjust itself to a new master. Why should one suppose that the bee with its fine sensitiveness should not be aware of what happens, why should one not think that the bee also, accustomed as it is to the bee-master cannot at once adapt itself to a new one? Indeed something very significant lies at the root of all this. But you may say: “Is it then the same with these tiny little creatures as with dogs and horses?” Well, perhaps you may not have noticed, but it is nevertheless true, that one finds men who have, as the saying is, a specially lucky hand in the cultivation of plants. Even when they sow plants, or grow flowers in a pot, everything thrives with them, while another person may take equal care of the plants, but none will thrive; he is not successful. This is due to the “emanations” man has, and which work favourably on the plants in the one case, and unfavourably in the other. It is quite impossible for some people to cultivate plants. They have an unfavourable reaction which above all affects the forces in the flower that produce nectar, the forces that sweeten the flower. So we can say, Man works even on the flowers, and in a much more pre-eminent way upon the bees. One need not wonder at this, but one must bring the facts before one as they appear; then one begins to understand that things really are so, and can bring them to bear in practical life. QUESTION: According to an old peasant rule it is held that if it rains on the third of May, the Day of the Finding of the Holy Cross, the honey is washed out of all the flowers and trees, and there will be no good honey harvest that year. My observations of the last four years seem to confirm that there is some truth in this rule. Is such a thing at all possible? DR. STEINER: This question leads us very deeply into the great processes of Nature. You see, it is just this day of the Finding of the Holy Cross, this third of May which is of less importance; it is of much greater importance that it is just this season of the year. What does it actually mean when it rains at the beginning of May? It means this. You know that on March 23, the Sun enters the Sign of the Fishes. I have told you before that the spring equinox is now in this Sign of the Fishes. The Sun remains in this Sign till April 20, then it passes on into the Sign of the Ram. Thus the rays of the Sun come at the beginning of May from an entirely different corner of the Universe than at other times. Suppose now that it is fine weather in the beginning of May — on the third of May — what does this signify? It signifies that on the third of May the Sun has a powerful influence on all that is earthly. Whatever happens on the earth is under the influence of the Sun when the weather is fine. What then does is mean when it rains on May the third — that is in the beginning of May? It means that the earth has the strongest forces, and hinders the influences of the Sun. This is immensely significant for the whole plant kingdom, for when the rays of the Sun come from the direction of the Ram, they can so work that their whole power is directed to the plants. Then the flowers can develop the sweet substance which is present in honey. Then the bees can make honey. When, however, the earth has the greater power, when it rains at this season, the flowers cannot develop in the rays of the Sun which come from the Ram, but must await later events, or maybe even be altogether interrupted in what they have already developed. Then the flowers do not mature the nectar rightly and the bees find none. A matter such as this only becomes comprehensible when we know that everything that happens on this earth is, as I have repeatedly told you, under the influence of the Cosmos, of all that is outside and beyond the earth. Rain means that the influences of the Sun are chased away. Fair weather means that the Sun forces can unfold in all their power. The question here is not that the power of the Sun comes only in a general way, from where we look up to it, but that it comes definitely from that part of the heavens where the Ram is. The forces of the Sun differ according to the particular corner of the heavens from which they come. This is not due to the Sun alone, but because as the Sun shines down upon the earth, behind it, in this instance, in the Cosmos stands the constellation of the Ram. What the Ram gives, the Sun first absorbs and then pours it forth again with its rays. Thus, it is quite different if the Sun sends its rays to the earth at the beginning of May, or at the end of May. In the beginning of May the full force of the Ram is working; by the end of the month the Sun is already in the Sign of the Bull. These forces of the Bull cannot work with the same strength on the plants, they tend to harden and dry up the plant, and this means above all that the plant is no longer able to mature the forces for honey-production. Thus something has really come to light from these old peasant rules that has sound reason, and one should take note of it. Naturally, as I have previously said — the consciousness of these things has been lost, and we have fallen into superstitions, for when one is no longer able to distinguish things one may easily become superstitious. Then these old peasant rules are of about the same value as the saying: “If the cock crows on the dunghill the weather will change, or will remain as it was before!” This does not apply however, to all these old rules, for many of them are based on deep wisdom, and this we should once more study. The peasants who have applied these rules have sometimes done very well! A deeper wisdom will also lead us to the point where we can once more make use of them.

Nine Lectures on Bees

Lecture IV

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA351/English/SGP1975/19231201a01.html

Dornach

1 Dec 1923

GA351-10

HERR ERBSMEHL remarked that in modern bee-keeping the bee-master is primarily concerned with making a profit: it is the material side that has to be considered. In the “ Bienenzeitung ” (No. 10) it says: — “Honey is for the most part a luxury, and those who can afford to buy it can well pay a good price for it.” An instance is then given of how a certain Balmesberger who was travelling in Spain, found a number of very healthy children in a bee-keeper's house, and how in answer to the question where he sold his honey, he replied: “Here are my customers.” Here in Middle Europe we want to get as much profit as possible from our honey. An employer of many workmen must see that he gets as much as possible out of them, and the same also applies to the bees. In the eleventh number, the further question is asked as to whether there was any truth in the matter when people thought that moonlight had an influence on the production of honey or nectar in the flowers. HERR MÜLLER replied: 1. That Herr Erbsmehl can gather from the Journal that the bee-keeper in question was only working on a small scale, and did not sell his honey. Erbsmehl is evidently not aware what bee-keeping is in our days, and all the things connected with it so that one is obliged to keep accounts. If one does not reckon on making a profit out of it, as with other matters, one might just as well give it up. Honey would never be available in the necessary quantities if one did not have recourse to artificial methods. One gets perhaps 4–8 pounds of honey and may need rather more than this to keep the stock in good condition. Then a bad year comes and one has not enough to last till April or May. One must help the stock that has sufficient vitality by artificial feeding — with sugar, camomile tea, thyme and a small seasoning of salt. Then the hours which the bee-keeper spends in working are noted down quite exactly in a modern apiary — how much time the bee-keeper has given to it and so on. Let us say five and a half hours; — (the hour is reckoned at the rate of one franc or one franc, fifty) — thus a pound of honey costs seven francs. Then one must reckon with wear and tear; the combs get used up, and one must replace them. The whole enterprise should surely make a profit. But if the bee-keeper remains at the old standpoint, he does not get along. Herr Erbsmehl may be able to do so, but if I have a large stock, then I must reckon up and say to myself — I have already made a loss if I sell my honey at six francs. The American bee-keepers take exactly this view. 2. I myself, cannot understand that within the next eighty to a hundred years the whole stock of bees will die out. I really cannot understand what Dr. Steiner means by saying that within eighty to a hundred years bee-keeping will be endangered. 3. As to the second point — i.e. , what announcing the death of the bee-master to the bees has to do with the bee-master, I have already stated that the greater part of the stock dies after the death of the person in charge. How it came about, I am quite unable to understand. 4. With regard to impure honey in hotels I would like to say that first-class hotels frequently buy American honey. When bees are fed oil this honey, they die — and yet it is produced by bees. 5. As to stinging, sweat is the very worst thing; when you hear shrill buzzing sounds, it is advisable to stand still. 6. As to the question how far can a bee sting affect a man, I know of a case which I should like to mention. A strong man was stung by a bee. He cried out: “Hold me, I have been stung!” He was extremely sensitive to it. He was a man with slight heart trouble. Perhaps Dr. Steiner will tell us to what extent a bee-sting may be really dangerous. For instance, it is said that three hornet stings will kill a horse. A little while ago I found a hornets' nest in my bee-house. I was taking away the brood. The hornets were such cowards they did not sting me in the dark; perhaps they might have done so out of doors. DR. STEINER: Let us go back to the recognition by the bees of their bee-master. I should like to add a few remarks that we may discuss these matters in a reasonable way. You have formed an opinion that is naturally completely justified if you consider the thing intellectually. But now I should like to tell you this: imagine you have a friend, you came to know him, let us say, in the year 1915. This friend stays here in Europe and you go to America, returning in the year 1925. Your friend, let us suppose, is in Arlesheim. You come to Arlesheim, meet your friend and recognise him. But what has happened meanwhile? I have already described to you how the matter, the substance of the human body is completely changed after seven or eight years. There is then nothing at all left of it; so that your friend when you see hint again after ten years' interval, has nothing of the old, actually nothing, of the substance you saw in him ten years ago. Yet you recognised him! When you look at a man externally, he certainly looks like a coherent mass, but if you were to see him through a big enough magnifying glass, you would then see the blood flowing through his head. Very well, this blood when you see it with the naked eye, or with a small magnifying glass — this blood looks like blood . But if you imagine a gigantic magnifying glass then what flows there as blood no longer has the same appearance; then it seems to consist of little “dots” which are like minute animals. But these little dots do not remain at rest, they vibrate continually. And when you watch this going on it has the strangest likeness to a mass of bees. When sufficiently magnified in his substances, man appears exactly like a mass of bees. If we thoroughly examine the whole matter it must seem just as incomprehensible that one man should be able to recognise another after ten years (for not a single one of these small vibrating dots is any longer there). His eyes are quite different dots, quite different minute creatures are there, and yet one man recognises another again So you see, it is entirely unnecessary that it should be due to these minute creatures and plants of which we consist, that we are able to recognise one another, for it is the whole man , who again recognises us. The colony is not only just so and so many thousands of bees, the whole host of bees is a whole and complete unitary being that recognises a man or does not recognise him. If you had a diminishing glass instead of a magnifying glass you would be able to gather all these bees together; you could then visualise them as united in the same way as a human muscle. It is just this fact that one has to bear in mind with bees — that one is not dealing with single individual bees but must consider them as a whole , as belonging together as one whole . With the intellect alone this cannot be grasped; one must be able to visualise it as a whole. It is for this reason that the bee colony is so profoundly instructive; it completely refutes all our usual ideas. Our ideas really always tell us that things ought to be different But the most marvellous things happen in the hive; not at all such as we think out with our reason. That it should have a certain effect upon the bees when, for instance, through the death of the bee-master another has to take his place, is undeniable. Experience has shown it to be a fact. Those who have had to do with many apiaries, and not only with one, know this quite well. I can tell you that bee-keeping in a variety of ways interested me extremely when I was a boy, though the economic side, the financial problem of bee-keeping did not interest me so much then as later, or today — because honey even in those days was very dear and my parents could not afford to buy any. We got all our honey from our neighbours as a gift, for Christmas or at other times, indeed we had so much given us that we had honey all the year round. Honey was given away in those days. You see the economic problem was not of great interest to me because, as a boy I ate a terrible lot of honey, as much indeed as I wanted of the honey that was given us. How could this be? Nowadays, under the same circumstances one could not get so much honey as a gift, but in those days the bee-keepers in the neighbourhood of my parents' home were mostly farmers, and honey was just a part of the general farm produce. This is quite a different matter, gentlemen, from starting bee-keeping as some of you do while living on the wages you earn. On a farm, bee-keeping goes on without one's paying much attention to it. The time it takes up is not considered, is not taken into account. On the farm this was always so, it was time that remained over. Time was saved somewhere or other, or a bit of work was put off till another time and so on. At all events the honey was looked after between-whiles, and one had the idea that honey is something so precious that one cannot really pay for it at all. In a certain sense this is quite right, but at the present time conditions are such that all price levels are quite false. It is fundamentally impossible to discuss prices today, for the whole question ought to be discussed on a much wider basis, on the basis of economics. Nothing much results if one discusses the price of separate food substances, and honey is a food substance, not merely a luxury or a pleasure. In a healthy social order a healthy price for honey would naturally be found; this is undoubted. But because we do not live under healthy social conditions at the present day, all our problems are placed in an unhealthy position. When you visit big farms today and hear what the farm-bailiff has to say (as a rule it is not a peasant, but a bailiff) when he tells you how much milk he gets from his cows, it is horrible! He gets so many gallons of milk a day that anyone knowing the nature of the cow realises it is quite unnatural to get so much milk from a cow. But they manage to get it! Quite certainly gentlemen, they manage to get it! Some of them in my opinion, get up to twice as large a quantity as the cow should really give. In this way the farm can obviously become exceedingly profitable. One cannot even say that it is as yet very noticeable, but the milk has not got the same force as milk produced under normal conditions; one cannot immediately prove the great harm that is being done. Perhaps I might tell you the following. We have made experiments with a remedy for foot-and-mouth disease in cattle; we have made many such experiments during the last few years. They were carried out on large farms as well as on smaller ones where the milk production was not pushed so far as on the big farms. Much could be learnt in this way because one had to test how the remedy worked in foot-and-mouth disease. The matter however, was not carried to a conclusion, for the officials in charge did not agree, and today so many concessions and so on, are necessary. But the remedy succeeded well, and with a slight alteration, it has also had very good results in distemper in dogs, under the name of “Distempo.” When one makes these experiments one discovers the following: — One finds that calves bred from cows that have been brought to an excessive production of milk, are considerably weaker. You see it in the way the remedy affects them. The working or nonworking of the remedy, so to speak, can be tremendously increased in such cases. The calf grows up if it does not die of the disease, but the calf bred from a cow that has been over-stimulated to this over-production of milk, a calf of such breeding is weaker than calves bred from cows that have never been so forced. This change can be observed through the first, second, third or fourth generations, but is then so slight that observation is not easy. This breeding for milk-production is still of short standing, but I know very well that if it continues, if a cow is forced to yield six gallons of milk a day, if you continue thus maltreating it, all breeding of cows will after a time go absolutely to ruin. There is nothing to be done. Well, in artificial bee-keeping things are, naturally not fundamentally so bad, because the bee is a creature that can always help itself again, that is indeed, incredibly able to help itself because the bee lives so much nearer to Nature than the cow that is being bred in this fashion. It is not even quite so bad if cows so maltreated for milk-production are nevertheless at times taken out to pasture. But on the big dairy farms this is no longer done. These farms have nothing but stall-feeding; the cow is completely torn away from natural conditions. You cannot afford to do this in bee-keeping. Thanks to its nature the bee remains united with external Nature; it helps itself again. And you see, gentlemen, this self-help in the bee-hive is something extremely wonderful. We now come to what Herr Müller said about the bumblebees and hornets he sometimes finds in his bee-hives, which did not sting him, whereas it can be sometimes rather a disaster to meet a hornet. I would like here to tell you something else. I do not know whether those of you who are bee-keepers have already experienced this; it may happen that you have an empty hive, and I once saw a strange thing in an empty hive, something like a lump. At first one could not make out what it was. The bees appeared, apparently for no good reason at all, to have made a lump out of all their usual products, out of all sorts of things. A lump just like a big stone and surrounded by all manner of resin and pitch, glue-like substances, wax and so on; such things as the bees also collect. I was curious to know what this was and I took the lump to pieces, and behold, there was a dead mouse inside You see, the mouse had got into the hive and died there, and now imagine what a terrible thing the smell of a dead mouse would have been for the bees. In this emergency the whole colony had the instinct to surround the dead mouse with a shell. When one took this shell to pieces it smelt horribly, but the smell had remained quite shut up within the shell. You see, gentlemen, within the hive was not only the instinct to build cells, to feed the brood, but, in an emergency, the instinct for something unusual , for what has to be done when a dead mouse is in the hive! Since the bees were not sufficient in number to carry the mouse away, they helped themselves; they made a shell all round it. I have heard from others that snails or slugs which had crept inside hives were also thus encrusted. In the hive not only ordinary instincts are living, but true healing instincts; these are exceedingly active in the hive. Well — if there is a hornets nest in the hive the bees do not enclose it with a hard shell, but continually surround the nest with excretions of their poison, so that the hornets lose all energy, all power to attack. Just as the mouse, the dead mouse in there can no longer send its smell in all directions, so the hornet, though not so firmly imprisoned, is continually exposed to the exhalations with which the bees surround it, and thereby gets so weakened that they can do nothing. The hornet loses all its strength, and can no longer use its sting to defend itself when you come near it. It is really so, that one only does justice to the bees when one goes beyond mere intellect and actually follows up the facts with a certain inner vision. It is quite wonderful, this picture. One must therefore say, the bee-colony is a totality . It must be seen as a totality. But in a totality the harm does not appear all in a moment. You see, if one knows men well, one can say for instance, the following: — A man — there are such men — is fairly fresh and strong at the age of 65 or 66; another man is not so fresh because he suffers inwardly from too much lime in his arteries, etc. To observe this, and to bring it into connection with what had occurred in his childhood, is extremely interesting. For example, one can give a child milk that comes from cows who get too much fodder from a lime-stone soil. Even in the milk with which the child is nourished, the child gets some elements of this limey soil. This may not perhaps be at once evident. A doctor of the kind we have today, may come along and show you a child fed on milk derived from a limey soil, and another child fed with its mother's milk and he says, “It makes no difference at all,” and so on. But the child fed on its mother's milk is still fresh at the age of 65 or 66, and the child fed on the cow's milk has too much lime in the blood-vessels at the same age. This is so because man is a whole , and what works in one period of time still continues to be active at a much later period. A thing can be entirely healthy at one moment, and yet it works on later. This is what I mean when I say that from the conditions. of bee-keeping today, you cannot draw conclusions as to what artificial methods of bee-keeping signify, or do not signify. One must think how will it be 50, 60 or 100 years hence! It is quite comprehensible that someone should say today — I do not understand how this will be quite different in 50, 60 or 100 years time — this is quite comprehensible. It once happened to me on a farm, that all in good nature, I was nearly killed when I began to say that one ought not to get so much milk, for the breeding of cows would suffer even sooner, and would be ruined within a quarter of a century. One cannot as yet say very much against these artificial methods in bee-keeping today, because we are now living under conditions in which nothing can be done in the social domain. But it must be recognised that there is a great difference in whether one allows Nature to take a free course, or whether one brings artificial methods into the matter. I do not want to protest against what Herr Müller has said. It is quite correct. Today one cannot as yet confirm these things; one must wait for this. We will discuss it together in a 100 years time, Herr Müller, and see what your opinion is then! It is a question that cannot be decided at the moment. (HERR ERBSMHEL once more points out that modern bee-keeping is entirely a matter of making it profitable). DR. STEINER: The more you find that a man does his bee-keeping as a hobby, the more you will find him in agreement with the Spaniard whom you quoted just now. This farmer did not do much reckoning up as to profit; this is not generally the case today, but 50 or 60 years ago the farmer did not do much reckoning as to what he could make out of his bees; it was hardly taken into account. He either gave the honey away, or if he sold it, he put the money into the children's money boxes — or something similar. Today, the whole conditions are quite different. One cannot imagine that a man paid by the hour, or in any sense dependent on time for his payment, would not feel himself obliged to take profit-making into account. He is simply driven to it by circumstances. Today there are bee-keepers who as working men, must stay away from their work now and again, must take leave of absence if they want to carry on their bee-keeping in the right way — this is so is it not? (Certainly.) Then, quite naturally, they count up what they did not get — from other work. Just think for a moment; bee-keeping is so ancient that no one can say today from any external evidence what bee-keeping really was when the bee was still undomesticated. For the most part people know only our bees, I mean the European honey-bees, and they know only domestic bee-keeping. Natural History books write mostly about the bee which is universally spread in Europe, as “the common. hive-bee.” Thus one only knows about domestic bee-keeping. This is well worth our attention, gentlemen, that one knows only domestic bee-keeping; one is not aware what it was all like when only Nature herself was at work. Bee-keeping is very ancient. And when things are so old as this prices must be fixed on quite a different basis from that on which we mostly work today. For this reason we really have to say that here also we must trust that little by little men will come to realise that better social conditions must be brought about. I believe there will then be less talk as to whether things are profitable or not. These competitive ideas, even if they do not imply competition among those engaged in the production of similar goods, have at any rate to do with those who produce different goods. I will now answer any other questions connected with what has already been said. QUESTION: There are people who cannot digest honey at all. They immediately get stomach trouble. Is there any way of preventing these bad effects of eating honey? DR. STEINER: People who cannot take honey are, as a rule, those who in early life have had some tendency to sclerosis, to a hardening of the whole body, so that the whole digestive process is too slow. That is why they cannot digest honey which tends to accelerate the metabolic process. Because these persons digest too slowly, the honey wants to make It quicker, and so they quarrel with their own digestion, with the result that they have pains in the stomach. Everybody ought really to be able to enjoy a little honey — that is, not only to “enjoy” it, but to have the inner capacity to do so. When one finds people unable to digest honey, one has first to look for the actual cause. You must not think there is a general remedy, an universal remedy, but one can make use of one remedy or another, dependent on the causes which have resulted in this hardened body. For example, the cause might be as follows: let us say, a man cannot take honey; he gets indigestion. One asks oneself: “Does this man get indigestion because, as we say, he has a tendency to a sclerosis of the head, as it is called, to a calcifying of the veins and arteries, the blood-vessels of the head?” It can happen, in this case, that at a certain age he is unable to digest honey. To cure such a man we must take a preparation of phosphorus, and if one can cure him he will then be able to take honey. Or it may also happen that one finds the trouble in the lungs. One must then not take phosphorus, but a preparation of sulphur. Thus the answer to the question is that one cannot say in general that a man has indigestion when he eats honey, how can we cure it? But one must say: If a man at a certain age is not able to eat honey, it is an illness. A healthy man can eat honey. If he cannot digest it he is ill, and one must find out what is wrong with him and cure it. Not to be able to digest honey is, however, less important than not to be able to take sugar, as, for instance, when a man has “ diabetes mellitus ,” or sugar-sickness. This, of course, is worse, then he is really ill, much more so than when he cannot digest honey. But even in this case he is somewhat ill and one must cure the illness. QUESTION: Like most other insects, in the dark, bees will fly towards candle or lamp-light. I have been frequently assured by experienced bee-keepers that bees are much less attracted by electric light. When one goes to them with a pocket electric torch they keep quite quiet, as though they did not notice the light at all. Only after some little time do they get restless Lamp or candle-light affects them much more quickly, and in greater numbers. Is there any explanation for this behaviour? Herr Müller says he has observed the same thing. DR. STEINER: You will probably have seen, gentlemen, in the old Goetheanum, that the cupolas were painted inside with different colours, colours made from pure vegetable substances. But this making of colours from various plant-substances finally proved that they would have completely faded away if the Sun had shone into the cupola. If one had exposed these colours for some little time, they might have lasted perhaps for some months, perhaps a few years, but exposed to direct sunlight they would have faded so much one would have seen nothing more of the paintings once there. But exposed to the electric light, they remained. We therefore, used these colours in a way that a painter working in sunlight could not have done at all. In the sunlight they would have faded completely away, whereas in electric light they were permanent. So you see, sunlight which has chemical properties (and you said bees were aware of this) has effects quite different to those of electric light. Electric light works on all substances in a much more hardening way, it does not dissolve them. That is why the bees feel something like a very slight cramp which they do not feel with sunlight, though of course, they recover again. QUESTION: With regard to the influences of the Signs of the Zodiac on honey production, the peasants lay great stress on sowing seed when the moon is in the sign of the Twins, and so on. The question is whether this idea as to the Signs of the Zodiac is founded on external data, or if there is more than this in it? DR STEINER: You see, gentlemen, today these things are never dealt with scientifically. But one can treat them scientifically. On the whole colony of bees, as such, there is as I told you, an influence. The bee, and above all the Queen is, in a certain sense, a Sun creature, and thus all that the Sun experiences in that it passes through the Zodiac, has the greater influence. But the bees naturally, depend on the plants, and here indeed, the sowing, the scattering of the seed, can he very much affected by the passage of the moon through a zodiacal sign; this concerns the preparatory substances the bees are able to find in the plants. These things are by no means fanciful, but as a rule they are represented quite superficially; they should be much more deeply studied. We have now come to the end of our time. What has to be said further we will discuss next Saturday at 9 o'clock. I think many of you have questions at heart. Bee-keeping is so beautiful and of such great value that one cannot ask enough about it. Ask questions of one another, of Herr Müller, and of me. I believe we shall find a balancing of our contradictory opinions. We need not get our stings ready like the bees but can peacefully discuss them all. But questions must be asked honestly and without reserve.

Nine Lectures on Bees

Lecture V

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA351/English/SGP1975/19231205p01.html

Dornach

5 Dec 1923

GA351-11

HERR DOLLINGER wishes to ask a question about the honeycomb. There are people who eat the wax as well as the honey, and in restaurants they used at times to serve honey in the comb. He would like to know if it was a bad thing to eat the comb. As to the diseases of bees, he thinks these could not formerly have been as bad as they are today when the bees are over-exploited. HERR MÜLLER said that eating comb-honey was an idiosyncrasy with some people. Naturally, these are the natural combs and not artificial ones. He does not think that bee diseases are the result of exploitation, but that formerly they were less considered. In those days there were not so many weak stocks and so one was not so much on the look out for them. A disease had appeared in Switzerland from England which had not been known in the past. Herr Erbsmehl thinks this may perhaps be owing to the use of artificial manures, even the flowers sicken as the result of this. DR. STEINER: With regard to these two points, one might say it is quite true that the eating of honey-comb is a fancy with some people; the real question is whether it is good for them, and this can, unfortunately only be answered medically. It is only possible to answer this question when one is really able to observe these people who eat the honey-comb, thus the wax, from the point of view of their state of health. I have seen various people who eat the comb, but they always spat it out when they had sucked out the honey. I have not so far come across people who eat any considerable quantity of wax. One should take into consideration that people digest in very different ways, not everyone in the same way. There may be people who would get some kind of gastric trouble simply by eating the wax, and such persons should be advised not to take it. But there can also be people who are able to digest the wax without any trouble and get rid of the residue by excretion. With regard to these people one could certainly say that because they eat the wax with the honey, (thus leaving the honey as long as possible still in connection with the wax which has entered the body), the honey is digested more in the intestines, whereas otherwise it is not digested till it has left the intestines and has passed into the lymphatic vessels. It is a question of the state of health of the person concerned. There are people who digest more in the intestines, and others more in the lymphatic vessels; one cannot say that one way is better than the other, for one is just as good as the other. It depends on the individual. One could only speak with certainty if one took a number of people who eat honey in the comb, and others who eat it without the comb, and then investigated how these two matters are related. With regard to bee-diseases the question is, as is usual in disease, namely, that we must take into account what Herr Müller has just said. It is so even with human beings that certain things were not much noticed formerly, whereas today they are most carefully studied. But here something essentially different comes in question. The bee-keeper of the past had really many good instincts: he did many things without being able to say just why he did them. Today these instincts no longer exist. Today people always want to know the reason why. To determine this why it is, however, necessary to study the whole matter very fundamentally. Modern knowledge is not as a rule in a position to do this. You see, the bee-keeper of old had very good instincts as how to treat the bees, I should like to say, in quite a personal manner. For instance, you should consider that there is already a considerable difference between giving the bees the old straw skeps as in former days, and giving them wooden hives as one does today. Box-hives are made of wood, and wood is an entirely different substance to the straw of which the old skeps were made. Straw attracts quite other substances from the air than does wood, so we have already a difference in the external handling. When I add to this all the bee-keeper did in former times, and above all, the strong instincts he had to do them even if he did not always know the reason why, he would, for example, place his bee-hives on some chosen spot, where the wind would blow more often from one quarter or another, and so on. Today one sets the bee-hives wherever there is room for them, from reasons of convenience. The climatic elements are still considered, but no longer to the same degree. HERR MÜLLER stated that he pays great attention to this; he places his hives on a ridge where they are sheltered from the north wind and the east wind, and so on. DR. STEINER: In such matters wood is less sensitive than straw. I have no intention of agitating in favour of straw skeps; nevertheless differences do exist, and just such things as these certainly, very definitely, affect the bees with regard to their inner activities. A tremendous activity goes on in the body of the bee when it must first gather the nectar from the plants, and in absorbing it, transforms it. This is really an immense work. How does the bee accomplish it? It is accomplished through the quite special relationship between the two different fluids in the bee. One of these is the gastric juices and the other the blood-fluid. When you study the bee you find the whitish gastric juice and the reddish sap of the blood; these are the two main elements of which the bee is constituted, and all the other parts are arranged according to the workings of the gastric juice and the blood. The main point then is this definite proportion between these two fluids; they differ very considerably in themselves. The gastric juice is what one calls acid in chemistry, and the blood sap is chemically called alkaline, which means that it is not acid though it can be made so; in itself it is however, not acid. When the pepsin is insufficiently acid, something takes place within the bee which greatly disturbs its inner organism in the honey-producing process. The blood sap is only kept sufficiently strong when the necessary climatic conditions of light and warmth, etc., are present. It will therefore be very important to take the right means of establishing the proper balance between the gastric fluid and the blood if one is to overcome the many diseases which have recently appeared among the bees. As bee-keeping can no longer be carried on as in past days, it is no longer possible to arrive at preventive methods through climatic conditions of warmth, etc., for these are no longer able to work so effectively upon the stocks of bees today; one will have to discover what will be able to work most favourably on the blood sap of the bee. It will be necessary in the future that bee-keepers take special care that the blood sap of the bee is rightly provided for. The following is important: you all know that there are years when the bees are obliged to get nectar almost exclusively from trees. In such seasons the composition of the blood sap is endangered, and the bees are much more liable to disease than at other times. It will be necessary in the future that the bee-keeper even contrives a small green-house — it need not be a large one — in which he can cultivate those plants which the bees not only like, but must have at certain times of the year. It will be necessary to have at least some small plot of flowers for the bees especially, for instance in the month of May. They will not fail to discover them for themselves whenever the plants they need have failed elsewhere. By this special cultivation of the necessary plants in the neighbourhood of the hives it will be possible to combat these diseases. These are methods I can recommend; I am giving only indications, but they will most certainly prove satisfactory for they are derived from a knowledge of bee-keeping, If they are put to the test you will find that one day they will bear very good fruit for the bee-keeper, for he will find that the diseases of bees can be prevented by these means. But if one is to proceed in a practical way all the connections mentioned above must be taken into account. I have no wish to make assertions; I only wish to say that these things arise out of the whole nature of the bees, and that it would be well to make experiments with especially cultivated plants in seasons when those most needed have failed, either partially or altogether. It should be possible in this way to considerably improve the health of the bees. I am myself quite convinced that these methods will prove successful when one is able to enter once again into these questions with a true understanding of nature. You see, it is not possible to go back to the old methods of bee-keeping. Just as little as there is any need to be reactionary in the realms of politics, or of life, is there any necessity to be a reactionary in any other domain. One must move with the times; but what really matters is that while we leave the old methods we are careful to balance this by something which will replace what we have lost. This is essential. HERR MÜLLER stated that bee-keepers were already working in the direction of the special cultivation of certain plants. For example, the yellow crocus, which is grown in large quantities for the bees; other plants were cultivated also with similar small yellow blossoms. Indeed, more than this, for a large amount of American clover is now planted; a clover which grows six feet in height and flowers the whole year round. It is cut only in the autumn; till then the blossom is left for the bees. This might also be necessary perhaps? DR. STEINER: Certainly, such things are no doubt done, but as a rule the right connections are not known. What Herr Müller had mentioned at first, was excellent and should be continued, but with regard to the American clover that flowers all the year round, this will in future be avoided, for this plant cannot bring about any improvement at all in the blood-sap of the bees; it acts only as a stimulant, and for a very short time. It is very much the same as trying to cure a man with alcohol, the bees are stimulated to more activity for a certain time. The very greatest care should really be taken today not to grow plants for the bees that are totally foreign to them; bees in their whole organic nature are bound up with a particular country. This is very evident, for the bees from different parts of the world differ widely from one another. There is, for instance, the mid-European bee already referred to here, the common domestic bee. The Italian bee again is quite unlike the Spanish bee, and so on. Bees are most strongly bound by their habits to their native country, and one cannot help them in any real way by giving them the nectar or honey belonging to entirely different countries. They have then, so much work to do in their own bodies that there are great disturbances there; the bees are forced to try and adapt themselves, to make their organisation as much as possible like that of the bees over there, in those countries where the clover comes from. Hard facts will prove in time that though such methods may appear successful for a few years, disastrous results will follow. It is quite true as has been said, that so far there are no definite indications of this, but it will none the less occur, and then people must abandon all such methods, or continue them as was done in the case of the vines. You will remember that in the seventies or eighties, phyloxera appeared and is destroying the vineyards of Europe, over immense areas. At the time I was able to study this matter, as I had a very good friend who was a farmer, and who also edited an agricultural paper, and gave much attention to this whole problem. People began to wonder why the American vine appeared immune to this disease. But what did it all amount to? It amounted to this, that the remedies by which the disease could be got rid of with the American vine, could not be used with the same result on the European vine. The consequence was, that even when everyone began to cultivate the American vine, they could succeed in keeping it in health, whereas the European vines died out. The cultivation of the European vine had to be given up altogether; the whole cultivation of the vineyards was Americanised, and everything has been completely changed. This has happened in many places. To think in this mechanical manner is valueless; one must be quite clear that things through their whole nature may be bound up with definite localities, and this fact must be taken into account. Otherwise though some temporary success may follow, it cannot be permanent. Are there any other questions you would like to ask? Or are all you gentlemen content to eat honey without so much discussion about it? Perhaps some question may occur to one or another of you. Meanwhile, I should like to say something quite briefly about the nature of this honey-making process of the bees. It is something so really wonderful that there should be these tiny little creatures that are able to transform what they have gathered from the flowers or plants in general, into the honey which is so health-giving, and which should really play a far greater part in the nourishment of men and women today. It is not realised how important the consumption of honey actually is. For example, if it were possible to influence the social medicine of today, it would be discovered that if people about to be married would eat honey as a preparation for the future, they would not have rickety children. Honey when assimilated can affect the reproductive processes, and greatly influence the building up of the body of the child. The consumption of honey by the parents, and above all by the prospective mother, works especially into the bony structure of the child. Results such as this will appear when these questions are considered in their essential aspects. In the place of the trivialities put forward in scientific journals today, it will be asked, when once we have some real knowledge of these things: “What is it best to eat at this or that time of life?” “What is best at another time of life?” Indeed, gentlemen, this will be of immense value, for the general state of health will then essentially improve, and more especially will this affect a man's vitality. Today people attach very little value to such matters. Those whose children do not suffer from rickets are naturally very pleased, but they do not think very much about it, it is taken as a matter of course. Only those complain whose children are born with rickets. It is just in the case of such most valuable social and medical methods that people remain indifferent, for it is generally taken for granted that such measures are concerned merely with what they regard as a normal condition. They have first to be persuaded that this is not the case. It should, however, be recognised that extremely favourable results would appear in this direction, and I am sure that if it could in this way be realised that through spiritual science it is possible to arrive at such conclusions, people would begin to look towards the things of the spirit. They would do this to a far greater extent than at present, when they are only told to pray that this or that may happen. Truly, gentlemen, these things which can be learnt by the spirit, and which modern science ignores, are such that one is able to know that during the times of betrothal and pregnancy, honey can be of inestimable value. I have just said that it is a most wonderful thing that the bee should be able to gather substances from the storehouse of nature and then transform them into this honey which is of so great value to human life. You will best understand on what the origin of honey actually rests if I describe to you the sane process in the quite different form in which it appears in those relatives of the bees, if I may call them so, the wasps. The wasps do not provide man with honey, but they prepare a substance that can be made use of medicinally, though of a very different kind to that prepared for us by the bees. In the next lecture I will also speak about the ants, but first, will we consider a certain species of wasp. There are wasps that have the peculiarity that they do not deposit their eggs at random, but place them on plants or on the leaves or bark of trees, even into the blossoms of trees. [Drawing on the blackboard.] Here for example is the branch, here an oak-leaf, and the wasp with its ovipositor which is hollow, (the sting would be here) lays its egg in the oak-leaf, or in some other part of a plant. What then happens? Where the egg has been placed the whole surrounding tissue of the leaf is changed; the leaf would have been quite different if the egg had not been laid there. Very good, let us now see what has happened. The whole growth of the plant has been affected, and protruding from the leaf, entirely surrounding the little wasp-egg, we find the so-called gall-nut or gall-apple, those little brownish coloured nuts or apples so often seen on trees. They are there because a wasp deposited an egg at this spot, and all round the egg there is this metamorphosed plant-substance which entirely envelops it. The wasp egg would perish if it were laid in any other place; it can only exist and develop because this protective substance encloses it which the gall-wasp steals from the plant. The wasp robs the plant of this substance. You see, the bee lays its egg in the cells of the comb; the larvae develop and emerge as bees, which in their turn steal the substance of the plant, and elaborate it within themselves. The wasp does this at an earlier stage, for in the depositing of the egg the wasp already takes from the plant the substance it needs. The bee, as it were, waits a little longer, the wasp does it earlier. In the case of the higher animals, and with man, the egg is already surrounded with a protecting sheath within the body of the mother. In this instance what the wasp has to take from the plant is provided by the mother. This gall-nut is simply built up from the substance of the plant, just as the chorion is formed as a sheath round the egg in the body of the mother, and is ejected later with the after-birth. You see how close is the relationship between the wasp and the plant. In districts especially rich in wasps one can find trees almost entirely covered with these galls. The wasp lives with the trees; it depends on them, for its eggs would never develop if it could not procure this protective covering from the different trees or plants. These galls have very many and various forms, there are some which do not look like small apples, but are interwoven and hairy, but everywhere the small germ of the wasp is in the centre. At times these galls look like shaggy little nuts. We see how close is the relationship between the wasps and the plants with which they share their existence. When the wasp has matured, it eats its way with its sharp jaws out of the gall-nut, and emerges as a wasp, and after a period of living in the outer world lays its eggs on a leaf or the bark of a tree; the egg and larval stages are always passed through as a living together with the plants. Well, gentlemen, you may perhaps say — what has all this to do with the production of honey? It has actually a great deal to do with it, for when such things are observed in the right way one learns to know how the honey was first prepared in nature, and we find once more an instance of how the instinctive knowledge of the people in older times took these things into account. Perhaps some of you know that in the south, and more especially in Greece, the cultivation of fig trees is of much importance. These are the so-called wild figs which are certainly rather sweet, but there are people with a still sweeter tooth, who wish to have fig trees that bear still sweeter figs than those of the wild trees. What do these people do? Now just imagine you have a wild fig tree; this wild fig tree is a special favourite with a certain kind of wasp which lays its eggs upon it. Let us picture this tree, and on its branches a wild fig into which the wasp inserts its egg. Now the grower of the figs is in his way a clever fellow; he lets the wasps lay their eggs in the wild figs which he cultivates just for this very purpose. Later this fellow gathers two of these figs, just at the moment when the wasp eggs are not quite fully developed, when the wasps are not yet ready to creep out, and he takes a reed and ties the two figs together so that they are held firmly. And now he goes to a fig tree that he wants to improve, and he hangs the two figs he has tied together, and within which are the eggs of the wasp not yet fully developed, and binds them on to the fig-tree which he wishes to sweeten. And now the following happens: the wasps within the figs feel that something has happened, for the figs which were gathered now begin to dry up, for they are no longer supplied with the sap of the tree, and get very dry. The immature wasp inside senses this, even the egg is aware of it, and the result is that the wasp is in a terrible hurry to come out of the fig. The grower always starts this process in the spring; he first lets the wasp lay its eggs, and in the month of May he quickly gathers the two figs and carries out his plan. The little creature inside thinks, now I must hurry up, now the time has come when the figs dry up. In a terrible hurry the wasp emerges much earlier than it would otherwise have done. If the fig had remained where it was before, it would only have crept out in the late summer; now it must creep out in the early summer with the result that there is a second brood. It lays eggs in the summer which would otherwise have been laid in the following spring. Now these late eggs which are deposited on the tree that is to be further cultivated, do not reach full maturity, they only develop to a certain stage. The result of this is, that those figs into which the second brood has been placed become twice as sweet as the wild figs. This is the method of improving the figs, of making them twice as sweet. What has actually happened here? The wasps, which though they differ from the bees are yet related to them, the wasps take just that substance from the plant which is on the way to become honey. If in the clever way of the cultivator of the fig trees, the figs of the wild tree containing the eggs of the wasp are thrown up and tied so that they remain hanging up there, and if one then is clever enough to induce the wasps to weave again into the tree what they have taken from the other tree, then honey in the form of sweetness is, as it were, filtered into these grafted fig-trees; it enters into the figs in the form of sweetness because the wasps have prepared it in an extremely fine state of dilution; Nature itself has brought it about in an indirect way. You see, gentlemen, nothing has been taken away from Nature, the essence of the honey remains within Nature. The wasp cannot prepare the honey in the way the bee does, for its organisation is not adapted to this. But when, by this by-path, it is compelled during the stages of its growth, to carry the sweetness of the honey from one fig-tree to another, the sweetness of the grafted figs can be increased; a kind of honey-substance is then within them. You see, gentlemen, we arrive here at something very interesting. It seems that these wasps have a body which is unable to gather the nectar, the honey-substance from Nature, and transform it into honey within itself. But man can bring it about that from one fig-tree to another a kind of honey-making takes place. The bee is therefore a creature that develops a wasp-like body so much further that it is able to accomplish this quite apart from the trees; in the case of the wasp the process must be left within the tree itself. So we must say: the bee retains within itself more of that force which the wasp only possesses at a very young stage, as long, that is, as it is in the egg, or larval state. When the wasp develops further it loses the power of producing honey; the bee retains it and can make use of it as a fully matured creature. Just think, gentlemen, what it signifies that one can in this way look into Nature's processes, and can say to oneself: within the plants there is concealed this honey, this substance that tends towards sugar-sweetness. It is there; it shows itself, if only one follows the right path; one has only to assist Nature by seeing that the wasp comes at the right moment to the tree that is to be improved. Here, in our country such things cannot be done, it is no longer possible today. There was once a time in the evolution of the earth when from the wasps, which as long as 2,000 years ago, and indeed, still today, could be persuaded by some clever fellow to produce a second brood as I have described. These wasps crept out and were given the opportunity of laying their eggs in the figs, which were then again and again gathered. Thus, in the course of time, it was possible that bees could be developed from these wasps. The bee is a creature which in very ancient times was developed from the wasp. Today one can still see that it is by means of an animal activity , namely that of the wasps, that honey is first prepared in the realms of nature. So now, you can also understand how closely related to this is the fact that the bees place their honey in the cells of the honey-comb. This comb consists mainly of wax, and wax is not only necessary in order that the bees may deposit their honey there, for the bee can only produce honey when its whole organism is active in the right way. It must therefore secrete wax. The second fig tree in which sweetness arises of itself, is also richer in wax than the wild tree. It differs especially from the wild tree in that it is richer in wax. Nature has herself increased the wax so that the cultivated figs, the sweetened figs, grow on a tree which in a certain way, Nature has made richer in wax. You can already see here a model, as it were, for what appears in bee-keeping. If you now go to work very carefully, and make a cross-section from the trunk of the cultivated fig tree, you will find, if you look carefully, patterns just like the wax cells of the comb. Within the tree-trunk you find certain growths similar to the honey cells, formed from the precipitated wax of the tree. The tree that is richer in wax uses it in a kind of honey-cell formation. So we can say: when we study this special cultivation of the fig trees we discover a kind of honey production in Nature that has not yet appeared openly, for the honey remains within the figs. The bees, if I may so express it, bring out into the open what remains still within Nature in the sweetened figs. Thus, what would otherwise have remained within the tree-trunk, forming there these natural cells, which are only less definite, less substantial than the bee cells, and fade away again, this whole wax and honey-making process is driven up into the figs, so that Nature is herself a bee-keeper. The bees have drawn it forth from Nature and have these processes within themselves. What does the bee then do? The bee deposits its eggs within the hive, and the egg matures there. It does not need to change the substance into a gall-apple, it takes the nectar directly from the plants, neither does the bee need to go to the tree that is richer in wax, for she accomplishes in herself what takes place in the tree-trunk, and deposits in the comb the juices of the plant which she transforms into honey, which in the case of the cultivated tree, remains in the juices of the fig. One can say that what in Nature lies concealed in the tree through the wasps, now happens outwardly, and it becomes clear what it really is that we have before us, when we look into the hive with its marvellously built comb of waxen cells. It is indeed, gentlemen, a wonderful sight, is it not Herr Müller? A wonderful sight is the artistic construction of these waxen cells with the honey within them. You have only to look at it gentlemen, and you will say to yourselves — the bees with their waxen combs really show us a kind of artistically formed tree-trunk with its many branches. The bee does not need to go to the tree to lay her eggs there, but they build for themselves a kind of picture of a tree, and in the place of the figs growing there, she puts honey into the finished cells. We find, as it were, a copy of the artificially cultivated fig tree which the bees have made. Truly, gentlemen, this is to look into the very heart of Nature, and realise what can be learnt from her. Men have yet to learn much from Nature, but for this they must first learn to recognise the spiritual in Nature. Without this recognition of the spirit in Nature, one merely stands and gapes, and should one journey to the south and see how those clever fellows there tie the figs together, the figs pierced by the wasps, and throw then up into the trees and bind and fix them there we shall gape as tourists do, even when they are scientific gentlemen, and not know what to make of it, They do not know that he saves the bees their labour, for Nature will put the honey into the figs for him. In those countries where figs are plentiful, they are as health-giving as honey, for it is honey at an earlier stage of development that is already in the figs. You see, these are things which we ought to know if we are to discuss a matter of such importance as bee-keeping. I believe that by such means we shall in time arrive at points of view of true value.

Nine Lectures on Bees

Lecture VI

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA351/English/SGP1975/19231210p01.html

Dornach

10 Dec 1923

GA351-12

(Questions were asked as to the affinity between bees and flowers which unites them so closely; also, what honey should be, and is, in relation to mail. The question of the laying of eggs when the Queen is not fecundated was again raised, as in a normal hive there are three kinds of eggs: queen-eggs, worker-eggs and drone-eggs). DR. STEINER: Very well, we will discuss these things once more in today's lecture. It is like this: we have first the fertilisation of the Queen during the nuptial flight. The Queen is then fecundated. Then we have to consider the time which elapses between the laying of the eggs until the insect is completely matured, till the bee is there. With the Queen this period is sixteen days, with the worker-bee twenty-one — twenty-two days, and in the case of the drone twenty-two — twenty-four days. We have then to begin with these three types; they differ from one another in so far as they mature during differing periods of time. What lies at the root of this? When a bee develops as a Queen it is due to the special feeding it has been given; the Queen larva are differently fed so that growth is accelerated. Now the bees are creatures of the Sun, and the Sun needs approximately the same time to revolve once upon its own axis as the worker-bee needs to come to maturity. The Queen does not wait in her development till the Sun has quite completed this revolution, and for this reason her whole development remains entirely within the influence of the Sun. Thereby she becomes a creature capable of laying eggs; all that is connected with a capacity to lay eggs is under the influence of the Sun, and indeed, of the whole cosmos also. The moment the feeding is such that development proceeds at the rate of the worker-bee, which is that of almost a complete revolution of the Sun, the nearer the bee approaches the influence of the earth-evolution. The farther the Sun moves, the more the bee comes under the influences of the earth. The worker-bee is indeed largely a creature of the Sun, but already somewhat of an earthly creature. But the drone which develops during a longer period than is necessary for a complete revolution of the Sun, becomes a creature wholly of the earth. It withdraws itself from the influence of the Sun. We have then this trinity; we have the Queen, the worker-bees, in which there are still super-earthly forces, and we have the drones which have no longer anything to do with the Sun, but are fully creatures of the earth. All else that happens occurs no longer under the influence of the earth, with the one exception of the actual fecundation of the Queen. Now this is the remarkable point. Just consider this nuptial flight of the Queen. The lower animals dislike fecundation, they seek to avoid it. This is everywhere in evidence. Thus the flight of the Queen is an escape towards the Sun, and no fecundation can take place when the day is dull. The drones who try to bring an earthly element into the Sun element must even wrestle in the air, and the weaker ones are left behind. Only the very strongest can fly as high as the Queen, and fertilise her. But even after this has taken place it is not all the eggs that are fertilised, but only a portion of them, and these can become Queens or worker-bees; the remaining portion that are unfertilised within the body of the Queen become drones. When the Queen is not fecundated then only drones can emerge, when she is fecundated, Queens, worker-bees and drones can emerge, because the seed is fertilised and the heavenly has made contact with the earthly. Thus even when there are worker-bees and drones, the latter still owe their origin to a longer exposure to earthly influences, because no fertilisation has in their case taken place, and they must therefore be all the more exposed to earthly influences if they are to become fitted for life; they must be fed for a longer period of time. QUESTION: Some years ago, I was told that if anyone has rheumatism and gets stung by a bee or a wasp, the rheumatism will get better. DR. STEINER: This touches upon a question which was perhaps not fully considered last Monday. Herr Müller then told us of a man who evidently had some slight affection of the heart, and who collapsed on being stung by a bee. HERR MÜLLER: The doctor advised him to give up bee-keeping, as otherwise it might be the death of him. DR. STEINER: Disease of the heart is a sign that the ego-organisation is not functioning rightly. You have already heard something of these things in former lectures. You will remember that we distinguished four different parts of a man; first of all, the ordinary physical body, which we can touch, secondly the etheric body, thirdly the astral body, and fourthly the ego-organisation. This ego-organisation is active in the blood; actually, it brings the blood into movement, and in accordance with the movement of the blood, the heart beats. In text books you will always find the facts quite falsely stated, for it is represented as though the heart were a kind of pump, and that this pumping of the heart sends the blood all over the body. This is nonsense, because it is in reality the blood which is brought into motion by the ego-organisation, and moves throughout the body. If anyone asserts that it is the heart that drives the blood, then he must equally assert that if he has a turbine, it is the turbine that sets the water in motion, though everyone knows that it is the water that drives the turbine. Man has the same kind of points of resistance in his heart; the blood comes up against them and sets the heart in motion; thus it is that the ego-organisation works directly in the circulation of the blood. Now it is actually the case that this ego-organisation is in a mysterious way present in the poison of the bee; it is a similar force to the force that circulates in your blood that is present in the bee-poison. It is of great interest that the bee should have need of this poison within her. The bee does not merely need it in order to be able to sting; that is merely incidental. The bee needs the poison throughout its whole organism, for it must have the same force of circulation that man has in his blood. The colony of bees, as I told you, is like an entire man. Now consider, you get some of this bee-poison into your body, that is, into your blood, for any poison entering the body goes immediately into the blood. You are, let us say, a normal man, your blood will come more into motion, and inflammation may follow, but your heart can bear it. If however, a man has some disease of the heart, and his ego-organisation is made stronger by the poison, then this affects the weak heart, and the result may be that the man faints, or may even die. This explains the case mentioned by Herr Müller. The remarkable thing is this; that substances that can make a man ill or even kill him, can also cure him. This is one of the great responsibilities one has in the preparation of medicines, for there are no real remedies which, if wrongly applied, cannot cause the same illnesses which they can also cure. What then actually happens when a fainting fit or even death results from the sting of a bee? You see, when a man faints, then his astral body, and more especially his ego-organisation, has withdrawn from the body as happens in sleep, only in sleep this happens in a normal way, and in a swoon in abnormal way. In a swoon, or fainting fit, the astral body does not withdraw completely as in sleep, it gets stuck fast, and when a man has a weak ego-organisation, he cannot bring it back again. One has to shake him, wake him up, rouse him out of his faintness by making him breathe more strongly by certain movements. You know how in these cases, one has to take the man's arms, cross them over on his breast, put them back, then again bring them forward and so on, and this artificial breathing really always means that one is trying to bring the ego-organisation back into the body in the right way. And now let us suppose someone is suffering from rheumatism, or perhaps gout, or other deposits in the body; then one must try to strengthen the ego-organisation. Why do people have gout or rheumatism? Because the ego-organisation is too weak and cannot bring the blood into the right movement. The blood must be made to move more quickly. When the blood is not in the right state, when for instance, it flows too slowly, minute crystals are precipitated everywhere, and pass into the neighbourhood of the blood-vessels. These minute crystals consist of uric acid, and they go all over the body, and cause gout or rheumatism — the ego-organisation is too weak. If I now give this man the right dose of bee or wasp poison, his ego-organisation is strengthened; only one must not give too much, or the ego-organisation might not be able to hold its own. But if one gives just enough to strengthen the ego one can then find a very good remedy prepared from the bee or wasp poison; only one must combine it with some other substance. These things are done. For instance, the old Tartarus remedy is manufactured in a similar way, though from different substances. Remedies can always be prepared from poisonous substances, as in this case for the strengthening of the ego-organisation, but in applying them it is necessary to know all about the particular patient. For example, someone has gout or rheumatism; the first question must be — is his heart sound? that is, does it function well under the influence of the blood-circulation? If this is the case, he can be cured with bee or wasp poison. If the heart is not sound (but here one must distinguish between a nervous heart trouble, where it is less harmful) but if you have a patient with a serious heart disease, when the trouble is due to a valvular disease, then one must be very careful in the use of this remedy. Bee or wasp poison acts very powerfully on the cardiac valve, and when this is diseased these remedies cannot sometimes be made use of at all. This is why it is so dangerous to speak in a general way of some medicine or another as a cure for this or that illness. But one is entitled to say — I make a certain preparation, a remedy; I put wasp or bee poison into it (we actually have such a remedy) combining it with some binding substance, some gelatinous or other vegetable binding substance, which is then put into an ampoule and injected, just as the sting of the bee is injected, only the re-action from the bee sting is much stronger. One can prepare this remedy, and can call it a cure for rheumatism. But even so, this is not the only anxiety one has, for one has first of all to discover whether the patient's general state of health can well bear the remedy; medicaments which enter deeply into the body must only be given when one has most thoroughly examined the patient's whole state of health. For this reason such remedies as enter deeply into the body must only he administered when one has thoroughly examined the patient's state of health. When one hears of all manner of remedies such as are commonly advertised as cures for one thing or another, they are usually more or less harmless, and may be of use. There are many of these remedies to be bought, and one may agree that this is so, even when they have unpleasant results. Cures very frequently have unpleasant consequences, and the patient usually has to recover from the remedy which has cured him! If we have some fine strong fellow who has rheumatism, it is as a rule, not true rheumatism, but a gouty condition, and then, as Mr. Burle said, “a few bee-stings can affect him very favourably.” He can be cured because he is able to stand the reaction. It is usually so, that a normal man who suffers from rheumatism, and is given the correct dose of bee-poison, can take this remedy well and be cured by it. On the other hand, a bee-sting may cause such severe inflammation that this must first be reduced and the poison, as far as possible, removed, in which case not very much will remain for curing the rheumatism. In the case of a normal man, it will very probably happen that not sufficient will remain over to cure the rheumatism. But now let us consider the following case. Rheumatism can also come about in this way. A man is perhaps not a very hard worker, and has a very good appetite. Well, generally speaking, a man will have quite a good sound heart if he does not work too much and eats heartily, until the whole situation begins to be rather doubtful. The heart is an organ with extraordinary powers of resistance, it can hardly be seriously damaged unless there is some hereditary tendency, or if it has been injured in youth; the heart can only be injured after many years. But a man who is a heavy eater often takes a good deal of alcohol with his meals, then the ego-organisation is over-stimulated, and the circulation of the blood becomes too violent; the heart can no longer keep pace with its beats. Poison, uric acid, is deposited all over him; the heart may still be strong for quite a long time, but already gout and rheumatism are lurking everywhere. Under these conditions, a bee-sting may render him extraordinarily good service. HERR BURLE: I do not know whether there was a trace of alcoholism about this man I mentioned. DR. STEINER: You mean you made no inquiries? You see, gentlemen, when one has such remedies as bee-poison, which is a very powerful one, then one must be quite sure that most careful attention is given to the patient's whole state of health. HERR MÜLLER stated that he got an attack of rheumatism by catching cold; he treated it with exposure to the Sun, after which it disappeared. This summer he had it again slightly. He also believed that one could be cured by bee-stings, but one unlucky day he was badly stung on both legs, and had about thirty-two stings. The only ill effect was that for a week he was all colours of the rainbow. Swelling did not always follow; human bodies are very differently constituted. As already stated, one man may die of a bee-sting, while another may get as many as sixty without his heart beating any faster for it. One man has more resistance than another. DR. STEINER: When you got so many stings, was it after you had been working many years with bees? HERR MÜLLER: Many years. DR. STEINER: Probably you no longer remember the first time you were stung. After the first time one gets to feel it either more, or less. The man of whom you told us, was no doubt, stung for the first time. When one has once had a poison in one's body, that is, in the blood, one gets more and more able to cope with it, one gets increasingly immune, as it is called. When someone is stung a hit at the beginning of his bee-keeping, and is otherwise a man with a healthy heart, then the poison so works on him that he becomes less and less sensitive to it. If one knows one is strong and healthy, one can even let oneself be stung once or twice in order that one can be stung afterwards. Rainbow colours show that the poison only affects the skin; the blood has become immune. This does not depend only on the organisation, but on what has been previously introduced into the blood. I am surprised that the doctor who saw this man of whom you told us, did not tell him that the second time it would not be so bad, and the third time he would be immune. But perhaps his heart was so bad he could not safely have taken this risk. That also has to be considered. And indeed today it is a dangerous affair, because the doctors having once got hold of such things, now think that every bee-master should be inoculated before he starts bee-keeping. When men go to war they are inoculated with all sorts of poisons, a thing not at all to be recommended, for the blood is then very greatly injured. The blood always deteriorates somewhat when such things are put into it. After a time it recovers its balance, the blood becomes healthy again, but is protected against any fresh poison of the same nature. HERR MÜLLER: About the drones and the different kinds of eggs, Dr. Steiner has said so much, but one point is perhaps not familiar to him. When one has reason to believe the colony to be healthy, there may be times when the Queen is inferior, or is too old, and all the eggs she lays turn out drones. After many years of experience he is convinced that the Queen, when not a good one or too old, is still capable of laying eggs, some of which are good, but the majority will produce only drones. Then about honey; how the bee actually makes the honey, and whether the bee-keeper should not help by sugar-feeding. From what had been said here, it would seem that the bee-keeper is on no account to use sugar; it seems that anyone who feeds his bees with sugar will get his name on the black list. It is true that one can have bad experiences with feeding foreign honey. DR. STEINER: Naturally, it is quite right to say that one does not get the same product if sugar is fed artificially. If anyone likes taking sugar with honey he can add some for himself. Just as one does not water the wine you offer people on the ground that people should not drink it so strong, one offers what is printed on the label. The best thing in regard to honey is reciprocal control by the bee-keepers, because they best understand the whole question. With regard to the drones, I should like to say this. One may certainly suspect that the Queen is not properly fertilised; too many drones come out. If one does not wish to leave the matter to the bees to settle, something can be done by means of special feeding, (these experiments have been made) the brood then emerges earlier, i.e. , after twenty — twenty-two days, instead of twenty-three — twenty-four days, The drones then appear as somewhat drowsy, but still approximately similar to worker bees. One cannot certainly continue this for long; it is merely an example of the effects of the time-periods. Such things are however, not done in practical bee-keeping theoretically, it can certainly be stated that a very great deal depends on the feeding, and it is undeniable that an irregularly egg-laying bee can be developed from a worker-bee, though it will certainly not be a real Queen. These things all go to show how readily transformable these creatures are, but such matters have no great value in practical bee-keeping. HERR MÜLLER: One calls these “laying workers;” it is an illness in the colony. DR. STEINER: In practical bee-keeping it is of no great importance, but by special feeding, the colony is able to make an egg-laying bee out of an ordinary worker-bee. It is a kind of illness. The colony is a unity in itself, and the colony is then ill. If you take a goose and overfeed it till the liver is over-developed, then the whole organism is ill. If a worker-bee becomes a layer of eggs, it is an over-developed worker-bee, but the whole colony must then be regarded as ill. Perhaps some other questions may occur to you later, we can then return to them. Meanwhile I will add a few words in reply to the question asked by Herr Dollinger. One can clearly distinguish those insects that in the wider sense are bee-like, the bees, wasps, and ants. These small creatures are related to one another, and I have already told you the interesting story of the gall-wasps which deposit their eggs in trees and similar places. I explained further how a kind of inner preparation of honey takes place through these wasps. There are also other kinds of wasps beside these gall-wasps, which more closely resemble the bees as they make a kind of honey-comb. There is, for example, an interesting wasp which builds in the following way: when it finds a rather stiff leaf on some branch, it fetches small particles which it bites off from the bark of neighbouring trees, or some similar substance; these it permeates with its saliva, and then proceeds to build a number of small stalks which it attaches to the leaf. When it has completed these attachments the wasp goes on working, mixing these substances with saliva and building on to these stalks something very similar to the single cell of the honey-comb. On a closer inspection of this substance it is, however, seen to be different. Honey-comb, as you know, is made of wax, but when you take a piece of this wasp-comb it has a greyish colour, it is very much like what we manufacture as paper. It is actually a kind of paper-pulp. Then second, third, fourth pieces are added and hung up there. When eggs have been deposited in these cells, they are covered over, but during the time of laying, the wasp in a most curious way, makes a kind of loop out of its paper, (Diagram 15) and then again a kind of covering with an opening at one side for a flight hole, so that the wasps can go in and out and attend to these little cells, Then more rows of cells are added, covered in, again a loop, a cover and a flight hole, and so on, till there may be quite a long cone, like a fir-cone. The wasps build themselves this cone-like structure out of paper, and in its separate parts it is similar to the brood nest of the bees. Other wasp nests are, as you know, covered in with a kind of skin, and have many and varied forms. Just think what is happening here. If you ask me what the bee does in order to build its waxen cells, then I must say that the bee gathers what is needed from the flowers, from flowering plants, and what is of a similar nature from trees, but not concerning itself at all with the bark, or woody substances. The bee gathers only what is of the nature of the blossom, or more rarely what is leaf-like in its nature. The only time when such higher insects as the bees go to what is not of the nature of the blossom (to woody parts and such-like they do not go) is when they go after a substance that at certain times seems to be extremely tasty to them. The bees certainly do this much less than the wasps, and most especially the ants. Though the ants and wasps make use of what is lignified for their nests, they greatly relish the juices that are exuded primarily by the aphids:. This is really most interesting. The harder the substances used by these creatures for their structures, the more do they relish not only the nectar that is within the blossom, but something that is upon the blossom or leaf, namely, the aphis. These are really noble creatures, (forgive me if I now use the language of the ants, in human speech I could not say the same), the aphis is for the ant a noble animal. It is absolutely all blossom; it is really the finest honey in the world. The wasps also have a discriminating taste for the aphis. But when we come to the ants, which are not able to build the same kind of nest as the wasps, they must set to work quite differently. The ant makes heaps of earth, and these heaps have many passages within them, a whole labyrinth of passages along which the ants then carry all they need in the way of harder substances from the bark or rind of trees. Above all, the ants like the dead parts of wood, and these materials they use to continue their building, piling it up with particles of soil. They chiefly visit the stumps of trees that have been cut down, selecting what they need from the hardened core and carrying it away for their nests. Thus the ants use the very hardest substances, and cannot elaborate their building as far as a cellular structure. You see, the bees make use of the substances that are within the plants; with these they build their waxen cells, and are thus still dependent on the juices of the blossom for their food, on pollen for instance, and the juice-like substances in the blossom. In the case of the wasps, it is already a harder material that they need for building their cells, but it is at the same time, thinner and more brittle than honey-comb, though as a substance it is harder. A wasp may have a fine taste for aphis, but it nevertheless feeds also, in bee-fashion, on what is contained in the plants. The ants mostly make use of such hard material that they can only make tunnels into the earth, constructing little caves without any combs or cells. They are most especially fond of the aphis; they even capture them and carry them away to their dwellings; one can find them there in the ant heaps. It is really most interesting. When you go into a village you see a row of houses, and behind them the cow-sheds where the milking cows are; the ants have just the same plan. Throughout the ant heap you will find little dwellings where the aphis are placed, for they are the milch-cows of the ants. It is only all on a minute scale, for there you will find little stalls, and the aphis are the cows. The ants go to them and stroke them with their antennæ; this is extremely pleasant to the aphis, and they exude their juice which the ants now absorb. In this juice of the aphis the ant receives the most vital element of its food, for the aphis gives up this juice when it is milked by the ant. It is really just like a cow, only the cow must be stroked much harder. The aphis are picked off the plants by the ants, and are well cared for, so that we really must say it is quite splendid for these little creatures that there should be an ant hill in the neighbourhood, and that they should be carried off by the ants and made use of in their little cow-stalls. In the wise arrangements of Nature quite a little cow market in aphis is carried on by the ants. Thus you see, gentlemen, that the ants which make use of hard substances only for their dwellings, are no longer able to be satisfied with the pure saps of the plants for their food; they must take as food what the sap of the plant has already given to the animal. So one must say: with the bees the pure juices of the flowers suffice for food; the wasps need both the flower saps and the animal saps, hence their harder shell structure. In the case of the ants their actual food is animal sap only; hence there is no construction of cells at all. The ant has no longer the power to build cells. Even when it takes something from the flowers it still needs this substance from the little cow-stalls, otherwise it cannot live. You see how interesting are the relationships that exist between the flowers and these creatures. The bees must use the pure saps of the flowers; the wasps, and more especially the ants, must first allow these flower juices to pass through the animal before it can serve them as nourishment. As a result of this, they are able in the building of their house, to use what is no longer the sap of the plant. There is really a very great difference between the waxen honey-comb of the bee, the paper nest of the wasp, and the structure made by the ants which can only be made from outside material, and cannot be carried to the stage of the cell. For this reason their food must be so entirely different. On Saturday I must go to Schaffhausen, and there will be no lecture; I will let you know when the next one will take place.

Nine Lectures on Bees

Lecture VII

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA351/English/SGP1975/19231212p01.html

Dornach

12 Dec 1923

GA351-13

Good morning, Gentlemen! Today I shall continue the subject dealt with last time in answer to Herr Dollinger's question. Should anything else arise, we can consider this also. In my answer to this question of Herr Dollinger, I spoke of the ants, and how these creatures, bees, wasps and ants are related to one another, though their modes of life are totally different. Taking our starting point from this fact, we can really learn a very great deal about the whole household of Nature, for the more one learns to understand these small creatures and their ways, the more one realises how wisely regulated their work is, and all they are able to accomplish in the realm of Nature. Last time, I told you how the ants make their nests, how they either build up mounds of the soil itself, or gather together minute particles of decaying wood, or of wood which has become quite hard, and is no longer living; also from various other substances which they mix together. Within these ant-hills are innumerable passages, along which the ants move in procession, whole hosts of them. One sees them coming out at the entrances, searching their surroundings, and collecting what they need. Sometimes however, it happens that these creatures do nct first build up a mound, but make use of something suitable they find there already. Perhaps, for instance, a tree has been cut down and the stump has been left standing; an ant colony comes along and makes a little chamber inside it, hollows it out, and makes all kind of passages with their exits. Then perhaps, they heap up a little earth, make one passage, then another, then a third and so on, and within these passages are all inter-connected. You see, to say of all this that it is due to the instinct of the creatures may be all very well, but nothing very much has then been said, for when the creature cannot make use of a tree stump, it builds up a sand heap; when it finds a suitable tree stump, then it so arranges the matter that it saves the labour that would be needed to heap up a hillock. The small creature adjusts itself to the individual situation, and it becomes very difficult to state that this is due to instinct. This would only enable the creature to do everything in accordance with instinct; but it actually adjusts itself to the external circumstances. That is the important point. Here, in our country, it does not frequently happen, but the further one goes south the greater nuisance do the ants become. Imagine a house, and in one corner of it, without the owner having noticed anything, the ants have gathered; they have carried in all sorts of things, particles of earth, minute fragments of wood, and in some corner that has been overlooked in cleaning, have made a small dwelling place which no one notices. From here they make passages into the kitchen, into the pantry, following the most complicated ways, and bring back all they require for food or other purposes, from the kitchen or pantry. This can happen in southern countries, and the house may be quite pervaded by a colony of ants without anyone living there knowing they are mere fellow inhabitants of the ants, until they discover by chance, or by sight, that something in the store cupboard has been nibbled, and the real source only comes to light when the passages are traced. Here again, one cannot get very far by speaking of mere instinct, for you would then have to say that Nature has given these creatures an instinct to take up their abode precisely in this very house; what they build there must be so constructed that it is adapted to this particular house. But you see, these creatures do not work out of mere instinct; there is wisdom in what they do. If you test some individual ant, you would certainly not arrive at the conclusion that it was especially wise, for what it does when separated from the colony, or what it may be forced to do, does not reveal any special wisdom. One then begins to realise that it is not the individual ant that can reason, but the entire colony of ants as a unity; the colony of bees, for example, is wise in this sense. The separate ants of the colony have no individual intelligence, and for this reason the work is carried on by the whole colony in an extremely interesting way. There are, moreover, many other more interesting happenings within these ant-hills. There is, for instance, a kind of ant which does as follows: somewhere or other it builds on the ground a kind of wall (drawing on the board); here it is raised; here, it forms a circle on the surrounding earth, there, digs a hole. Within are the ants. Sometimes the hole is at the top, like the crater of a volcano; within are the many passages with their outlets. Now these ants do something very peculiar. They destroy all the grasses and plants which grow round about, with the exception of one particular kind of grass. All other grasses are destroyed, even at times, all other plants. Thus, in the centre we have a kind of hillock, and all round it looks as though the ground had been very finely paved. Through the ants biting away everything, the soil has become very compact, and is very firm. There is the ant-hill, and all round it a smooth pavement, almost like asphalt, but rather lighter in colour. The ants then search all round about and collect a certain kind of grass which they then begin to cultivate. As soon as the wind brings other seeds, they bite off the new plants the moment they begin to grow; they will not have them in the place they have made so smooth, and in all the surrounding area nothing else is permitted to grow but just this one special kind of grass. The ants have established a little property of their own, as it were, and regularly cultivate the kind of grass that best suits them; nothing else is allowed to grow there; all other plants are bitten away. The grass which is allowed to grow becomes quite different in character from the same grass where it grows further away, where, for instance, it is growing in loose soil. In the hardened soil made by the ants, the cultivated grass has quite hard seeds, as hard as stone. One can find these ant-hills. Round about them there is a regular little farm, 'and the ants are engaged in agriculture. Darwin, who especially observed these things, calls it so. One finds in the soil very hard seeds somewhat like small grains of maize, and when all is ready, the ants come out, bite off the tops, and carry them into their dwelling. For a while they stay inside; one does not see them, but they are very busy inside there. Whatever they have no use for, like the little stalks that were still attached to the hard seeds, they bite off, and after a time they come out again and run all about, and throw away all they do not want, keeping in their ant-hill only the hard silica-like seeds. These they partly use as food, biting them with their very hard teeth, or they use them for their building. Everything they cannot make use of they throw out. After all, we men do very much the same. These farming ants manage to provide themselves with all they need in a very fine way! One has really to ask oneself: what is actually happening here? Actually, an entirely new kind of grass is brought into existence. These silica-hard seeds cannot be found anywhere else. They are only produced by the ants, and the ants work further upon them. What then is really happening here? Before considering this, we will approach the question from another side. Let us go back to the wasps, among which I told you, we find creatures that deposit their eggs on the leaves, and in the bark of trees; gall-nuts are then formed out of which the young wasps emerge. But quite other things can also happen. There are certain caterpillars which look like this (drawing on the blackboard). You all know them; these caterpillars are covered with woolly hairs, with quite prickly-woolly hairs. The following can happen to these caterpillars. One or more wasps of a special kind simply insert their eggs into the caterpillar, and when the eggs mature the grubs creep out of them. Bees, and other insects of this kind, all make their first appearance as grubs, also the ants. You know how, when one clears away an ant-heap, one finds the white, so-called ants' eggs, which are given to caged birds. They are however, not eggs, but the larvae that have crept out of the eggs. It is not correct to call them eggs. Now when the wasp lays its eggs into the caterpillar, it is really very remarkable. As I have already told you, these grubs when they first emerge are very hungry, and there are a great number of them in the caterpillar. It is really remarkable, for if one of these grubs were to begin to eat the caterpillar's stomach, the whole affair of the wasp's development would come to an end, for the caterpillar could not live if any organ, an eye, or to do with the heart or with the digestion, were eaten into. The thing would then come to an end. But these minute wasp grubs show their intelligence by not biting into, or feeding upon any vital organ, but by eating only those organs which can be injured for quite a long time. The caterpillar does not die, it is ill; but the wasp grubs can still go on devouring it. It is most wisely arranged that the wasp grubs do not bite into anything that would fatally injure the caterpillar. Possibly, you may have seen how these larvæ emerge from inside the caterpillar when they are mature? The caterpillar has been their foster-mother, nourishing the whole brood with her own body. Now they creep out, develop further, and seek their food from the plants. When they are fully developed, the eggs are once more deposited in a similar caterpillar, You might well say that there is something extremely clever in all this, and indeed, as I have already said, the more one observes such things, the more do they arouse one's deepest admiration. It cannot be otherwise; wonder is kindled, and one asks oneself the meaning of such things. If one would discover their meaning, one must first say; we have the plants growing out of the earth; we have the caterpillars. Then these insects appear, and eat their fill from the flowers, and caterpillars, and then reproduce themselves. So it goes on, over and over again. To us men it seems as though the whole insect world might just as well not exist at all. Naturally, as human beings, when we see the bee, we say; the bees give us honey, therefore bee-keeping is of use to us. Very good; but this is from the point of view of man. If the bees are robbers, and merely take away the nectar from the flowers, and we men then use the honey for our food, or as a remedy, then this is all to our advantage. But from the point of view of the flowers, it looks like a mere robbery in which we, as men, take part. The question therefore, is whether from the point of view of the flowers they would say, as it were; out there are those robbers, the bees, wasps and ants who rob us of our saps; we should thrive much better if they did not take away our saps. You see, gentlemen, this is a point of view that a man usually takes as regards the flowers. But it is not so; it is absolutely not so. The matter is entirely different. When one is looking at some flower, and an insect, let us say a bee, is sucking the juices of the flower, or from the willow blossom, one must say to oneself: how would it be for the plant if the bee, or the wasp or some other insect, did not come to suck out this nectar? Now would it be then? This is naturally a question far more difficult to answer than that of a mere robbery, for one must look deeply into the whole household of Nature. It is not possible to reach the right conclusion unless one is able to look back into the earlier stages of the earth's evolution. You see, the earth was not always the same as it is today. If the earth had always been as it is today, when we find the dead lime-stone, the dead quartz or gneiss, or mica-schist, and so on; when we find growing out of the present-day seeds, the plants, when we find the animals. If the earth had always been like this, the whole of what we see today could not exist, could not be there at all! Those who begin their science only at the point of what exists today, give themselves up to complete illusion. He who would seek all the mysteries, all the laws of the earth in that alone wherein modern science seeks them, is as if a dweller in Mars should come down to the earth, who had no idea of living men, who only went to a mortuary and saw there the dead men. The dead could not be there at all if they had not first been living men. The inhabitant of Mars who had never seen living men, and saw only the dead, would first have to be guided to living men; then he would be able to say — “Yes, now I understand why the dead have these forms; before I did not understand this, because I did not know the living form that preceded the dead one.” Thus, one must go back to earlier conditions if one would know the laws of the earth evolution. The earth had long ago a very different form; I have spoken of it as the Moon-condition, and in my book, “An Outline of Occult Science,” it is also called the Moon-condition, because the present Moon is a remnant of this ancient earth. Other stages of evolution in their turn preceded this one of the Moon. The earth has transformed itself; it was originally altogether different. Now the earth was once at such a stage that plants and insects such as we have today, did not exist at all. The matter, gentlemen, was thus; there was, let us say, something that can be compared with the earth of today. Out of this grew plant-like forms, but plant-like forms that were continually changing, that continually assumed different forms, as the clouds do, for instance. There were then such clouds in the environment of the earth, but they were not clouds like the clouds we see today, which are dead, or at least seem to be dead; they were living clouds, as living as the flowers of today. If you can imagine to yourselves that our clouds could become alive and turn a greenish colour, then you would have a picture of the plant kingdom of that time. The scientific gentlemen of today have very strange ideas on such matters. There was recently a most ludicrous article in the newspaper. Once more a new scientific discovery had been made, quite in the modern way. It was really absurd! It was stated that if prepared in a certain way, milk was a good remedy for scurvy, a very ugly disease. Well, gentlemen, what does the scientist of today do? I have already referred to this. He analyses the milk. Then he finds that milk contains such and such chemical components. But I have also told you that one can feed mice with the chemical substances in the milk, but if one gives them these only, the mice die within a few days. Bunge's pupils confirmed this, (see previously mentioned article in the “ Schweizerische Bienenzeitung ”) and merely said; “Well, yes, there is a life-substance in the milk, as also in honey, Vitamin.” You remember, as I said before, one might just as well say “poverty comes from being poor,” as say what is said here, “there is Vitamin in it.” Well gentlemen, an important discovery has been made, there are various substances in milk, that have very complicated names and milk when prepared in a special way, is a remedy for scurvy. Then in a truly learned way investigations were made to see whether the scurvy could be cured if one gave the scurvy patients only all the things with the learned names that were contained in the milk. They were not in the least cured by any of the component substances. But when all of these were present (in the specially prepared milk) then the scurvy was cured. No single component by itself cured, only the whole together. Well says the scientist to himself; what remains over when one subtracts all the components? What then remains over? For now he eliminates them all. He does not admit that these components have an etheric body, he reckons them all out, and what remains? The “ Vitamin !” The vitamin which must be what cures the scurvy is not to be found among the component parts. Where then is it? So now they make this fine tale — it must be in the water of the milk! Therefore, the remedy for scurvy is the water! This is really absurd, but it is a learned affair today. For if water is to contain vitamin, then with our learning we should arrive up there in the clouds. We should have to look around us and say: “Water is everywhere and vitamin is in the water.” But then we would be at the stage at which the earth once was. Only today, it is no longer so. Plant-life was there, a living plant covering, and this living covering of plants was fertilised from all directions from the environment. There were then no separate animals, no wasps for instance, but from the surrounding regions there came a substance which had an animal-like nature. Our earth was once in a condition of which one could say that it was surrounded by clouds that had plant-life within them; from the periphery, other clouds approached and fertilised them; these clouds had an animal nature. From cosmic spaces came the animal nature; from the earth the essence of plant-being rose upwards. All this has changed. The plants have become our clearly outlined flowers which grow out of the earth, no longer forming great clouds. But within the plants there remains a longing to receive an influence from without. Here we have a rose growing out of the earth; here a rose petal, here another, then a third and so on. Now comes a wasp. This wasp immediately bites a piece out of the rose petal, carries it off to its nest, and uses it for building, or gives it as food to its young. A piece of the rose petal is simply bitten out by the wasp, and carried there, Well, as I said before, our rose bushes are no longer clouds: they have become sharply defined things. But what once lived within them, what was once united with all that entered in as the essence of animal life, this has remained behind within the rose leaves and blossoms. It is there within them. In every rose leaf is something which must of necessity be in some way fertilised from without, from the whole environment. You see, gentlemen, what the flowers need, what they actually need, is a substance that also plays an important part in the human body. When you study the human body the most diverse substances are found in it. But everywhere within the human body these substances are transformed into something which, in certain quantities, is always present within the human body which has need of it. This substance is formic acid. If you go to an ant-hillock, and collect some ants and squeeze them, you get a juice. This juice contains formic acid and a little alcohol. It is inside the ants. But this juice is also very finely distributed over your body. Whatever you eat during your life time is always transformed into formic acid, not of course, exclusively, for there are other substances also, but in small quantities. This formic acid permeates your whole body. When you are ill, and have not sufficient formic acid within you, it is a serious matter for your body, for it then has a tendency, just because you have not enough formic acid within you, (and here I come once more to Herr Müller's question, in answer to it) your body has a tendency to become gouty, or rheumatic. It develops too much uric acid, and too little formic acid. The ants also have in their bodies this substance that the human body needs. This formic acid, gentlemen, is indeed something that is made use of throughout nature, You actually cannot find any bark of any tree that does not contain some formic acid. Formic acid is everywhere in the tree, just as it is in the human body. In every leaf, everywhere there must be formic acid. But not only formic acid must be there, but also what is closely akin to it, and later becomes the bee poison. All these insects contain a certain substance within them which is poisonous. If one is stung by a bee, one gets inflammation; if one is stung by a wasp, it is sometimes even worse. This business of wasp stings can be pretty bad. Brehm describes how these insects can play bad tricks on men and animals. It happened that a young cow-herd had taken a large number of cows out to graze, and the pasture was full of wasp nests. The cow-herd's dog ran about; suddenly the cow-herd's dog goes mad, rushes round like a mad dog, and no one knows what has happened. As fast into it can the dog rushes to a neighbouring stream, flings itself into the water, and shakes and shakes itself. The lad was much disturbed by this, and goes to the rescue of the dog. He does not jump into the water, but tries to help it from the bank. Most unluckily he steps on a nest, as the dog had probably done before, and the wasps sting him too, and he begins to rush about like a madman, and finally jumps into the water. And now, because the dog has vanished, and the cow-herd has vanished, confusion arises in the herd of cows. The cows which tread on nests also get stung, and behave as though mad. Finally, most of the herd are in the stream also — as if they were all mad. You see, insect stings can do one a very bad turn. All these creatures have poisons in them; even an ant stings one, and causes a little inflammation because it injects some formic acid into the wound. This formic acid, moreover, is present in all living things in a right dilution. If there were no ants, bees and wasps, which are the preparers of these poisons, what would happen? Truly, gentleman, the same thing would happen that would also come to pass in the propagation of the human race if all the men were beheaded, and only women were left on the earth. Humanity could not then continue to exist, for the male semen would no longer be there. Well, these creatures all have the semen in addition, but they none-the-less need what comes from these poisons for their existence, for these poisons have remained over from what was once in the whole environment. In the finest state of dilution, bee poison, wasp poison, ant poison, once descended upon the plants from cosmic spaces, and the remnants are still present today. So when you see a bee sitting on some willow-tree or on some flower, you must not say: the insect only wants to rob the flower of something; rather must you say: when the little bee sits there and sucks, the flower is so content that it lets its sap flow to the spot where the bee sucks. While the bee is taking something from the flower, bee or wasp poison flows from the bee to the flower. From the wasp, the wasp poison flows, and more especially when the ant attacks the tree stump which no longer has life, formic acid flows in. If the ant visits a flower, then the sap of the flower unites with the formic acid. This is necessary. If these things did not happen, if bees, wasps and ants did not exist and continually attack the plants and bite into them, then the necessary formic acid, the necessary poisons, would not flow into the flowers, and the plants would in time die out. You see, substances such as are usually called life-substances, are highly valued by man; yet it is precisely only these substances that are truly life-substances. If one has deadly nightshade, within it is a poison, a very powerful one. But what is the deadly nightshade? It collects spirituality from the world's environment. Poisons are gatherers of what is spiritual; for this reason they are healing remedies. Fundamentally speaking, the flowers sicken through the life-substances, and the little bees, and wasps and ants, work continually as small physicians bringing to the flowers the formic acid they need, and at the same moment, healing their sickness. Thus all is once more healed. The bees, wasps and ants are not mere robbers, for in the same moment they bring life to the plants. It is even the same with the caterpillars which would also die out, and none would remain after a time. You will probably say no great harm would be done if all the caterpillars were to disappear; but in their turn the birds feed on them. Throughout the whole of Nature there are these inner relationships. When we see, for example, how the ants permeate everything with their formic acid, we look into the whole household of Nature and its splendour. Everywhere things happen that are essential for the maintenance of life, and of the world. You see, here is a tree, and the tree has bark. The bark decays when I cut down the tree; then it moulders. People say: “Well, let it rot away.” Just try to imagine all that moulders away in the forests, fallen leaves and so on, within the course of the year! Men are willing to let it all rot away, but Nature orders it otherwise. Everywhere there are ant-heaps, and from these ant-heaps formic acid enters into the soil of the forest. When you have both forest soil and an ant-heap, it is the same as if you take a glass of water and add a drop of something else to it; the whole contents are at once affected. If you put in salt, all the water is at once made salty. If you have an ant-heap then the formic acid goes in the same moment into the forest soil, and all the soil which is already decaying is saturated with this formic acid. It is not only into the inner parts of the living plants, and into the still living caterpillars that formic acid penetrates when the bee sits on the flower, and the flower absorbs what it receives from the bee. All these things can only be learned by means of spiritual science; the other kind of science is only concerned with what the bee takes away from the flowers. But the bees would never have been able to sit for thousands of years on the flowers had they not fostered them in the act of biting into them. So it is also with the lifeless substances of the woods. Even physical science as it is today, concludes that the earth will one day be quite dead. It would indeed be so, for a state of things would eventually come about when decay would prevail, when the earth would be dead. That this will not be so, is because wherever the earth decays it is in the same moment penetrated by all that is yielded up by the bees, wasps and ants. The bees, it is true, give it only to the living flowers, the wasps for the most part also to the living plants. But the ants give what they hand over in the formic acid directly to what is mouldering and dead; in a certain degree they rouse it to life, in this way doing their part that the earth in its decaying substances shall still retain life. Well may one say that wonder is awakened at the activity of the spirit in all things, but when one can approach it more nearly, then one realises it has immense significance. Let us look once more at those farming ants which cultivate their little field, and change the character of the plants they grow there. Truly, gentlemen, a man could not nourish himself with what grows there, for if a man were to eat those little rice grains that are as hard as silica, he would first get strange illnesses because he would have too much formic acid inside him, and in addition to this, so injure his teeth that for a time the dentists would be kept busy. At last, he would die wretchedly, because of these silica-hard rice-grains which had been thus developed. But the ant-heap would say: when we ants go out into nature and suck that out of the plants which is everywhere there, then we get far too little formic acid, and can give far too little formic acid to the earth. Let us therefore, select the plants which we can cultivate so that they get quite hard, stony hard, and then we can get plenty of formic acid from this hardness. So these farming ants do this that they may get the greatest possible amount of formic acid. It is these ants again that give back so much formic acid to the earth. That is the connection. From this you can see that poisons when they cause inflammation, or the like, are also perpetual remedies for the holding back of the processes of death. One can say, it is precisely the bee that is of great importance in this regard, that all may be preserved within the flowers; there is a great affinity between the bees and the flowers. This preservation actually shows that every time the insects are developing their activities on the earth, the earth is, as it were, quickened by their poison. This is the spiritual relationship. If anyone asks what are the spiritual relationships, I never like merely to say they are so and so; I give the facts, and from the facts you can judge for yourselves whether they have significance or no. The facts are such that one sees significance everywhere. But the people who call themselves scientists today, do not tell one so. In life this has certain effects. In our country this is perhaps less taken into account, but when you go further south, the simple folk, the peasants, will often say out of a kind of instinctive knowledge; one must not destroy these ant-heaps, for they prevent the mould from becoming harmful. Those who are still wiser, will say something quite different if you walk with them through the forest, and especially where trees have been cut down and young trees are growing up. Then these people who are wise in their noses, not in their top-story (one can be wise also in one's nose) when these people go where the trees have been felled and young trees are being cared for, they will say: “Here, it will all go well; it does not smell so mouldy as it often does; there must be an ant-heap near, and it is proving its usefulness.” These people smell this; they are clever with their noses. Much homely and useful knowledge is derived from a clever nose! Unfortunately, modern civilisation only regards the cultivation of the brain, and rejects all that is instinctive; instinct has become merely a word. Creatures like the bees know all this collectively, as a colony, as an ant-heap; it comes about by a kind of sense of smell. As I said before, much that is instinctive knowledge may come from a cleverness of the nose. Well, gentlemen, we shall continue the subject next week Today, I wished to say that the bees, wasps and ants do not only rob Nature, but help to make it possible for Nature to live and thrive.

Nine Lectures on Bees

Lecture VIII

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA351/English/SGP1975/19231215a01.html

Dornach

15 Dec 1923

GA351-14

We should perhaps say something further on the subject of Herr Dollinger's question. He asked, on your behalf, for it is probably of interest to you all, what the spiritual relationship is between the hosts of insects which, fluttering about, approaches the plants and what is to be found in the plants. I told you yesterday, for we began to answer this question last time, that all around us there is not only oxygen and nitrogen, but that throughout Nature there is intelligence, truly intelligence. No one is surprised if one says that we breathe in the air, for air is everywhere, and science today is so widely included in all the school books that everyone knows that air is everywhere, and that we breathe it in. All the same I have known country people who thought this a fantastic idea, because they did not know the air is everywhere; in the same way there are people today who do not know that intelligence is everywhere. They consider it fantastic if one says that just as we breathe in the air with our lungs, so do we breathe in intelligence, for example, through our nose, or through our ear. I. have already given instances in which you could see that there is intelligence everywhere. We have been speaking of an especially interesting chapter of natural science, of the bees, wasps and ants. There is, may be, little in Nature which permits us to look so deeply into Nature herself, as the activities of the insects; the insects are strange creatures, and they have still many a secret to disclose. It is interesting that we should be discussing the insects just at the time of the centenary of the famous observer of insects, Jean Henri Fabre, who was born on December 23, one hundred years ago, and whose life time coincides with the age of materialism. Fabre therefore interpreted everything materialistically, but he also brought to light an enormous number of facts. It is therefore quite natural that we should remember him today when we speak of the insects. I should like to begin with, to give you an example of a species of insect which will interest you in connection with the bees. The work of the bees is perfected to a very high degree, but the most remarkable thing about the bee is really not that it produces honey but, that it produces the marvellous structure of the honey-comb entirely out of its own being. The material it makes use of, it must itself bring into the hive, but the bee actually works in such a way that it does not use this material directly, but completely transforms it, completely transforms what it brings into the hive. The bee works from out of its own being. Now there is a kind of bee which does not work in this way, but shows, precisely in its work, what immense intelligence there is in the whole of Nature. Let us consider this bee; it is commonly called the wood-bee, and is not so valued as the domestic bee, because it is mostly rather a nuisance. We will consider this wood-bee at its work. It is a tremendously industrious little creature, a creature which in order to live — not the individual bee, but the whole species — must do a terrific amount of work. This bee searches out such wood as is no longer on a living tree, but has been made into something. One finds the wood-bee which I shall presently describe, with its nest in a place where wooden rails, or posts have been driven in and the wood is therefore apparently dead. The nests can usually be found in wooden rails or posts, in garden benches, or garden doors, in fact wherever one has made use of wood. Here the wood-bee makes its nest, but it does so in a very singular way. Imagine to yourselves a post (Diagram 16.) The wood is no longer part of a tree. The wood-bee comes along and first of all bores a sloping passage from outside. When it has got inside, when it has bored out a kind of passage, it starts boring in quite a new direction. It makes a little ring-like hollow, then flies off and collects all manner of things from round about, and lines out the hollow with these. Having finished the lining, it deposits an egg which will develop into a larva. This is now inside the hollow. When the egg has been placed there, the little bee makes a covering over it, in the centre of which there is a hole. Now it begins to bore again above the cover, and makes a second little hollow for the second bee that is to creep out, and having lined it and left a hole it lays another egg. The wood-bee continues in this way till it has constructed ten or twelve of these superimposed dwellings; in each one there is an egg. You see, gentlemen, the larva can now mature in this piece of wood. The bee puts some food next to the larva which first eats what has been prepared for it, and grows till it is ready to creep out. First we have the time when the grub becomes a cocoon, then it is transformed into a winged bee which is to fly out. Inside there it is so arranged (see Diagram 16), that the larva now developed can fly out at the right moment. When the time comes that the larva has developed, has turned into a cocoon, and then into a complete insect, then it is so arranged that it is able to fly out through the passage. The skill employed has enabled the fully formed insect to fly out through the passage that was first bored. Well and good, but the second insect that is a little younger, now emerges, and the third that is still younger; because the mother insect had first to make these dwelling-places, the creatures would not find any outlet, the situation would be fatal to the larvae in the upper chambers, they would slowly die. But the mother insect prevents this by laying the eggs so that when the young larva creeps out, it finds this other hole which I described, and lets itself down there, and flies out. The third creature comes down through the two holes and so on. Because each insect that comes out later is matured later, it does not hinder the one below it which had emerged earlier. The times are never the same, for the earlier has always already flown out. You see, gentlemen, the whole nest is so wisely planned that one can only wonder at it. Today when men imitate mechanically, the things they copy are often of this kind, but as a rule they are far less cleverly constructed. Things that exist in Nature are extremely wisely made, and one must really say that there is intelligence in them, real intelligence. One could give hundreds and thousands of examples of the way the insects build, of the way they set about their tasks, and how intelligence lives within these things. Think how much intelligence there is in all I have already told you about the farming ants which establish their own farm, and plan everything with wonderful intelligence. But in considering these insects, the bees, wasps and ants, we were at the same time dealing with another matter. I told you that these creatures all have a poisonous substance within them, and that this poisonous substance is also, if given in the right dose, an excellent remedy. Bee-poison is an excellent remedy; wasp-poison is the same, and the formic acid secreted by the ants is a most especially good remedy. But as I have already pointed out, this formic acid which we find when we go to an ant-heap and take out a few ants and crush them, these ants have the formic acid inside them; by crushing them we get the formic acid. It is found more especially in the ants. But gentlemen, if you knew how much, (of course, comparatively speaking,) how much formic acid there is in this hall, you would be greatly astonished. You might say, surely we are not to look for an ant-heap in some corner! But all of you, as many as are sitting here, are really yourselves a kind of ant-heap, for every where in your limbs, muscles and other tissues, in the heart and lung and liver tissues, above all in the tissues of the spleen, everywhere there is formic acid; certainly, it is not so concentrated as in the ant-heap, nevertheless, you are quite filled with formic acid. It is a highly remarkable fact. Why do we have formic acid in our bodies? One must be able to recognise when a man has too little of it. If someone seems ill, and people are mostly a little ill, he might have one or another of a hundred different illnesses which externally, would seem similar. One must know what is really the matter with him; if he is pale or has no appetite, these are only external symptoms. One must find out what exactly is wrong with him. In many cases, the trouble might well be that he is not enough of an ant-heap in himself, that he is producing too little formic acid. Just as formic acid is produced in the ant-heap, so in the human body, in all its organs, especially in the spleen, formic acid must be vigourously produced. When a man produces too little formic acid, one must give him a preparation, a remedy with which one can help him to produce sufficient formic acid. One must learn to observe what happens to a man who has too little formic acid in him. Such observations can only be made by those who have a true knowledge of human nature. One must make a picture of what is happening in the soul of a man who, to begin with, had enough formic acid, and later, has too little. It is a singular thing, but a man will tell you the correct thing about his illness, if you ask him in the right way. Suppose, for instance, you had a man who tells you: “Why, good gracious, a few months ago I had ever so many good ideas, and I could think them out well. Now I cannot do so any longer; if I want to remember anything, I cannot do so.” This is often a much more important symptom than any external examination can give. What is done today is of course justifiable, one must do these things. Today one can test the urine for albumen, or sugar and so on; one gets quite interesting results. But in certain circumstances, it can be far more important when a man tells you something of the kind I have just told you. When a man tells you something of this kind, one must of course, learn other things about him also, but one can discover that the formic acid in his body has recently become insufficient. Well, anyone who still thinks only of externals, might say: “This man has too little formic acid, I will squeeze out some formic acid, or get it in some other way, and give him the right dose.” This could be done for a certain time, but the patient would come to you and say it has done him no good at all. What then is the matter? It really has not helped him at all. It was quite correct; the man had too little formic acid, and he has been given formic acid, but it did him no good. What is the reason? You see, when you examine further, you come to this point. In the one case formic acid has done no good, in another case, it has continued to do good. Well presently one learns to see the difference. Those who are helped by formic acid, will usually show mucus in the lungs. Those who got no help from it, will show mucus in the liver, kidneys, or in the spleen. It is very interesting. It is therefore a very different matter if the lung, for example, lacks formic acid, or the liver. The difference is that the formic acid which is in the ant-heap, can immediately take effect upon the lung. The liver cannot do anything with the formic acid, it can make no use of it at all. Something further now comes in question. When you discover that a man's liver, or more especially his intestines are not quite in good order, and if one gives him formic acid it does not help him, though he actually has not enough of it, then one must give him oxalic acid. One must take wood-sorrel, or the common-clover that grows in the fields, extract the acid, and give him this. Thus you see, anyone with lung trouble must be given formic acid, whereas if the trouble is in the liver, or the intestines, he must be given oxalic acid. The remarkable thing is that the man to whom one has given oxalic acid, will before long himself change the oxalic acid into formic acid. The main point therefore is, that one does not simply introduce such things into a man's body, but that one knows what the organism can bring about by means of its own resources. When you introduce formic acid into the organism, it says; — “This is not for me; I want to be active, I cannot work with ready-made formic acid, I cannot take it up into my lungs.” Naturally, the formic acid has gone into the stomach; from there it finally passes into the intestines. Then the human body wants to be active, and say, as it were: “What am I supposed to do now? I am not to make formic acid myself, for formic acid is given me; have I to send this from here up into my lungs? This I shall not do.” The body wants oxalic acid, and from this it produces formic acid. Yes, gentlemen, life consists of activity, not of substances, and it is most important to recognise that life does not merely consist of eating cabbages and turnips, but of what the human body must do when cabbages and turnips are put into it. You can see from this what strange relationships exist in Nature. Outside there, are the plants, The clover is merely especially characteristic, for oxalic acid is to be found in all the plants; in clover it is present in greater quantities, that is why it is mentioned. But just as formic acid is everywhere in Nature and everywhere in the human body, so also is there oxalic acid everywhere in Nature and in the human body. There is something further that is very interesting. Suppose you take a retort, such as are used in chemical laboratories. You make a flame under it, and put into the retort some oxalic acid — it is like salty, crumbly ashes. You then add the same quantity of glycerine, mix the two together, and heat it. The mixture will then distil here, (Diagram 17) and I can condense what I get here (Diagram 17). At the same time I notice air is escaping at this point. Here it escapes. When I now examine this escaping air, I find it is carbonic acid. Thus carbonic acid is escaping here, and here, where I condense (Diagram 17) I get formic acid. In here, I had oxalic acid and glycerine. The glycerine remains, the rest goes over there, the fluid formic acid dropping down and the carbonic acid giving out the air. Well, gentlemen, when you consider this whole matter thoroughly, you will be able to say: suppose, that instead of the retort we had here the human liver or let us say some human or animal tissue, some animal abdominal organ, liver, spleen or something of this nature. By way of the stomach I introduce oxalic acid. The body already possesses something of the nature of glycerine. I have then in the intestines oxalic acid and glycerine. What happens? Now look at the human mouth, for there the carbonic acid comes out, and downwards from the lungs formic acid everywhere drops in the human body in the direction of the organs. Thus everything I have drawn here we have also in our own bodies. Within our own bodies we unceasingly transform oxalic acid into formic acid. And now imagine to yourself the plants spread out over the surface of the earth. Everywhere in the plants is oxalic acid. And now think of the insects; with the insects all this occurs in the strangest way. First think of the ants; they go to the plants, to all that decays in the plants, and everywhere there is oxalic acid, and these creatures make formic acid from it in the same way that a man does. Formic acid is everywhere present. The materialist looks out into the air and says: — Yes, in the air there is nitrogen and oxygen. But gentlemen, in very, very minute quantities there is also always some formic acid present, because the insects flutter through the air. On the-one hand we have man. Man is a little world; he produces formic acid in himself, and continually fills his breath with formic acid. But in the great world without, in the place of what happens in man, there is the host of insects. The great breath of air that surrounds the whole earth is always permeated with formic acid which is the transformed oxalic acid of the plants. Thus it is. If one rightly observes and studies the lower part of the human body with its inner organs, the stomach, liver, kidneys and the spleen, and further within, the intestines, it is actually the case that oxalic acid is perpetually being changed into formic acid, this formic acid passes with the inbreathed air into all parts of the body. So it is within man. On the earth the plants are everywhere, and everywhere the innumerable hosts of insects hover above them. Below is the oxalic acid; the insects flutter towards it, and from their biting into the plants formic acid arises and fills the air. Thus we perpetually inhale this formic acid out of the air. What the wasps have is a poison similar to formic acid, but somewhat different; what the bees have in the poison of their sting, though actually it pervades their whole body, is likewise a transformed, a sublimated formic acid. Looking at the whole, one has this picture. One says to oneself: we look at the insects, ants, wasps and bees. Externally, they are doing something extremely clever. Why are they doing this? If the ant had no formic acid it would do quite stupidly all that I have described as so beautiful. Only because the ants are so constituted that they can produce formic acid, only because of this, does all that they accomplish appear so intelligent and wise. This also applies to the wasps and the bees. Have we not every reason to say (for we produce this formic acid in ourselves): In Nature there is intelligence everywhere; it comes through the formic acid. In ourselves also there is intelligence everywhere because we have formic acid within us. This formic acid could not be in existence had not the oxalic acid first been there. The little creatures hovering over the plants see to it that the oxalic acid is changed into formic acid, that it is metamorphosed. One only fully understands these things when one asks: How is it then with the oxalic acid? Oxalic acid is essential for all that has life. Wherever there is life, there is oxalic acid, an etheric body. The etheric body brings it about that the oxalic acid is renewed. But the oxalic acid never becomes a formic acid that can be used by the human or animal organism unless it is first transformed by an astral body from oxalic into formic acid. The formic acid which I here extracted from the oxalic acid, is of no use at all to the human or animal organism. It is an illusion to think it can be of use; it is dead. The oxalic acid which is produced in man, and through the insects is living, and arises everywhere where sensation, or something of the nature of the soul is present. Man must produce formic acid in himself if he wishes to bring forth something of the nature of the soul out of the mere life-processes of the lower body where the oxalic acid prevails. Then, in the formic acid of the breath there lives the soul quality that rises up to, and can be active in the head. The soul needs this transformation in man of the oxalic into formic acid. What then is actually happening when oxalic acid is changed into formic acid? You see, the first thing that I told you can show us this. The wood-bee which I described, is especially interesting for it works in wood that is no longer living. If this wood-bee could not make use of the wood in the right way, it would seek a dwelling place elsewhere. It does not make its nest in a tree, but in decaying wood, and where rails and posts begin to rot away; there it makes a nest and lays its eggs. If you study the connection of the decaying wood and the wood-bee, wasps, etc., then you find that similar processes of decay constantly take place in the human body. If this process of decay goes too far, the body dies. Man must constantly carry on in himself what happens externally; he must build up cells, and this he can only do by transforming all that is plant-like within him and permeated with oxalic acid; he must change all this into formic acid so that all is permeated with formic acid. You will say: What significance has all this for Nature? Let us imagine one of these decaying posts or rails. Should one of these wood bees never discover it, a man would certainly not regret it, for these bees increase quickly, and the post they have hollowed out would fall down the following year. Men may not appreciate this, but Nature finds it good, for if there were none of these creatures all woody substances would gradually crumble into dust, and would become entirely useless. The wood in which the wood-bees have worked does not perish in dust, it is given new life. From all this decaying wood that is quickened a little by the wood-bee, or by other insects, much arises which rescues our earth from complete decay, from being scattered as dust in cosmic space; our earth can live on it because it has been quickened by the insects. As men we breathe in formic acid; in Nature the formic acid is prepared by the insects from the oxalic acid of the plants, and so works that the earth renews its life. Consider the connection. We have man, and we have the earth. Let us take first a young child, for a young child readily transforms the oxalic acid of the lower organism into formic acid. The organs of a young child are sufficiently supplied with formic acid; the human soul develops in the child. We have the formic acid as the basis for the soul and spirit. But when a man grows old and is unable to develop sufficient formic acid, then the soul and spirit must take leave of the body. Formic acid draws the soul and spirit to the body; otherwise the soul and spirit must leave it. It is deeply interesting. If for instance you observe a man who has developed a number of independent inner processes, you will find that it Is formic acid that helps him to master these independent inner processes. The right relationship is then brought about between the astral body and the physical body which were hindered by these independent processes in the body. Formic acid is always needed as the right basis for the soul and spirit. When the body has too little it decays, and can no longer retain the soul; the body ages and the soul must leave it. We have then, man on the one side and Nature on the other side. In Nature formic acid is continually being prepared from oxalic acid, so that the earth may always be surrounded not only by oxygen and nitrogen, but by formic acid also. It is formic acid that prevents the earth from dying every year, gives it each year renewed life. What is beneath the earth longs as seed for the formic acid above, for renewal of its life. Every winter the spirit of the earth actually strives to take leave of the earth. The spirit of the earth benumbs the earth in winter, to quicken it again in spring. This happens because what waits as seed beneath the earth draws near-to the formic acid which has arisen through the whole intercourse of the insect world and the plant world throughout the preceding year. The seeds do not merely grow in oxygen, nitrogen and carbon, but in formic acid; this formic acid stimulates them in their turn to develop oxalic acid, so that once more the formic acid of the succeeding year may come into existence. Just as in man formic acid can be the basis for his soul and spirit, so the formic acid which is spread out in the cosmos can be the basis for the soul and spirit of the earth. Thus we can say that for the earth also, formic acid is the basis for earth-soul and earth-spirit (see Diagram 18). You see, it is actually much more difficult to telegraph in a district where there are no ant-heaps, for the electricity and magnetism necessary for telegraphing depend on formic acid. When the telegraph wires go through towns where there are no ant-heaps, it is from the fields outside the town that power must be collected to enable the electric streams to pass through the towns. Naturally, the formic acid is present in the air of the towns also. Thus we can say: What is within man as production of formic acid, is also outside in external Nature. Man is a little world, and between birth and death he is able to produce formic acid from oxalic acid. When he can no longer do so, his body dies. He must once more take a body which in childhood can develop formic acid from oxalic acid in the right way. In Nature the process is unbroken, winter-summer, winter-summer; ever the oxalic acid is undergoing transformation into formic acid. If one watches beside a dying man one really has the feeling that in dying, he first tries whether his body is still able to develop formic acid. When he can no longer accomplish this, death takes place. Man passes into the spiritual world, for he can no longer inhabit his body. Hence, we say that a man dies at a given moment. Along time then passes, and he returns to take another body; between whiles, he is in the spiritual worlds. Well, gentlemen, as I told you, when a young Queen slips out in the hive, something disturbs the bees. Previously they had lived in their twilight world; now they see the young Queen begin to shine. What is connected with this shining? It is connected with the fact that the young Queen robs the old Queen bee of the power of the bee poison. The whole departing swarm feels this fear, this fear that they will no longer possess a sufficiency of poison, will no longer be able to protect, or save themselves. They go away just as the human soul goes away at death when it can no longer find the formic acid it needs: so too, the older bees go away when there is not sufficient formic acid, bee poison, in the hive. So now, if one watches the swarm, still indeed visible to us, yet it is like the human soul when it must desert the body. It is a majestic picture, this departing swarm. Just as the human soul takes leave of the body, so when the young Queen is there, the old Queen with her company leaves the hive; one can truly see in the flying swarm an image of the departing human soul. How truly magnificent all this is! But the human soul has not carried the process so far as to develop its forces into actual small creatures; the tendency to do this is nevertheless there. We have something within us that we wish to transform into tiny creatures, into bacilli and bacteria — into minute bees. But we suppress this tendency that we may be wholly men. The swarm of bees is not a whole man. The bees cannot find their way into a spiritual world, it is we who must bring them into a new incarnation as a new colony. This is, gentlemen, directly an image of re-incarnating man. Anyone who is able to observe this, has an immense respect for these swarming bees with their Queen, for this swarm which behaves as it does because it desires to go into the spiritual world; but for this it has become too physical. Therefore these bees gather themselves together, and become like one body; they wish to be together, they wish to leave the world. Whereas they otherwise fly about, now they settle on some branch or bush, clustering together quietly as though they wish to vanish away, to go into the spiritual world. If we now bring them back, if we help them by placing them in a new hive, then they can once more become a complete colony. We must say that the insects teach us the very highest things of Nature. This is why in bygone times men were always enlightened when they looked at the plants; they possessed an instinctive knowledge of these things of which I have been speaking to you, a knowledge completely lost to modern science. These men observed the plants in their own way. When people today bring into their houses a branch of a fir-tree for a Christmas tree, they remind themselves that all that is outside in Nature can also work in our human and social life. This fir branch from which the Christmas tree is made should become for us a symbol of love. It is commonly thought that the Christmas tree is a very old custom, but the fir-tree has only been so used for 150 to 200 years. In earlier times this custom did not exist, but another plant was made use of at Christmas time. When the Christmas plays, for example, were performed in the villages, even in the 15th and 16th Centuries, there was always a man who went round to announce them who carried a kind of Christmas tree in his hand. This was a branch of the juniper that has such wonderful berries; the juniper was the Christmas tree. This was because these juniper berries, so greatly loved by the birds, contain something of that poison which must pervade all that is earthly, so that this earthly may rise again in the spirit. Just as the ants give to the wood, or the wood-bee to the decaying posts, so when the birds eat the juniper berries every morning, a certain acid, though a weaker one, is developed. People in olden days knew this instinctively, and said to themselves: “In winter when the birds come to eat the juniper berries the earth is quickened through the juniper tree.” It was for them a symbol of the quickening of the earth through Christ. Thus we can say: When we observe things in the right way, we see how the processes of Nature are actually images and symbols of what happens in human life. These men of olden times watched the birds on the juniper trees with the same love with which we look at the little cakes and gifts on the Christmas tree. To them the juniper tree was a kind of Christmas tree which they carried into their houses; the juniper became a kind of Christmas tree. As you are now all of you especially hard at work, we must close. I did not want today's lecture to end without touching on a subject of real importance. I have therefore spoken of the juniper tree which can truly be regarded as a kind of Christmas tree, and which is the same for the birds as the blossoms for the bees, the wood for the ants, and for the wood-bees and insects in general. In conclusion, I should like to wish you a happy, cheerful Christmas Festival, and one which may uplift your hearts.

Nine Lectures on Bees

Lecture IX

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA351/English/SGP1975/19231222a01.html

Dornach

22 Dec 1923

GA351-15

Good morning, gentlemen. We have not been meeting for some time. Maybe one of you has thought of something in particular that we may discuss today? Questioner: The large ants to be found around our woodlands have a kind of honey or resin at the bottom of their ant heap. This is used for ritual purposes; Roman Catholic priests like to use it for incense. I would like to ask where this comes from and what it is made of. Rudolf Steiner: Those resins contain the same material as is found in incense, and really have no other value but it is a way of getting one's incense cheaply. Ant heaps develop because with their formic acid ants also secrete all kinds of things they bring with them from the resinous parts of the trees where they gather sap. It is not a kind of honey, therefore, but a resin that has formic acid mixed in with it. Mr Müller: I would like to go back to the bees, the carpenter bees that infest trees. In my young days I knew a case where all the wood in a forestry area rotted away and was not used. A master carpenter came and bought enormous quantities of this wood, which in the old days was always only used to make boxes. He used the wood for carpentry in new houses. A year later, people kept finding bees everywhere in those houses. These bees were such a danger to the structure that the master carpenter had to take the houses back after two years. All the timber work, including the rafters, had to be taken down. He had to take the houses back completely, buy them back. Rudolf Steiner: That can happen, of course. Did the bees get into the wood in the timber yard or when it was still in the woods? Mr Müller: It runs sold by auction in the autumn, then used in the spring, and the bees came out in the summer. Rudolf Steiner: Anything that may be extremely useful in one respect can also be terribly harmful in another. This does not go against what I said before, which is that these bees in the wood are something that is really needed. As I said, something that may be extraordinarily useful in one situation can on the other hand be extraordinarily harmful. Let me give you an example. Imagine a little boy who is short-sighted. If he is given glasses, that is necessary and can indeed be very useful. But if the other boys were to see this as something rather distinguished and decided to put on glasses as well, this would not be useful but harmful. And that is how it is. Something that is extraordinarily useful in one situation may prove extraordinarily harmful in another. That is the way it is. Mr Müller: I'd like to go back to the bees again and things connected with our life and activities as beekeepers. My colleagues have complained several times that it would have been better if I did not read out what I want to say but speak freely. I have to say to them, however, that I have only been to primary school and have no special gift as a speaker. I am therefore not in a position to speak freely. So I am going to read out again today what I have written and not speak freely. About the bees, the queen bee. (Spoke about beehives and then referred to problems between workers and employers; going back to 1914, he expressed some dissatisfaction. Made a comparison: we, too, are a beehive in that situation, and so on.) Rudolf Steiner: Well, gentlemen, it is difficult to speak immediately off the cuff about such matters. I expect we all know from experience that when such things are brought up and one discusses them on the spot the discussion has a different tone than when the matter has been fully considered. Let us therefore consider the matter carefully, that is, if we are to talk about it at all. We have time available again on Wednesday and I'll then ask the gentlemen who have something to say on the matter that we use the time on Wednesday for this. People have, quite rightly, spoken of the temperaments. The temperaments work in a different way if one has had a sleep in between. I do not mean that I want to remove the subject from the agenda, for this is not to say that I won't say something on the subject myself on Wednesday. But I think the way to do it is not to discuss the matter right away, when some people may get rather hot around the collar, but give it time, until Wednesday. I'll therefore ask you, gentlemen, to speak on Wednesday, if you wish. For today let us continue with matters of science. And as I said, Mr Muller's suggestion will certainly be considered, and we'll say what we have to say about it on Wednesday. And I myself will then also say what I have to say. You see, with scientific subjects it is relatively, pretty well possible for someone who knows the subject to say quite a few things even if unprepared. But the whole issue that has been presented here is something I would like to think through first. Is this all right with you? (Agreement.) Does anyone else have a question? Mr Dollinger: A question that has often come up recently — it has been in all the papers — is that one never knows where dead elephants have got to, for their remains are never found. I would like to ask Dr Steiner if it might not be interesting to talk about this. Rudolf Steiner: That is an interesting thing with those elephants. The fact is that remains of elephants from prehistoric times are sometimes found in extremely good condition. And the way those elephants from prehistoric times are found shows that these particular animals, called pachyderms in natural history, must always have died in the places where such prehistoric animals are found in a way — that is, they must have been preserved in such a way — that they were enveloped all at once in the soil that surrounds them. What I mean is that these thick-skinned pachyderms could only have been so well preserved because it did not happen that water, let us say, soil and mud seeped in gradually. It must have happened that they were lying in a cave and a landslide caused them to be enveloped in soil quite suddenly. The result has been that when that foreign soil had dissolved the flesh surrounding the bones, the enveloping form, which was firm in itself, preserved the skeletal structures extremely well. You find most beautifully preserved examples especially of these huge animals in museums everywhere. This proves that these animals have the peculiar habit of withdrawing into caves when the time comes to die. Of course, the matter cannot be taken quite as strictly as you have put it, for all we can say is that very often — one does of course also find dead elephants — no trace can be found of an elephant that before had certainly been seen around. these animals have the peculiar habit of withdrawing into raves when they see death approaching, and to die in caves. You see, gentlemen, this has to do with the fact that these animals—and what you have said refers essentially only to pachyderms—have such an extraordinarily thick skin. And what does such a thick skin signify? You see, the hard parts of an animal are the parts most related to the soil. Your own nails are also most closely related to the earth. And an elephant's skin is such by nature that it is indeed related to the earth to an extraordinary degree. Because of this an elephant really feels himself surrounded by the earth all his life, meaning the earth in his skin, and only feels well surrounded by his skin. Now, within his skin the elephant is really continually dying. When death approaches — this is the peculiar thing with pachyderms — these animals feel this particularly strongly, exactly because they have such a thick skin. They then want to have more of the earth in their skin. Their instinct then makes them go into caves. People tend not to look for them in those earth caves. If they were to look for them there they would find more dead elephants in the regions where elephants are. They are not to be found in the open. What this fact proves is that animals have much more of an idea of approaching death than humans do, especially animals with a thick skin all around them, but also lower animals, small ones such as insects, for example, with their horny outer covers. And you see, when it comes to these small animals we have to say: It is not only that they feel death approaching, but also that they make all kinds of arrangements when they come to die, so that death shall happen in a place that is the best place for it. Some insects withdraw into the soil to experience death there. You see, with human beings the situation is that they pay for their freedom by having really very little intuition. Animals do not have freedom, everything about them is unfree. But they have great intuitive powers. As you know, when danger threatens, an earthquake, for instance, animals move away, while human beings are caught completely unprepared by such events. We may say that it is extraordinarily difficult for humans to enter into the inner life of animals. But anyone able to observe animals properly, anyone with the gift for observing animals, will always find that animals act in an extraordinarily prophetic way in anything that concerns their lives. And the peculiar habit we have spoken of is indeed connected with the prophetic life of these animals. But again we should not compare animals directly with humans when they do such things. Here we may speak of something else connected with elephants. It will make the subject of your question even more understandable. You see, it has repeatedly been observed that a small elephant herd, let us say, was taken to water. Now it might be that a young rascal was standing by the roadside as the elephants passed and threw something at an elephant. For the time being the elephant would seem to be a patient creature who did nothing of the kind, and his reaction would seem fairly indifferent. But lo and behold, when the elephant came back, he had kept a hefty charge of water in his trunk. And as he walked back and saw the boy again, he sprayed the boy from top to toe with the water, before the boy could throw something again. This has been observed on several occasions. Now we might say: My word! The elephant is a lot cleverer than a person, for the elephant must have enormous wisdom to remember the insult the boy inflicted on him, keep the water in his trunk and then take his revenge. Well, gentlemen, such an idea of the elephant is not quite correct. You should not compare this with human cleverness but with another human faculty. If a fly settles on your eye, here, you do this: you brush it off without giving the matter much thought. Scientists, who have all kinds of terms for things, terms that are not always easily understood, call this a reflex movement. You simply use a kind of instinct, a defensive movement, to brush off something that might be harmful to you. Humans do such things all the time. The brain is not at all involved in such actions, where someone merely brushes off a fly. Only the nerves that go to the spinal cord are involved. I think you know that when a person thinks about something it is like this: up here is the brain, and when he has seen something, for instance, the optic nerve goes to the brain, and from the brain the will impulse to do something goes through the rest of the organism. But when someone simply brushes away a fly which has settled on him, the nerve does not go to the brain at all — even if it was on the head—but goes directly to the spine, and the fly is brushed off without any thought given to it in the brain. It thus is the spinal marrow which brings it about that we defend ourselves instinctively when something of this kind touches us. We human beings do not have a thick skin, at least physically speaking; we have a very thin skin. Our skin is so thin that it is actually transparent, for it consists of three layers: the inner one is called the dermis or corium; then comes a layer known as the basal or Malpighian layer, followed by the outer skin, which is quite transparent. We do have a skin, like the elephant, but it is extremely thin. The outer skin is completely transparent. Because we have a transparent skin we are also in contact with the environment with our feeling senses, and because we are in contact with the environment we human beings think inwardly and consider things. The elephant is also physically thick skinned, humans often are so morally. What does this lead to? You can easily imagine after what I have told you that an elephant is extraordinarily insensitive to his environment. Such an elephant really feels nothing at all, and everything he perceives of the environment is by sight. It is like a world closed off in itself. To enter into the heart and mind of an elephant is extraordinarily interesting for some people. Sometimes a person should actually desire more than anything to be an elephant, so that he may gain in insight. For you see, if a human being had the human way of thinking as well as an elephant mind he would be so clever that one could not even find the words to say how clever! But the elephant does not have the brain to be that clever. Because he is completely closed off in himself, his reflex movements, defensive movements, slow down. It takes a long time. If a fly had settled on you and you did not have the quick instinct to brush it away, the fly would fly away of its own accord before you got round to it. With the elephant, it is like this: he would leave a fly be, for the business of brushing it off would probably only come an hour later, that is how slow the reflex or defensive movement is. And what the elephant does with his trunk is nothing but such a reflex movement, only that it takes longer. And we cannot say that he thinks: That boy has insulted me, I must pour a load of water over his head. An elephant does not think like that. If a boy throws mud at you, you give him a clout on the ear without giving it much thought. But an elephant is a slow creature, exactly because he is a pachyderm, and it therefore takes a long time until he goes there and then comes here and puts out his trunk to give the boy a clout on the ear. But as he takes in water during the interval he realizes that his trunk is stronger when there is water in it. He wants to make his trunk stronger by keeping water in it. And he feels his trunk getting longer. He simply wants to use the extended trunk to strike the boy when he sprays him with a load of water. So this is what we have to consider. We should not simply ascribe human wisdom to them but need to enter into their inner heart and mind. Then we discover such things. And the situation with an elephant is that it is a creature closed up within itself and notes everything, noting above all everything that goes on inside it. Because of this the elephant also becomes aware of approaching death and is able to withdraw. The situation is that there is really only very little animal psychology today. You know, people observe animals and discover all kinds of interesting things, as I have told you. But really looking into the animal's soul — that is something extremely rare today. But one needs to strengthen one's senses if one wants to get at such things, to observe life altogether. Take very small animals of the kind one may find. Some very small animals consist altogether only of a soft, slimy mass (Fig. 1). This soft, slimy mass can extend something like a threadlike feeler from its mass if there is a little grain somewhere near. An arm is produced out of the mass. It can be taken back again. But, you see, such creatures secrete shells of lime or silica, so that they are surrounded by shells of lime or silica. Well, you cannot see very much when you observe such small animals. But there are creatures that are more developed, and with them you can observe more. There are creatures that also consist of such a slimy mass, but inside is something that looks like small rays if you look a bit more closely; and they also have a shell around them, and the shell has spines (Fig. 2). Everything that later develops into coral looks like this. Figure 2 Take such a creature, which has a shell with spines and inside in its soft mass such ray-like structures. What is it? If you really go into it, you find that those rays inside are not brought about by the earth but by the sphere around the earth, by the stars. This soft mass is brought about by something that comes from the heavens, and the hard mass, or the mass with spines, is brought about by something from the inner earth. How does such a thing come into existence? Well, gentlemen, if you want to know how it comes into existence, you must see it like this. Here is a little bit—I am drawing it much larger —of such a small slimy animal. Through an influence that comes from a faraway star, a little bit of such a ray develops inside. As it develops, the influence from the star is causing quite a bit of pressure on the rest of the mass here. This then pushes even more strongly against the wall here. A bulge forms on the inside of the shell there, because of the increased pressure, and a spine is created in the surrounding mass of lime or silica. So that the spine is brought about from outside, from the earth, the ray, however, from inside, but due to the influence of the star. Can you understand this? he structure that develops here inside is the beginning of a nerve mass; the structure that develops out there is the beginning of a bone mass. We thus see, looking at these lower animals, that nerves develop under the influence of the outer world circumference, which is beyond the earth. Everything that is bony or shell-like by nature —the lower animals only have bone on the outside — develops under the influence of the earth. As we go on to consider more highly developed animals, we see shell development come to an end and skeletal development evolving, reaching its most perfect form in man. But take a look at the human skeleton. Looking at it you realize that the head can be compared to a lower animal, for it has a kind of shell. It is soft inside. That is a big difference from the rest of the human skeleton. Your leg and thigh bones are inside, and the flesh covers them. There the human being has taken the bony skeleton inside. In the rest of the human being the external skeleton is not as it is around the head but is taken inside. This is connected with the fact that the blood develops in a particular way in these higher animals and also in human beings. When you look at those lower animals, everything is a white mass. Even the substance that flows in them as blood is white. These lower animals thus really have white blood that is not at all warm. The higher the animals, and the closer we come to the human being, moving up the scale of animal organization, the more the human being, who remains light-coloured, has blood mass present in him. And the more the nerve is penetrated by blood mass, the more does the skeleton, initially an outer shell, withdraw into the inner organism. We are thus able to put it like this. Why does the human being have bones developed as internal structures, the way they are in his arms and legs? Because he has blood mass entering into his nerve mass. We are therefore able to say that higher animals and man inwardly need the blood inside them and therefore outwardly take the shell inside. Is this clear to you? We are then also able to say: such a lower animal knows nothing of itself; human beings, however, and the higher animals, know of themselves. How does one know of oneself? Because one has the skeleton inside oneself. It is because of this that one knows of oneself. So if we ask: 'Why does man have self-awareness, what makes him know of himself?' We should not point to the muscles, nor to the soft parts, but we must point exactly to the solid skeletal support. Man knows of himself because he has a solid skeletal support. And it is extraordinarily interesting to study the human skeleton. Figure 3 Let us assume this is the human being, and I roughly put in the skeletal system (Fig. 3). Now this is extraordinarily interesting. Looking at a skeleton you have to realize it has been inside a human being. But this human skeleton is completely enclosed in a membrane. If I wanted to draw this membrane I'd have to draw it like this. When the human being is alive, the whole of his skeletal system is as though in a sack, inside a membrane called the periosteum, which fits it very closely. Imagine a joint (Fig. 4). Here one bone has a head and that fits into a cup, as it were. With the periosteum it is like this. There you have the membrane, with the whole bone enclosed in it, and the membrane continues like this, arriving there and covering the skeleton. So if you just think of the skeleton inside the human being, it is entirely separate in the human being. Between all other parts of the human being and the skeleton lies a sack-like skin. It is really as if you were to take the skeleton of a living human being and imagine you spread a sack over the whole skeleton, covering it closely everywhere, so that the sack would cover the outside of the whole skeleton. But you don't need to do this, for nature has already done it. The whole is in a sack, the periosteum. And the interesting thing is that the blood vessels only go as far as the periosteum — they are present in the whole of this membrane. This blood nourishes the bone in so far as nourishment is intended, but inside the sack the bone is all earth: calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, ash, salts, and so on. So you have the strange situation that you are muscle, liver, and so on, and have your blood vessels inside you, and the blood initially creates a sack. This sack closes you off from the inside. Inside the sack is a hollow space, and the bony skeleton is inside this hollow space. So it really is as if your bones were inside you, and you had separated them off, using a sack, the periosteum. And those bones are entirely earthy, they are earth inside you. You cannot feel them inside you as something that is you. You are as little able to feel your bones, seeing what they are, to be part of you as you would feel a piece of chalk you pick up to be part of you. The chalk is outside yourself, and in the same way your bone is outside yourself, and you are separated from it by a sack. You all have something inside you, in your skeleton, that is not you. It is earth made in the shape of bones, calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate. You have this inside you, but it is enclosed in a sack, in the periosteum. Figure 4 You see, gentlemen, that is not a place for something that is not of the spirit. For if you get some splinter of earth matter inside you, it must fester until it comes out. Your bone does not fester until it comes out. Why? Because there where you are dead inside yourself, where the bone appears dead inside its periosteum, spirit is present everywhere. You see, that was the wonderful instinct that made ordinary people, who often knew more than the academics, to see death as a skeleton. For they knew that the spirit was present in the skeleton. And if they thought of a spirit walking about, then it, too, had to be a skeleton. That was exactly the right image. For as long as a human being lives, he makes room in himself for the spirit through his bones. This is something we'll discuss further in the very near future. But you also see from this that man does a great deal to bring the spirit into his bones. The elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin. And because the elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin, the spirit, which the elephant is then able to sense, is able to perceive when the outside world destroys it. Man does not know of his death because his skin is too thin. If he were thick-skinned also in physical terms, he, too, would withdraw into a cave and die in a cave. And then we would also say: 'Where do human beings get to? They go to heaven when they die!' Yes, gentlemen, the same thing which has been said about animals has also been said about individuals who were greatly venerated by many people. Moses is an example. It was said that his dead body was never found. He vanished, and people thought this really happened in his case. He had grown as wise, people thought, as I have been saying. If human beings were thick-skinned physically and had their brains, they would be so clever that words cannot tell how clever they would be. And people knew of such things. You see, it is amazing what people did know. They said of Moses that he was as clever as he would have been if he had had a thick skin. And because of this he withdrew, and his dead body was never found. This is a very interesting connection. Don't you think so? Ancient legends often have to do with a pure, most beautiful animal veneration. Well, we'll talk about this next time, if the discussion that has been imposed on us today leaves time for it. Until next Wednesday, then, gentlemen. 1 Incidents that had aroused ill feeling were discussed with the builders on 9 January, with further discussions following on 12 and 16 January. Table of Contents Next ˃˃ Figure 2 Take such a creature, which has a shell with spines and inside in its soft mass such ray-like structures. What is it? If you really go into it, you find that those rays inside are not brought about by the earth but by the sphere around the earth, by the stars. This soft mass is brought about by something that comes from the heavens, and the hard mass, or the mass with spines, is brought about by something from the inner earth. How does such a thing come into existence? Well, gentlemen, if you want to know how it comes into existence, you must see it like this. Here is a little bit—I am drawing it much larger —of such a small slimy animal. Through an influence that comes from a faraway star, a little bit of such a ray develops inside. As it develops, the influence from the star is causing quite a bit of pressure on the rest of the mass here. This then pushes even more strongly against the wall here. A bulge forms on the inside of the shell there, because of the increased pressure, and a spine is created in the surrounding mass of lime or silica. So that the spine is brought about from outside, from the earth, the ray, however, from inside, but due to the influence of the star. Can you understand this? he structure that develops here inside is the beginning of a nerve mass; the structure that develops out there is the beginning of a bone mass. We thus see, looking at these lower animals, that nerves develop under the influence of the outer world circumference, which is beyond the earth. Everything that is bony or shell-like by nature —the lower animals only have bone on the outside — develops under the influence of the earth. As we go on to consider more highly developed animals, we see shell development come to an end and skeletal development evolving, reaching its most perfect form in man. But take a look at the human skeleton. Looking at it you realize that the head can be compared to a lower animal, for it has a kind of shell. It is soft inside. That is a big difference from the rest of the human skeleton. Your leg and thigh bones are inside, and the flesh covers them. There the human being has taken the bony skeleton inside. In the rest of the human being the external skeleton is not as it is around the head but is taken inside. This is connected with the fact that the blood develops in a particular way in these higher animals and also in human beings. When you look at those lower animals, everything is a white mass. Even the substance that flows in them as blood is white. These lower animals thus really have white blood that is not at all warm. The higher the animals, and the closer we come to the human being, moving up the scale of animal organization, the more the human being, who remains light-coloured, has blood mass present in him. And the more the nerve is penetrated by blood mass, the more does the skeleton, initially an outer shell, withdraw into the inner organism. We are thus able to put it like this. Why does the human being have bones developed as internal structures, the way they are in his arms and legs? Because he has blood mass entering into his nerve mass. We are therefore able to say that higher animals and man inwardly need the blood inside them and therefore outwardly take the shell inside. Is this clear to you? We are then also able to say: such a lower animal knows nothing of itself; human beings, however, and the higher animals, know of themselves. How does one know of oneself? Because one has the skeleton inside oneself. It is because of this that one knows of oneself. So if we ask: 'Why does man have self-awareness, what makes him know of himself?' We should not point to the muscles, nor to the soft parts, but we must point exactly to the solid skeletal support. Man knows of himself because he has a solid skeletal support. And it is extraordinarily interesting to study the human skeleton. Figure 3 Let us assume this is the human being, and I roughly put in the skeletal system (Fig. 3). Now this is extraordinarily interesting. Looking at a skeleton you have to realize it has been inside a human being. But this human skeleton is completely enclosed in a membrane. If I wanted to draw this membrane I'd have to draw it like this. When the human being is alive, the whole of his skeletal system is as though in a sack, inside a membrane called the periosteum, which fits it very closely. Imagine a joint (Fig. 4). Here one bone has a head and that fits into a cup, as it were. With the periosteum it is like this. There you have the membrane, with the whole bone enclosed in it, and the membrane continues like this, arriving there and covering the skeleton. So if you just think of the skeleton inside the human being, it is entirely separate in the human being. Between all other parts of the human being and the skeleton lies a sack-like skin. It is really as if you were to take the skeleton of a living human being and imagine you spread a sack over the whole skeleton, covering it closely everywhere, so that the sack would cover the outside of the whole skeleton. But you don't need to do this, for nature has already done it. The whole is in a sack, the periosteum. And the interesting thing is that the blood vessels only go as far as the periosteum — they are present in the whole of this membrane. This blood nourishes the bone in so far as nourishment is intended, but inside the sack the bone is all earth: calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, ash, salts, and so on. So you have the strange situation that you are muscle, liver, and so on, and have your blood vessels inside you, and the blood initially creates a sack. This sack closes you off from the inside. Inside the sack is a hollow space, and the bony skeleton is inside this hollow space. So it really is as if your bones were inside you, and you had separated them off, using a sack, the periosteum. And those bones are entirely earthy, they are earth inside you. You cannot feel them inside you as something that is you. You are as little able to feel your bones, seeing what they are, to be part of you as you would feel a piece of chalk you pick up to be part of you. The chalk is outside yourself, and in the same way your bone is outside yourself, and you are separated from it by a sack. You all have something inside you, in your skeleton, that is not you. It is earth made in the shape of bones, calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate. You have this inside you, but it is enclosed in a sack, in the periosteum. Figure 4 You see, gentlemen, that is not a place for something that is not of the spirit. For if you get some splinter of earth matter inside you, it must fester until it comes out. Your bone does not fester until it comes out. Why? Because there where you are dead inside yourself, where the bone appears dead inside its periosteum, spirit is present everywhere. You see, that was the wonderful instinct that made ordinary people, who often knew more than the academics, to see death as a skeleton. For they knew that the spirit was present in the skeleton. And if they thought of a spirit walking about, then it, too, had to be a skeleton. That was exactly the right image. For as long as a human being lives, he makes room in himself for the spirit through his bones. This is something we'll discuss further in the very near future. But you also see from this that man does a great deal to bring the spirit into his bones. The elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin. And because the elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin, the spirit, which the elephant is then able to sense, is able to perceive when the outside world destroys it. Man does not know of his death because his skin is too thin. If he were thick-skinned also in physical terms, he, too, would withdraw into a cave and die in a cave. And then we would also say: 'Where do human beings get to? They go to heaven when they die!' Yes, gentlemen, the same thing which has been said about animals has also been said about individuals who were greatly venerated by many people. Moses is an example. It was said that his dead body was never found. He vanished, and people thought this really happened in his case. He had grown as wise, people thought, as I have been saying. If human beings were thick-skinned physically and had their brains, they would be so clever that words cannot tell how clever they would be. And people knew of such things. You see, it is amazing what people did know. They said of Moses that he was as clever as he would have been if he had had a thick skin. And because of this he withdrew, and his dead body was never found. This is a very interesting connection. Don't you think so? Ancient legends often have to do with a pure, most beautiful animal veneration. Well, we'll talk about this next time, if the discussion that has been imposed on us today leaves time for it. Until next Wednesday, then, gentlemen. 1 Incidents that had aroused ill feeling were discussed with the builders on 9 January, with further discussions following on 12 and 16 January. Table of Contents Next ˃˃ Take such a creature, which has a shell with spines and inside in its soft mass such ray-like structures. What is it? If you really go into it, you find that those rays inside are not brought about by the earth but by the sphere around the earth, by the stars. This soft mass is brought about by something that comes from the heavens, and the hard mass, or the mass with spines, is brought about by something from the inner earth. How does such a thing come into existence? Well, gentlemen, if you want to know how it comes into existence, you must see it like this. Here is a little bit—I am drawing it much larger —of such a small slimy animal. Through an influence that comes from a faraway star, a little bit of such a ray develops inside. As it develops, the influence from the star is causing quite a bit of pressure on the rest of the mass here. This then pushes even more strongly against the wall here. A bulge forms on the inside of the shell there, because of the increased pressure, and a spine is created in the surrounding mass of lime or silica. So that the spine is brought about from outside, from the earth, the ray, however, from inside, but due to the influence of the star. Can you understand this? he structure that develops here inside is the beginning of a nerve mass; the structure that develops out there is the beginning of a bone mass. We thus see, looking at these lower animals, that nerves develop under the influence of the outer world circumference, which is beyond the earth. Everything that is bony or shell-like by nature —the lower animals only have bone on the outside — develops under the influence of the earth. As we go on to consider more highly developed animals, we see shell development come to an end and skeletal development evolving, reaching its most perfect form in man. But take a look at the human skeleton. Looking at it you realize that the head can be compared to a lower animal, for it has a kind of shell. It is soft inside. That is a big difference from the rest of the human skeleton. Your leg and thigh bones are inside, and the flesh covers them. There the human being has taken the bony skeleton inside. In the rest of the human being the external skeleton is not as it is around the head but is taken inside. This is connected with the fact that the blood develops in a particular way in these higher animals and also in human beings. When you look at those lower animals, everything is a white mass. Even the substance that flows in them as blood is white. These lower animals thus really have white blood that is not at all warm. The higher the animals, and the closer we come to the human being, moving up the scale of animal organization, the more the human being, who remains light-coloured, has blood mass present in him. And the more the nerve is penetrated by blood mass, the more does the skeleton, initially an outer shell, withdraw into the inner organism. We are thus able to put it like this. Why does the human being have bones developed as internal structures, the way they are in his arms and legs? Because he has blood mass entering into his nerve mass. We are therefore able to say that higher animals and man inwardly need the blood inside them and therefore outwardly take the shell inside. Is this clear to you? We are then also able to say: such a lower animal knows nothing of itself; human beings, however, and the higher animals, know of themselves. How does one know of oneself? Because one has the skeleton inside oneself. It is because of this that one knows of oneself. So if we ask: 'Why does man have self-awareness, what makes him know of himself?' We should not point to the muscles, nor to the soft parts, but we must point exactly to the solid skeletal support. Man knows of himself because he has a solid skeletal support. And it is extraordinarily interesting to study the human skeleton. Figure 3 Let us assume this is the human being, and I roughly put in the skeletal system (Fig. 3). Now this is extraordinarily interesting. Looking at a skeleton you have to realize it has been inside a human being. But this human skeleton is completely enclosed in a membrane. If I wanted to draw this membrane I'd have to draw it like this. When the human being is alive, the whole of his skeletal system is as though in a sack, inside a membrane called the periosteum, which fits it very closely. Imagine a joint (Fig. 4). Here one bone has a head and that fits into a cup, as it were. With the periosteum it is like this. There you have the membrane, with the whole bone enclosed in it, and the membrane continues like this, arriving there and covering the skeleton. So if you just think of the skeleton inside the human being, it is entirely separate in the human being. Between all other parts of the human being and the skeleton lies a sack-like skin. It is really as if you were to take the skeleton of a living human being and imagine you spread a sack over the whole skeleton, covering it closely everywhere, so that the sack would cover the outside of the whole skeleton. But you don't need to do this, for nature has already done it. The whole is in a sack, the periosteum. And the interesting thing is that the blood vessels only go as far as the periosteum — they are present in the whole of this membrane. This blood nourishes the bone in so far as nourishment is intended, but inside the sack the bone is all earth: calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, ash, salts, and so on. So you have the strange situation that you are muscle, liver, and so on, and have your blood vessels inside you, and the blood initially creates a sack. This sack closes you off from the inside. Inside the sack is a hollow space, and the bony skeleton is inside this hollow space. So it really is as if your bones were inside you, and you had separated them off, using a sack, the periosteum. And those bones are entirely earthy, they are earth inside you. You cannot feel them inside you as something that is you. You are as little able to feel your bones, seeing what they are, to be part of you as you would feel a piece of chalk you pick up to be part of you. The chalk is outside yourself, and in the same way your bone is outside yourself, and you are separated from it by a sack. You all have something inside you, in your skeleton, that is not you. It is earth made in the shape of bones, calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate. You have this inside you, but it is enclosed in a sack, in the periosteum. Figure 4 You see, gentlemen, that is not a place for something that is not of the spirit. For if you get some splinter of earth matter inside you, it must fester until it comes out. Your bone does not fester until it comes out. Why? Because there where you are dead inside yourself, where the bone appears dead inside its periosteum, spirit is present everywhere. You see, that was the wonderful instinct that made ordinary people, who often knew more than the academics, to see death as a skeleton. For they knew that the spirit was present in the skeleton. And if they thought of a spirit walking about, then it, too, had to be a skeleton. That was exactly the right image. For as long as a human being lives, he makes room in himself for the spirit through his bones. This is something we'll discuss further in the very near future. But you also see from this that man does a great deal to bring the spirit into his bones. The elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin. And because the elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin, the spirit, which the elephant is then able to sense, is able to perceive when the outside world destroys it. Man does not know of his death because his skin is too thin. If he were thick-skinned also in physical terms, he, too, would withdraw into a cave and die in a cave. And then we would also say: 'Where do human beings get to? They go to heaven when they die!' Yes, gentlemen, the same thing which has been said about animals has also been said about individuals who were greatly venerated by many people. Moses is an example. It was said that his dead body was never found. He vanished, and people thought this really happened in his case. He had grown as wise, people thought, as I have been saying. If human beings were thick-skinned physically and had their brains, they would be so clever that words cannot tell how clever they would be. And people knew of such things. You see, it is amazing what people did know. They said of Moses that he was as clever as he would have been if he had had a thick skin. And because of this he withdrew, and his dead body was never found. This is a very interesting connection. Don't you think so? Ancient legends often have to do with a pure, most beautiful animal veneration. Well, we'll talk about this next time, if the discussion that has been imposed on us today leaves time for it. Until next Wednesday, then, gentlemen. 1 Incidents that had aroused ill feeling were discussed with the builders on 9 January, with further discussions following on 12 and 16 January. Table of Contents Next ˃˃ he structure that develops here inside is the beginning of a nerve mass; the structure that develops out there is the beginning of a bone mass. We thus see, looking at these lower animals, that nerves develop under the influence of the outer world circumference, which is beyond the earth. Everything that is bony or shell-like by nature —the lower animals only have bone on the outside — develops under the influence of the earth. As we go on to consider more highly developed animals, we see shell development come to an end and skeletal development evolving, reaching its most perfect form in man. But take a look at the human skeleton. Looking at it you realize that the head can be compared to a lower animal, for it has a kind of shell. It is soft inside. That is a big difference from the rest of the human skeleton. Your leg and thigh bones are inside, and the flesh covers them. There the human being has taken the bony skeleton inside. In the rest of the human being the external skeleton is not as it is around the head but is taken inside. This is connected with the fact that the blood develops in a particular way in these higher animals and also in human beings. When you look at those lower animals, everything is a white mass. Even the substance that flows in them as blood is white. These lower animals thus really have white blood that is not at all warm. The higher the animals, and the closer we come to the human being, moving up the scale of animal organization, the more the human being, who remains light-coloured, has blood mass present in him. And the more the nerve is penetrated by blood mass, the more does the skeleton, initially an outer shell, withdraw into the inner organism. We are thus able to put it like this. Why does the human being have bones developed as internal structures, the way they are in his arms and legs? Because he has blood mass entering into his nerve mass. We are therefore able to say that higher animals and man inwardly need the blood inside them and therefore outwardly take the shell inside. Is this clear to you? We are then also able to say: such a lower animal knows nothing of itself; human beings, however, and the higher animals, know of themselves. How does one know of oneself? Because one has the skeleton inside oneself. It is because of this that one knows of oneself. So if we ask: 'Why does man have self-awareness, what makes him know of himself?' We should not point to the muscles, nor to the soft parts, but we must point exactly to the solid skeletal support. Man knows of himself because he has a solid skeletal support. And it is extraordinarily interesting to study the human skeleton. Figure 3 Let us assume this is the human being, and I roughly put in the skeletal system (Fig. 3). Now this is extraordinarily interesting. Looking at a skeleton you have to realize it has been inside a human being. But this human skeleton is completely enclosed in a membrane. If I wanted to draw this membrane I'd have to draw it like this. When the human being is alive, the whole of his skeletal system is as though in a sack, inside a membrane called the periosteum, which fits it very closely. Imagine a joint (Fig. 4). Here one bone has a head and that fits into a cup, as it were. With the periosteum it is like this. There you have the membrane, with the whole bone enclosed in it, and the membrane continues like this, arriving there and covering the skeleton. So if you just think of the skeleton inside the human being, it is entirely separate in the human being. Between all other parts of the human being and the skeleton lies a sack-like skin. It is really as if you were to take the skeleton of a living human being and imagine you spread a sack over the whole skeleton, covering it closely everywhere, so that the sack would cover the outside of the whole skeleton. But you don't need to do this, for nature has already done it. The whole is in a sack, the periosteum. And the interesting thing is that the blood vessels only go as far as the periosteum — they are present in the whole of this membrane. This blood nourishes the bone in so far as nourishment is intended, but inside the sack the bone is all earth: calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, ash, salts, and so on. So you have the strange situation that you are muscle, liver, and so on, and have your blood vessels inside you, and the blood initially creates a sack. This sack closes you off from the inside. Inside the sack is a hollow space, and the bony skeleton is inside this hollow space. So it really is as if your bones were inside you, and you had separated them off, using a sack, the periosteum. And those bones are entirely earthy, they are earth inside you. You cannot feel them inside you as something that is you. You are as little able to feel your bones, seeing what they are, to be part of you as you would feel a piece of chalk you pick up to be part of you. The chalk is outside yourself, and in the same way your bone is outside yourself, and you are separated from it by a sack. You all have something inside you, in your skeleton, that is not you. It is earth made in the shape of bones, calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate. You have this inside you, but it is enclosed in a sack, in the periosteum. Figure 4 You see, gentlemen, that is not a place for something that is not of the spirit. For if you get some splinter of earth matter inside you, it must fester until it comes out. Your bone does not fester until it comes out. Why? Because there where you are dead inside yourself, where the bone appears dead inside its periosteum, spirit is present everywhere. You see, that was the wonderful instinct that made ordinary people, who often knew more than the academics, to see death as a skeleton. For they knew that the spirit was present in the skeleton. And if they thought of a spirit walking about, then it, too, had to be a skeleton. That was exactly the right image. For as long as a human being lives, he makes room in himself for the spirit through his bones. This is something we'll discuss further in the very near future. But you also see from this that man does a great deal to bring the spirit into his bones. The elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin. And because the elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin, the spirit, which the elephant is then able to sense, is able to perceive when the outside world destroys it. Man does not know of his death because his skin is too thin. If he were thick-skinned also in physical terms, he, too, would withdraw into a cave and die in a cave. And then we would also say: 'Where do human beings get to? They go to heaven when they die!' Yes, gentlemen, the same thing which has been said about animals has also been said about individuals who were greatly venerated by many people. Moses is an example. It was said that his dead body was never found. He vanished, and people thought this really happened in his case. He had grown as wise, people thought, as I have been saying. If human beings were thick-skinned physically and had their brains, they would be so clever that words cannot tell how clever they would be. And people knew of such things. You see, it is amazing what people did know. They said of Moses that he was as clever as he would have been if he had had a thick skin. And because of this he withdrew, and his dead body was never found. This is a very interesting connection. Don't you think so? Ancient legends often have to do with a pure, most beautiful animal veneration. Well, we'll talk about this next time, if the discussion that has been imposed on us today leaves time for it. Until next Wednesday, then, gentlemen. 1 Incidents that had aroused ill feeling were discussed with the builders on 9 January, with further discussions following on 12 and 16 January. Table of Contents Next ˃˃ he structure that develops here inside is the beginning of a nerve mass; the structure that develops out there is the beginning of a bone mass. We thus see, looking at these lower animals, that nerves develop under the influence of the outer world circumference, which is beyond the earth. Everything that is bony or shell-like by nature —the lower animals only have bone on the outside — develops under the influence of the earth. As we go on to consider more highly developed animals, we see shell development come to an end and skeletal development evolving, reaching its most perfect form in man. But take a look at the human skeleton. Looking at it you realize that the head can be compared to a lower animal, for it has a kind of shell. It is soft inside. That is a big difference from the rest of the human skeleton. Your leg and thigh bones are inside, and the flesh covers them. There the human being has taken the bony skeleton inside. In the rest of the human being the external skeleton is not as it is around the head but is taken inside. This is connected with the fact that the blood develops in a particular way in these higher animals and also in human beings. When you look at those lower animals, everything is a white mass. Even the substance that flows in them as blood is white. These lower animals thus really have white blood that is not at all warm. The higher the animals, and the closer we come to the human being, moving up the scale of animal organization, the more the human being, who remains light-coloured, has blood mass present in him. And the more the nerve is penetrated by blood mass, the more does the skeleton, initially an outer shell, withdraw into the inner organism. We are thus able to put it like this. Why does the human being have bones developed as internal structures, the way they are in his arms and legs? Because he has blood mass entering into his nerve mass. We are therefore able to say that higher animals and man inwardly need the blood inside them and therefore outwardly take the shell inside. Is this clear to you? We are then also able to say: such a lower animal knows nothing of itself; human beings, however, and the higher animals, know of themselves. How does one know of oneself? Because one has the skeleton inside oneself. It is because of this that one knows of oneself. So if we ask: 'Why does man have self-awareness, what makes him know of himself?' We should not point to the muscles, nor to the soft parts, but we must point exactly to the solid skeletal support. Man knows of himself because he has a solid skeletal support. And it is extraordinarily interesting to study the human skeleton. Figure 3 Let us assume this is the human being, and I roughly put in the skeletal system (Fig. 3). Now this is extraordinarily interesting. Looking at a skeleton you have to realize it has been inside a human being. But this human skeleton is completely enclosed in a membrane. If I wanted to draw this membrane I'd have to draw it like this. When the human being is alive, the whole of his skeletal system is as though in a sack, inside a membrane called the periosteum, which fits it very closely. Imagine a joint (Fig. 4). Here one bone has a head and that fits into a cup, as it were. With the periosteum it is like this. There you have the membrane, with the whole bone enclosed in it, and the membrane continues like this, arriving there and covering the skeleton. So if you just think of the skeleton inside the human being, it is entirely separate in the human being. Between all other parts of the human being and the skeleton lies a sack-like skin. It is really as if you were to take the skeleton of a living human being and imagine you spread a sack over the whole skeleton, covering it closely everywhere, so that the sack would cover the outside of the whole skeleton. But you don't need to do this, for nature has already done it. The whole is in a sack, the periosteum. And the interesting thing is that the blood vessels only go as far as the periosteum — they are present in the whole of this membrane. This blood nourishes the bone in so far as nourishment is intended, but inside the sack the bone is all earth: calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, ash, salts, and so on. So you have the strange situation that you are muscle, liver, and so on, and have your blood vessels inside you, and the blood initially creates a sack. This sack closes you off from the inside. Inside the sack is a hollow space, and the bony skeleton is inside this hollow space. So it really is as if your bones were inside you, and you had separated them off, using a sack, the periosteum. And those bones are entirely earthy, they are earth inside you. You cannot feel them inside you as something that is you. You are as little able to feel your bones, seeing what they are, to be part of you as you would feel a piece of chalk you pick up to be part of you. The chalk is outside yourself, and in the same way your bone is outside yourself, and you are separated from it by a sack. You all have something inside you, in your skeleton, that is not you. It is earth made in the shape of bones, calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate. You have this inside you, but it is enclosed in a sack, in the periosteum. Figure 4 You see, gentlemen, that is not a place for something that is not of the spirit. For if you get some splinter of earth matter inside you, it must fester until it comes out. Your bone does not fester until it comes out. Why? Because there where you are dead inside yourself, where the bone appears dead inside its periosteum, spirit is present everywhere. You see, that was the wonderful instinct that made ordinary people, who often knew more than the academics, to see death as a skeleton. For they knew that the spirit was present in the skeleton. And if they thought of a spirit walking about, then it, too, had to be a skeleton. That was exactly the right image. For as long as a human being lives, he makes room in himself for the spirit through his bones. This is something we'll discuss further in the very near future. But you also see from this that man does a great deal to bring the spirit into his bones. The elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin. And because the elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin, the spirit, which the elephant is then able to sense, is able to perceive when the outside world destroys it. Man does not know of his death because his skin is too thin. If he were thick-skinned also in physical terms, he, too, would withdraw into a cave and die in a cave. And then we would also say: 'Where do human beings get to? They go to heaven when they die!' Yes, gentlemen, the same thing which has been said about animals has also been said about individuals who were greatly venerated by many people. Moses is an example. It was said that his dead body was never found. He vanished, and people thought this really happened in his case. He had grown as wise, people thought, as I have been saying. If human beings were thick-skinned physically and had their brains, they would be so clever that words cannot tell how clever they would be. And people knew of such things. You see, it is amazing what people did know. They said of Moses that he was as clever as he would have been if he had had a thick skin. And because of this he withdrew, and his dead body was never found. This is a very interesting connection. Don't you think so? Ancient legends often have to do with a pure, most beautiful animal veneration. Well, we'll talk about this next time, if the discussion that has been imposed on us today leaves time for it. Until next Wednesday, then, gentlemen. 1 Incidents that had aroused ill feeling were discussed with the builders on 9 January, with further discussions following on 12 and 16 January. Table of Contents Next ˃˃ As we go on to consider more highly developed animals, we see shell development come to an end and skeletal development evolving, reaching its most perfect form in man. But take a look at the human skeleton. Looking at it you realize that the head can be compared to a lower animal, for it has a kind of shell. It is soft inside. That is a big difference from the rest of the human skeleton. Your leg and thigh bones are inside, and the flesh covers them. There the human being has taken the bony skeleton inside. In the rest of the human being the external skeleton is not as it is around the head but is taken inside. This is connected with the fact that the blood develops in a particular way in these higher animals and also in human beings. When you look at those lower animals, everything is a white mass. Even the substance that flows in them as blood is white. These lower animals thus really have white blood that is not at all warm. The higher the animals, and the closer we come to the human being, moving up the scale of animal organization, the more the human being, who remains light-coloured, has blood mass present in him. And the more the nerve is penetrated by blood mass, the more does the skeleton, initially an outer shell, withdraw into the inner organism. We are thus able to put it like this. Why does the human being have bones developed as internal structures, the way they are in his arms and legs? Because he has blood mass entering into his nerve mass. We are therefore able to say that higher animals and man inwardly need the blood inside them and therefore outwardly take the shell inside. Is this clear to you? We are then also able to say: such a lower animal knows nothing of itself; human beings, however, and the higher animals, know of themselves. How does one know of oneself? Because one has the skeleton inside oneself. It is because of this that one knows of oneself. So if we ask: 'Why does man have self-awareness, what makes him know of himself?' We should not point to the muscles, nor to the soft parts, but we must point exactly to the solid skeletal support. Man knows of himself because he has a solid skeletal support. And it is extraordinarily interesting to study the human skeleton. Figure 3 Let us assume this is the human being, and I roughly put in the skeletal system (Fig. 3). Now this is extraordinarily interesting. Looking at a skeleton you have to realize it has been inside a human being. But this human skeleton is completely enclosed in a membrane. If I wanted to draw this membrane I'd have to draw it like this. When the human being is alive, the whole of his skeletal system is as though in a sack, inside a membrane called the periosteum, which fits it very closely. Imagine a joint (Fig. 4). Here one bone has a head and that fits into a cup, as it were. With the periosteum it is like this. There you have the membrane, with the whole bone enclosed in it, and the membrane continues like this, arriving there and covering the skeleton. So if you just think of the skeleton inside the human being, it is entirely separate in the human being. Between all other parts of the human being and the skeleton lies a sack-like skin. It is really as if you were to take the skeleton of a living human being and imagine you spread a sack over the whole skeleton, covering it closely everywhere, so that the sack would cover the outside of the whole skeleton. But you don't need to do this, for nature has already done it. The whole is in a sack, the periosteum. And the interesting thing is that the blood vessels only go as far as the periosteum — they are present in the whole of this membrane. This blood nourishes the bone in so far as nourishment is intended, but inside the sack the bone is all earth: calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, ash, salts, and so on. So you have the strange situation that you are muscle, liver, and so on, and have your blood vessels inside you, and the blood initially creates a sack. This sack closes you off from the inside. Inside the sack is a hollow space, and the bony skeleton is inside this hollow space. So it really is as if your bones were inside you, and you had separated them off, using a sack, the periosteum. And those bones are entirely earthy, they are earth inside you. You cannot feel them inside you as something that is you. You are as little able to feel your bones, seeing what they are, to be part of you as you would feel a piece of chalk you pick up to be part of you. The chalk is outside yourself, and in the same way your bone is outside yourself, and you are separated from it by a sack. You all have something inside you, in your skeleton, that is not you. It is earth made in the shape of bones, calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate. You have this inside you, but it is enclosed in a sack, in the periosteum. Figure 4 You see, gentlemen, that is not a place for something that is not of the spirit. For if you get some splinter of earth matter inside you, it must fester until it comes out. Your bone does not fester until it comes out. Why? Because there where you are dead inside yourself, where the bone appears dead inside its periosteum, spirit is present everywhere. You see, that was the wonderful instinct that made ordinary people, who often knew more than the academics, to see death as a skeleton. For they knew that the spirit was present in the skeleton. And if they thought of a spirit walking about, then it, too, had to be a skeleton. That was exactly the right image. For as long as a human being lives, he makes room in himself for the spirit through his bones. This is something we'll discuss further in the very near future. But you also see from this that man does a great deal to bring the spirit into his bones. The elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin. And because the elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin, the spirit, which the elephant is then able to sense, is able to perceive when the outside world destroys it. Man does not know of his death because his skin is too thin. If he were thick-skinned also in physical terms, he, too, would withdraw into a cave and die in a cave. And then we would also say: 'Where do human beings get to? They go to heaven when they die!' Yes, gentlemen, the same thing which has been said about animals has also been said about individuals who were greatly venerated by many people. Moses is an example. It was said that his dead body was never found. He vanished, and people thought this really happened in his case. He had grown as wise, people thought, as I have been saying. If human beings were thick-skinned physically and had their brains, they would be so clever that words cannot tell how clever they would be. And people knew of such things. You see, it is amazing what people did know. They said of Moses that he was as clever as he would have been if he had had a thick skin. And because of this he withdrew, and his dead body was never found. This is a very interesting connection. Don't you think so? Ancient legends often have to do with a pure, most beautiful animal veneration. Well, we'll talk about this next time, if the discussion that has been imposed on us today leaves time for it. Until next Wednesday, then, gentlemen. 1 Incidents that had aroused ill feeling were discussed with the builders on 9 January, with further discussions following on 12 and 16 January. Table of Contents Next ˃˃ As we go on to consider more highly developed animals, we see shell development come to an end and skeletal development evolving, reaching its most perfect form in man. But take a look at the human skeleton. Looking at it you realize that the head can be compared to a lower animal, for it has a kind of shell. It is soft inside. That is a big difference from the rest of the human skeleton. Your leg and thigh bones are inside, and the flesh covers them. There the human being has taken the bony skeleton inside. In the rest of the human being the external skeleton is not as it is around the head but is taken inside. This is connected with the fact that the blood develops in a particular way in these higher animals and also in human beings. When you look at those lower animals, everything is a white mass. Even the substance that flows in them as blood is white. These lower animals thus really have white blood that is not at all warm. The higher the animals, and the closer we come to the human being, moving up the scale of animal organization, the more the human being, who remains light-coloured, has blood mass present in him. And the more the nerve is penetrated by blood mass, the more does the skeleton, initially an outer shell, withdraw into the inner organism. We are thus able to put it like this. Why does the human being have bones developed as internal structures, the way they are in his arms and legs? Because he has blood mass entering into his nerve mass. We are therefore able to say that higher animals and man inwardly need the blood inside them and therefore outwardly take the shell inside. Is this clear to you? We are then also able to say: such a lower animal knows nothing of itself; human beings, however, and the higher animals, know of themselves. How does one know of oneself? Because one has the skeleton inside oneself. It is because of this that one knows of oneself. So if we ask: 'Why does man have self-awareness, what makes him know of himself?' We should not point to the muscles, nor to the soft parts, but we must point exactly to the solid skeletal support. Man knows of himself because he has a solid skeletal support. And it is extraordinarily interesting to study the human skeleton. Figure 3 Let us assume this is the human being, and I roughly put in the skeletal system (Fig. 3). Now this is extraordinarily interesting. Looking at a skeleton you have to realize it has been inside a human being. But this human skeleton is completely enclosed in a membrane. If I wanted to draw this membrane I'd have to draw it like this. When the human being is alive, the whole of his skeletal system is as though in a sack, inside a membrane called the periosteum, which fits it very closely. Imagine a joint (Fig. 4). Here one bone has a head and that fits into a cup, as it were. With the periosteum it is like this. There you have the membrane, with the whole bone enclosed in it, and the membrane continues like this, arriving there and covering the skeleton. So if you just think of the skeleton inside the human being, it is entirely separate in the human being. Between all other parts of the human being and the skeleton lies a sack-like skin. It is really as if you were to take the skeleton of a living human being and imagine you spread a sack over the whole skeleton, covering it closely everywhere, so that the sack would cover the outside of the whole skeleton. But you don't need to do this, for nature has already done it. The whole is in a sack, the periosteum. And the interesting thing is that the blood vessels only go as far as the periosteum — they are present in the whole of this membrane. This blood nourishes the bone in so far as nourishment is intended, but inside the sack the bone is all earth: calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, ash, salts, and so on. So you have the strange situation that you are muscle, liver, and so on, and have your blood vessels inside you, and the blood initially creates a sack. This sack closes you off from the inside. Inside the sack is a hollow space, and the bony skeleton is inside this hollow space. So it really is as if your bones were inside you, and you had separated them off, using a sack, the periosteum. And those bones are entirely earthy, they are earth inside you. You cannot feel them inside you as something that is you. You are as little able to feel your bones, seeing what they are, to be part of you as you would feel a piece of chalk you pick up to be part of you. The chalk is outside yourself, and in the same way your bone is outside yourself, and you are separated from it by a sack. You all have something inside you, in your skeleton, that is not you. It is earth made in the shape of bones, calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate. You have this inside you, but it is enclosed in a sack, in the periosteum. Figure 4 You see, gentlemen, that is not a place for something that is not of the spirit. For if you get some splinter of earth matter inside you, it must fester until it comes out. Your bone does not fester until it comes out. Why? Because there where you are dead inside yourself, where the bone appears dead inside its periosteum, spirit is present everywhere. You see, that was the wonderful instinct that made ordinary people, who often knew more than the academics, to see death as a skeleton. For they knew that the spirit was present in the skeleton. And if they thought of a spirit walking about, then it, too, had to be a skeleton. That was exactly the right image. For as long as a human being lives, he makes room in himself for the spirit through his bones. This is something we'll discuss further in the very near future. But you also see from this that man does a great deal to bring the spirit into his bones. The elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin. And because the elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin, the spirit, which the elephant is then able to sense, is able to perceive when the outside world destroys it. Man does not know of his death because his skin is too thin. If he were thick-skinned also in physical terms, he, too, would withdraw into a cave and die in a cave. And then we would also say: 'Where do human beings get to? They go to heaven when they die!' Yes, gentlemen, the same thing which has been said about animals has also been said about individuals who were greatly venerated by many people. Moses is an example. It was said that his dead body was never found. He vanished, and people thought this really happened in his case. He had grown as wise, people thought, as I have been saying. If human beings were thick-skinned physically and had their brains, they would be so clever that words cannot tell how clever they would be. And people knew of such things. You see, it is amazing what people did know. They said of Moses that he was as clever as he would have been if he had had a thick skin. And because of this he withdrew, and his dead body was never found. This is a very interesting connection. Don't you think so? Ancient legends often have to do with a pure, most beautiful animal veneration. Well, we'll talk about this next time, if the discussion that has been imposed on us today leaves time for it. Until next Wednesday, then, gentlemen. 1 Incidents that had aroused ill feeling were discussed with the builders on 9 January, with further discussions following on 12 and 16 January. Table of Contents Next ˃˃ We are then also able to say: such a lower animal knows nothing of itself; human beings, however, and the higher animals, know of themselves. How does one know of oneself? Because one has the skeleton inside oneself. It is because of this that one knows of oneself. So if we ask: 'Why does man have self-awareness, what makes him know of himself?' We should not point to the muscles, nor to the soft parts, but we must point exactly to the solid skeletal support. Man knows of himself because he has a solid skeletal support. And it is extraordinarily interesting to study the human skeleton. Figure 3 Let us assume this is the human being, and I roughly put in the skeletal system (Fig. 3). Now this is extraordinarily interesting. Looking at a skeleton you have to realize it has been inside a human being. But this human skeleton is completely enclosed in a membrane. If I wanted to draw this membrane I'd have to draw it like this. When the human being is alive, the whole of his skeletal system is as though in a sack, inside a membrane called the periosteum, which fits it very closely. Imagine a joint (Fig. 4). Here one bone has a head and that fits into a cup, as it were. With the periosteum it is like this. There you have the membrane, with the whole bone enclosed in it, and the membrane continues like this, arriving there and covering the skeleton. So if you just think of the skeleton inside the human being, it is entirely separate in the human being. Between all other parts of the human being and the skeleton lies a sack-like skin. It is really as if you were to take the skeleton of a living human being and imagine you spread a sack over the whole skeleton, covering it closely everywhere, so that the sack would cover the outside of the whole skeleton. But you don't need to do this, for nature has already done it. The whole is in a sack, the periosteum. And the interesting thing is that the blood vessels only go as far as the periosteum — they are present in the whole of this membrane. This blood nourishes the bone in so far as nourishment is intended, but inside the sack the bone is all earth: calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, ash, salts, and so on. So you have the strange situation that you are muscle, liver, and so on, and have your blood vessels inside you, and the blood initially creates a sack. This sack closes you off from the inside. Inside the sack is a hollow space, and the bony skeleton is inside this hollow space. So it really is as if your bones were inside you, and you had separated them off, using a sack, the periosteum. And those bones are entirely earthy, they are earth inside you. You cannot feel them inside you as something that is you. You are as little able to feel your bones, seeing what they are, to be part of you as you would feel a piece of chalk you pick up to be part of you. The chalk is outside yourself, and in the same way your bone is outside yourself, and you are separated from it by a sack. You all have something inside you, in your skeleton, that is not you. It is earth made in the shape of bones, calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate. You have this inside you, but it is enclosed in a sack, in the periosteum. Figure 4 You see, gentlemen, that is not a place for something that is not of the spirit. For if you get some splinter of earth matter inside you, it must fester until it comes out. Your bone does not fester until it comes out. Why? Because there where you are dead inside yourself, where the bone appears dead inside its periosteum, spirit is present everywhere. You see, that was the wonderful instinct that made ordinary people, who often knew more than the academics, to see death as a skeleton. For they knew that the spirit was present in the skeleton. And if they thought of a spirit walking about, then it, too, had to be a skeleton. That was exactly the right image. For as long as a human being lives, he makes room in himself for the spirit through his bones. This is something we'll discuss further in the very near future. But you also see from this that man does a great deal to bring the spirit into his bones. The elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin. And because the elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin, the spirit, which the elephant is then able to sense, is able to perceive when the outside world destroys it. Man does not know of his death because his skin is too thin. If he were thick-skinned also in physical terms, he, too, would withdraw into a cave and die in a cave. And then we would also say: 'Where do human beings get to? They go to heaven when they die!' Yes, gentlemen, the same thing which has been said about animals has also been said about individuals who were greatly venerated by many people. Moses is an example. It was said that his dead body was never found. He vanished, and people thought this really happened in his case. He had grown as wise, people thought, as I have been saying. If human beings were thick-skinned physically and had their brains, they would be so clever that words cannot tell how clever they would be. And people knew of such things. You see, it is amazing what people did know. They said of Moses that he was as clever as he would have been if he had had a thick skin. And because of this he withdrew, and his dead body was never found. This is a very interesting connection. Don't you think so? Ancient legends often have to do with a pure, most beautiful animal veneration. Well, we'll talk about this next time, if the discussion that has been imposed on us today leaves time for it. Until next Wednesday, then, gentlemen. 1 Incidents that had aroused ill feeling were discussed with the builders on 9 January, with further discussions following on 12 and 16 January. Table of Contents Next ˃˃ We are then also able to say: such a lower animal knows nothing of itself; human beings, however, and the higher animals, know of themselves. How does one know of oneself? Because one has the skeleton inside oneself. It is because of this that one knows of oneself. So if we ask: 'Why does man have self-awareness, what makes him know of himself?' We should not point to the muscles, nor to the soft parts, but we must point exactly to the solid skeletal support. Man knows of himself because he has a solid skeletal support. And it is extraordinarily interesting to study the human skeleton. Figure 3 Let us assume this is the human being, and I roughly put in the skeletal system (Fig. 3). Now this is extraordinarily interesting. Looking at a skeleton you have to realize it has been inside a human being. But this human skeleton is completely enclosed in a membrane. If I wanted to draw this membrane I'd have to draw it like this. When the human being is alive, the whole of his skeletal system is as though in a sack, inside a membrane called the periosteum, which fits it very closely. Imagine a joint (Fig. 4). Here one bone has a head and that fits into a cup, as it were. With the periosteum it is like this. There you have the membrane, with the whole bone enclosed in it, and the membrane continues like this, arriving there and covering the skeleton. So if you just think of the skeleton inside the human being, it is entirely separate in the human being. Between all other parts of the human being and the skeleton lies a sack-like skin. It is really as if you were to take the skeleton of a living human being and imagine you spread a sack over the whole skeleton, covering it closely everywhere, so that the sack would cover the outside of the whole skeleton. But you don't need to do this, for nature has already done it. The whole is in a sack, the periosteum. And the interesting thing is that the blood vessels only go as far as the periosteum — they are present in the whole of this membrane. This blood nourishes the bone in so far as nourishment is intended, but inside the sack the bone is all earth: calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, ash, salts, and so on. So you have the strange situation that you are muscle, liver, and so on, and have your blood vessels inside you, and the blood initially creates a sack. This sack closes you off from the inside. Inside the sack is a hollow space, and the bony skeleton is inside this hollow space. So it really is as if your bones were inside you, and you had separated them off, using a sack, the periosteum. And those bones are entirely earthy, they are earth inside you. You cannot feel them inside you as something that is you. You are as little able to feel your bones, seeing what they are, to be part of you as you would feel a piece of chalk you pick up to be part of you. The chalk is outside yourself, and in the same way your bone is outside yourself, and you are separated from it by a sack. You all have something inside you, in your skeleton, that is not you. It is earth made in the shape of bones, calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate. You have this inside you, but it is enclosed in a sack, in the periosteum. Figure 4 You see, gentlemen, that is not a place for something that is not of the spirit. For if you get some splinter of earth matter inside you, it must fester until it comes out. Your bone does not fester until it comes out. Why? Because there where you are dead inside yourself, where the bone appears dead inside its periosteum, spirit is present everywhere. You see, that was the wonderful instinct that made ordinary people, who often knew more than the academics, to see death as a skeleton. For they knew that the spirit was present in the skeleton. And if they thought of a spirit walking about, then it, too, had to be a skeleton. That was exactly the right image. For as long as a human being lives, he makes room in himself for the spirit through his bones. This is something we'll discuss further in the very near future. But you also see from this that man does a great deal to bring the spirit into his bones. The elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin. And because the elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin, the spirit, which the elephant is then able to sense, is able to perceive when the outside world destroys it. Man does not know of his death because his skin is too thin. If he were thick-skinned also in physical terms, he, too, would withdraw into a cave and die in a cave. And then we would also say: 'Where do human beings get to? They go to heaven when they die!' Yes, gentlemen, the same thing which has been said about animals has also been said about individuals who were greatly venerated by many people. Moses is an example. It was said that his dead body was never found. He vanished, and people thought this really happened in his case. He had grown as wise, people thought, as I have been saying. If human beings were thick-skinned physically and had their brains, they would be so clever that words cannot tell how clever they would be. And people knew of such things. You see, it is amazing what people did know. They said of Moses that he was as clever as he would have been if he had had a thick skin. And because of this he withdrew, and his dead body was never found. This is a very interesting connection. Don't you think so? Ancient legends often have to do with a pure, most beautiful animal veneration. Well, we'll talk about this next time, if the discussion that has been imposed on us today leaves time for it. Until next Wednesday, then, gentlemen. 1 Incidents that had aroused ill feeling were discussed with the builders on 9 January, with further discussions following on 12 and 16 January. Table of Contents Next ˃˃ Figure 3 Let us assume this is the human being, and I roughly put in the skeletal system (Fig. 3). Now this is extraordinarily interesting. Looking at a skeleton you have to realize it has been inside a human being. But this human skeleton is completely enclosed in a membrane. If I wanted to draw this membrane I'd have to draw it like this. When the human being is alive, the whole of his skeletal system is as though in a sack, inside a membrane called the periosteum, which fits it very closely. Imagine a joint (Fig. 4). Here one bone has a head and that fits into a cup, as it were. With the periosteum it is like this. There you have the membrane, with the whole bone enclosed in it, and the membrane continues like this, arriving there and covering the skeleton. So if you just think of the skeleton inside the human being, it is entirely separate in the human being. Between all other parts of the human being and the skeleton lies a sack-like skin. It is really as if you were to take the skeleton of a living human being and imagine you spread a sack over the whole skeleton, covering it closely everywhere, so that the sack would cover the outside of the whole skeleton. But you don't need to do this, for nature has already done it. The whole is in a sack, the periosteum. And the interesting thing is that the blood vessels only go as far as the periosteum — they are present in the whole of this membrane. This blood nourishes the bone in so far as nourishment is intended, but inside the sack the bone is all earth: calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, ash, salts, and so on. So you have the strange situation that you are muscle, liver, and so on, and have your blood vessels inside you, and the blood initially creates a sack. This sack closes you off from the inside. Inside the sack is a hollow space, and the bony skeleton is inside this hollow space. So it really is as if your bones were inside you, and you had separated them off, using a sack, the periosteum. And those bones are entirely earthy, they are earth inside you. You cannot feel them inside you as something that is you. You are as little able to feel your bones, seeing what they are, to be part of you as you would feel a piece of chalk you pick up to be part of you. The chalk is outside yourself, and in the same way your bone is outside yourself, and you are separated from it by a sack. You all have something inside you, in your skeleton, that is not you. It is earth made in the shape of bones, calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate. You have this inside you, but it is enclosed in a sack, in the periosteum. Figure 4 You see, gentlemen, that is not a place for something that is not of the spirit. For if you get some splinter of earth matter inside you, it must fester until it comes out. Your bone does not fester until it comes out. Why? Because there where you are dead inside yourself, where the bone appears dead inside its periosteum, spirit is present everywhere. You see, that was the wonderful instinct that made ordinary people, who often knew more than the academics, to see death as a skeleton. For they knew that the spirit was present in the skeleton. And if they thought of a spirit walking about, then it, too, had to be a skeleton. That was exactly the right image. For as long as a human being lives, he makes room in himself for the spirit through his bones. This is something we'll discuss further in the very near future. But you also see from this that man does a great deal to bring the spirit into his bones. The elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin. And because the elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin, the spirit, which the elephant is then able to sense, is able to perceive when the outside world destroys it. Man does not know of his death because his skin is too thin. If he were thick-skinned also in physical terms, he, too, would withdraw into a cave and die in a cave. And then we would also say: 'Where do human beings get to? They go to heaven when they die!' Yes, gentlemen, the same thing which has been said about animals has also been said about individuals who were greatly venerated by many people. Moses is an example. It was said that his dead body was never found. He vanished, and people thought this really happened in his case. He had grown as wise, people thought, as I have been saying. If human beings were thick-skinned physically and had their brains, they would be so clever that words cannot tell how clever they would be. And people knew of such things. You see, it is amazing what people did know. They said of Moses that he was as clever as he would have been if he had had a thick skin. And because of this he withdrew, and his dead body was never found. This is a very interesting connection. Don't you think so? Ancient legends often have to do with a pure, most beautiful animal veneration. Well, we'll talk about this next time, if the discussion that has been imposed on us today leaves time for it. Until next Wednesday, then, gentlemen. 1 Incidents that had aroused ill feeling were discussed with the builders on 9 January, with further discussions following on 12 and 16 January. Table of Contents Next ˃˃ Let us assume this is the human being, and I roughly put in the skeletal system (Fig. 3). Now this is extraordinarily interesting. Looking at a skeleton you have to realize it has been inside a human being. But this human skeleton is completely enclosed in a membrane. If I wanted to draw this membrane I'd have to draw it like this. When the human being is alive, the whole of his skeletal system is as though in a sack, inside a membrane called the periosteum, which fits it very closely. Imagine a joint (Fig. 4). Here one bone has a head and that fits into a cup, as it were. With the periosteum it is like this. There you have the membrane, with the whole bone enclosed in it, and the membrane continues like this, arriving there and covering the skeleton. So if you just think of the skeleton inside the human being, it is entirely separate in the human being. Between all other parts of the human being and the skeleton lies a sack-like skin. It is really as if you were to take the skeleton of a living human being and imagine you spread a sack over the whole skeleton, covering it closely everywhere, so that the sack would cover the outside of the whole skeleton. But you don't need to do this, for nature has already done it. The whole is in a sack, the periosteum. And the interesting thing is that the blood vessels only go as far as the periosteum — they are present in the whole of this membrane. This blood nourishes the bone in so far as nourishment is intended, but inside the sack the bone is all earth: calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, ash, salts, and so on. So you have the strange situation that you are muscle, liver, and so on, and have your blood vessels inside you, and the blood initially creates a sack. This sack closes you off from the inside. Inside the sack is a hollow space, and the bony skeleton is inside this hollow space. So it really is as if your bones were inside you, and you had separated them off, using a sack, the periosteum. And those bones are entirely earthy, they are earth inside you. You cannot feel them inside you as something that is you. You are as little able to feel your bones, seeing what they are, to be part of you as you would feel a piece of chalk you pick up to be part of you. The chalk is outside yourself, and in the same way your bone is outside yourself, and you are separated from it by a sack. You all have something inside you, in your skeleton, that is not you. It is earth made in the shape of bones, calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate. You have this inside you, but it is enclosed in a sack, in the periosteum. Figure 4 You see, gentlemen, that is not a place for something that is not of the spirit. For if you get some splinter of earth matter inside you, it must fester until it comes out. Your bone does not fester until it comes out. Why? Because there where you are dead inside yourself, where the bone appears dead inside its periosteum, spirit is present everywhere. You see, that was the wonderful instinct that made ordinary people, who often knew more than the academics, to see death as a skeleton. For they knew that the spirit was present in the skeleton. And if they thought of a spirit walking about, then it, too, had to be a skeleton. That was exactly the right image. For as long as a human being lives, he makes room in himself for the spirit through his bones. This is something we'll discuss further in the very near future. But you also see from this that man does a great deal to bring the spirit into his bones. The elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin. And because the elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin, the spirit, which the elephant is then able to sense, is able to perceive when the outside world destroys it. Man does not know of his death because his skin is too thin. If he were thick-skinned also in physical terms, he, too, would withdraw into a cave and die in a cave. And then we would also say: 'Where do human beings get to? They go to heaven when they die!' Yes, gentlemen, the same thing which has been said about animals has also been said about individuals who were greatly venerated by many people. Moses is an example. It was said that his dead body was never found. He vanished, and people thought this really happened in his case. He had grown as wise, people thought, as I have been saying. If human beings were thick-skinned physically and had their brains, they would be so clever that words cannot tell how clever they would be. And people knew of such things. You see, it is amazing what people did know. They said of Moses that he was as clever as he would have been if he had had a thick skin. And because of this he withdrew, and his dead body was never found. This is a very interesting connection. Don't you think so? Ancient legends often have to do with a pure, most beautiful animal veneration. Well, we'll talk about this next time, if the discussion that has been imposed on us today leaves time for it. Until next Wednesday, then, gentlemen. 1 Incidents that had aroused ill feeling were discussed with the builders on 9 January, with further discussions following on 12 and 16 January. Table of Contents Next ˃˃ Figure 4 You see, gentlemen, that is not a place for something that is not of the spirit. For if you get some splinter of earth matter inside you, it must fester until it comes out. Your bone does not fester until it comes out. Why? Because there where you are dead inside yourself, where the bone appears dead inside its periosteum, spirit is present everywhere. You see, that was the wonderful instinct that made ordinary people, who often knew more than the academics, to see death as a skeleton. For they knew that the spirit was present in the skeleton. And if they thought of a spirit walking about, then it, too, had to be a skeleton. That was exactly the right image. For as long as a human being lives, he makes room in himself for the spirit through his bones. This is something we'll discuss further in the very near future. But you also see from this that man does a great deal to bring the spirit into his bones. The elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin. And because the elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin, the spirit, which the elephant is then able to sense, is able to perceive when the outside world destroys it. Man does not know of his death because his skin is too thin. If he were thick-skinned also in physical terms, he, too, would withdraw into a cave and die in a cave. And then we would also say: 'Where do human beings get to? They go to heaven when they die!' Yes, gentlemen, the same thing which has been said about animals has also been said about individuals who were greatly venerated by many people. Moses is an example. It was said that his dead body was never found. He vanished, and people thought this really happened in his case. He had grown as wise, people thought, as I have been saying. If human beings were thick-skinned physically and had their brains, they would be so clever that words cannot tell how clever they would be. And people knew of such things. You see, it is amazing what people did know. They said of Moses that he was as clever as he would have been if he had had a thick skin. And because of this he withdrew, and his dead body was never found. This is a very interesting connection. Don't you think so? Ancient legends often have to do with a pure, most beautiful animal veneration. Well, we'll talk about this next time, if the discussion that has been imposed on us today leaves time for it. Until next Wednesday, then, gentlemen. 1 Incidents that had aroused ill feeling were discussed with the builders on 9 January, with further discussions following on 12 and 16 January. Table of Contents Next ˃˃ You see, gentlemen, that is not a place for something that is not of the spirit. For if you get some splinter of earth matter inside you, it must fester until it comes out. Your bone does not fester until it comes out. Why? Because there where you are dead inside yourself, where the bone appears dead inside its periosteum, spirit is present everywhere. You see, that was the wonderful instinct that made ordinary people, who often knew more than the academics, to see death as a skeleton. For they knew that the spirit was present in the skeleton. And if they thought of a spirit walking about, then it, too, had to be a skeleton. That was exactly the right image. For as long as a human being lives, he makes room in himself for the spirit through his bones. This is something we'll discuss further in the very near future. But you also see from this that man does a great deal to bring the spirit into his bones. The elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin. And because the elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin, the spirit, which the elephant is then able to sense, is able to perceive when the outside world destroys it. Man does not know of his death because his skin is too thin. If he were thick-skinned also in physical terms, he, too, would withdraw into a cave and die in a cave. And then we would also say: 'Where do human beings get to? They go to heaven when they die!' Yes, gentlemen, the same thing which has been said about animals has also been said about individuals who were greatly venerated by many people. Moses is an example. It was said that his dead body was never found. He vanished, and people thought this really happened in his case. He had grown as wise, people thought, as I have been saying. If human beings were thick-skinned physically and had their brains, they would be so clever that words cannot tell how clever they would be. And people knew of such things. You see, it is amazing what people did know. They said of Moses that he was as clever as he would have been if he had had a thick skin. And because of this he withdrew, and his dead body was never found. This is a very interesting connection. Don't you think so? Ancient legends often have to do with a pure, most beautiful animal veneration. Well, we'll talk about this next time, if the discussion that has been imposed on us today leaves time for it. Until next Wednesday, then, gentlemen. 1 Incidents that had aroused ill feeling were discussed with the builders on 9 January, with further discussions following on 12 and 16 January. Table of Contents Next ˃˃ This is something we'll discuss further in the very near future. But you also see from this that man does a great deal to bring the spirit into his bones. The elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin. And because the elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin, the spirit, which the elephant is then able to sense, is able to perceive when the outside world destroys it. Man does not know of his death because his skin is too thin. If he were thick-skinned also in physical terms, he, too, would withdraw into a cave and die in a cave. And then we would also say: 'Where do human beings get to? They go to heaven when they die!' Yes, gentlemen, the same thing which has been said about animals has also been said about individuals who were greatly venerated by many people. Moses is an example. It was said that his dead body was never found. He vanished, and people thought this really happened in his case. He had grown as wise, people thought, as I have been saying. If human beings were thick-skinned physically and had their brains, they would be so clever that words cannot tell how clever they would be. And people knew of such things. You see, it is amazing what people did know. They said of Moses that he was as clever as he would have been if he had had a thick skin. And because of this he withdrew, and his dead body was never found. This is a very interesting connection. Don't you think so? Ancient legends often have to do with a pure, most beautiful animal veneration. Well, we'll talk about this next time, if the discussion that has been imposed on us today leaves time for it. Until next Wednesday, then, gentlemen. 1 Incidents that had aroused ill feeling were discussed with the builders on 9 January, with further discussions following on 12 and 16 January. Table of Contents Next ˃˃ This is something we'll discuss further in the very near future. But you also see from this that man does a great deal to bring the spirit into his bones. The elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin. And because the elephant still leaves room for the spirit inside his thick skin, the spirit, which the elephant is then able to sense, is able to perceive when the outside world destroys it. Man does not know of his death because his skin is too thin. If he were thick-skinned also in physical terms, he, too, would withdraw into a cave and die in a cave. And then we would also say: 'Where do human beings get to? They go to heaven when they die!' Yes, gentlemen, the same thing which has been said about animals has also been said about individuals who were greatly venerated by many people. Moses is an example. It was said that his dead body was never found. He vanished, and people thought this really happened in his case. He had grown as wise, people thought, as I have been saying. If human beings were thick-skinned physically and had their brains, they would be so clever that words cannot tell how clever they would be. And people knew of such things. You see, it is amazing what people did know. They said of Moses that he was as clever as he would have been if he had had a thick skin. And because of this he withdrew, and his dead body was never found. This is a very interesting connection. Don't you think so? Ancient legends often have to do with a pure, most beautiful animal veneration. Well, we'll talk about this next time, if the discussion that has been imposed on us today leaves time for it. Until next Wednesday, then, gentlemen. 1 Incidents that had aroused ill feeling were discussed with the builders on 9 January, with further discussions following on 12 and 16 January. Table of Contents Next ˃˃ Well, we'll talk about this next time, if the discussion that has been imposed on us today leaves time for it. Until next Wednesday, then, gentlemen. 1 Incidents that had aroused ill feeling were discussed with the builders on 9 January, with further discussions following on 12 and 16 January. Table of Contents Next ˃˃ Well, we'll talk about this next time, if the discussion that has been imposed on us today leaves time for it. Until next Wednesday, then, gentlemen. 1 Incidents that had aroused ill feeling were discussed with the builders on 9 January, with further discussions following on 12 and 16 January. Table of Contents Next ˃˃ Table of Contents Next ˃˃

From Elephants to Einstein

Pachyderms. Nature of shell (carapace) and skeletal development

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA352/English/RSP1998/19240107p02.html

Dornach

7 Jan 1924

GA352-1

I have told you that man must be regarded as a being who consists not only of the physical body that is visible to the eye, but also of higher members — invisible bodies. The first invisible member, the ether body, is a much finer, more delicate body and cannot be perceived by the ordinary senses. It is the source of life not only in man, but also in the plants and animals. Another higher member is the astral body which enables man to have feelings and perceptions. He has this body in common with the animals, for they too have an astral body. But man has something which the animal has not, namely, self-consciousness, “I” consciousness. Man, then, consists of the visible physical body and of three higher members: ether body, astral body and the “I.” When it is said, as the result of super-sensible perception, that these higher members are a reality in man, a good way of convincing oneself that such a statement is well-founded — there are other ways too, of course — is to study the effects of poisonous substances upon the human organism. In speaking about the insects recently, we heard that in certain circumstances insect poison can have an extremely beneficial effect, that it actually counteracts certain illnesses. Most medicaments, indeed, are prepared from substances which, in the ordinary way, are poisons. They must, of course, be taken in the proper dosage, that is to say, they must be prepared as medicaments in such a way that they have the right effect upon the human organism. Every poison has its own specific way of working. Arsenic is sometimes used to destroy rats and is a very strong poison. When a human being takes arsenic, or when arsenic is given to an animal, death either occurs immediately or if, by administering the appropriate antidote one succeeds in warding off death by expelling the arsenic, a kind of slow arsenical illness may set in and become gradually worse. If in his occupation a man is handling something of which arsenic is an ingredient, these tiny quantities of arsenic may give rise to arsenical poisoning as an occupational disease. When a man takes arsenic in a quantity insufficient to cause death, when he takes only a little but nevertheless enough to be injurious, then he gets pale and thin, has a chalky look about him and his body gradually deteriorates. He loses the natural freshness of his complexion and also the fatness that denotes a healthy state of the body. And so even if the effect of the arsenic is slow, the body gradually deteriorates. But there is another side to the matter. There are valleys in the Austrian Alps, for example, where the stones and rocks contain arsenic. The people living there begin by taking tiny quantities of arsenic without any ill effects at all. They begin with minute quantities and then increase them — with the strange result that after some time their bodies can stand a considerable amount. Why do they take the arsenic? In most cases it is for reasons of vanity! They have an idea that the arsenic will give the skin a good colour; if they were once skinny and emaciated they get plump. They take the arsenic for vanity's sake, their bodies get accustomed to it and their complexions improve. There you have a very striking contradiction! Such contradictions are to be found not only in human thinking — which as a rule is full of them — but in nature too. At one time the effect of the arsenic is that a man wastes away and his skin (not his hair) gets grey. Yet at another time arsenic is taken for the very purpose of improving the complexion! It is a complete contradiction. What is the explanation? When science speaks of matters like this, we are told: There is no explanation, it simply is so. And indeed it cannot be explained if nothing is known about the super-sensible bodies of man! As I have told you, it is necessary for the human being to have formic acid in him all the time — and the same applies to arsenic. Man actually produces it in his own organism. This may seem surprising, but as I said to you once, it is not correct to state that a man can live without alcohol. He can, of course, live without drinking alcohol ... but without alcohol he cannot live. For even if he drinks no alcohol, his own body produces inwardly the quantity that is necessary to keep him alive. He produces in himself all the substances that are essential to his life. What he takes or receives from outside is merely a support, a stimulus. In reality, man himself produces the substances he needs, drawing them from the Cosmos into his organism. All such substances are present in the Cosmos in a state of fine and very delicate distribution — iron, for example, Man does not only take in the iron with his breathing; it also makes its way into the body through the eyes and ears. The iron that a man actually consumes is merely a support, a supplement, and most of it is subsequently excreted. If as human beings we were not obliged to live on the earth between birth and death and to cope with earthly affairs, it would be unnecessary for us to eat at all, for we could draw our sustenance from the universe. But when we have manual work to do, when we have to move about, we need the support of this extra iron, for the body itself does not produce a sufficient quantity. Man produces arsenic in his organism all the time; so does the animal. The plant does not. And why? Because the plant has only an ether body and it is the astral body that produces arsenic. Man and animal, therefore, produce arsenic inwardly. Now what is the purpose of the arsenic? You see, if man were not able to produce arsenic in his organism, he would be incapable of feeling or perception; he would gradually lapse into a plant-like existence. He would begin, first of all, to be dreamy, and finally, he would go about in a state of utter drowsiness. The arsenic in his organism enables him to be wide-awake, to have feelings and perceptions. When I press my hand on something I not only squeeze the skin but I also feel something. And the reason why this feeling arises is that my astral body is producing arsenic all the time. A man who takes arsenic strengthens the activity of the astral body. The consequence is that the astral body asserts itself all over the organism; it becomes excessively strong, seizes hold of all the organs and rots them away. That is what happens in rapid arsenical poisoning. If anyone takes a great deal of arsenic all at once, the astral body begins to be powerful to an alarming degree; it surges and swirls and finally destroys the activity of the whole organism. It drives the life out of the organs, for within the human being a perpetual battle is and must be in process between the astral body and the ether body. The ether body gives life ; the astral body gives feeling , perception (awareness). But feeling and awareness cannot arise unless the life is suppressed. There is perpetual battle between the astral body and the ether body. If the ether body has the upper hand we become a little sleepy; if the astral body has the upper hand we become intensely wide-awake. Actually these conditions alternate in waking life, only the alternation is so rapid that it is not noticed and we think we are wide-awake all the time. In reality there is a constant swing: waking, sleeping; waking, sleeping. And what the astral body needs in order to be able to work down in the right way is provided by the amount of arsenic produced inwardly by the human being himself. If arsenic is introduced from outside in excessive quantity, the astral body becomes suddenly very strong — so strong that it destroys the life in the ether body. The man can no longer live; he dies. But if someone takes an amount of arsenic which makes the astral body only a little too strong, then the limbs and the inner organs gradually lose flesh and the man gets thin and has a greyish complexion, because the inner organs are not functioning in the right way. If he is given a very tiny quantity of arsenic, or if he is in the habit of taking such a quantity himself (in the latter case one will not give him any more because he is taking it already) then the astral body begins to be just a little lively; it stimulates the organs and the effect is just the reverse. If, from the beginning, too much arsenic has been given, the astral body destroys the organs; if only a little is given, the organs are stimulated just as they are stimulated by spice. If the dose is increased very gradually, the organs are able to stand it. The man begins to look healthier, to put on flesh, because his astral body is more active than it was before, when he was taking no arsenic. But now think of someone who was once in the habit of taking arsenic and then is obliged to stop. In such a case his astral body ceases to be active, because the stimulus given by the arsenic is missing. The result will be a rapid deterioration in his health. And so a person who begins to take arsenic and then increases the doses to a certain point, becomes dependent upon it and must continue to take it until his death. That is where the mischief lies: the arsenic cannot be dispensed with and such people are dependent upon it all their lives. The only other possible course — unfortunately it very seldom succeeds — would be to take less and less by gradual degrees. But what usually happens is the story all over again of the peasant who thought that by applying this theory he would get an ox out of the habit of eating. He gave the ox less and less fodder and although it became very thin, it went on living; finally he gave it a single stalk, and then it died. Nevertheless the peasant was still convinced that if the ox had been able to do without this last stalk, it would still be alive. It is just the same with people who are supposed to be getting rid of the habit of taking arsenic. They collapse before they reach the point of being able to do without the final quantity. Man's astral body needs arsenic and it is remarkable to see science groping its way about — for that is what is happening! We constantly hear, for example, that somewhere or other a remedy for syphilis has been discovered. You may have read in the newspapers a few days ago that a remedy for syphilis has been discovered in Paris. Now none of those who make these tentative experiments really know to what syphilis is due. Syphilis is due to the fact that the physical body has become excessively active and the astral body cannot take hold of it. But the scientists concerned do not know this and so they try things out experimentally Strangely enough, all these medicaments contain arsenic! If you go into the matter you will find that this is the case, although these things can only be explained by Spiritual Science. Arsenic is an ingredient of all these remedies, but the essentials are not known and people are groping in the dark. In many ways this is characteristic of modern science. It is realised, of course, that something happens in the human being when a medicament containing arsenic is administered; but what is not known is that the activity of the astral body is enhanced and that the excessive activity of the physical body is reduced by the administration of a solution of arsenic. Real insight into the nature of man — that is what a new science of medicine must help to promote; for then and only then will healing in the true sense of the word be possible. And now to return to the subject of poisonous substances in general. There are mineral poisons, one of which is arsenic; copper, lead, phosphorus, tartar emetic, certain pulverised stones — these are all mineral poisons. There are also plant poisons, for example, belladonna; also digitalis which comes from the red foxglove. Thirdly, there are animal poisons — insect poisons, snake poisons. These include the very terrible poison of rabies, coming from a mad dog. Distinction must therefore be made between mineral poisons, plant poisons and animal poisons. Each of them has a different effect. Take, for example, mineral substances like lead or copper — they all have poisonous effects; or sulphuric acid, nitric acid, phosphorus, etc. Such poisons can really only be studied when they have not been taken in quantities sufficient to cause immediate death. A strong dose of mineral poison kills the human being; weaker doses make him ill. And the most important thing of all is to be able accurately to observe how strong the effect of a poison must be to make a man ill. It is when the effects are only slight that we can best study how the poison works. And if illness is present, the right dose may succeed in restoring health. When a man has taken a mineral poison — let us say, arsenic, or copper, or lead — the symptoms are severe nausea, retching, vomiting, pain in the stomach, violent colic and pains in the intestines. The human body tries all the time only to take in substances that it can really absorb and digest. That is why there is retching and vomiting the moment a man has taken a mineral poison. This is the self-defence put up by the body, but in most cases it is inadequate and then antidotes must be administered; we must see to it that an antidote with which the poison unites is introduced into the stomach and the intestines. If the poison gets into the stomach and the intestines, it takes hold of the body. But if an antidote is administered, poison and antidote unite and then the poison does not take hold of the body because it has wedded itself, so to speak, with the antidote. And then a strong emetic or purgative must be given. What are the antidotes for slight mineral poisonings? Discussion of severe poisonings must, of course, be confined to medical circles. In cases of slight mineral poisoning a good antidote is immediately to swallow lukewarm water into which an egg has been beaten; in this way, fluid albumen reaches the stomach and the intestines. The poison unites with this fluid albumen and can be got rid of by vomiting or diarrhoea. When the poisoning is very slight, the same result can be achieved with tepid milk or also with certain oils extracted from plants. These are antidotes for mineral poisons — with the exception of phosphorus poisoning. If someone has been poisoned with phosphorus, plant-oils must not be given because they actually enhance the poisonous effect of the phosphorus. But all other mineral substances can be made to unite with oils, and then expelled. What actually happens when there is poison in the stomach? Think of what I have just said. An egg has been beaten into lukewarm water and this surrounds the poison in the stomach. All the poisons I have named are also produced by the human organism itself. The human organism produces in itself a little lead, copper, phosphorus. Man produces within his organism all kinds of substances, but these substances must be produced in exactly the quantity required by the body. If lead is introduced, the body then contains too much lead. So we must ask: What is the function of lead in the human organism? If the body produced no lead, we should all be going about with rickets! Our bones would be flabby and soft. A rachitic child is one whose organism produces too little lead. The human body must contain neither too much nor too little lead. As a general rule the constitution of man is such that he produces the substances he needs in sufficient quantities. If he does not produce them he gets ill. Very well, then, if lead is introduced into the organism, what happens? What happens to the lead that man produces inwardly all the time? Just think of it. Even in childhood you begin to produce lead in your bodies. But lead can really never be found in the body in any perceptible quantity because it is immediately sweated out. If it were not sweated out, you would, as quite young children, have within you so much lead that its presence could be demonstrated; and as grown-ups, far from having soft bones, you would be going about with bones so hard and brittle that if knocked at any point they would fall to pieces. And so this tiny quantity of lead which the human being has within him, is all the time being produced and then sweated out. But if an excessive quantity finds its way into the body, it cannot immediately be sweated out again and it becomes a destructive agent. Very well — now we give water containing albumen. This is a deterrent to the injurious effects of the lead. And why? The reason why I am unable to sweat out the lead I have myself produced is that I also have albumen in my body. And when a baby is drinking the lukewarm mother's milk, one of the effects of this milk is that the child gets accustomed to sweat out the lead. Therefore lukewarm milk can also be given in a case of slight lead poisoning, and then the lead is induced to leave the body, either through vomiting or through sweating. The very last vestiges must always be got rid of by sweating. So you see, man imitates what nature is doing all the time. The albumen that is always present in the human being dissolves the lead. If, therefore, I introduce too much lead into the stomach and then add albumen, I am really doing what the body is doing all the time. The effects of these mineral poisons must be nullified by something that contains life . It must always be something that has life, either albumen-water — the egg comes from the hen and has life — or lukewarm milk which has come from the cow and has life; or oils that come from the plants and have life. One must give something that contains life, something that still contains etheric life. And so, when there is mineral poisoning, the physical body is cured by means of the ether body . In cases of mineral poisoning the physical body is sending its forces with excessive strength into the ether body. Therefore we can say: mineral poisons cause the physical body to be active in the ether body, to make its way, somewhere in the organs, into the ether body. So you see, if I have too much lead in me and it is not got rid of by its antidote but passes over into the body, then immediately the whole physical body is driven into the ether body. The physical body is a dead body, the ether body is a body of life . But the ether body is killed by the physical body when the latter is driven into it with too much force. If I have copper poisoning and do not at once succeed in rendering it innocuous in the stomach by an antidote, it passes on into the abdomen where the physical body proceeds to make too much headway into the ether body. Again there are injurious effects. All mineral poisons cause the physical body to trespass into the ether body. If I now give the antidote, something that derives from the ether body — albumen water, lukewarm milk and the like — the physical body is driven out of the ether body. Here we can see with exactitude what kind of processes go on in the human body. And now what is there to say about plant poisons? When the poison is that of belladonna, or henbane, or digitalis, or thorn-apple, or some such plant, the following happens. Mineral poisons cause vomiting; the stomach and intestines are cast into tumult. But when plant poisons have been taken ... and taken in large quantities, alcohol and opium too work as plant poisons ... then things do not remain at the stage of nausea or vomiting, but the whole of the body is affected. With plant poisoning, hardly anything, to begin with, happens in the stomach, but lower down, in the intestines, diarrhoea sets in. Whereas mineral poisons give rise more to vomiting, plant poisons give rise more to diarrhoea, but there are further effects. The body swells up, becomes bluish, cramps and convulsions occur; the pupil of the eye expands, or it may also contract, as in opium poisoning, when it becomes tiny; in cases of other plant poisons the pupil is very much enlarged. These plant poisons take a deeper hold of the body. Mineral poisons only take hold of the physical body; plant poisons, because they derive from life , from ether substance, take hold of the ether body. And so we may say: plant poisons cause the ether body to trespass into the astral body. The process goes still more deeply into the body. Whereas mineral poisons drive the physical body at some point into the ether body, into the realm of life, plant poisons drive the life into the astral body — the realm of feeling, of perception. The consequence is that the person concerned is stupefied, feeling is dulled and deadened and the eyes, the very organs through which he is able to have fine and delicate perceptions, are attacked; the pupils enlarge or contract; the skin which is the organ of touch, is affected. Plant poisonings, you see, go more deeply into the body. And now, just as mineral poison is driven out of the ether body by something that derives from life , we must discover how the plant poison may be thrown out of the astral body. And there we must turn to plants in which the astral forces from the Cosmos , from the universe, have already taken hold. The ordinary plants grow in the spring, last through the summer, wither away in the autumn. But think of trees : they do not wither away but live for a long, long time. That is because the astral forces come to them from outside and take a hold. In certain trees, this process is particularly strong; such trees do not, of course, become animals, for the plant-nature always predominates; but the astral forces take a very strong hold, particularly in the bark . Trees surround themselves with bark and the bark of oaks and willows is the most potent because it is there that the astral forces have taken the strongest hold. But all trees containing tannic acid, as it is called, are trees in which the astral forces have taken a strong hold. Consequently the juice that can be squeezed or extracted by boiling from the bark of willows or oaks is a useful antidote because with it one can drive out of the astral body what has trespassed into it through the plant poison. To a certain extent, too, both coffee and tea contain an acid of the kind that will help to expel the injurious agent from the astral body. Strong coffee and really good tea also have a counteracting effect upon plant poisons. We can see now that to drink black coffee with our meals is by no means a bad thing to do. Plants always contain poison in tiny quantities and when we drink black coffee we drive out of the astral body the injurious effects caused by the encroachment of the ether body. And this drinking of black coffee really means that every time we have introduced into the body something that makes it a little unhealthy, we get rid of what was contained in the food and has made too much headway into the astral body. The right time to drink tea is during the taking of food because it actually works more strongly then and takes the astral body in hand. If tea is drunk during a meal it mingles with the digestive process and promotes digestion in that it frees the astral body which is occupied with the digestion. But if tea is drunk some time after a meal, it goes directly to the astral body and makes it too lively, too forceful. Humanity has had a certain very sound instinct. The habit of drinking coffee fulfils a useful purpose, for it helps the astral body to extricate itself from what may be an injurious element. The body always has a slight tendency to develop poisons and for that reason man needs the weak antidotes contained in coffee. You know, too, that there are people who try to give a fillip to their digestion not only with black coffee but by adding a little brandy to the coffee. In the brandy itself there is something that works as a plant poison and this makes the astral body inoperative. The ether body becomes particularly strong when a man drinks brandy or any spirit of that kind. He feels comfortable, because he lets consciousness slip away he vegetates. When he imbibes strong spirits he lets himself sink into a plant-like condition and he has the feeling of comfort and well-being that is usually associated with sleep. In sleep, however, he has no consciousness of this well-being. If anyone were actually to feel a sense of wellbeing during sleep it would be because he is aware of the activity of the flesh. But in the ordinary way, when people are asleep they are unconscious of comfort or well-being. When they drink brandy it is a different matter because although they are awake the lower part of the body is sleepy, and in this condition, while the head is awake, they feel extremely comfortable. And so the drinking of spirits promotes a sense of animal-plant-like well-being in man. Thirdly, there are the animal poisons: snake poison, different insect poisons, also poisons like that produced in a dog with rabies. Snake poisoning provides the best illustration here. If you are bitten by a snake, the poison goes into the blood where it does untold harm. But if you were to extract the poison from snakes and mix it with pepper or salt into food ... only that would be a senseless thing to do because snake poison has no taste ... I mean, if you were to do such a thing for amusement, your stomach would not be seriously affected! In the stomach it does not act as a poison. The same applies to other animal poisons, insect poisons, for example. But the poison of rabies gets into the saliva and from the saliva into the blood and therefore if it did get into the stomach it would have certain injurious effects, although nothing like as injurious as the poison from the bite of a mad dog. Rabies poison passes from the saliva into the blood. Speaking quite generally, therefore, it can be said that animal poisons work primarily in the blood, not in the digestive process. When digestion begins, the in-taken foodstuffs pass, first of all, into the stomach — they are still physical, just as they were in the world outside. Plant poisons derive from the ether body and therefore are not entirely physical; they go more deeply into the body. All foodstuffs eventually reach the blood. Snake poison can be digested and when it passes from the digestion into the blood there are no ill effects. Now when food is in the stomach, the physical body is at work. When the food has reached the intestines, from then until the point where it is to pass into the blood, the ether body is at work; and the actual transition into the blood is brought about by the astral body . But within the blood, the Ego, the “I” is working. If, therefore, snake poison enters the blood, this causes the astral body to trespass into the field of the “I.” The effect of mineral poisons is that the physical body trespasses into the ether body. Plant poisons cause the ether body to trespass into the astral body. Animal poisons cause the astral body to trespass into the field of the “I.” Therefore with an animal poison the only thing to do is to expel it from the blood itself; because the “I” is the highest principle. The poison can only be expelled by something that is actually in the blood. In a case of rabies poisoning, therefore, the only thing to do is to take an animal and inject the poison into its blood. If the animal dies ... well, the poison is the cause of death; but if it does not die, then its blood is strong enough to fight this poison. If the serum is then extracted and injected into a human being who has rabies, something that is capable of fighting the poison is added to his blood and in this way one may possibly succeed in curing him This poison can only be got rid of by the direct antidote, produced in the blood itself. This sheds light on animal poisons in general. The human being himself produces slight animal poisons all the time. The faculties possessed by animals are due to the fact that they produce these poisons in themselves; if they did not, they would have no intelligence at all. The human being produces poisons -very similar to the animal poisons, especially in organs situated near the head — but again in tiny quantities of which the body can make use. If the poisons are produced too vigorously there may, of course, be an excess of such animal poisons in the organism. This is what happens, for example, in diphtheria. Diphtheria is caused by animal poisons which have been produced by the human being himself. Therefore diphtheria can be cured in a similar way — by injecting the poison into an animal who can resist it and then injecting the serum again into the human being. He then has in his blood something that can fight the poison. This shows you that in nature there are not only useful but also injurious substances ... those that are injurious, however, also have their function. Mineral poisons are the same, essentially, as that with which, in a less potent form, man's ether body has to be dealing all the time. Plant poisons are the same as that with which the astral body has to be dealing all the time; and animal poisons are the same as that with which the “I” has to be dealing all the time. We can therefore say: Poisoning is going on in some degree all the time a man is awake — while he is asleep too — but this poisoning contains its own antidotes. The gist of the matter is that poisons and non-poisons alike must be present in nature in order that the whole economy of nature may go forward in the right way. Now you will realise why I said (in a previous lecture) that the presence of formic acid is indispensable. Formic acid is being sent out into nature all the time from the ant-hills. Formic acid is present everywhere. The human being produces his formic acid himself, but nature needs the ants who produce and send out the formic acid. And if this formic acid were not produced, our earth could never be revitalised — it would simply die away. In a human corpse there is a poison known as the virus of dead bodies. But in reality man has around him all the time a corpse that is producing poison. A corpse yields this particular virus and the physical body of a living man yields it too, but in the latter case the ether body, astral body and “I” are at work. These higher members are occupied all the time with this nascent poison; they absorb it as sustenance. If the corpse did not contain poison the living human being would not, in the real sense, be man . You will realise from this that when a man dies, something must have gone away from him, namely, the super-sensible members of his being. When the super-sensible members have departed, the poison is no longer destroyed; it remains. If, therefore, people were able to think correctly about why corpse-virus arises, they would say: the physical body has always produced this poison; there is no possible reason why it should not do so, for as physical body it is the same, no matter whether the man is dead or alive. But the super-sensible man who needs the poison for sustenance, has departed, and therefore the poison remains. This indicates how the super-sensible man is incorporated in the physical, in the material man. Modern science, however, for lack of proper thinking, cannot grasp it. That, then, is what observation of the way in which poisons work can teach us as a general principle. It also shows us that when we are looking for a medicament in a case of illness, we must ask ourselves: How, exactly, does it work? If we notice that the astral body cannot work as it ought, is not in proper control of the physical and etheric bodies, it is necessary, in certain circumstances, to give the person a very tiny quantity of arsenic because that strengthens the astral body. If the “I” is not working properly, gout or rheumatism appear, because the “I” is too weak to dissolve the foodstuffs and then they make their way into the blood as foreign bodies. If in a case of gout or rheumatism we discover that this is what is happening, we must proceed to strengthen the “I.” This can be done by administering the right dose of insect poison. If a man is stung by a bee the same thing is achieved in a natural way and he may be cured. In order to acquire a real knowledge of medicaments or remedies, we must ask: How does nature work upon the “I”? How does nature work upon the astral body? How does nature work upon the ether body? It is precisely by understanding super-sensible nature that we develop a knowledge of medicaments. So you see, science in any domain really depends upon recognition of the super-sensible being of man.

Cosmic Workings In Earth and Man

On Poisonous Substances and Their Effects

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/CosmicWorks/19240119v01.html

Dornach

19 Jan 1924

GA352-2

I'd like to add something to what I said last Saturday. I can answer the two questions I have been given for today the next time. We have been speaking of poisons and their actions on human beings, and have learned from those poisons that for genuine knowledge we must rise to the supersensible aspect, to the spiritual aspects of the human being. Today I'd like to complete the picture and add something to the discussion of elements that have such powerful poisonous effects. This concerns the work done by a more or less healthy body in nutrition. I have spoken on nutrition on a number of occasions, 6 For instance, Steiner, R., in Cosmic Workings in Earth and Man (in GA 350), lecture of 22 Sept 1923. Tr. V.E. Evans. London: Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co. 1952. but let us speak again of some aspects relating to nutrition, taking into account what was said the last time. To feed himself, man mainly takes in three or four kinds of foods. The first is protein, which you can get to know most easily by looking at a hen's egg. Protein is produced in plants as well as in animal and human bodies. Both human and animal bodies need not only the powers they have in them to produce protein, for every living body actually produces protein; they also need the protein which a plant produces quite independently. And the human body also takes in animal protein. Some scientists have suffered severe embarrassment very recently concerning this very protein. Twenty years ago it was still taught everywhere that people had to consume at least 120 grams of protein a day to stay healthy. The whole of nutrition was therefore geared to it that dishes were recommended which people should eat in order to have the right amount of protein; 120 grams were thought to be necessary. Today scientists have completely abandoned that idea. They know that people do not serve their health by eating so much protein but actually serve their ill-health, with the greater part of the protein going putrid in the human intestinal organism. Consuming 120 grams of protein a day, therefore, the human organism constantly has something like rotting eggs in its gut, that pollutes the intestinal contents most dreadfully, sweating out poisons which then enter into the organism, into the body. This not only produces something in the body that later on in life causes hardening of the arteries, as it is called — most of this comes from eating too much protein —but also making people highly susceptible to infection with all kinds of infectious diseases. People are less at risk of catching infectious diseases— they must, of course, have the necessary amount — the less excess protein they consume. Anyone taking at lot of protein will more easily catch infectious diseases — diphtheria, smallpox — than someone who does not take in so much protein. It is strange indeed that scientists are now saying people do not need 120 grams of protein but only 20 to 50 grams. This, they say, is the amount people really need every day. So quickly have scientists changed their views in two decades. So you see how much store you may set by anything said to have been scientifically established. For if it should happen that you need to find out about the subject and you take a 20-year-old encyclopaedia, you will read in the relevant chapter that you should have 120 grams of protein. If you consulted a later edition you would read: 20 to 50 grams, and that it will make you ill to take more. So you see how it is, basically, with scientific truths. You are informed what you should consider to be true or false, depending on the edition of the encyclopaedia you consult. All this shows that this simply is not the way to get a clear picture about things that involve the spiritual dimension. And it gives us reason, if we really think about it, to enter into the spiritual aspects if we want to understand what happens when people consume protein. But this is the food that absolutely must still be processed in the intestines, in the lower body, and the lower body itself must have the power to digest this protein. You know that protein, especially fresh egg white, is semi-fluid. All protein is semi-fluid. Anything semi-fluid is accessible to the human ether body. The human ether body cannot do anything with solid matter, only with fluid matter. Human beings must therefore take all the food they consume in fluid form. You will say that when people take salt, sugar, or the like, they are solid. Yes, but they are immediately dissolved. That is why we have saliva. The solid matter of which the actual physical body is made must never come into the human body from the outside world. From this you may learn: you have solid matter in you. You know that. Your bones are solid. But it is like this: the solid bones are created out of the fluid element in the human body; no solid from the outside world can ever enter into the human body. The human body must let all its solid parts arise out of the fluid sphere. You are thus able to say: we have solid matter in us and this is our physical body, but the physical body is wholly and entirely created out of the fluid sphere, and for the fluid sphere we have the ether body, a subtle body that cannot be seen but is present everywhere in the human being. Protein must also be completely converted by the ether body, and this happens in the lower body. The higher aspects of the human being are also active there, as I have told you, but the protein must be processed in the ether body. The fluid sphere thus exists for the human ether body. And by merely knowing that protein has to be converted in the lower human body, you are able to realize that protein cannot have the hardest task in the human being, for it does not have to act up into the chest, it does not have to work up into the human head. You can see from this that protein cannot be a food of prime importance. We may say that people cannot possibly eat too little protein, for it is processed immediately in the lower body; it does not have to do much work. Protein is processed in the lower body. Even if people have a diet that is very low in protein, all the protein is processed immediately. We can see, therefore, that human beings are perfectly able to manage with little protein. Scientists will now admit this, but years ago children in particular were fed excessive amounts of protein. And you know we see those children who in the 1870s and 1880s were given too much protein going about with hardening of the arteries, or they have already died of hardening of the arteries. The harmfulness of something does not show immediately, it only shows itself much later. The second kind of foods are the fats. The fats we eat will of course also reach the lower body. But fats pass through the intestines and act most strongly on the middle human body, on the chest. For the middle body, the chest region, for proper nutrition of the heart, chest, and so on, it is therefore absolutely necessary to take in fatty substances. We see from this that human beings above all need fatty substances in the chest region because that is the region where we breathe. What does this mean? It means that carbon, which we have in us, combines with oxygen. When carbon combines with oxygen we need to supply heat. What the fats do, when they themselves combine with oxygen, is to produce heat. Fats therefore contribute a great deal specifically to what is needed in the chest region. Now we may say that proteins have a tendency to putrefy if they are not processed in the body, in the lower body. To have proteins in us that cannot be properly digested actually means that we have something like rotten eggs in our gut. I think you know the stink of rotten eggs, gentlemen, and the situation is that when people take too much protein they sweat out this stink of rotten eggs into their internal organism. They fill themselves with this stink of rotten eggs. If you leave eggs for some time they become rotten eggs, and they stink like rotten eggs. And the part that has not been digested in the body will of course also produce a stink in the body; the other part, which is digested, will not produce a stink but enter cleanly into the body. And that is the work of the ether body. The ether body exists to overcome and remove the rotten stink that develops. The way it is in the human body is that the ether body fights and overcomes the rotting process. The rotting process is overcome by the ether body in the human being. When a human being no longer has an ether body after death, he begins to rot away. So there you have it right in front of your nose, we might say, that a human being does not rot away while he is alive; as soon as he no longer lives, he rots. Why is that so? Because the ether body has gone when a person is dead. The ether body is therefore the part of the human being that prevents rotting. We therefore have a continuous battle going on inside us against rotting away, and it is the ether body which fights that battle in us. I think, gentlemen, you only need to think this through and you'll see very clearly, just from the evidence of your eyes, that there must be an ether body, that in fact there has to be an ether body everywhere. For proteins are produced everywhere on earth, and they rot. The earth would have to stink to high heaven if the ether did not keep driving this rotting principle away. Both inside and outside the human organism, the ether fights against proteins going rotten all the time. This is something we must certainly consider. When we come to the fats, we have to say that fats do not rot but go rancid—you all know this, if you have ever left fats somewhere outside; even butter will go rancid. Fats thus have the property of going rancid. Now if you have left butter to stand, you will not be able to say if it is rancid or good fresh butter unless you have developed an eye for it. But when you taste it on your tongue you will know right away that it is rancid. This has something to do with awareness, therefore, with sensation. Rotting has to do with our sense of smell, with something you can smell outside. It is different, of course, if you have rotten eggs or the scent of roses, but in either case you smell it. Not so the going rancid. Going rancid is something where we only put a name to it because of something more inward, our sense of taste. This immediately shows that it has a lot more to do with an inner response than in the case of eggs going rotten. The middle human body, the chest body, has to do with everything that is an inner response coming to awareness; and spiritually it is the astral body. As you know, in the chest we have something that functions on an airy principle. We breathe in air. We transform air. The air has its rightful place in the chest. In the remaining part of the human body gases and types of air should only be produced sparingly. If too much gas is produced in the gut, pathological flatulence develops, and that is not healthy. The middle human body exists for the generation of gases. And the higher supersensible spiritual aspect which intervenes here —it intervenes in things that are gaseous by nature —is the human astral body. This fights the going rancid of fats in itself. Just as the ether body combats the rotting of proteins, so does the astral body combat the going rancid of fats. People would continually have rancid eructations from their own fats, they would taste rancid to themselves inwardly, if their astral bodies did not constantly fight this process of going rancid. We thus have this astral body inside us to prevent fats going rancid. You see, gentlemen, this is truly marvellous, for you can see from this that things go very differently in the ordinary physical world outside than they do inside us. Out there in the physical world fats inevitably go rancid. Human beings are blessed in that they do not go rancid, or only if they develop an internal disease. The matter is, therefore, that in health human beings have their astral body so that they cannot go rancid. They only go rancid if they eat too much fat, so that the astral body is unable to cope, or if something or other causes too much fat to be produced; cannibals know more about this than we do. Inwardly, however, human beings do perceive it if they go rancid. We may say that if someone grows very rancid, which means that his astral body is not sufficiently active, he continually has an unpleasant taste in his mouth. This unpleasant taste in turn affects the stomach. And in this roundabout way people get diseases of the stomach and intestines from the rancid fat in them. If you notice that a person is inwardly going rancid, then arsenic is a good medicine for fats he has inside him which are not digested. Arsenic prevents one getting fat; it strengthens the astral body. The result is that a person is then able to combat the process of going rancid. These things are extraordinarily important. When a person shows himself to have an inner tendency of being unable to overcome his rotting protein with the help of the ether body, some copper compound or other usually proves highly effective as a medicine. Copper is thus effective when abdominal diseases, intestinal diseases are caused directly by protein. But when you find that something comes to awareness in the mouth, in the taste, it will not help to give copper; in that case it has to be arsenic, because you must first of all strengthen the astral body. It will not do to say simply that diseases of one kind or another are in a particular part of the human being. You have to know where they come from, if they come from rotting protein in the gut or fats that have gone rancid and affect the intestines and the stomach via the taste in one's mouth. You see, therefore, gentlemen, that inside us we have the opposite of what these substances show themselves to be on the outside. We have an astral body that combats the going rancid of fats, while the ordinary physical and material world simply makes fats go rancid. A third food people eat are the substances known as carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are found particularly in potatoes, for instance, in lentils and beans, and of course in all cereal grains. The carbohydrates are in there. Very many of them also contain actual sugar, which we always take as a food, or the sugar is directly produced from those carbohydrates because we transform the substances we take in when we eat potatoes, for instance. Potatoes contain much starch. This sticky starch is converted to dextrin inside us and then into sugar. If you eat potatoes you are therefore really taking sugar, for the potato starch paste is converted to sugar in the human body. As you know, grapes are particularly rich in sugar, hence also the alcohol. Everything alcohol is to man is, apart from being alcohol, really due to its sugar content, for sugar is produced particularly from alcohol in the human organism. The first kind of food thus was protein, the second kind fats and the third starch, sugar. We have seen that protein is digested in certain quantities, without going putrid, by the ether body. Fats are digested, without going rancid, by the astral body. Now to starch and sugar. Looking at the ether body we have to say it is mainly active in the lower body. The astral body is mainly active in the chest region. Now we come to something else. You all know —I won't say from personal experience, but from seeing people who are not like you — the effects of alcohol, and you know that alcohol causes a peculiar condition in people, first of all drunkenness, but we'll leave that aside for the moment. But as you know, the next day—we have spoken of this before 7 Steiner, R, Health and Illness, vol. 2 (in GA 348), lecture of 8 January 1923. Tr. M. St Goar. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1981 and 1983. — one has a thick head, a hangover, as it is called. What does such a heavy head or hangover signify? Well, gentlemen, you can see even the term 'thick head' refers to the human head. And if you have heard people— different from yourselves, of course — talk about the bit of a hangover they had the day before, you will hear them complain above all of their skulls. The skull aches, and if it did not ache it felt as if it would drop off their shoulders, and so on. What is really going on? The function of the head is to combat what starch and sugar want. What do starch and sugar want? You only have to consider wine. As you know, the wine, the grapes, are harvested when autumn comes. They are pressed and the matter then ferments. When fermentation is complete, people drink the wine. By becoming wine through fermentation, wine has overcome the fermentation. But if you put wine into your stomach, something develops from it that becomes part of the food again. The alcohol is literally converted back. Now starch and sugar are substances that want to ferment. Starch and sugar mainly want to ferment in the human organism. If you drink alcohol, the alcohol drives away the powers in the head that prevent the fermentation of sugar and starch in the human being. Let us take a good look at this. Let us say you had potatoes on 22 January, you had some beans and you drank alcohol with them. Right then. If you had not taken alcohol your head would have remained sober. Potatoes and beans contain starch and the sugar that comes from starch. The head would have the power to prevent fermentation of the starch and sugar in the proper way. If you bring in alcohol, the head loses the ability to prevent the fermentation of the starch and sugar you have in you from the potatoes, and then the potatoes and beans, and other things, too, cereal grains, for example, begin to ferment inside you. Instead of being prevented, fermentation occurs in the person. It occurs because of the inability of the head that has developed because of the alcohol, so that the person comes to be full of fermentative powers. In central Germany, in Thuringia, people have a strange popular expression. When someone talks nonsense people in Thuringia say: 'He ferments.' It is not something people say in this area, but those who have been to Germany will no doubt have heard it in central Germany. And when someone is talking nonsense all the time, people in central Germany, in Thuringia, call him 'an old wretch in ferment'. The situation is that in central Germany, people connect fermentation with confusion in the head, with fooling around. That is an excellent popular instinct. They know that when someone talks a lot of nonsense he is in ferment in his head. And if someone has been drinking and got a thick head, he does not talk nonsense, for he tends to be quiet, but the nonsense is inside him, it rumbles in him. The process which develops to prevent the fermentation of starch and sugar is therefore the opposite of the tangible effect of alcohol. We may say, therefore, that there is something in the human head that continually works in the direction of preventing the fermentation of everything the person has in him by way of starch and sugar. No one will deny that the I, the actual human I, has its main seat in the head, just as the ether body has its seat in the lower part and the astral body in the middle part of the human body. The situation is that this actual I has to do with warmth qualities, just as the physical body has to do with solids, the ether body with fluids and the astral body with gases. The situation is that with everything that relates to his actual I, the human being makes warmth move. This can be seen in detail if we study the human body. The actual I is also connected with the blood, and the blood therefore produces warmth. But the actual I, of which human beings have conscious awareness, is also connected with glandular secretion, for instance. Because of this, glandular secretion is connected with temperature conditions. With its supersensible powers the actual I also uses the powers of the head to prevent fermentation. We are thus able to say: the ether body combats the rotting of proteins, the astral body combats fats going rancid, and the I combats the fermentation of sugar and starch. This is also the reason why I had to tell you on one occasion 8 See note 6. that eating too many potatoes is bad for the head. Excessive potato consumption affects the human being as follows. You see, a potato contains little protein, which basically makes it a good human food. And if people eat moderate amounts of potatoes together with other things, the potato is a good food, having little protein. But it contains an extraordinary amount of starch which has to be converted to sugar in the human being, first into dextrin and then into sugar. I told you on that earlier occasion that the head has to do a terrible lot of work when people eat too many potatoes, obviously, for the head has to prevent fermentation. People who eat too many potatoes and have to make a terrible effort in their heads to cope with potato fermentation therefore tend to be weak in the head. It is mainly the middle parts of the brain that grow weak, leaving only the front parts which make little effort to prevent potato fermentation. It is actually due to the fact that potatoes have come to be widely eaten in recent times that materialism has developed, for this is produced in the front part of the brain. It is really peculiar. People think materialism is a matter of logic. To some extent materialism is nothing but the consequence of eating potatoes! Now I think you'll agree people do not really like it if they have to live mainly on potatoes, but they do like materialism. So they are really caught up in a contradiction. To be a proper materialist, one should really advise everyone to eat potatoes, for that would surely be the best way of being convinced of materialism. But it is something that does not happen with most people. However, if the materialistic monists, the Monist Association, wanted to be really effective in their fight, they should really make sure that other foods are as far as possible replaced with potatoes. Then the Monist Association would be terribly successful. It would not be quick, but over some decades the Monist Association would be most effective if it were to influence the eating of potatoes. Though the people they would seek to influence with their potato diet would also give them something to think about; and so they would not be all that successful. One thing you can see from this is that the science of the spirit we work with here recognizes the true nature of materialism. Materialism does not know anything about the world of matter; the science of the spirit recognizes the potato in particular as the real creator of materialism. It is dreadfully malicious, the potato, crafty, sly to an excessive degree. For you see, people can only eat the tubers of potatoes, not even the eyes on a potato — they are harmful — and they certainly cannot eat the flowers, for the potato is a member of the deadly nightshade family and the flowers are poisonous. But what is poison? As I told you the last time, large amounts of a poison kill, small amounts, in fine distribution, are medicinal. Potato as such contains much sticky starch, it consists almost entirely of sticky starch. It would be quite unable to live, because the sticky starch would be terribly harmful to it. But it attracts poison from the world at the same time, and destroys the harmful effect that is inside itself. This is why I say it is crafty and sly. It has its poison which removes the effect that would be harmful to it. But the poison in potatoes is particularly harmful to humans; it does not give this ability to them but only the matter which it renders harmless in itself by using the poison. This really is something we may refer to by saying that the potato is a sly, crafty thing. And people must clearly understand that if they eat too many potatoes their midbrain will wither away and it is even possible that their senses also suffer from eating too many potatoes. If someone eats too many potatoes as a child or a young person, his midbrain will become extraordinarily weak. But the midbrain is the source of the most important sense organs. In the midbrain lie four rounded eminences called colliculi, the thalamus, and so on, and excessive potato consumption even weakens one's eyesight, for this has its origins in the midbrain. Some eye conditions in old age are due to the person having been brought up eating too many potatoes as a child. A person then gets weak eyes, weak eyesight. It really is true that people in Europe suffered much less from weak eyesight in earlier times than they do now. And this is because apart from other things that influence the eyes (but less strongly, because they do not act from inside, electric light and so on) excessive potato consumption in particular is very harmful to the eyes, affecting our vision and even the ability to taste — even the ability to taste! You see, the consequence is as follows. Let us assume someone eats too many potatoes even as a child. Later in life you will very7 often find that such a person never knows when he has had enough, because his sense of taste has been ruined by potato consumption, while someone who has not eaten too many potatoes will know instinctively when he has had enough. This instinct, which is largely connected with the midbrain, is thus ruined by excessive potato consumption. This is something that has emerged particularly clearly in recent times. From everything I have said you will see that people must take particular care to be strong enough to overcome firstly the rotting of proteins, secondly the getting rancid of fats, thirdly the fermentation of starch and sugar. As I told you the last time, people cannot be complete anti-alcoholics — for if they do not take any alcohol at all, alcohol is produced inside them. This alcohol stays in the lower body; it does not go up to the head, for the head must be free from alcohol, otherwise it will be unable, as bearer of the I, to have proper control of the fermentation in the body. You see, you can now have an idea of the way in which human beings relate to their natural environment. Looking at rotting protein everywhere — animals rot away, plants rot away —you have to say: ether is also present everywhere, and this gradually balances it out again. Looking at fats, which are also found in plants, which are found everywhere, you have to say: these fats would gradually make it impossible for all living creatures to continue to live, both animals and humans, if the astral body were not present to combat the process of going rancid. The human being thus fights everything that exists in nature outside. And when the human being dies the ether body, astral body and I go away. They leave the physical body. The human being then moves on into the world of the spirit. What happens then? Well, gentlemen, you know what happens. The dead body immediately begins to rot, to go rancid and at the same time to ferment, though the rotting is more apparent to the eye and to the nose, for we only rarely go about with our noses blocked up. The rotting process is thus easily smelt. But to go and lie across a grave somewhere and taste if the fat of the dead body has gone rancid —that is something we do not normally do, and therefore people usually do not know about it. And the fermentation that takes place is not studied at all. So it truly is the case that because the I goes away the human body begins to ferment, because the astral body goes away the human body goes rancid, and because the ether body goes away the human body starts to rot. This is something human beings always have in them, but for as long as they live on earth they are always fighting it. Any48 one who denies that the ether body, the astral body and the I are present in the body as real spiritual entities simply has to be asked: What do you imagine? Why does the human being not rot away? Why does he not ferment? Why does he not go rancid? This would have to happen to the body if it were just a physical body. What do our scientists do? They wait until a human being has died before they examine him. For they know precious little of the living human being compared to what they know of the anatomy of the dead body, when the human being has died. Everything you are able to learn from them really only relates to the dead body. Scientists always wait for the dead body. They are thus quite unable to know anything about the real human being, who is alive, for they do not consider him. And this is the great problem, that all the knowledge of our modern science —this really is only so since the seventeenth century—basically comes only from the dead body. But the dead body is no longer the human being, for we have to ask ourselves: what brings it about that the dead body which human beings have also when they are alive does not behave like the dead body, rotting, fermenting and going rancid? It is exactly when we take a real look at the living human being that we discover these supersensible aspects of human nature. And we then also find that the I is active mainly in the head, that the astral body is active mainly in the chest, and that the ether body is active mainly in the lower body. And scientists do not know anything about the lower body, for they believe the processes in there are the same as those in outside nature. But that is not so. Well, gentlemen, it is interesting to study things by not shutting oneself away in one's study but going out among living people. You know there are spas where you get a smell of rotten eggs, in Marienbad 9 Marienbad, spa, in what was formerly Bohemia. for instance, because the water contains hydrogen sulphide. Yes, really, people who like fine foods and are also fussy about smells have to go to such spas. And why do they go? Why do they sometimes spend several summer months in places where it smells as if there were rotten eggs everywhere? You see, it is like this. These people really have eaten too much protein and now come to the spa. They are covered with skin and the whole business is inside, and so they do not smell like that. But if we were able to smell it, they would smell horribly of rotten eggs inside. So all the people who inwardly smell of rotten eggs come to the spas where you get a smell of rotten eggs. And what happens? Well, you see, in one case the rotten egg smell is inside, and in the other it is outside. In the one case, where it is inside, the nose does not notice it; in the other case, where it is outside, the nose does notice. Head and belly are opposites. The rotten egg smell produced in the belly is combated when it comes from the head side, through the sense of smell. And the inner smell of rotten eggs is fought in spas that smell of rotten eggs. This is very noticeable for anyone who is inclined to make such observations. It so happens that when I was a boy I had to go to such a spa. Every second day I had to go to a spring called Marienquelle . 10 Marienquelle , Our Lady's Well. There you also get a smell of rotten eggs. While this is rather unpleasant outwardly, there being such a terrible smell, you suddenly begin to feel rather good in your belly. So if one is not sick, and does not have the rotten egg smell in one's belly, a feeling of greater vitality comes up. Anyone who is not driven away by the smell can experience this. Someone who holds his nose will of course not experience the contrast, will not have this springtime effect in the belly that comes if one really gives oneself up to the rotten egg smell. And rotten egg smell is an extraordinarily good medicine, for example, even if artificially produced. It will give the body the power to make atrophying muscles grow strong and firm again. People are not keen on such treatments, but in one respect they are extraordinarily useful. For you see, if the rotten egg smell comes to us from outside, spring comes inside, in the belly. And in spring everything grows and sprouts, and people can gain new strength when spring comes inside, in their bellies. This then is what happens with people who ruin their digestion by eating too much during the winter. You see, when someone does not ruin his digestion by eating too much in winter, he shares in the spring that comes in the outside world. The lower body in particular participates in the spring very strongly. But if you want to really enjoy spring in the world of nature outside, you should as far as possible avoid such things as goose liver pate and so on. If you have eaten a lot of goose liver pate then the environment in your belly will always be the way it is below the surface of the soil in winter, not above ground but below ground. It is warm there, for it is where pits are dug to store potatoes through the winter. But it all goes rotten in the human being because the warmth is stored in the belly; spring does not come in the human being. And then he must find an artificial spring in the smell of rotten eggs. This is the contrast between I and ether body. I and ether body must be in balance in the human being. You can see from this that if one really studies things in the world of nature, going to a spa that has the smell of rotten eggs with open senses, the sensation of spring in one's belly teaches one that inwardly the opposite process takes effect as proteins begin to rot. I wanted to add to what I said the last time. You know I told you that when someone has taken certain poisons he has to take liquid egg-white protein as an antidote. Things that are healthy become poisons if they are not treated properly in the body, if too much of them gets into the body. Protein can therefore drive away poison in the human being, but protein is itself poisonous if it rots in the body, if too much of it gets into the body. That is how close nutrition and poisoning are to one another. You have no doubt heard that excess food can become poison. A great many diseases are nutritional diseases, that is, people failed to consider that only certain amounts of some substances should be taken if the body is to cope with them. I'll ask them to tell you when the next talk will be, because I won't be here on Saturday. I'll be in Bern then.

From Elephants to Einstein

Nutrition

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA352/English/RSP1998/19240123p02.html

Dornach

23 Jan 1924

GA352-3

Gentlemen, the question that has been asked is: Is the iris of the eye a mirror of soul life in sickness and in health? I think the second question can be combined with it; they are probably meant to go together: How does albinism or leukopathy develop in black people? To answer this question we must above all consider the nature of the human eye in some detail. The question has to do with the fact that some people draw conclusions as to the sickness or health of the whole body from the state of the iris, the coloured ring-shaped structure surrounding the blackness of the pupil in the eye. The iris does indeed show the greatest imaginable variation in different people. As you know, it is not merely that it is blue or black or brown or grey or indeed hazel, but it also has lines created by tiny vessels that run in different patterns. It is true, therefore, that just as the general facial features differ from person to person, so the more subtle structures of this iris or rainbow membrane differ greatly between people, much more so than the facial features differ from person to person. We'll need to go into the structure of the eye to some extent if we want to talk about the subject. This also relates to the other question you have asked. It is that especially in negroes but also in others who are not black, the skin shows abnormal, unusual colouring and this is connected with the special colouring of the iris. It is in a way connected. The skin colouring is particularly striking in black people for the very reason that the rest of their skin is black, and they then have all kinds of white spots, looking mottled like a tiger. They are only rarely completely pale and completely white; that is extremely rare among negroes, extraordinarily rare. But 'albinos', as they are called, may also be seen in races that are not completely black in colour. Albinism also occurs among white people; they have a very pale skin, an almost milky white. The iris is usually a pale reddish colour, with the pupil, which is black in other people, a dark red. A female albino I once saw was showing herself in all kinds of fair booths. The skin was milky white all over, the iris red, with dark red rather than black pupils, and she said in an uncommonly weak voice: 'I am entirely white, have red eyes and have very poor vision.' And that was true, she could not see well. 11 Translator's note. Rudolf Steiner handled the gender of this person in an unusual way in the German. 'Albino' is a masculine noun in German. It is, however, normal usage to change to the feminine gender for any pronouns that follow if the individual is female. Rudolf Steiner did not do so. The text thus reads: 'was showing himself in all kinds of fair booths ... and he said ... he could not see well.' Rudolf Steiner was also using a term for an albino that was then colloquial in German: Kakerlak, meaning 'cockroach', which no doubt arose because cockroaches are also very sensitive to light. If we want to go into the matter we must first of all study the structure of the eye itself. I have been telling you various things in the course of time, and so you will probably be able to understand what I am going to say today. You see, the eye lies in the extremely solid bony part of the head. The bony form of the head arches in there (Fig. 6) and the eye lies in this bony cavity, which is opening towards the brain here at the back. The outer border of the eye to the outside is a hard membrane, which is not transparent here. The eyeball, as it is called, is enclosed in a firm membrane, the external tunic. This becomes transparent at the front, here, where it bulges a little. We would not be able to reach the light with the inner part of the eye if that part of the membrane were not transparent. It is called the cornea in its transparent part because it is hornlike. Next to it to the inside is a membrane consisting of fine blood vessels. The body's blood network extends to the eye, sending extremely fine capillaries into the eye. So we have here the external tunic, which is transparent at the front, and lying close to it the choroid, as it is called. The third membrane inside is made of nerves; it is called the retina. So I have to draw in a third membrane, the retina. This extends backwards, as does the choroid. And this, being nerve substance, going in the direction of vision, is called the optic nerve. You know how people say that we sense things through the nerves. And with the optic nerve we see. The strange thing is, however, and everyone has to admit this, that we see with the optic nerve in all these parts, but not in the place where it enters; there it is blind and one sees nothing! If someone were to look in such a way that he would be looking just there, somehow, or if the nerves all around were to be diseased and only the place where the optic nerve comes it was healthy, one would nevertheless see nothing at the place where it comes in. Now people say: 'We see with the optic nerve; it is there so that we may see.' Have you ever heard the following? Imagine a group of, say, 30 workers; 25 of them must work busily. They stand all around there. And then there is a group of 5 — it is not the kind of thing one does, but let us suppose it is done like that — and these 5 are allowed to be idle while the others are working hard. So we may say these are the 25 busy workers and there we have 5 who are idle all the time, sitting in comfortable armchairs and doing nothing. If someone were to tell you that the work is just as much done by the 5 idlers — or perhaps he cannot say this, because he does not see it, but the work is done by people being idle —you would not believe him, would you? It is clearly nonsense. But scientists tell us: 'The optic nerve sees.' Yet in the very place where there is most of this nerve it does not see at all! That is just as if you were to say the work is being done by the 5 idlers. You see people actually know these things — that is what is so odd about it —but they will insist on their common or garden nonsense. I think you'll agree that the existence of the blind spot, for that is what it is called, here where the optic nerve comes in most strongly (Fig. 6) and the fact that we do not see anything whatsoever in this spot shows quite clearly that the optic nerve cannot be something we see with. The matter is like this. There is something in the human body that is very similar to this business with the optic nerve; and that is your two arms and hands. Imagine you pick up a chair. You make a great effort with your arms, including your hands. But the element that connects them remains up here, does it not? It is the same with the optic nerve. You endeavour to do something that reaches out to the light, and in the middle it is just the way it is between the two areas where your arms attach here. But it is not the optic nerve which reaches out — if it were the optic nerve it would have to see most exactly in that spot — but what reaches out is part of the entirely invisible element that I have described to you. This in fact is indeed the I, the I-organization. It is not the physical body, nor the ether body, not even the astral body; it is the I. And so I have to draw in something else, apart from what is already in there: it is the invisible I which spreads there. Except that it is not as if there were two such arms but as if the two arms were to come together and make a sphere. We create part of a sphere when we touch something with our hands. That is how the supersensible I is in there; it takes hold there. And what purpose does the nerve have? Well, gentlemen, the nerve is there — this being work done by the invisible human being — so that secretion may happen. Matter is secreted everywhere and remains lying everywhere. We see with our supersensible I. But the nerve is there so that something may be secreted. Consider the nonsense scientists talk. It is as if one were to examine the colon and whatever is inside the colon and one would actually say that human beings take their nourishment from the material excreted from the colon! Just as you have matter in the colon which is then excreted, so nerve matter is excreted here. And this (the blind spot) is the place where most of it is excreted. Material not needed in the eye is excreted into the brain and then goes further and is eliminated altogether. You see, this is something you can understand quite easily, yet people tell the weirdest tales about it today. It is simply that people do not realize what it means when others insist that we see with our nerve substance or have sentience or perceive something or other. That would be the same as if we were to take our nourishment from the contents of the colon. So you see that this matter of the blind spot has no significance for the ability to see, for the optic nerve around it does not see either; it is merely that here, where the blind spot is, most matter is excreted. And just as nutrition comes to an end in the colon, and this exists only for the purpose of elimination, so does vision come to an end here, for this is where most is eliminated, and there also is no point to being able to see there in the middle. Imagine a stick lying there and you were to try and pick it up with your head! You cannot do it. You have to pick it up with your arm, your hand, with something attached to you at the side. In the same way you cannot see with the nerve. You have to see with something that reaches out. Now, gentlemen, everything you have there (Fig. 6) ends here in a kind of muscle. This muscle holds the lens. That is a completely transparent body. Why transparent? So that we may get to the light. And behind this body is a thickish liquid. In front is an even thicker liquid, and in this thickish liquid floats the iris, which lies here, close to the blood vessels. It really floats in the liquid, leaving a hole for the light. This hole looks black when you look into it, because you are looking right through the whole eye to the back of this, which is black. The iris is fairly transparent in front and black at the back. The black membrane at the back is fairly thin in some people. Some people have blue eyes because one is looking through something transparent into blackness when it is thin. And the eyes are black or dark in people who have a thicker membrane, where you are looking at a thick skin at the back of the iris. WeTl talk about brown eyes shortly. We have to consider why it is so, gentlemen, that this membrane, which really is responsible for the blue or brown or black, is thicker or thinner in some people. I have told you that there, into the eye, goes what we call the I, this most sublime supersensible part of the human being. There the I enters. The I is strong or weak to a different degree in people. Take it that the I is very strong in a person, that a person has a very strong I. You see, such a person is able to dissolve the iron he has in his blood — through this choroid membrane it also gets into the eye — completely. Someone who has a strong I thus dissolves the iron completely, and the result is that very little iron gets into this membrane, which after all is in the outermost margin of the body, because it has been completely dissolved. Little iron gets into it, and the result is that this membrane becomes thinnish. And because it becomes thinnish, one has blue eyes. Now imagine someone has a weak I; he then does not dissolve the iron so much, and the result will be that a great deal of undissolved iron still gets into this membrane. This undissolved iron makes the membrane thicker, and a person has dark, black eyes. It thus depends on the I whether a person has black or blue eyes. Well, gentlemen, there is also another substance in the blood, and that is sulphur. Even if the I is able to deal with the iron, it is sometimes unable to deal with the sulphur. When the I lets undigested sulphur enter into this membrane, a yellowy brown develops in the iris, and a person has brownish eyes. If especially large amounts of sulphur get into the eyes, the iris will be reddish. Even the pupil is not black in that case, because of the sulphur that shimmers behind it. That is the case with albinos, with people who also cannot properly provide their skin with colour. We may say, therefore, that there are people who can inject sulphur into their eyes, as it were. The I can inject it, and this produces the unusual colouring of the iris. But anything that gets into the eye by way of sulphur or iron also gets into the whole body, for it comes from the blood. Those are just tiny blood vessels here in the eye. If someone injects sulphur here in the eye, he also injects sulphur into the whole of his skin everywhere. And the result of thus injecting sulphur everywhere into the skin is that he does not have the natural skin colouring in these places where the sulphur has been injected; for our natural skin colour comes from iron being processed. If someone therefore only processes his iron slightly and injects sulphur instead, he gets those patchy skin areas and one can at the same time also see it in the eyes. So you see, it is exactly when we consider this invisible human being who is present in every person that we can understand the human being right down to the level of physical matter. Anthroposophy is not so idiotic that one cannot understand matter. It is the materialists who actually do not understand matter. If you read about albinism anywhere — what do your read? The one among you who has asked the question will probably have read somewhere that the cause of albinism is unknown. Materialists arrive at this strange statement that the cause is unknown because they pay no heed at all to the situations where the causes are to be found. It is of course easy to say: That is a red pupil. Yes, but one must know what is really at work in there, and what is injecting the business, for both the red and the pale colouring of the body come from the sulphur. Now you'll be able to understand the nature of true science. Imagine you go somewhere on earth where some work has been done. Someone looks at it and says: 'The work is there, the cause is unknown.' He does not care about what happened before. He therefore says: 'Cause unknown.' The fact that 30 people have been working there for many days, for example, does not concern him. That is what scientists do when they say the cause of the red hue of the pupil and the pale hue of the skin is unknown. But the cause lies in the I which is at work there in the physical matter. You also see from this that the iris does indeed have something of a true mirror image of the way the whole body works with iron and sulphur. But just take such an albino. That is really a kind of illness. Too much work is done with sulphur in the body, but the body gets used to it and things are organized that way. Now it may happen that the degree to which this gets into the eyes is much less. You see, apart from the albino lady who was showing herself in a fair booth, I have seen quite a few other albinos. And it is always possible to show that there is a very special situation with such albinos. You may say: 'There's an albino, and he has this unusual red colouring of the iris, a pale red, with the pupil dark red, and has a pale body.' If you now examine him further you come to see, from the nature of his body, that the connection between heart and kidney is particularly weak. The kidneys are only supplied with blood with great difficulty and therefore only function laboriously. If this person were to deposit the sulphur which he has in him because of the nature of this whole body in the kidneys, he would die in childhood. He therefore gets rid of the sulphur by pushing it into the body surface — the skin gets white, the eyes are red — so that the kidneys can work delicately. Those albinos have the most delicately functioning kidneys, for instance. The same may happen in other people. But when people who are not albinos—most of them are not albinos — develop any kind of kidney defect, surely this must also show itself in the iris? For anything sulphur and iron do with one another is also reflected here. And so it is possible to see from this subtle reflection in the iris if there is a spot here or here that is not really normal: there you have damage in the body. But you have to consider, gentlemen, that the human body is a whole, and if one were clever enough to do this one could also see what is seen in the iris if one cut out a little bit of skin. Then something abnormal would also show itself in the skin, or in the nail of the big toe if one were to cut it off. There, too, you have very subtle distinctions, and you would be able to see from this that the liver or the kidney or the lung are not all right, though it would be a little bit different again. But if someone were particularly clever and examined cut-off fingernails rather than the iris, for example — it would be much harder because it is less obvious—he would also be able to see if the body is healthy or sick. It is noticeable in the eye simply because the eye is a particularly delicate structure, and subtle changes are easily perceived there. But you can see in other ways, too, that things emerge most strongly on the body surface. I have rarely seen someone wanting to get the feel of a very fine fabric or something like that put it on his shoulders. If this were to be the better method, we would of course arrange things in such a way that if we wanted to get the feel of something very fine we would bare the area up on the shoulder and touch and feel it there. But that does not get us anywhere. We feel it with our fingertips. And in the fingertips we are particularly sensitive to get the feel of things. So there we have the same again as before. If it were the nervous system that really allowed us to feel things, we ought to feel things most up there, close to the brain. But we do not have the strongest sense of touch close to the brain but furthest away from it, in the outermost fingertips, because the I is most of all located on the body surface. It is easiest to see what someone is inwardly, as an I, from the outermost surface. And because the eyes are most of all on the surface, this is also where one is most able to see these things, because the eyes are delicate and away from the brain. You may say the eyes are in the skull and close to the brain. But we have many bones there to make sure they are really far away, and at the point where the eye connects with the brain, where there is no bone, nothing is seen at all. In the case of the fingertips it is therefore due to the distance in space that they are particularly sensitive; in the case o the eyes it is because they are most strongly shielded fron the brain. Something else is also strange. When a lower animal develops its brain, it does so in such a way that the brain leaves a cavity for the eye, and the eye does not grow out of the brain but becomes attached to the side there and grows into the cavity. The eye grows from the outside, not out of the brain; it grows into the brain. Is is therefore produced from outside. You can see from all this that whatever is produced on the surface, be it in the skin, be it in the eye, has to do with something that most closely connects the human being with the outside world. If someone always stays in bed, unable to use his will for the body, we cannot really say that he strongly develops his I. If someone is very mobile, we can indeed say that he brings his I strongly to expression. And it is the senses that apart from this keep us in touch with the outside world — in our smelling, seeing and so on. And the eye is the most delicate of senses to keep us in touch with the outside world. So we may well say that because the I is particularly active in this fine network of capillaries (those are terribly fine vessels in the iris) we can see a great deal from it—how the whole I works in an inward direction, that is, if a person is healthy or sick. This is the first truth and insight we have relating to this matter. But this fact which I have been describing to you is also one of the most difficult, for one has to be extremely well informed as to what a minor irregularity in the iris may signify if one is to draw conclusions about a person being healthy or sick. Let me give you an example. You see, it may be, for example, that small dark dots appear here and there in someone's iris. These dark dots mean, of course, that the person has something which is not there if there are no dark dots in the iris. But let us assume this person, in whom the dark dots appear, is a terribly stupid fellow. He will then have some kind of illness that is indicated by those dots. But it may also be that the person who has those dark dots had excessive demands made on him in his youth to learn things, and this learning process went beyond his physical powers. The fact that he used certain organs too much in his youth may have driven a certain weaker activity into his eyes, and it may then happen that these small, fine iron deposits appeared due to overexertion in his childhood. They may thus appear due to illness in later life, but they may also appear due to overexertion in childhood. Most people tend to think: if I see little black dots in the iris then one thing or another must be the case in the body. It is, however, important to know not only about the person's present life. Particularly if one wants to look at such things in order to discover the causes of illness one must go through such a person's whole life with him; one must make him remember what he did on one occasion or another in his childhood. What we see in the iris may thus point to a number of things. And it requires extremely complex knowledge to draw any conclusions from this. This is why it is so annoying when people write all kinds of pamphlets today. The things they write are usually quite brief, under the title of 'eye diagnosis'. You get 50 pages of instructions on how the iris should be examined. Like this, you see: there is the divided-up iris, there is the pupil, a completely schematic representation. Then it says 'disease of the spleen'; 'lung disease', 'syphilis' and so on. An eye diagnostician who knows what can be seen when he looks at the iris through a medium magnifying glass then only needs to refer to his booklet. And when he sees markings in the area where it says lung disease, he will say: 'lung disease'! And that is what many eye diagnosticians do today, after just an hour's study. They leave the rest to the booklet they have; they just make the diagnosis. Gentlemen, that is disgusting! You have something extremely difficult and these people want to learn it in the easiest possible way. The result is not something of value but quite the opposite. Damage is done to the whole field of medicine. And people must make the distinction between someone who has serious intentions in medicine or merely wants to make money. People are of course upset about science today, rightly so, for if you take the example of the optic nerve I have given you, scientists pay no heed to what the human being really is but appreciate the excrement above all else in the human being, that excrement in the eye, for example, that is the optic nerve. People do not know this, of course, but they feel it, and get annoyed with scientists. One can understand their annoyance. But what eye diagnosticians generally do is not better than science but generally much worse. Out of ignorance, knowing no better because of modern materialism, scientists believe excrement to be the most sublime part of the human being. Excrement is, of course, most necessary, for if it were to remain in the body it would soon kill the body; it is therefore necessary. But scientists consider excrement to be the most valuable thing in the human being. But they are taking a right and proper course, for they do not just want to make money. It is just that they are struck with blindness. They have a very large blind spot in their knowledge; yet in spite of it all we have to acknowledge their good will. But when it comes to those eye diagnosis pamphlets, we cannot speak of good will, only of a desire to make money. So you always have to say to yourself with such things: a good truth may be at the heart of some endeavour, but it is exactly the best truths, gentlemen, that are most abused by the world. You see, it is truly marvellous that the whole human being in health and sickness is indeed reflected in the iris. But on the other hand the iris is hardest to diagnose for its own condition just because the whole human being is reflected in it in health and sickness, and we really have to say that anyone who does eye diagnosis without real knowledge of the whole human being is doing mischief. What does it mean, to know the whole human being? You see, we have learned that the human being consists of his physical body, the ether body, the astral body and the I. One therefore not only has to know something of the physical body but must also know something of the spiritual human being, especially if one wishes to do eye diagnosis. You know, ordinary anatomy, which is only concerned with the dead body, may sometimes be adequate in what it has to offer; it may still offer something quite good, relatively speaking. Anatomists may not know that the optic nerve is the excrement of the eye, but they do at least find the optic nerve. But an eye diagnostician usually has not the least idea of how the nerve runs. He has his 50-page booklet showing divisions of the iris and diagnoses away; he does not examine the person. Then he'll of course need some other booklet, again of 50 pages. There the rubric Tung disease' may be found and the remedy for it. But lung disease is something that may be from many causes. Knowing that the lung is affected does not tell us much. The lung affection may come from the digestion. One needs to know where it comes from. Many people have lung disease. In many of them the lung disease has a wide variety of causes. This is exactly where one has to be tremendously careful, for where you get the best things you also have the greatest mischief done. I told you often in these lectures that the human being depends not only on the earth but on the whole of the starry heavens. But that is exactly also what calls for the most complex insight. And one should not cause mischief here. Fraud and mischief are practised on a large scale by the different astrologers in the world today. It is much the same with eye diagnosis as it is in astrology. In astrology, one also has something sublime and magnificent. But there is nothing very sublime about the people who do astrology today. In most cases designs on other people's purses are the basis of their work. And so you can see the connection, gentlemen. On the one hand we have phenomena that change the whole surface of a person, even externally. The person develops pale skin areas, the rest of the skin being darker, his eyes get a different colour; he is an albino. A certain activity is driven to the surface, deflected from the internal organs. But when someone is not an albino, the same things, the external appearance of the eye, are present in the iris, but the finer structure, the finer differentiation points to the inner organism. An albino is not totally ill from being an albino, he merely has the disposition for a disease because he has this from his young days and his bodily organization later gets used to it. You see it is not good to call an albino a leukopath. It suggests that the blood of such people is different, leukocytes being particular corpuscles in the blood. The cause is not known. But when the blood grows paler on the surface, you do not get general green-sickness or anaemia, but the skin gets paler on the surface. That is the difference between the disease of green-sickness, where the blood inside simply gets paler, and leukopathy or albinism, where the blood is more pushed towards the surface. The situation is that when someone has anaemia, an internal function is out of order. The I is more active on the surface, the astral body more inside. Because of this, all the bodies we see or hear with are pushed more to the surface. We need those for the I. The liver we need inside. And if you were to feel everything your liver does as strongly as that, you would be observing your innards all the time, saying: 'Ah, I've just got some cabbage soup into my stomach, the walls of the stomach are beginning to absorb it. It is as though it radiates out, very interesting. Now it goes through the pylorus at the end of the stomach into the duodenum; it now reaches the villi in the intestinal walls.' You would take note of all this, and all of it would be most interesting, but you would have no time at all to take note of the outside world! It is very interesting and there is lots to observe, in many respects much more beautiful than the outside world, but human beings are quite rightly distracted from this. Generally speaking it does not come to conscious awareness; the things that are on the surface come to conscious awareness. If someone therefore does not digest the iron properly inside, where the astral human being is more active, he gets anaemic. If he does not properly deal with the iron outside, but dissolves it, as I have described it to you, he becomes an albino — which is very rare; he gets leukopathy. So you see that the question I have been asked has to do with this: albinism is due to the I not digesting sulphur or iron in a regular way. Anaemia comes from abnormal iron processing by the astral body and affects more the inner part of the blood. And if one really understands what goes on inside the human being one can also see which supersensible aspect of the human being is involved. Someone with proper understanding of the physical human being also understands the super-physical, supersensible human being. But the situation with materialism is this: materialists do not understand the supersensible human being and therefore also do not understand the physical human being. I'll have them tell you if I'll be back next Wednesday. Maybe someone will have another question for the next session, so that we may have a similar discussion based on that question.

From Elephants to Einstein

The human eye. Albinism

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA352/English/RSP1998/19240202p02.html

Dornach

2 Feb 1924

GA352-4

DR. STEINER: I should like to speak of various matters to-day which can show you once more how the earth is connected with the whole universe — in which, as you know, it exists as a spherical body. From this aspect, then, let us consider the rivers and oceans. You are aware that only a part of the earth's surface is solid land; for the most part the earth is a water-sphere, an ocean. And of the rivers it may be said that they have their source — they rise, as one says — somewhere on the earth and then make their way to the sea. Let us take the Danube, for instance. You know that the Danube rises in the Black Forest. Or take the Rhine which rises in the Southern Alps. The Danube flows through various valleys into the Black Sea; the Rhine flows through various valleys into the North Sea. Now when we think of rivers and seas we generally only consider their course and where they flow out into the sea. Rivers give us a good deal of pleasure but we do not reflect on the great significance that rivers and oceans really have for the whole life of the earth. We have as a rule more knowledge about the fluids in the human body. Man, as I have told you, consists for the most part of a volume of fluid, with the blood as a special kind of fluidity running through its veins. We also know that this flowing blood is of the greatest significance for life; it forms life, it maintains life. As physical men we are entirely dependent on the blood flowing rightly through the body and, moreover, taking a definite course. Were it to deviate from this course we should not be able to live. The fact that the arrangement of rivers and seas has just as great a significance for the earth is generally not considered at all. It is not usually realised that water actually forms the blood circulation of the earth. Why is this not realised as a rule? Well, you see, the blood makes a more striking impression. It is red, it contains all sorts of substances and people say to themselves that blood is in fact a peculiar substance. As to water, one simply thinks — Oh, well, it's just water! It makes less impression and the substances which it contains in addition to hydrogen and oxygen, are not present to the same extent as, for instance, the iron in the blood. So people don't consider the matter again. Nevertheless it is true that the entire water-circulation is of immense importance for the life of the earth. Just as little as the human organism could live without a circulation of blood, could the earth exist if it had no circulation of water. The water-circulation has a distinct character — namely, it takes its start from something that is quite different from that into which it enters when it finds its outlet in the ocean. If you follow up the rivers you find that they contain no salt: the water in the rivers is fresh water. The sea contains salt and all that the sea brings to maturity is founded on this salt-content. That is of extraordinary importance: water begins to circulate on the earth in a fresh, salt-free condition and ends in the ocean in a salty condition. The subject is generally dismissed by the statement that such a river as the Rhine rises somewhere or other, takes this course ( a sketch was made ) and then flows into the sea. That in fact is just what is seen externally. But what is not considered is that whereas the river, the Rhine, for example, flows externally like this from the Southern Alps to the North Sea, there is a kind of stream of force under the earth, returning from the mouth of the river to its source. And what happens there (above the earth) is that the river is fresh water, contains no salt; what returns there (under the earth) is all the time carrying salt into the earth in the direction of the river. The earth acquires salts which actually come out of the sea. It would have no salt if the stream of salt did not return under the earth from the river's mouth to its source. The so-called geology which investigates the interior of the earth should always bear in mind that wherever there are river-beds, somewhat deeper in the ground there are deposits of salt. Now, if there were no salt-deposits in the earth, no plant-roots would grow. For plant-roots only grow in the soil by obtaining the salt for nourishment. The plant is most salty in the root, above it gets less and less salty and the blossom has little salt. And if one asks whence it comes that the ground can bring forth plants, it must be replied: because it has a water-circulation. Just as in us the blood arteries go out from the heart and the veins return, bringing back the blue blood, so in the earth the arteries of rivers and streams branch out on the one hand, while below the earth the veins of salt return. Thus there is a genuine circulation. Is there then some special reason for the fact that the earth consists on the one hand of a fluid salt-body, on the other hand of dry land, and that salt is continuously brought in from the sea while there is none in the fresh water rivers that course through the land? Yes, you see, if one really investigates sea-water, one discovers that this salty sea-water stands in but slight connection with the universe. Just as with us, for example, the stomach is but slightly connected with the outer world — in fact, merely through what it receives — so there is very little connection between the interior of the sea and the heavens. Land, on the contrary, has a strong connection with the heavens — land through which the rivers flow, where plants are brought forth through the salty deposits, particularly, however, where there are flowing waters. If we view the matter in this way then we approach the mountain springs in quite a different spirit! We delight in the rippling of the springs, in their beautiful flow, their wonderfully clear waters and so on. Yes, but that is not the only thing! Springs are in fact the eyes of the earth! The earth does not see out into the universe through the sea, because the sea is salt and that gives it an interior character like our stomach. The springs with their fresh water are open to the universe, just as our eyes look freely out into space. We can say therefore that in countries where there are springs, the earth looks far out into the universe; the springs are the earth's sense organs, whereas in the salt ocean we have more the earth's lower body, its bowels. It is naturally not the same as in the human body; there are not such enclosed organs, organs that can be delineated. It would be possible to sketch them, but they are not so evident. However, the earth has its bowels in the sea and its sense organs in the land. And everything through which the earth stands in connection with the cosmos comes from fresh water, everything through which the earth has its intestinal character comes from salt water. Now I will furnish you with a proof that this is so. I once told you that the reproductive process in man and animal also stands in connection with the heavens. I said that it is not merely a development of the egg in the maternal body, but that forces from the universe work in upon it and bring about its roundness. We see the movement of the universe outside us as round , and thus this little egg is an image of the universe, because the forces work in upon it from all sides. And so where the reproductive process is at work, the heavenly is actually working into the earthly. You see the same thing in the eye, it is a sphere. I described the eye recently and how it is formed from the universe inwards. Sense organs and the eye are built in from the universe. If you observe the spleen you see that it is not spherical, it is formed more by terrestrial forces, the intestinal forces of the earth. That is just the difference. If one only pays real attention to things then they give one proofs. I will presently give you a proof taken from sea and land, but first I will interpolate something else. I have told you that recently we have been making researches in our biological laboratory on the importance of the spleen. When we cannot eat regularly — we all eat more or less irregularly — the spleen is there to balance it all out: it is the regulator. We have produced the proof of this in our laboratory and there is a little booklet by Frau Kolisko (Not published in English.) which describes it all. While this experiment was being made we were obliged by the requirements of modern science to produce a palpable and evident proof. (This will no longer be necessary when science accepts super-sensible proofs, but it is still necessary to-day.) So we took a rabbit and removed the spleen and let the rabbit go on living without its being harmed in any way. This operation can be done with all care, and it was a complete success. Later the rabbit died from an accidental chill in no way connected with the operation. Then we dissected the body and were anxious to see the effect of the removal of the spleen. The interesting thing is ... now, what must be said by Spiritual Science? What remains when one has cut out the physical spleen? Well, now, if the spleen is here ( a sketch was made ) and one cuts it out, removes it, on this spot there still remains the etheric body of the spleen and its astral body. The spleen is given its form by the earth which has developed it. If one removes the physical spleen, leaving the etheric spleen, as was the case with the rabbit, what must happen? The following should happen. Whereas the physical spleen is dependent on the earth, inclines to the earth, the etheric spleen, which has now become free and is no longer hampered by the physical spleen, must come again under the influence of the heavens. And lo and behold, when we dissected the rabbit there was a small, round body, formed of fine white tissue! Thus there was complete confirmation. Something appeared which according to the expectation of Spiritual Science ought to appear. In a relatively short time a small webbed body about the size of a nut had arisen. Therefore you see that one only has to go to work in the right way and one finds proofs everywhere for the statements of Spiritual Science. You can gather from this that pronouncements made out of spiritual knowledge can enter quite concretely into the physical realm, if right methods are pursued. Now just as the white body was formed here through the surrounding influences, so are the rudiments of man and animal formed spherically in the ovum through the influence of the heavens. This knowledge makes us realise that fish are in a special situation, for they never actually come on to the land. They can at most gasp a little on land, but they cannot live on land, they must live in the sea. Hence fish are organised in a particular way; they do not come where the earth is open to the universe. It is therefore with great difficulty that fish develop sense organs and in particular the organs of reproduction, for the formation of these is dependent on the influence of the cosmos. Fish must make careful use of whatever light and warmth falls into the sea from without in order that they may breed and develop sense organs. But nature, as we know, attends to many things. You see it with the so-called goldfish: they use their whole skin for receiving the influence of the light and hence they become so golden. Fish take every opportunity of snapping up what falls into the water from the universe. They must lay their eggs wherever some light can enter, so that they may be hatched from outside. Thus fish are organised, as it were, to live under the water; they do not come out of the water. What I am saying does not apply so very much to freshwater fish — fresh water can be penetrated from the universe — but it applies very much to sea fish. And these show that they are organised to make use of all that enters the salt water from the universe in order to be able to breed. The salmon, however, forms a quite remarkable exception. It has in fact an extraordinary organisation. It must live in the sea in order to develop proper muscles and to give its muscles right nourishment it needs the earth-forces found primarily in the salt of the sea. But when the salmon lives in the sea it cannot breed. Its organism shuts it off completely from the universe and salmon would have long ago died out if they had had to breed in the sea. The salmon is an exception; whereas it becomes strong in the sea and develops its muscles, it is practically blind and it cannot reproduce its species there. The reproductive organs and sense organs get weak and stunted; on the other hand, salmon in the sea get fat. Now in order not to die out — we can see this by the salmon here in the North Sea — they make a journey every year up into the Rhine, and so get the name of “Rhine salmon.” But the Rhine makes the salmon thin, it loses its muscles again; the fat it gained in the salt ocean it loses in the Rhine. Yet in the Rhine the salmon can breed, for while it gets slender, the sense organs and in particular the reproductive organs, in both male and female, become well developed. Thus every year the salmon must journey from the salt ocean to the freshwater Rhine in order to breed. Then while the old are still alive and the young ones are there, they all make the journey back again to the sea in order to get rid of their slimness and regain their fat. You see how this is all in full accord. Where the earth is salty the earth forces are at work upon the organs that are developed by the earth. Our own muscles are developed by the earth when we move with the forces of gravity. Gravity is the earth-force and works upon everything muscular, everything bony. The earth shares its salt with us and we get strong bones and muscles. With this salt excretion of the earth, however, we could do nothing for our senses and the reproductive organs; they would wither away. These must always come under the influence of extraterrestrial forces, the forces coming from the heavens. And the salmon shows what a distinction it makes between fresh and salt water. It goes into salt water to take up earth forces and get fat. Thus the earth can be said to have a kind of circulation with respect to animal-life as well, as for instance, in the case of salmon. This circulation drives the salmon alternately into the sea and into the river. They go to and fro, to and fro. The whole salmon community goes to and fro. One can see so clearly from the salmon how everything alive on the earth is in movement. If we have learnt this from the salmon, it gives us the picture of something else, something that is always before our eyes and is such a wonderful spectacle: the birds of passage. They travel to and fro in the air, the salmon travels to and fro in the water. Salmon migration in the water is the same as bird migration in the air, except that salmon go to and fro between salt water and fresh water and the birds between the colder and warmer regions that they need. In order to come into the right earth-forces of warmth, birds must go to the south and there they develop their muscles. In order to have the forces of the heavens they must come into the purer air of the north; there they mature the reproductive organs. Such creatures need the whole earth. Only the higher animals, the mammals, and man, have become more independent of the earth, have emancipated themselves and reached a greater independence in their own organisation. This, however, is only apparently the case. In reality we human beings are at the same time actually two people. We are still more — I have told you: physical man, etheric man, etc. But even in the physical man we are really two people, a right man and a left man. The right half of the body is vastly different from the left. I think the minority of you sitting here would be able to write with the left hand; we write with the right hand. But the part of the nervous system connected with speech is situated in the left half of the brain. There are strongly marked convolutions there but none in the corresponding place at the right side. In a left-handed person this is reversed; those who are left-handed have the speech-organisation on the right — not the external organisation, but the internal, which arouses speech. In this respect man is extremely different on left and right. But this is so elsewhere too; the heart is situated more to the left, the stomach is on the left, the liver on the right. But even organs ostensibly symmetrical are not wholly so. Our lungs have (here) on the left two lobes, on the right, three. So the right side of man differs very much from the left side. What is the reason of this? Let us start from something very simple. We do not, as a rule, learn to write with the left hand but with the right hand. This is an activity which depends more on the etheric body. The physical body is heavier and is more developed on the left, the etheric body more on the right. The left forms two lobes; the right, being more active, brings more life into the lungs and forms three lobes. On the left, man is more physical, on the right, more etheric. [See Dr. Steiner's lectures entitled: Anthroposophy, Psychosophy, Pneumatosophy , found in Wisdom of Man, of the Soul, and of the Spirit ] And so too with speech. For right-handed people more nourishment is required by the left part of the brain than the right. And so every possible arrangement is made for man to contain the earth-forces on the left, and more the etheric forces of the heavens on the right. As our modern science is only willing to recognise matter, it is just material things about which it does not know very much. In the education of children it has introduced the harmful practice of making children learn everything with the left and right hand equally. Well, but man is not in the least organised for that! If that practice is carried to excess, education will make people half insane, for the human body is organised to be more physical on the left and more etheric on the right. But what does modern science care about physical, etheric? Both are the same to the scientists — left man, right man. We must be able to penetrate these things through spiritual science if we are to know anything about them. So on the left, man is more earthly, and on the right if the word is not misunderstood — more heavenly, more cosmic. Man has however already largely emancipated himself, as I have said. He develops this left-earthly element, this right-heavenly element in such a way as to be able to carry it about as physical man. It is no longer remarked that on the left he has a tendency to the earth and on the right to the heavens. But there are people who have a greater tendency to the earth and they generally lie on their left side for sleep. People lie on the right side either when they are tired of the left or when they occupy themselves with forces inclining more to the heavens. Such matters are naturally difficult to observe since all sorts of other things come into consideration. When a person lies on the right side it may only be because that is the dark part of the room — that too could be a reason. And although one is not by any means bound to find it so, yet on the whole people tend to sleep on their left side, since that is the earth-side. But man has really emancipated himself from the earth and is independent in what he does. It can be observed however in the animal; one sees the secrets of the world everywhere revealed in a very remarkable way. Imagine that the surface of the sea is here ( drawing on blackboard ); underneath is the salt sea-water with all sorts of substances in it. Now there are certain fish which are quite remarkably organised. They are organised with a very strong inclination to earth-forces, while other fish snatch eagerly at all the light and air that come into the water. They cannot breathe in the air as they have no lungs; they collapse and die in the air, but with their gills they snap at all the air and light coming into the water. But there is a fish called halibut in the larger variety and sole or plaice in the smaller variety which is very good for food. It has great nutritive value, more perhaps than any other fish, and this shows that it inclines to the earth, since foodstuffs come from the earth. The halibut sides with the earth, so to speak. So what may one expect from these fish? We may expect them to show by their habits that they side with the earth. And so they do; they lie down on one side and this becomes pale and white. And so thoroughly do they lie on the one side that the head is twisted round and the eyes are both placed on the other side. A sole looks like this from below ( sketch ); there it is quite flat and white, and on the other side, above, both the eyes are set and the head is turned round, because the sole always lies on the left side. The left side produces the nourishment and is pale and white. The other side takes on colour from the heavens, etc., becomes bluish, brownish and the eyes and head are turned away from the food side. So the sole is quite lop-sided, it has all the organs on the one side while the other is flat and pale. The halibut really produces a great deal of nutritive substance because it inclines to the earth. Some become over 600 lb. in weight. Halibut therefore give a clear demonstration: they always lie on one side since it is the earth that attracts them. If a man could lie just as forcibly every night on his left side, his head would twist round and he too would always peer out from one side. But it does not get as far as this with man; he has emancipated himself, as I have said, and maintains his independence. Still, even man can be affected. One may find, for example, a person with a remarkable complaint: he sees with the right eye, or at any rate sees with one eye somewhat better than with the other. If this is not inborn, one can generally discover by questioning that he lies on the other side for sleeping. The earth-forces are working on the side upon which one very frequently lies and the eye becomes somewhat weak-sighted. It is not affected so strongly as in the case of the halibut, but still slightly. The eye that is turned away from the earth becomes somewhat stronger. You see how remarkable these connections are. I have said that nature somewhere or other shows us with what forces she is working. When one sees a sole — the smaller ones are to be seen in any fish market, the larger ones are in the ocean — one realises that the nutritive part can only be formed just where it is, it must be separate. If these fish need anything from the heavens they must always take on that direction and the reproductive organs can be developed. These fish go about it differently from the salmon; salmon migrate, they go from the North Sea to the Rhine in order to be able to breed. Soles always lie on the one side, so that the heavens work from the other side and in this way they can develop their senses and reproductive organs. And the earth itself, what does the earth do Well, if there were only the salt sea, the earth would long ago have perished; it cannot exist by itself alone. There are not only the salt seas but the freshwater rivers and streams, and the freshwater receives from universal spaces the reproductive forces for the earth. The salt ocean can bring in nothing from the wide universe which will give the earth continuous refreshment. When you go to a spring and the wonderfully pure water is bubbling out, you will notice how green everything is near the spring, what a wonderful scent there is. All is so fresh. Yes, and what is so fresh there by the spring refreshes the whole living earth as well. The earth opens itself there as if through the eyes and sense organs to cosmic space. And one can observe how living creatures like the salmon and the sole make their way to where they can find this. They have a kind of instinct to attach themselves to the earth. The salmon seeks the fresh waters direct, the sole turns to the light by so arranging its body. It cannot come to the springs, but the springs are where the earth turns to the light. The sole, the fish, must turn direct to the light with its own body. These things are immensely instructive, because they show us what is still present in man, but cannot be so well observed since he has broken away from the earth. And if one is not observant of such things one has really no understanding of the whole life of the earth. Indeed, if we look at the ocean and observe the sole, we can realise: Yes, by means of the sole the ocean opens itself everywhere to the heavens! Soles are a proof that the sea is thirsty for the heavens, since its salty content turns away from the universe. One can say that soles express the thirst of the sea for light and air. And if we look at our own circulation, we too, in fact, have fine sense organs, the organs of touch, at the places where we are saltier, where the muscles are situated. Here too man makes himself open to the outer world, though not directly, as through the eyes. These places correspond as it were to the places where soles are to be found in the sea. Soles make themselves open to the heavens and this gives them an extraordinary acuteness. Just as we become skilful when we are able to make good use of our external organs of touch, so the sole becomes skilful through the sea, because it makes itself open to the heavens. Look at what is underneath in the sea — it is heavy and clumsy. Soles, oh! they get terribly cunning, they become sly creatures just by turning away from the sea on one side. Although they turn to the earth-forces as well, they feel: the earth-forces are just for themselves. They accumulate nutritive material — up to about 600 lb. as I said — but soles have these fine sense organs through which they open themselves to the heavens. They eat other fish — smaller ones. But if a sole approached, the other fish would flee away from it on all sides as if from a spectre. For other fish consider it necessary to have eyes at the sides — a sole affects them exactly as if a human being were approaching. The fish would rapidly get away and soles would have nothing to eat if they were not cleverer than the others. But the other fish, those which have an eye at either side, are in fact not so clever as they do not turn so definitely to the heavens. A sole seeks out places where the sea has a sort of little shore in the shallower parts, and there it lies down. It bores into the ground with its flat body, uses its jaws to cover itself a little with sand and then whirls up sand, but so fine that a fish can swim through. Then come the fishes and crabs, do not notice the sole, and instantly when they have passed over, it snatches and snaps at them! The sole does it very cleverly indeed! But of course only a creature could do it which is linked in a close connection with the forces of the universe. Such a creature then has developed its physical body on one side and on the other side it develops especially powerfully the invisible etheric body. We can see just by such things that the forces of intelligence in us are not derived from earthly forces. Earthly forces makes us muscular, give us salts; forces from the heavens give us forces which are at the same time those of reproduction and of intelligence. You see, a man in a certain way is actually a small earth-sphere. Man too consists, as I have often said, of about 90 per cent of water. Man too is a fish, for the solid part which is only 10 per cent, swims there in the water. We are really all of us fish, swimming in our own water. It is even admitted by science that in essentials we are a small ocean. And as the sea sends out rivers, so does our sea, our fluid body send out salt-free juices. We too have our freshwater streams. They lie outside the muscles and bones. On the other hand, within the muscles and bones we have the same salt deposits as the sea has. Our nourishment is actually in the bones and muscles. We are therefore, in this respect too, a small earth-sphere: we have our salt sea in us. If the fluidity, the freshwater streams become too strong — which can easily occur in children if the milk is not rich enough in salts — then the child becomes rickety, gets the so-called “English sickness.” When a person gets too much salt he becomes too much a sea, his bones become brittle and the muscles unwieldy and clumsy. There must always be a balance between our salt consumption and what is contained in other foods. Now what is it that lies in other foodstuffs? Look at a plant: you know now that plants grow because there are salt streams under the earth, returning from the river-mouth, which spread out and make the plants grow. So the plant finds its salt within the earth, but when it emerges from the earth it goes on growing towards the blossoms. The blossom becomes beautifully coloured because it takes up the light. There in the blossom the plant absorbs the light, in the root it absorbs the salt. There outside it becomes a light-bearer, there beneath it becomes a salt-bearer. Down below it is like the sea-part of the earth, up above it is like the heavens. The root is rich in salt, the blossom rich in light. In earlier times this was much better known and what is in the blossom was called “Phosphor.” To-day when everything is materialistic, phosphor is only a solid body. Phos = light, phor = bearer, phosphor = light-bearer; phosphor was actually that in the blossom which carried the light. The mineral “phosphorus” has received its name because of the way it gives out light when it is ignited. But the real light-bearer is the plant- blossom. The plant-blossom is phosphorus. Therefore for those organs in our human body, which as it were contain the freshwater currents, we need light; for the muscles, the bones, for that in us which ought to become salty we need precisely salt and solid ingredients in our food. Between them there must be the right balance — each must be consumed in the right quantity. And so it is too with the earth. However far you may have travelled you will not have seen — nor has the globe-trotter, nor the genuine world traveller anywhere seen that the earth has prepared itself a meal! But nevertheless it does nourish itself, substances are continuously being exchanged, the earthly element is ascending all the time through mist and fog. And you know that the rain-water which falls is distilled; it is pure water and contains nothing else. But the sea is nourished through the salt in rarefied condition from cosmic space. There is no need to keep to meal-times! It is only we men, who have broken away from the earth, who must procure our food from it. The earth is nourished by the fine substances to be found everywhere in the universe. It is fed continuously, but one does not notice it because it is such a fine and delicate process. You see, if you look at a man quite superficially, you do not notice that he is continually absorbing oxygen. So too with the earth, one does not notice that all the time it is receiving nourishment from cosmic space. Now we human beings keep to our meal-times. There we take our nourishment, through the stomach into the lower body. This is quite obvious, extremely obvious. But in breathing it is less obvious. It is in respect of the obvious that social questions arise. One man is better off, another worse off. Men all want to be well off — social questions arise in respect of the obvious. But social questions are not so clear in respect of the air which we all inhale. There it is not so easy to say that one man deprives another — there is a little truth in it, but not very much. In the case of our lower body we differ entirely from the earth. In the matter of breathing we are more like the earth, our breathing is performed almost unnoticed. But in fact we are all the time absorbing iron through our hearing — not only do we hear — we are absorbing iron in a very fine state. Through the eyes we absorb light and other substances too. This can be discovered from those people who are lacking in these substances. Through the nose in particular we take in an immense amount of substance without noticing it! With our lower body we have broken away from the earth and made ourselves free. So there we can only absorb foodstuffs created by the earth, baked and made more solid. We can take in the air because it is in the cosmos, and with our head and the senses we do what the earth does. There we receive nourishment out of the universe in the same way as the earth itself. The head is not formed spherically without reason; it deals with the universe just as the earth does. Only down below gravity enters, there the human body is developed according to the earth; physical hands — this gravity draws downwards. Gravity has not such an influence on the head; that remains spherical. So there we must pass from the visible to the invisible. One must say: The soles would die in spite of feeding on fish and crabs — for they only eat these for the sake of the pale, flat under-body — if they were not to take in what comes from the universe through having made themselves one-sided. These are the fine, the delicate connections through which one looks into the laws and secrets of the cosmos. This is what Spiritual Science must call attention to again and again, namely, that one must learn to know the true laws, not through crude superficial observation but through fine and delicate perception.

Cosmic Workings In Earth and Man

The Circulation of Fluids in the Earth

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/CosmicWorks/19240209v01.html

Dornach

9 Feb 1924

GA352-5

Good morning, gentlemen. Have you perhaps thought of something you would like to have for today? Mr Burle: If one might ask Dr Steiner perhaps about human clothing, the garments people wear. In some countries people have just a rag that they wrap around them; others are buttoned up. One has shimmering colours, the other simple colours. Then one might also ask about the national costumes worn by a nation or by particular people. And also what waving flags are and — this may be connected with this-what ecstasy it causes? Rudolf Steiner: Concerning human clothing — people have often thought, as you can imagine, why it is that there are so few documents and historical records about it. You see the clothes worn by simpler nations and tribes, and you also see the clothes worn by the people in the town where you yourself are at home. And finally one sees what one is putting on oneself, really paying least attention to the things one wears oneself. One simply goes along with custom in this. Indeed, to some extent one simply has to do this because otherwise one might be taken for half a fool if not a complete fool. Now I think you'll agree the first question is the one that is probably hardest to answer for scientists considering only outer aspects, because, as I said, there are few written records about the reasons why people originally put on clothes. If you really consider everything that is available in this direction, you have to say to yourself: yes, much of what there is with regard to clothing has clearly come from people's need to have protection, the need to protect themselves from the influences of the environment. You must remember that animals have their own protection. Animals are very largely protected from external influences, which cannot get through their pelt, their skin, and so on and reach the more delicate, softer parts of the organism. You may ask yourselves why people do not have such natural protection. I am not going to give too much consideration to this question, which is asking for the reason why, for with nature it is not really quite justifiable to ask the reason why. Nature simply puts the creatures there, and one simply has to study how they present themselves. The question why is never quite justifiable. But we'll understand one another if in spite of this I say: how come that man has to go about as he is, unclothed by nature? Another question we must ask is whether the natural covering which animals have by nature does not clearly relate to the less advanced mental organization of the animals. And that is so. You see, gentlemen, it really is the case that sometimes the parts that are most important in a living creature, an animal and also in the human being, do not appear to be the most important to outer appearances. We can mention several organs in the human organism that are very small indeed. If they are not the way they are supposed to be the whole human organism breaks up. Here in the thyroid glands, for instance, tiny organs lie on either side — I have mentioned them in another context before 13 Parathyroid glands (epithelial bodies). Mentioned in lecture given on 2 December 1922. GA 348. — they are barely the size of a pinhead. Now one might think them to be less important. But if it should ever happen that someone needed a thyroid operation, a goitre operation, and the surgeon were clumsy enough to remove these tiny pinhead-sized organs as well, the whole organism would get sick. The individual would grow imbecile and gradually die of debility. Tiny organs the size of a pinhead thus have the greatest imaginable importance for the whole of human life. They have it because these organs secrete a subtle matter that must enter into the blood. The blood will be useless unless these organs are present and their secretions flow into the blood. You can see, therefore, that even organs to which one pays little attention in the whole system have the greatest imaginable importance for the individual in whom they are found. Take animals with hairy pelts, for instance. Now you can imagine that a pelt is useful to prevent the animals being cold in winter, and so on. And yes, it is useful for this. But for those hairs to develop in the skin the animal must be exposed to very strong sun influences. The hair develops in no other way but that the animal is exposed to powerful sun influences. Now you might say: 'Yes, but the hairs develop not only in the places that are reached by the sun's rays.' But it is true, nevertheless. It even goes so far that the human embryo is hairy in the early stages when it is carried in the mother's womb. There you may say: 'It is not exposed to the sun.' The embryo later loses that hair. Why is that so? It is so because the mother takes in the sun's influence and this is active inside her. Hair is very closely connected with the Sun's influence. Take the lion, for example. Lions —and the males have that huge mane —are very much exposed to the sun. This also gives them chest organs that grow particularly strong under the sun's influence. The intestine is quite short, and the lungs are tremendously developed. The lion differs in this from our ruminants, in whom the organs of the lower body, intestines, stomach, and so on, are more developed. The way in which an animal has hair, feathers, and so on, thus relates above all to the sun's influence. Yet again, if the sun's influence on a life form is very great then this life form allows the sun to think within it, to will in it—it does not become independent. Human beings are independent because they do not have this outer protection but are more or less exposed to their earthly environment. It is indeed interesting to note that animals are less dependent on the earth than humans are. Animals are largely created from outside the earth. I have provided evidence of this for you everywhere. But human beings are emancipated from these outside natural influences. And that is because they have an unprotected skin, as it were, in all directions, and must find their own protection. Looking at the clothes we ordinarily wear you can see that there are two parts to them. One part is evident from the fact that in winter we put on a winter coat to protect us from the cold. This is the part of our clothing where we seek protection. But it is not the only part. You can see for instance, especially in women, that they look not only for protection in their clothes but also arrange them in a way they find beautiful. It may often be horrible, but it is supposed to be beautiful. This is a matter of taste or lack of taste, but it is meant to be beautiful, to adorn. These are the two functions of our clothing — to provide protection from the outside world and to adorn. One of these functions has developed more in the north, where people need protection. There the clothing that is worn has more of a protect-yourself character. People actually do not go to great lengths when it comes to protection. But in warmer regions, regions where whole nations go about practically naked, really, the decorative aspect makes up the little, or if they put on more garments, the main part of their clothing. You no doubt know that higher civilization has actually come from the warmer regions, that more of the life of mind and spirit has come from warmer regions. Considering the clothes people wear, we can therefore always see that in a sense the type of clothing designed to protect people from outside influences has remained imperfect. The clothing designed to adorn, on the other hand, has been developed in all kinds of ways. Now it is of course a question of people's taste, as you'll agree. The whole inner attitude of people comes into this. Let us think of more primitive peoples who are less sophisticated and more aboriginal. Such peoples have a great sense of colour. In our regions, where we are, of course, far advanced in intellect —or at least consider ourselves to be so — we do not have the sense of colour that the more aboriginal peoples have. But those more aboriginal peoples also have a sense for something very different. They have a sense for it that human beings have supersensible, spiritual aspects. People in 'civilized' parts of the world no longer believe today that there are people who may not be as clever as civilized people consider themselves to be but have a sense for it that human beings have a supersensible aspect. And they sense this aspect in colour. That is how it is with those simple peoples, they sense that there is a supersensible aspect to them — I have called it the astral body —and sense its colours, and they want to make this invisible part of themselves visible. So they adorn themselves in red or blue, depending on whether they see themselves as blue or whatever in the astral sphere. This comes from the view of themselves that comes to these people from the world of the spirit. The Greeks, for instance, saw that the human ether head is much bigger than the physical head, that it projects, and they therefore endowed the goddess Pallas Athene with a kind of helmet. But if you look at Pallas Athene and examine the helmet she is wearing you can see that the helmet has something like eyes at the top. You can see this everywhere; just look at Pallas Athene, even a poor quality statue, and you see eyes up there on the helmet. This proves to you that people believed it was really part of the body. It is something one is also able to see; they put it on Athene. And the kind of clothing people created in regions where they had a feeling for the supersensible human being was made to show how they saw this human astral body. Now in our regions — you know this, gentlemen — only ritual garments are arranged to be really colourful. If you look at the ritual garments, they are certainly arranged according to the way people saw the astral body with their inner eye. The colours used and the design of the garments basically derive from the supersensible sphere. And it is only if we understand this that we understand to what extent clothing is made decorative. This is also most important. If you look at pictures painted by the old masters you see that Mary, for instance, always wears a particular kind of dress and a particular kind of over-garment. This is meant to indicate the nature of her astral body, her heart and soul. This is meant to be indicated by her clothes. Compare pictures where Mary appears together with Mary Magdalene, you will always find that the old masters saw Mary and Mary Magdalene in a different light by the way they presented them, for this was thought to lie in their astral bodies, and the garments were painted to indicate the colour nature of the astral body. We civilized people have entered more deeply into materialism, and no longer have a feeling for this supersensible aspect of the human being. We think with our earthly intellect and think the earthly intellect is master of it all. Indeed, gentlemen, this is also why we no longer have any feeling about dressing in a way that the clothes we wear would make us look at least half-way human! We put our legs —if we are men —into tubes. That is probably the plainest kind of garment you can have, this trouser tube! But we do much more; if we want to be particularly posh we stick a stove-pipe on our heads. Just imagine the face of an ancient Greek, if he were able to rise and someone would come towards him who has stuck his legs into two tubes and, what is more, has a tall stove-pipe up there, and what makes it even worse, in black! The Greek would not think this was a human being but an unbelievable spectre. This is something we must think about. And it even goes so far that one cuts away pieces of the coat, which is ugly enough as it is, and then calls it a tail coat. This is something which shows more than anything how thoughtless humanity has become. It is just because we are used to it, and, as I said, you are considered half a fool if not a complete fool if you do not join in, that we do join in with this. But we have to be aware that the whole way men dress today does rather remind one of a madhouse, especially when it is supposed to be utterly normal. It does show that people have gradually left all reality behind. Women — and many men used to think they were less civilized than men—have adhered more to the original ways with their clothing. But there is a trend today to make women's clothing more like men's clothing, only it has not quite worked out so far. To adorn—what does it mean, really? To present oneself outwardly in such a way that one also gives expression to what the human being is in spirit! To see how everything connected with clothing developed in more aboriginal nations we have to realize, in this respect, that among those aboriginal nations people did not feel themselves to be as independent as people today feel themselves to be independent. Today everyone feels himself an independent person, quite rightly so in some respects. Now you see, he will say to himself: 'I have my own mind and use it to think of everything I am able to do.' If he is particularly conceited, he will immediately see himself as a reformer, and so we have almost as many reformers today as there are people in the world. People thus consider themselves to be absolutely individual. No such thing existed among earlier peoples and tribes. Those tribes saw themselves to be at one as a group, with a spiritual entity their group soul. They considered themselves part of the group, like the members of a body, and the group soul was to them the element that kept them together. Within this group sphere they thought themselves to have quite a specific configuration, and they brought this to expression in the clothes they wore. So if they thought of their group soul as having a helmet-like extension to the head, as in Greece, for example, they would wear a helmet (Fig. 12). And that helmet did not develop from any need for protection, but because people believed they would be more like their group soul if they wore a helmet. In the same way some group souls were thought to be eagles, vultures or other animals, owls, and so on. People then organized their clothing accordingly, decorating it with feathers or the like, so that they would be similar to the group soul. Clothes thus evolved largely to meet the spiritual needs of people. Among the aboriginal nations and tribes the clothes showed a little bit how they imagined their group soul to be. And when you find an aboriginal nation and ask yourself how they dress, and above all adorn themselves, do they adorn themselves with feathers or an animal skin, you can say that if you find a tribe that adorns itself mainly with feathers, you know their common group soul, their guardian spirit, as it were, was thought to be a bird. If you find that a nation adorns itself mainly with animal skins, they imagined their group soul, their guardian spirit, as it were, to be a lion or a tiger or something of this kind. We can therefore find out something about the original clothes people wore by asking ourselves how those people envisaged their group soul. And Mr Burle was quite right when he said that some wear floating garments, others close-fitting ones. Floating garments evolved because people wanted to make bird-clothes, garments with wings; it pleased them to have something winglike. And it actually had a great effect on people's skill development to acquire such floating garments. And when they rotated they would also make pleasing movements with their arms. This made them skilful and so on. So we may well say: to adorn oneself is to have the will to bring something spiritual to expression in the clothes worn at the time. And merely to protect oneself and this is not, of course, to say anything against it— gives expression to the uninspired aspect of the human being. The more one seeks to use clothes that serve only to protect, the more one is lacking in inspiration. The more one seeks to adorn oneself, the less does one lack in inspiration, really wanting to give expression to the spiritual quality to be found in the dignity of man. It is perfectly natural that these things shifted completely in later stages of civilization. We have to be clear about the following, for instance. Imagine those early peoples discovering that the sun has a special influence on the human heart, the human chest altogether, and saying to themselves: 'I am a person with heart only because the sun is able to have the right influence. Not outwardly, on the skin, for then I would be completely hairy, but when they are inwardly digested, the sun's rays act on the heart.' The heart is quite rightly seen in relation to the actions of the sun. What did people do who still were very much alive to knowledge of this connection with the sun? Well, you see, they tied a kind of medallion around their necks, a medallion representing the sun (Fig. 13). They would wear this to say: 'I make it known that the sun has an influence on the heart.' Later on this would be forgotten, of course. Civilized people have forgotten that this was originally a sign that the sun has an influence on the heart. But something which once had meaning has become habit, truly a habit. And people then put on such things from habit, no longer having any idea why it was worn originally. Such habits develop first of all; later governments lay claim to them, making them their possession. This is essentially all there is to the so-called 'advancement' of states and governments — they take possession of things that have become habit. Someone discovers — only a human being can discover it—a medicine, let us say. This arises from his mind and spirit. The government then lays claim to this medicine for itself, saying: 'It may only be sold in one place or another with my permission.' In the end, therefore, it comes from the government. That is also what happened to the sun medallion. People originally created and wore it from personal knowledge, and later out of habit. Then the governments said: 'Oh no, you cannot do this of your own accord, but we must first give you permission to create and wear it.' And that is how medals and decorations developed. Today governments adorn their adherents with medals. Medals have of course lost all meaning by now. But anyone who grumbles about medals and decorations should also know that they did have real meaning originally, that they have evolved from something that had meaning. You see, that is what has happened with many of the original garments. The ancient Romans and Greeks still knew that if they went about showing their naked bodies that would not be the whole human being, for there was also a supersensible body. They imitated this supersensible body in the toga, and that is how the toga was created. The Romans therefore wanted to reproduce the supersensible body. The toga is nothing but the astral body. And the folds so skilfully made in the garment showed the forces of the astral body. People of modern times, no longer having any knowledge of the real spiritual human being, knew no better than to take the old garments and, in order to have something new, cut off little bits here and there, first shortening the part that came close to the ground, and then making it as far as possible a garment you could slip into, and gradually changing it until it had become the modern man's jacket. The modern man's jacket is nothing but the chopped-up toga of old, only one does not recognize it as such. Take belts, for instance. Now, the belt developed because people knew they were divided off in the middle in a way no animal is divided. No animal has the kind of diaphragm that human beings have, for example. And this division in the middle does not have the significance in any animal which it has in human beings. Just look at it and compare. People are forgetting about this today in the most incredible way. So they often compare the length of a person with that of an animal in order to establish something or other, for instance how much food an animal and a human being needs. But just think: there you have an animal, and there a human being (Fig. 14). Someone measures the length of the animal and the length of a human being. Well, gentlemen, can we compare the two? That is nonsense. The length measured in the animal is only this part in the human being. You can therefore only compare the length a person has from the top of the head down to the lumbar part, here, to compare it with the animal world. Or if you want to compare this part of the human being with the animal you can compare it with the two hind limbs of the animal. It is really true that thoughtlessness often goes a very long way. Now when primitive people became aware of the significance of this division which humans have in the middle, they indicated this with a body belt. So here, too, a human property was indicated, by the body belt. And you see if the nature of the human being is truly recognized, one will know, for instance, that a special power actually relating to thinking lies in the crook of the knee. And the crook of the knee was therefore adorned — we can no longer decorate it specially today because it is covered by the trouser tube. This later became the Order of the Garter in the way I have described. All these things have evolved from genuine perceptions; they did not evolve in the terrible kind of abstract, theoretical thinking we have today. And you see, modern clothes have also lost all their colour. The question is, why did they lose their colour? Because one's feeling for the supersensible is best expressed in colour. And the more people delight in colour, the more are they really inclined to grasp the supersensible in some way or other. Our age likes grey in grey, however, colours that are as colourless as possible. The reason for this may be indicated by the saying: 'When candles are away all cats are grey.' For modern people no longer look into the light at all, I mean the light of the spirit. Everything has become grey for them. And they show this most in their clothes. They no longer know what colour they should use to adorn themselves, and so they do not adorn themselves with any colour. One can really see that everything by way of clothing is connected with things people still knew in the past, when they knew about the supersensible human being. And civilization in general has turned grey. But for some purposes in life the original colourful nature has remained, though people do not know where it comes from. The kind of clothes our military people wear in a modern nation have of course developed at a time when people increasingly needed to defend themselves. And you can examine every part of military clothing to see if it has some connection with means of defence or attack. Basically we may say that all military clothes are really obsolete today, for one no longer understands them. You see, the jacket of a modern suit can be understood, for it has developed out of the Roman toga. But a military uniform coat can only be understood if one explains it not in terms of a Roman toga, with its folds, that has been distorted into caricature, but out of medieval knighthood, when the whole was a kind of cuirass. The cuirass has been reshaped. Flags were also mentioned (as part of the question). You see, the situation concerning flags is this. Originally the heraldic animal would be depicted on the flag—it need not necessarily have been an animal. But what was this animal? It was the group soul, the soul that kept people together. And they wanted to have an image of it before them when they were together as a group. They made it into a flag. And flags actually are proof that common ideas people had were used to create their flag. Here it is particularly important to be clear in our minds that the old masters were much closer to reality in their work than modern painters. Today people paint pictures which are framed and hung somewhere because that is what one has got used to. Basically it is meaningless. Why should one hang a picture on a wall? That is the question we must ask. In earlier times it was like this. People had altars, and they painted the image on the altar that should come to mind when one stood before the altar. They had churches, and people walked about in them. On the walls they painted the things that should come to mind one after the other as one walked around. This had meaning. It related to what went on in people's minds. And in the knights' castles of old —well, what was the knighthood based on in those days? It was based on the fact that its members always looked up to their ancestors. The ancestors were more important to them than they were themselves. Someone who had a great many ancestors counted more. And so they would hang up paintings of their ancestors. And again it had meaning. It was only when this meaning was lost that landscape painting evolved. And landscape painting —to have a landscape hanging on your wall, well, you know, it is something people may like. I do not want to be at all horrible in this respect and decry all landscape painting, but you have to accept that a painted landscape can never be the same as when you go out into the landscape yourself! And landscape painting really only began to develop when people no longer had any real feeling for nature. If you look at paintings done just a few centuries ago — yes, take a look also at paintings by Raphael or Leonardo 14 Raphael Santi, 1483-1520. Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519. — and you'll see that they painted people. The landscape is just hinted at, quite childlike really, because people agreed that landscapes should be looked at outside, in nature. One can, however, bring a great deal to expression in a human being; man is not just nature, and one can bring different things to expression. And so Raphael was able to bring much to expression in Mary. You may know the painting that is in Dresden — Mary with the Jesus child on her left arm, with clouds above. And then there are two figures down below — Pope Sixtus IV and St Barbara. This is the painting known as the Sistine Madonna. Well, gentlemen, Raphael did not paint this picture so that it might be hung somewhere but he actually only painted Mary with the Jesus child so that a banner might be made to be carried ahead of processions. They had these processions where people go out into the fields to an altar, and they always had a banner that was carried before them. They would stop at the altar, where people would kneel down. Later on someone added the saints Sixtus and Barbara. They do not at all belong in the picture, and the quality of the painting is terrible compared to Raphael's own work. But people don't notice this. Some admire the somewhat repulsive figure of Barbara in this painting just as much as they admire what Mary and the Jesus child themselves are! All these things show you that people have moved away from the things that gave meaning to painting. Why did Raphael paint this picture for a church banner? Because people were to have this common idea as they went in the procession — which was in accord with the feeling out of which flags and banners were actually produced. Then the desire arose to give at least some kind of meaning to things that have come down to us from earlier times, when they did have real meaning. Going to some places today, to Finland, for instance, you will see people wearing the old clothes again. People who especially want to be members of their nation wear the old garments again that had been forgotten and are now brought back again. But people no longer live in the times when the old instincts were there that gave those clothes their meaning. Today we would have to find a way of dressing that arises from the life of mind and spirit we have today, just as those earlier peoples found their way of dressing out of what lived in their minds, out of what they felt to be the right way of dressing, considering the world and the human race. But people are no longer able to do this today because they know nothing of the real —that is, the spiritual—human being. And so it has happened that we wear garments today that really are quite meaningless and simply come into existence merely because meaninglessness is taken to extremes. People originally wore belts to show that this was a special area. The belt was used to express this. Later on, people saw the belt, say that the person was divided at that point; they then made this division themselves using a belt. Instead of expressing something, the belt often made women's garments such that they did not express something but tremendously compressed the liver and the stomach and all kinds of things here. It is fair to say that much of what has developed in the materialist age has developed from lack of meaning, in utter meaninglessness. Things we have to recognize as nonsense today did have a particular meaning among primitive peoples. Let us assume, for instance, that some wild tribes have the peculiarity that they do not clothe themselves by pulling on garments but in some other way. A garment is really something, you'll agree, that adorns, adding something to what the human being is. The significance of the garment is really suggestion, revelation. The invisible is thus to be revealed in the garment. And the wild tribes thought—they still do so today, and so do other people —one does not necessarily need fabrics to clothe oneself, one can also dress by making all kinds of drawings on the body. They adorn themselves by tattooing, as it is called. People thus make all kinds of marks on their bodies. Well, gentlemen, those signs which people drew on their bodies originally had great significance. Let us assume, for example, someone scratches a heart shape on his body. This has no significance when he is awake, walking about during the day. But when he is sleeping, this heart scratched into the skin makes a highly significant impression on the sleeping soul, and becomes a thought in the sleeping soul, a thought he will of course have forgotten when he returns to conscious awareness in the morning. Tattooing therefore originally developed out of the intention to influence the human being even in sleep. This, too, lost significance later, even among primitive peoples, at least to the extent that people do it only from habit, continuing out of habit, but it has lost its meaning. Now you see, you have to take all these things into account. You will then see that clothes developed partly from a desire for protection, and in the main part, most of all, from a desire to adorn oneself. And this adornment has to do with people making the supersensible outwardly apparent. And it then happened specifically with regard to clothing that people gradually knew no more than that one wears them. And that is how national costumes developed. Obviously people for whom there was greater necessity to protect themselves would have close-fitting garments, thick garments, weighing the whole body down, more or less, with garments, or at least the parts that were more exposed to the cold. Someone living in a warmer climate would develop the decorative aspect much more strongly, would be wearing thinner garments, floating garments, and so on. It would to some extent depend on the whole environment, on the climate, how people partly protected and partly adorned themselves. Then people forgot about this. When tribes began to migrate it could happen that a people coming from a region where the clothing was appropriate to the region moved to another region where one really could not see why this kind of clothing should be suitable for these people — but they kept them from habit. And so it is often very difficult today to discover why people wear a particular kind of clothing by just considering their immediate environment. And we can see, can't we, that people are simply no longer thinking. They are like a polar bear who is given a white garb because this does not stand out much from the snows in the Arctic and therefore means protection from pursuit and so on. Well, if the polar bear were to wear this in a warm climate it clearly would not offer protection! That is the way it is altogether. People stick to the things they are used to without being fully aware of their meaning. Because of this it is not so easy today to know from the way people dress why a particular nation dresses in a particular way. As I said, we have to go back to earlier times for this. You'll find, for instance, that the Magyar costume worn in Hungary is something quite special. The Hungarians wear fairly high boots with narrow shafts, close-fitting trousers inserted in those shafts, and a jacket that fits closely. Everything has been modernized, has lost its original meaning, but it indicates something that is also evident in the Hungarian language, for its original terms are largely hunting terms. It is really strange. If you go to Pest, for example, you may, as you cross the road, see a sign that says: Kave Ház . This is nothing other than 'Coffee House'! It is not Hungarian or Magyar, of course, but comes from the German Kaffeehaus , with just minor changes. People will say Kave Ház without realizing that it is really a German word. But if one leaves aside the many words coming from the Latin or German in Magyar, one realizes the language consists largely of hunting terms, and that the Magyars were originally hunters. And if you consider the costume, you see that it is a style that was originally the most comfortable for hunters. It then came to be modernized and changed. There you can still understand it, at a pinch. But when one sees the clothes people wear today, one cannot understand anything very much. Now, Mr Burle, have some things become clear with the things I have said? Mr Burle: Fairly! Now, we'll continue with the lectures next Saturday. Perhaps the one or the other of you will still think of something you'd like to ask.

From Elephants to Einstein

Human clothing

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA352/English/RSP1998/19240213p02.html

Dornach

13 Feb 1924

GA352-6

Good morning, gentlemen. Is there anything special you would like to have today? Mr Müller: Yes, a small query. Dr Steiner recently spoke about arsenic and very large children. Years ago I always saw such large children at the fair. I realized afterwards that the children who were shown at the fair had been at most 8, 12 or 16 years old. Children artificially brought to that state would sometimes come from Hungary. And since Dr Steiner said that arsenic is commonly found in the rocks there, I would like to ask what age such children may reach, children who have been artificially brought up on arsenic to make them large. Would it not be possible to take people who bring up children on arsenic to court and get the law to forbid people to do such things? Or is it only done very secretly as a source of business? Dr Steiner mentioned that people who were able to stop the arsenic at a certain stage did come down again. That was not the case with these children; these were children who weighed about two hundredweight although they were only about 16. Surely they would have a difficult future ahead? Dr Steiner also spoke about alcohol, that we produce alcohol in our bodies, and about the different effects of alcohol. One person gets extremely upset, making a row, and so on, and another is very quiet. Yet another has problems with his eyes, which is what happens to me. After one, two, three glasses I have hard granules in my eyes the next morning that one can hardly squash with one's fingers, as the result of taking alcohol. Then Dr Steiner also said that one could, as it were, detect all diseases in the eyes. Now there are also people who say they can recognize all diseases by just looking at the urine. There is someone like that in Basel; would that be right? I can't believe it. I'd also like to ask how it is when people get some medicine somewhere and firmly believe in it-would that contribute to the cure? Then I'd also refer to Dr Steiner's last but one talk, about fresh water. There's a pond near Darmstadt where hot water comes in all the time from the chemical industry — it is actually steaming - and in this pond are thousands and thousands of goldfish and every one of them is dark red all over. How does that happen ? They are dark red all over. Rudolf Steiner: So the first question was about the fatty children. It is true, as you thought quite rightly, that these children who are shown in all kinds of fair booths as something remarkable are fattened up artificially with arsenic or similar substances—you see, many other substances are similar to arsenic. And they are not particularly strong, those children, as one could test quite easily, but are merely fat, large. Now you see, there is something much more complicated involved than what I said recently about adults taking arsenic. What I said then had to do with adults. They get into the kind of states I was speaking of. In these children, and it is indeed true that a crime is being committed against them — one cannot deny this —the action of the arsenic or similar substances is also due to something else. These children have to be treated in this criminal fashion at about the age I have always told you is an important period in life — in the years between the changing of the teeth, which would be their 6th or 7th year, and sexual maturity, which would be in their 14th or 15th year. And you see, at this age a child is not only such that one sends it to school, to the ordinary primary school, but something else happens as well. You will remember, gentlemen, that I told you human beings consist not only of this physical body, which we see with our eyes and can touch with our hands, but also of supersensible soul and spirit aspects. One of the subtle bodies I called the human ether body. We have to consider this ether body in human development just as we do the physical body. To draw this rather schematically, we have the human being in his physical body (Fig. 15). But around this physical body and also inside it is this subtle body, the ether body. And apart from the physical body and the ether body — where even the ether body cannot be seen with our ordinary eyes — there is also the astral body in the human being, which is able to sense things. Plants still have an ether body, they can grow; that is because of the ether body. The human being and animals have an astral body; they can sense things, feel. Plants cannot do this. I told you that some people think a plant is able to feel; it definitely cannot. You see, gentlemen, with every substance that has an effect on human beings we must ask ourselves: on which of these different aspects does the substance have an effect? Arsenic acts particularly on the astral body and very powerfully on our breathing. Our breathing depends on the astral body. When one gives arsenic to someone, all the consequences which the arsenic has come by the roundabout route via the astral body. When a person lives through the early years, from birth until, let us say, the changing of the teeth in the 7th or 8th year, it is mainly the physical human body which develops. You can see this physical body developing. Look at a very small baby that has only just been born. You'll not really be able to say at that time if he looks more like his father or his mother. You know how it is, with aunts and uncles coming to the house when such a child has been born. One will say: 'Oh, he's the spitting image of his mother — especially the feet!' Another comes and says: 'Looks exactly like his father.' That is the way it is. An infant has not developed in decided way in his physical body, and it will only be later that one can see whom he resembles. Just look at the nose, a most expressive organ. The nose of a young infant may look very different from what it will be later on. This will be at a later time for some, but as a rule it is the case that when the changing of the teeth comes, the nose, which is relatively late in developing its proper form, its proper configuration, will have the right form. Later, after the 7th or 8th year, the physical body really only increases in size, with the muscles getting stronger, but it has his actual form, its configuration, by the 7th year. The situation is, then, that it is mainly the physical body which comes to expression between the 1st and 7th years of life. And between the changing of the teeth and sexual maturity, between the 7th or 8th year and the 14th or 15th year, it is mainly the ether body which develops. This is the body that holds the powers of nutrition and growth. And the astral body only comes to develop between the 14th or 15th and the 20th or 21st years. It is only then that the astral body really develops. It is not that it would not be there before — we have it from birth — but the real development of the astral body happens only after the 14th or 15th year. When an adult who has passed his 14th or 15th year is given arsenic, he has developed his astral body. The arsenic is taking effect in him, but the organism is able to resist a little. But when a child between the 7th and 15th year is given arsenic, the astral body has not been developed, and the full power of the arsenic is brought to bear on the child. No power of resistance exists in the organism at that time. And the result is that the arsenic action, which above all causes masses of fat to be deposited, with everything turning to fat, causes everything to become spherical, growing sideways between the 7th and the 14th or 15th year. You have to consider that the things I am telling you have tremendous importance where life is concerned. I know every one of you may say: 'Oh well, you are telling us that arsenic given to a child between the 7th and 14th or 15th years plays a great role, making the child fat, spherical, but I know people who have grown extremely large from childhood without having been given extra arsenic.' Yes, gentlemen, but you have to consider that the substances that occur in nature may be found everywhere, at least in small amounts. And we may say that people cannot take nourishment, or a child cannot take nourishment, without taking something that contains arsenic. Arsenic is also present in our foods. Now you know that children have different tastes, different preferences. One child likes to eat one thing, another something else. And there are children who have a real preference for foods that contain arsenic. Later in life it may also still happen that one gets fat from things one enjoys eating. If you eat things you do not like you get thin as a rake. If you eat things you enjoy and also have the time to give yourself up to it, you will get large and fat. This is especially so with children, and above all with children between the 7th and 14th or 15th years. If children have such a yen for foods that contain arsenic they get large and fat. But the children exhibited in fair booths and so on —as mentioned by Mr Muller—are given arsenic artificially, just as in Alpine regions, and this is also the case in Hungary, where arsenic is found in the rocks in the mountain areas. These children are therefore given arsenic, and the main thing is that the child develops a taste for arsenic exactly at this age. It is horrible, but it is so. The child gradually begins to desire this arsenic, as if it were sugar, and takes it, and it then happens that the child gets large and fat before its astral body has properly developed. And such children can be put on show because they are something abnormal, gaining a terrible amount of weight. And people then consider it something worth looking at. People always want to see things that are unusual, and what will people not do to offer others something they enjoy. There are also quite different things designed to give people pleasure. There is something else, for example, which is done with boys at that same age. You know that the human voice changes at the time when sexual maturity is reached, in the 14th or 15th year. It changes in boys — in girls changes have more to do with breast development and so on. But with boys the voice changes. A bad practice —it had become a great art especially in ancient Rome — is to castrate boys to keep their voices boyish, really high voices. Castration means to cut out their sexual organs. This gives you the famous choir boys with their tremendously high voices. Now you see, that is an even worse practice. But it is done under the pretence of being for sacred purposes. I don't know if you know it or not. So these things also exist, and we have to understand that there have been such things in this world, and that people really do all kinds of things so that even human nature may become something for exhibition and show. If one considers the consequences of such things, it is like this. When someone has been given this arsenic in his young days and has grown large and fat, when the time comes to develop his astral body it will be much too small for the large body. It will be much too small and feeble. And the result is that when sexual maturity is reached and the astral body should begin to develop, this astral body is indeed much too small and feeble for the large, fat body. And children who have been fed arsenic in this way and dragged around the show booths will then have an astral body that is too small. And the result of this will be that certain organs do not develop at all. The organs will be flaccid then, completely flaccid. And it is above all the lungs which grow flaccid in these children. This is sometimes most painful to see, for in their 20th year or even earlier these children get into a state where they really are no longer able to breathe. This is not only because the lungs drown in the fat but because they grow flaccid, having no energy. And then comes a situation where something special happens with the lung. You see, gentlemen, the lung is not just an organ for breathing, the lung is also an important organ of nutrition, and the lung has to be properly nourished if a person is to go on living in the right way. Most lung diseases are not at all due to the breathing being unhealthy but to the lung not being properly nourished. In these children it is no longer properly nourished from the 17th or l8th year onwards, because fatty degeneration of all the organs means that nutrients do not reach the lung at all. They may be said to reach the lung last, although it needs to be nourished. Foods go through all kinds of changes in the human body, as I have shown you. They go through six or seven changes. And the lung needs foods that have been changed seven times, these most precious things. This transformation does not happen, however, in those children. Most of them are therefore dead by their early twenties. And it is absolutely true to say that children who are exhibited at fairs in this way will be dead by their early twenties. They either die of debility or they develop lung disease. Most of them die of lung disease. It is because of this that one does not see such people at a later stage, as you said, for they die before that. It is of course difficult to take legal measures against such things. People should see to it that it stops, just as people should do more themselves to create the right kind of social life and not always scream for the law right away. But I am also convinced that very few people know about the things I have just told you, for example. Very few people know how much more harmful arsenic is at the very age when it is given to these children than later on in life, for example. And I still believe that if people are informed about these things then the matter will improve even without legislation, without coercion, without always cracking the whip. But how can things get better if one is unable to make the truth known! I know you'll say: 'Well, we did not have much education, we cannot know this, but we are sure the university professors will know it.' They do not know it at all. They simply do not know. And this is why such things are not made known. And it is important that it is understood by as many people as possible. Such things should and must be known. Something similar, though also very different, is the case with alcohol. We have talked about alcohol before. But of course in the case of this arsenic poisoning, which leads to fatty degeneration, someone else gives it to the children, and when an adult takes arsenic he really does so in full awareness. And it has to be said that here it would have a tremendous effect if people were informed. We might well say that someone who takes arsenic simply from vanity, as I have told you, could be given the information. And if he really understands the consequences he may well not do it. With alcohol, on the other hand, the problem is so great because enlightenment does not help much in this case — unless people stop taking alcohol altogether. For once they start and take one or two glasses they get into a state where enlightenment fades away, and they will then go on drinking. This is why it is particularly difficult to achieve much by informing people about alcohol. Enlightenment should of course be effective in this case, and the fact that this is exactly the area where one has to resort so much to the law is really a sad thing in terms of people's strength of mind. There are countries today—just think of North America — where laws actually forbid the import of alcohol, in order to make people be sensible. Well, if we get to the point where people will only be sensible, and altogether useful, if everything is prescribed by law, then the human race is not worth much any more here on earth. The situation with alcohol is this. I have told you that human beings produce their own alcohol in their bodies. This is because they need alcohol to preserve themselves. And you can be sure, gentlemen, the alcohol you produce yourselves will never make you drunk! The amount is just as much as you need to preserve the foods in you, making things last that should last in you. You'll realize the purpose, of course, of the alcohol we produce ourselves. You'll also have seen here or there that to preserve a dead animal, or some part of the human body, it is no good to leave it exposed to the air, and it has to be put in spirits, into alcohol. Alcohol thus keeps the form and structure of living things that have died. This is altogether a most important law of nature. What happens when you leave living things that have died to nature? The human body begins to perish the moment it is given over to the earth, it is dissolved. And that is how it is with all living things. The moment the ether body has left a living thing, that thing is destroyed, except if one uses such means as alcohol. Alcohol thus has the power to keep together those other powers that keep living things together. You can see from this that alcohol is not earthly. There is also something else that will show you that alcohol is not earthly in the ordinary way. The human body and the animal body and the plant body are destroyed by the earthly element, but they are preserved, as we say, kept from being destroyed, by alcohol. But how does alcohol come into existence? Well, you just have to look at a grape vine. Alcohol develops in the very place where the sun is able to shine most on the vine. And you know that grape vines do not thrive in northern Germany, for it gets too cold there, and the sun no longer has the power that is needed. If you draw a line parallel to the equator through Gruenberg in Silesia — very few people get drunk on Gruenberger wine, for it's as sour as may be! Wine can only be produced in places where the sun has that power on plants. Wine is therefore produced not by something earthly, but exactly by something from beyond the earth, the sun principle, something that is beyond the earth. People need to be altogether very cautious about taking in things that come from beyond this earth. How does it happen that people produce their own alcohol inside? It happens like this, and I am going to tell you something that will probably interest you especially, only one has to pay a bit of attention to understand it. You see, where is solar energy, gentlemen? Solar energy exists in everything the sun shines on. Do observe —let's make it really easy to see. On a really hot summer day I put my chair out there in the burning sun, and leave it there for some hours before inviting you to take a seat. You sit down on the chair. Wow, you think, that's got really hot! Now I think you'll agree it is not a case of the sun shining on the particular organ, making you feel hot. If you had stood in the same place for that length of time, assuming the appropriate posture, the organ in question would have got as hot as the chair, and you would have felt it in your own body. But that is not the case; the chair has got hot. So you see, an ordinary, lifeless body has taken up the sun's heat and then passed it on to you. It is much more complicated in the case of coal. Anthracite has been a palm tree or some other tree thousands and thousands of years ago. How did it come about? Well, there you had the earth (Fig. 16) and there a palm tree or a palm-like tree, with the sun shining on it. It later perished and went down into the soil. But just as the sun's heat was stored in the chair, so did the sun's heat stay in the palm tree, going into the soil with it. The palm tree turns into coal; the sun's heat stays in it. And thousands of years later you dig up the coal, put it in your stove, and the sun's heat is given back to you. You are heating your rooms today with heat from the sun when it shone on the earth thousands of years ago. People often do not think of this. When you sit on a chair and it warms your bottom you still notice that the sun left something of its energy there. With anthracite you no longer notice it. So you have to say: where anthracite is found in the earth, everywhere where there is anthracite, we have very ancient solar energy. The coal or carbon deposits everywhere are full of very ancient solar energy. Well, gentlemen, you do however eat plants. You put them inside you. Your own organism acts faster than the earth; the life-filled carbon from the plants is quickly converted and you then have carbon dioxide in your own body, which contains a lot of carbon. This carbon dioxide you have inside you does not turn to coal like the anthracite underground, but remains carbon dioxide. In the carbon dioxide you now have carbon, which you have inside you, and oxygen which comes from the air and also from foods. It is called carbon and oxygen. And you also have hydrogen in the human body, for you drink water, for example. This hydrogen combines with the carbon and the oxygen. And you only have to think of something you also have in a human body, something that begins to get smelly under certain conditions. And you only have to think of something that comes from animal bodies, which is eggs — we spoke of this the other day 15 See lecture of 23 January in this volume. — they get smelly. That is nitrogen. Only it does not smell when it is in the air, for there it is combined with other substances in a particular way. Now you see, gentlemen, you walk about, need oxygen, carbon, nitrogen in order to live, and produce alcohol inside your organism. Alcohol is produced in the human organ 16 Reported in v. Schubert, GH., Die Geschichte der Seele, S. 539. 2. Aufl. Stuttgart 1833. ism to prevent us falling apart inside. The body would dissolve, just as it dissolves when it is a corpse, unless alcohol and alcohol-like compounds are produced. That is a natural thing. But now we must ask: on which of our bodies does alcohol act? You see, taken in moderate amounts alcohol initially has a very good effect on the physical body, for someone who produces too little alcohol can gain a good preservative with alcohol, and the alcohol does not really harm the physical body. Basically alcohol does not have at all a bad effect on the physical body. If alcohol were to harm the physical body —people do not give enough thought to this — the vine would be in a poor way, for the vine also has a physical body. The vine is completely blotto — it is this because it is full of alcohol —but its physical body does not suffer. Well, and the ether body also does not suffer from alcohol. Only the astral bodies of adult people are harmed by alcohol. It is equally harmful in children, as I'll tell you in a minute, because something else happens as well. But in adults alcohol also affects the astral body, just like arsenic, and above all the I. And the I lives in the blood circulation Alcohol therefore has a powerful effect on the blood circulation. Alcohol is so bad for children because it already has ai astral body inside it. Plants only have an ether body, but the alcohol that is in the vine does have an astral body. This acts just like the principle that bubbles and boils in the blood. Is this hard to understand? Surely you can understand this. It acts like the principle that bubbles and boils in the blood. And this is also why children who drink alcohol at an early age get an astral body that they should really only develop fully by their 14th or 15th year; and they have no control over it. This is why alcohol is particularly harmful for children, because children will immediately get an astral body under the influence of alcohol. You can see from this that alcohol really influences the soul sphere, the mind of the human being. That is where it is active. It destroys the breathing, the blood circulation, which arise from the sphere of mind and soul. These are affected by alcohol. Now you should not think that the human head is a separate organ in the human being, and the chest, too, a separate organ. For although human beings are threefold, everything also influences everything else. Not only the lower body has to be nourished but especially also the human head. And when someone drinks alcohol and has the kind of lower body where alcohol is especially well processed—let us say someone is well able to tolerate two, three glasses of alcohol. I am not sure if that is what Mr Muller wanted to say of himself? But you probably tolerate a small amount of alcohol quite well? Mr Müller denied this, saying that the granules appeared the next morning even if he had just one glass of beer. So it is really the opposite in your case; you really do not tolerate alcohol at all? Mr Müller confirmed that this was so. Well, in that case you are an example of those who do not tolerate alcohol well. Now you see, if someone does not tolerate alcohol that well, does not really digest the alcohol b that well, then the undigested alcohol reaches the head, also influencing the eyes, and causing mucous matter to push up towards the head. The blood is set boiling in someone who tolerates alcohol well, and in someone who does not tolerate it well the mucous material starts to move, and the mucus condenses towards the outside, so that it becomes granular. It is mucous material that has condensed. This is what can happen to someone who really does not tolerate even the first glass of alcohol that well. But let us assume someone is able to take a lot. Then the thing also goes to the head, but into the blood; and then you do not get those granules, and the whole blood circulation in the head is stimulated, and the whole blood circulation of the head secretes substances which are harmful. You then get the general inebriation, the general hangover, and a person gets to a state where he goes on and on drinking. So this is how one can tell the effect of alcohol on one person and on another. You see, one would like to say: we really should have no need to tell these things apart, to look for them so hard, for whatever the situation may be, if alcohol has particularly abnormal effects it is really best to leave it alone. It is not good to go on taking alcohol when one feels the effects of it. But, as I said, alcohol acts on the astral body and the I today. The I feels stimulated. A person likes the taste of alcohol and he really feels that there is something in alcohol that takes him beyond earthly concerns. This feeling is really very interesting, for as I had to tell you, alcohol does not come from the earth but from a sphere that is not earthly. This is also why a person feels lifted above the earthly realm. Alcohol becomes a cure for cares, does it not? With alcohol a person is taken a bit beyond himself, and it feels infinitely good to be a bit outside oneself. And it is this which leads to widespread alcohol abuse. Now there was another question for us to consider. Mr Muller said, if I understood you rightly, that there is a pond near Darmstadt and that warm industrial effluents pass through this pond? You can see what this is about from what I have been saying before. On the last but one occasion I tried to show you that when I say the fish in the sea do not have direct sun, this does not mean you should think they get no sun influence at all. Just as coal in the ground still holds the sun's effects thousands and thousands of years later, so does water also still have the sun's effects in it. And there, we have to say, the fish merely have to be organized in a different way compared to animals that live on land. And you can of course see that fish are organized differently. If fish had the kind of lungs that other animals and humans have, they could not live in water, of course. As you know, higher animals and human beings will simply drown if they live permanently in water. So they cannot live there. Fish can live there because they do not have lungs but gills; with these they get the air into themselves that is in the water and always has solar energies in it. Now you know how people keep goldfish. You can't keep them in ordinary water; there you simply won't have goldfish. If there is shade you can at most breed them, but not keep them. The offspring take their colour from the old goldfish if you want to keep them without sun. But you'll find, if you keep goldfish in water that has no sun, that they get very pale after three or four months. The little goldfish get their proper bright colour if there is direct sun in their water. That is a difference. You see, if I have a pond here, or even a small basin, and the sun shines directly into it (Fig. 17), something else is there for the fish than in another place. Here it has to use old solar energies that have been in the water for some time; here it gains new solar energies that have been in the water for a shorter time. Now the Darmstadt factory that lets its warm water run into the pond is a special case. You have to admit that when something has been under some restraint where life is concerned and then is free again, it will really wriggle a great deal and develop. Imagine how it would be if you had tied a person down for some time. He cannot move a limb when he is locked up. When he is free again he takes a special pleasure and enjoyment in life. And now think of the water from the Darmstadt factory running into the pond. This water is getting its solar influence in a very special way. The factory basically also runs on coal, for everything goes back to coal. The heat used in it comes from coal. Coal has preserved solar energies through thousands and thousands of years. These solar energies now enter the pond as warm water. And it is indeed the case that solar energies which are released after having been locked up in the coal for thousands of years are particularly active. So you can't do better than to let those active solar energies run into the pond with the warm water. One might even do this artificially. One might artificially arrange things in such a way that one pours warm water into the ponds where goldfish are kept. And especially if you let the water move, so that the solar energies are set in motion, they will stimulate the goldfish to develop a really lively colour. You could make the following experiment. Imagine you have a large artificial pool. You first let warm water run into it, to remain motionless at the bottom, and then add ordinary water on top. And then you put in the goldfish. Now take another artificial pool and run in warm water so that there is a continuous stream of it going in. Now see which fish have the more lively golden yellow colour — not those in calm water but those that have warm water flowing through all the time, for that keeps the energies alive. In the case of that industrial concern this happens of its own accord, with new warm water running in all the time. So it is not at all surprising that the goldfish do especially well. That is the way nature works. One has to understand these things properly and then one discovers these ways in which nature works. Now you will say to yourselves: what is it that is so active in the rays of the sun? Well, gentlemen, that is the ether which is also active in our own ether bodies. The ether is active in the sun's rays. And just as the ether is needed to stimulate the astral in us, so it is also out there in the natural world. The vine has its ether body inside it. Because it is touched by the sun's heat, something astral is created in it, really something from outside this earth, and this acts as alcohol. And we therefore really only gain insight into things by considering the human being both inside the human being and in the world of nature outside. This brings me to something quite different, something to add now, in these last minutes, concerning Mr Burle's question about clothes. You see, I have told you all sorts of things about clothes, but it is of course interesting that clothing has really evolved out of human instinct so as to be right for the whole nature of the human being. People have three aspects even as physical beings. They have a head, chest organs, where breathing and circulation mainly take place, inner movement, therefore, and they have outer movement in their limbs. In their physical bodies, therefore, people have three parts: the head, the chest system—I always call it the rhythmic system, because everything moves in rhythm—and the external movement of organs, the outer organization of movement. Now, you see, in the head it is above all the ether body which is active, in the chest, in the blood circulation and the breathing the astral body, and in voluntary movements the I. If you look at all the clothes that are worn, with the exception of some that are excessively simple, among the savages — you know, real savages—you will always see, whatever fiddle-faddle there may be, that clothing essentially consists of three pieces, somehow or other three pieces. Of course, it is always changed a bit; you just have to consider that in the course of history it has changed terribly. Fiddle-faddle has been added, wishy-washy stuff has been added, but essentially all clothing is in three parts. One has developed from the loincloth or apron. In ancient Egypt men would basically only wear aprons. What is the clothing for that people wear? For the limbs. People showed that they could walk on their feet by covering their feet. The energy of the feet, of the movement organization, was meant to be given expression in the apron. It is interesting that such things are then passed on, and that Freemasons wear an apron as a special distinguishing mark at their gatherings. That is an ancient Egyptian heirloom. Just as people, at least mostly, have no idea why they wear medals, so they have no idea why they wear an apron. The apron is worn as a sign that one is to be particularly active in one's limbs. And from the apron has evolved anything connected with the limbs, our trousers, for example, but so changed that they prevent rather than help us with walking. So that is the situation with the limbs. The Egyptians made their aprons particularly so that they fitted the limbs; they then put their arms through, and so an apron developed with a part that also covered the front of the chest, and sleeves, so that the upper limbs were also held in it. The second part, gentlemen, was that people also gave expression to the chest system in their clothing. And this system is best given expression in anything like a shift that is pulled on over the head. This was especially developed among the ancient Assyrians. They evolved the shiftlike garment you put your head and arms through and which then hangs straight down. This gave expression to the chest system, with movement internal. That is also why the folds went like that. The Greeks then took this over as it came across from Asia, and added the artistic folds, imitating the way the main blood vessels run. The way it was done was to imitate the most important part of the circulation and flow in there. The third thing is the coat or cloak. Originally the cloak was thrown not only over the shoulders but also over the head. You can still see this in some areas, where people still do it like that. The cloak is thrown over the head so that it also covers the head. In throwing on the cloak everything coming from the head was given expression. In the apron more the will that lives in the limbs, in the shift-like element — you know we still have a little of this in our waistcoats, but you still see it well developed in a priest's garments, the garment of a Roman Catholic priest — and it is still part of female clothing, the garment for the chest. And the head garment is the cloak. It has gone through changes, of course. Think of a cloak thrown over the shoulders and also the head (Fig. 18). Originally it covered the head. If it is a red cloak it is very beautiful. The red colour is such that one would not seek to distort it. Then came the time of which I spoke the last time, when people no longer paid heed to the colours. They then also made themselves black cloaks or blue ones. And what did they do? They cut it off here and made a separate head covering. It became a hat. One can no longer see that today, but I really have to say that when I see someone coming who is wearing a tail coat and top hat I always say to myself: 'Goodness, how you've changed!' For the tail coat and top hat were a single cloak initially. Then the cloak was cut down, given the horrible form of a tail coat, and up above you still have the top hat to cover the head. Think of top hat and tails and try to cut the hat open in front so that you can cast the whole over your head, and you have the garment from which top hat and tails have evolved. One must therefore go back to the old garments and then one sees where our garments come from; although I do not believe Mr Burle wears top hat and tails so often that this would be the reason why he asked the question (laughter). But it does look like it, as if the head itself had been cut off, when people walk around in top hat and tails. We'll continue next Wednesday at nine in the morning.

From Elephants to Einstein

Effects of arsenic and alcohol

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA352/English/RSP1998/19240216p02.html

Dornach

16 Feb 1924

GA352-7

Good morning, gentlemen. Perhaps you have a question again for today? Mr Müller asked what might cause changes to occur in the pupils. Rudolf Steiner: That is a very personal question. You'd have to come down to the Institute of Clinical Medicine; I'll tell you when I go there again, so that you may then go there. It is a medical matter. Another question: What do the long stripes down the sides of fishes mean? Another question: A man drank a terrible lot of alcohol. He died eight weeks ago. In the last days before he died he ate chocolate and sugar, which he'd never done in his life. How did that happen? Rudolf Steiner: Well, with regard to the stripes down the sides of fishes you have to be clear about the following. If one looks at any life form, be it from the plant or the animal world, one has to ask oneself how they relate to the outside world. You see, plants have their green colour first of all in the leaves. This green colour of the leaves comes from a specific relationship which the plant has to light and heat. On one hand a plant takes in what comes from the light and gives other things back, does not take them in. And that is where the green colour comes from. In the same way you may ask yourself: where does one thing or another come from in fishes? Let me just draw your attention to the fact that fish living in more murky water have a much darker colouring than those that live in light-filled water. Fish that seek out the dark more are bluish, even black. Fish that go more into light-filled water are also lighter in colour. So we can see how external light and warmth influence the fish. And now consider other animals that live in areas where there is a lot of snow, polar bears, for instance. They take on the white colour themselves. Everything that lives is exposed to the environment in one way or another. With fish, we see a quite definite relationship between their own essential nature and their environment. The stripes down the side exist to make them subtly sensitive to the light and warmth in their environment. Fish are thus made particularly sensitive. It is not much use for the way they move through the water, but rather for the way they process light and warmth inside. It is therefore a kind of nerve organ. As to your question concerning the man who drank alcohol all his life and began to be utterly sensible as his end approached, eating sensible chocolate and sugar—you say the last days before his death — this is something we can easily understand if we compare it with countless other such phenomena in life. I have known many people who grew old. As they grew old their handwriting, for instance, became more and more shaky. The writing grew shaky; they were no longer able to write so well, and one could see especially from their handwriting that they had grown old. Earlier they had a handwriting that made them write, let us say, Lehfeld like this [clearly], and then they would write Lehfeld [shakily]. But for the last days before their death it was found that they could write very well again. I have known many people who regained their clear handwriting before their death. It has also been noted in countless cases (this is not in fact my own observation, but these are observations that have been well substantiated) that people who learned a particular language as children—they may have been in a foreign country as children, perhaps, learning a language which they then forgot again (this does happen), let us assume a man of 40 or 50 had had no opportunity to communicate with anyone in this language— would suddenly begin to talk quite comprehensively in this language a few days before their death. It came out again! Now, you see, these are highly significant phenomena. What was really going on? What went on was that a human being leaves his physical body, one aspect of his essential nature, behind for the earth when he dies; it dissolves in the soil, is destroyed in the soil. I have told you that the next aspect, the ether body, gradually dissolves in the general cosmic ether a few days after death. And the human astral body and I are the aspects that remain and go through the world of the spirit. They then go through the world of the spirit. There, of course, the individual aspects of the human being go through complete separation. And someone with an eye for such things can observe how the different aspects — physical body, ether body, astral body— separate even as death approaches. So what is it when someone changes his handwriting a few days before his death? Well, gentlemen, we do not write with the physical body. What do we actually write with? We write with the I. We only use the physical body as a tool for the I when we write. And our I does not grow old. In your I you are as young today as the day you were born. The astral body also does not grow old to the extent the physical body does. But it is the physical body we have to use as a tool if we want to write. The physical body therefore must take hold of the pen with its hand. When a person gets old, he grows weaker and weaker and is no longer able to get at his physical body properly. What is more, all kinds of things get deposited in the physical body. And the result is that a person can no longer use his fingers so well. He gets clumsy, shaky, instead of making firm strokes in his writing. When the person is close to death, the ether body is beginning to loosen from the physical body. A loosening happens. This may sometimes happen a few days before death; sometimes it happens at the last moment. It would be wrong to say that one should not try to cure a person when days before his death one can see that he may indeed die. Things that have loosened can be put together again. For as long as a person lives we must under all circumstances try to cure them. But it is true, nevertheless, that in many people the ether body loosens days before death comes. When the ether body loosens the person grows stronger. You can also see this from something else. There are some mad people who develop extraordinary physical strength, tremendous strength. You will often be amazed about the strength such a mad person can develop. Not only is the beating he gives someone much more powerful than that given by someone else, but a mad person may lift pieces of furniture which no one else would dream of lifting with the greatest of ease. So you see, something strange occurs that distinguishes such a person from a normal person. What happens in a mad person? Well, the ether body is always slightly loose in a mad person, or the astral body has loosened. People are not exactly strong in their physical bodies; they are weak. They have to make the ether or the astral body serve the physical body. The popular phrase 'He's got a screw loose' is quite right; something has loosened. Ordinary people often say things that are exactly right, because they have an instinct for the supersensible, and such old saws should not be taken as derogatory but as something that is perfectly true. When a mad person has loosened his ether or astral body and grown strong because of this, he is, as a mad person, in the same situation as someone whose ether body has loosened because he will be dying in a few days' time. And if such a person gets stronger in the ether body he'll be able to write better again. If he gets stronger in the astral body— everything we have forgotten is inside it—he extracts forgotten things from the astral body and is able to speak a language again that he used to know. But let us take the case you have given. You see, I did not know the man and therefore do not know how he lived. Perhaps you knew him? In that case you'll be able to answer certain questions. Did you know him well? Now you see with such a person it matters a great deal if there was perhaps a woman or someone else about, it may even have been yourself, who was always telling him how bad it is to drink such a lot. (Affirmative.) Well, that will put us on the right track. He has had people around him who always told him not to drink so much, because it was not a good thing and he would do harm to himself. This went in one ear and out the other, as one says. Another popular phrase that has some foundation in fact. It is indeed the case that people's attitude to some things is such that they go in one ear and out the other. Why? Because the astral body does not hear them. The ear is only the instrument of hearing. The astral body fails to hear it. It may also happen that the astral body hears the thing, but the physical body does not get involved, being too weak. Now consider this. The man has heard Mr Erbsmehl himself say, perhaps: 'You're mad' — I am putting it very strongly, all right? — 'getting drunk all the time. It will not do. It is not the proper thing to do,' and so on. And the man has swallowed it all. That is how it went, for it happens in life that people swallow things and then carry on. But his astral body has held on to some of it. You may have put it so strongly and so often that the astral body and the ether body could not fail to take it in. For as long as they were in the physical body with nothing to hinder them they did not hear. The moment the physical body changed so that the ether body and the astral body became loosened, well, then the idea suddenly came to the person, through the ether body and the astral body: Mr Erbsmehl may have been right after all! Perhaps it is a crazy thing to have done, to drink so much all my life. So now I'll make amends—you can imagine this might happen when things have loosened up. And then the astral body and the ether body say: Ah, now he is no longer drinking alcohol; now he drinks chocolate and sugar water! Of course he might also have had lemonade if there had been any. The fact that such things may happen proves to someone who takes a sensible view that there may be all kinds of things in a person that do not emerge. I have also told you about the opposite situation before. The opposite case was this. It happened one day to a gentleman of my acquaintance — he was a very learned gentleman — that he lost his awareness and memory. He no longer knew who he was, what he had been doing; he no longer knew any of the learned things he had known. He had forgotten it all. He even did not know that he himself existed. But his intellect was clear. It functioned perfectly. He went to the station, bought a ticket and went far away. He had also taken money with him, money he happened to have on him. He was able to go a long way. When he had arrived at the destination on his ticket he would buy another one, and he did this several times, not knowing what he was doing. The intellect is so much apart from the actual human being that everything was done perfectly sensibly — animals act sensibly, I have given you many examples of this, though they do not have an intellect. One day he found himself again, his memory returned. He knew who he was. His learned knowledge also came back to his head, but he was in Berlin in a hostel for the homeless. That was where he had ended up. He had set out from Stuttgart. It was later possible to establish that he had started from there. In his unconscious state he had been in Budapest and so on. He was able to go back from Berlin to Stuttgart where he was met by a member of his family who had been extremely worried. He was able to function again. He did, however, kill himself later on. One time he got out of it by being unconscious, the other time by committing suicide. But what is going on in such a case? Well, you see, the man I have told you of stands so clearly before me that I could actually paint him any time I wanted to. He had eyes that made one think they wanted to get more and more deeply back into the head. Here in front he had something that was as if his nose had dug itself in in his physical body—just a hint of all this, of course. He would speak to people in a very strange way. The way he would talk was as if he was convinced in a very different way by his words than anyone else. One had the feeling that he always tasted his words on his tongue and would then swallow them, for he liked them so much. It would please him so much when he spoke that he would swallow it all down. And if anyone contradicted him he'd get really angry. But he would not show much of his anger on the surface, he'd just make a face. He'd startle terribly if a car made a sharp noise in the street, also if you told him anything new. He'd startle irrespective of whether it was good or bad news. You see, this person had listened too much, and everything immediately left its mark on his physical body. Because of this he had the habit that the astral body would always dig itself in very deeply in the physical body. He did not keep things to himself, the way your alcoholic did, but everything dug itself in deeply in the physical body, until the physical body reached the point where for a time he also shifted his own I out of place. So there you have the opposite case. In this alcoholic the admonishments remained in the astral body and came out when he loosened up. In this other person, of whom I've told you, the astral body entered so deeply into the physical body, that the physical body then also went away on its own. You see, the signs are there, everywhere in the human being, that these higher aspects, the supersensible aspects, are closely bound up with his physical body and with his ether body. All this shows, however, that one can really only know life if one looks at life situations that actually tell us: there is a physical body in the human being; there is an ether body in the human being; there is an astral body; there is an I. You can also see other situations where the person concerned suddenly gets completely new appetites under the moral pressure of what he has left in the astral body during life. There is the following interesting story, for instance, which I'll tell you.16 A woman was selling vegetables and such things. This was quite some time ago. She would go from door to door with her basket of vegetables. Now she always was the way people would take her to be, looking at life the way a vegetable seller does. She would laugh when someone said something funny; otherwise she was indifferent in life. She brought her vegetables to the door, took her money, and that was how her life went. One day she came to someone's home wanting to sell her vegetables. No one was in except the master of the house, who opened the door. This gentlemen had rather a strange way of looking at people. He would look at them severely and had noted on a number of occasions that when he looked at people in this special way they would get quite talkative about something they did not normally speak of. Now the following happened. It is well documented. The vegetable seller came to the man; he looked at her. She got a shock. He did not say anything, but merely looked at her. He saw she'd been taken aback, but did not say a word and went on looking at her. Then she was not just taken aback but said: 'Don't look at me like that. Please don't look at me like that. I'll tell you everything!' He said nothing and went on looking at her. Then the woman said: 'Yes, but I only did it because I was afraid.' Again he said nothing, but went on looking at her. 'Don't look at me like that! Honest, I would not have done it except that I was afraid.' Again he said nothing, just went on looking. 'I'll tell you everything, but don't look at me like that!' He looked at her. 'I'll tell you everything! You see I would not have murdered it; I only did it because I was scared.' He went on looking. 'You see, I was so afraid of the people; the child would have said something really bad about me, and so I did it out of fear. I didn't really know what I was doing!' And you see, the woman told him the whole story of the murder she had committed on a child. So what had happened there? The thing is like this. The man had quite a piercing look. When people have the usual kind of eyes, they talk to people but do not really impinge on them that much. When someone's gaze grows fixed and penetrating, then this magnetizes the ether body of a person, as we might put it. And in the ether body is our conscience. When the ether body is properly integrated in the physical body, well, you know, a person will immediately suppress any such things as soon as it rears its head. But if the ether body is magnetized by such a look, it becomes loosened. And when someone has something on his conscience, this also comes loose, rises up and worries the astral body and the I. The result is that people make confessions they would not otherwise make if their ether body has been loosened. These things show that the ether body, when it is artificially loosened from the physical body, acts independently, and that the physical body really hides a great deal of what people have in them. And when the ether body gets loosened at one's death, the secret may come out—not always, but in a given situation. Much abuse has been practised with these things. If you were something of an observer of life before the war, you would always see the same if staying at an hotel, or some other place where people collect their letters: some item with the imprint of an American company. It was always the same item. What had happened? Well, an American company had been established and this had branches. One branch was in Berlin, another in Frankfurt; there were such branches in most of the larger cities. Business must have been good, therefore. It was stated that someone wanting to gain power over other people would receive booklets from this American company. He only had to send in so and so much money, and he'd get booklets, and in those booklets he would find directions as to how to gain power over people. Now all the travellers, the representatives, thought to themselves: 'That's a great thing, to gain power over people. By Jove, we'll sell a lot then, for no one will be able to resist us.' The booklets said right away that the person should focus his eyes not on the eyes of another person, but on the point between the eyes; he should stare fixedly at that point. This would magnetize the other person who would then be under his influence and do what he wanted. Now you know, the travellers in wine and other things all sent for this. And one could see that masses of these letters and things were sent to hotels where such travellers would stay. Most of them did not do better in their business in spite of this; it was the American company that did well. Most did not benefit from it. But it may have served some of them, and they did something a person should never under any circumstances do to someone else, for it is a sin against human freedom. No one should seek to gain that kind of power over others! It may be bad enough if it is a natural gift, as in the case of the man I have told you of, but in that case nature had given him that special look. And it is much less abused in such a case than when someone seeks to learn it. Well, such foolishness came to be much less during the war, and today it has largely gone. But we may well say that we can learn from this how people make use even of spiritual things and the worst of materialists — for most of the people who sent for such things were materialists — will actually turn to the spirit if it is a question of making a profit through the spirit. They do not believe in it, but they turn to the spirit if it is a question of making a profit out of it. I wanted to make you aware of the terrible abuse practised with these things. Much else also has to be considered. Many people have actually practised the kind of thing these people and such booklets were aiming at, though not to such an extent, and have also got somewhere with it. Maybe you have been at meetings where speakers were speaking. Now, you'll admit that the conviction shown by the speaker's words is not always the only thing, but there is a great deal else that comes from the speaker by way of influence. It is a fact that the most popular speakers are often people who gain an influence over the masses by the wrong means. One sees these things happen in the present time. It is the case, for instance, that I am writing essays on my own life in Das Goetheanum . 17 A weekly paper (in German) started by Rudolf Steiner that is still being published today. The essays have since been published in Steiner, R., Rudolf Steiner, an Autobiography (GA 28). Tr. R. Stebbing. New York: Rudolf Steiner Publications 1977. These essays — some of you may have read them—are intentionally written to tell things in the simplest possible way, in plain words, never making too much of things. Now a critic has already appeared who especially finds fault with this. He says I do not write poetry and truth, like Goethe, but truth of a most sober kind. But yes, that is exactly what I am aiming at! And I do not aim to achieve what such a critic demands. Such a critic has exactly the style which compared to a sober style is a 'sozzled' or intoxicated one. And, you see, this intoxicated style is to be found everywhere today. People are no longer concerned to make an effect with what they say, but use words that will overwhelm others. Here we see the beginnings of the wrong kind of influence. For when someone writes the way I am endeavouring to write, this influences the I, which has its own free will. When one writes in an intoxicated style this influences the astral body, which does not have such freedom but is unfree. It is possible to influence the astral body especially by saying things one knows people want to hear. People who do not want to convince but persuade others mostly use phrases and words other people like, while someone who wants to say the truth cannot always say things other people will like. At the present time it is actually the case that the truth does not generally please people. You only have to look how someone shapes his sentences and you can see that when the person writes his sentences in such a way that they are logical, one following out of another, he will influence the other person's I, which is free. When he writes his sentences so that he is not being logical, but is above all concerned to write things the other person will like, exciting the other person's desires, drives, instincts and passions, he influences the other person's astral body, which is not free. And it is a characteristic of our time that people talk so much about freedom, and that the greatest sin against freedom comes from public pronouncements in the spoken or written word. It really is the case that the spoken and the written word, the written and the spoken word is generally abused in public pronouncements. You will therefore understand ordinary situations in life better if you are able to distinguish between I and astral body, seeing that one is influencing the one or the other, and you will also be able to understand such things better where a person begins to get his handwriting back before he dies, or will eat something he has never eaten before because of some moral influence. There you can see how the I is integrated in the physical body and becomes loosened. Another question. The last time Dr Steiner spoke of arsenic. Now the opium question has become acute in Switzerland. A while ago an article by Dr Usteri on the poppy plant and its connection with opium was published in Das Goetheanum. 18 Usteri, A., Der Mohn, Das Goetheanum, 2. Jahrg., Nr. 39 vom 6 Mai 1923. Could something be said about opium? A further question. About two years ago, Einstein's 19 Einstein, Albert (1879-1955). theory became generally known. Today one hears very little of it. Has it proved correct, or has it also gone down the river? Rudolf Steiner. Well now, I'd have to talk a very long time about Einstein's theory, for it is difficult to present it briefly. To understand it properly one has to know mathematics. But the strange thing about Einstein's theory was that everyone was talking of it though they did not understand it, merely quoting the experts, for, as I said, it does need some knowledge of mathematics. But in so far as some of it can be understood without mathematics — we won't have time for this today—I'll tell you something of it, so that you can see how on the one hand it is based on truth and on the other is very much in error. People still talk about it. The situation with the public at large is that they will rise to the bait when something is spread about by the papers, but they don't hold on to it. The general public have forgotten it by now, but the university professors whose subject it is are all followers of Einstein now. Einstein's theory is thus much more widespread among scientists than it was years ago. I'll present some of it the next time, in so far as can be done in popular terms. It'll need more time than we have left today. Has anyone got another question? Question. I would really like to know the difference between alcohol and opium. According to Dr Usteri's article one would assume that poppy juice pulls people upwards, and alcohol downwards. Rudolf Steiner. You see, gentlemen, there we must ask ourselves: when someone drinks alcohol, which aspect of his nature is affected by this? The I. And this has the blood circulation as its physical tool. People are therefore most strongly influenced by alcohol in something that really is their life, in the blood circulation. With opium, the situation is that it acts particularly on the astral body, and does so in such a way that the person draws it out of the physical body. And you see, he feels particularly well when he thus withdraws the astral body from the physical body. He gets rid of his physical body for a time, and this feels good to him. People will easily say, and you'll have heard this: sleep is sweet. But the point is that people cannot really enjoy this sweetness, exactly because they are asleep! They cannot sense this sweetness; they can only have an aftertaste of it. And it is because it is an aftertaste that people will say sleep is sweet. When someone takes poppy juice, opium, he becomes aware of this sweetness, for he is then in his body as though he were asleep; yet he is also awake. This enables him to enjoy the sweetness, and this feels tremendously good to him. It is as if his whole body were full of sugar, a very special sugar—filled all the way with sweetness. But his astral body is also free of the physical body, and because of this he perceives all kinds of things, though not clearly. He does not have the usual kind of dreams but perceives the world of the spirit. He likes this. He is lifted up, as you said, into the world of the spirit. Drinking alcohol on the other hand is to have one's physical body taken hold of completely, right down to the blood. Then the astral body does not get free. Everything is laid claim to even more by the physical body. When people drink alcohol, therefore, they are made wholly subject to the physical body, much more so than normally. And that is the difference. With opium, the element of soul and spirit is liberated, on the one hand enjoying the sweetness in the physical body and on the other going on trips, entering into the world of the spirit in a somewhat chaotic way, but entering into it nevertheless. And the Orientals gain much of what they say of the world of the spirit—not in the right way, but they do speak of it — from taking opium, hashish and the like. These are things that can show you once again that such things cannot be understood unless one takes account of the higher aspects of the human being. We'll continue with this at 9 o'clock next Saturday.

From Elephants to Einstein

Connection between higher aspects of the human being and the physical body. Actions of opium and alcohol

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA352/English/RSP1998/19240220p02.html

Dornach

20 Feb 1924

GA352-8

Good morning, gentlemen. Perhaps one or the other of you has thought of something he'd like to ask? Or something about what we have been discussing the other day? Mr Müller asked if Dr Steiner would perhaps say something on a question he put the other day. There are quacks who look at urine samples to see what ails a person. Rudolf Steiner. Yes, you did ask about that the other day. I simply forgot the question, or there was no more time to answer it. Mr Müller also wanted to know about the following. There was a man in the Basle area who got good results with his practice of inspecting the urine and the medicines he gave. What should one think of this? Rudolf Steiner. Well, concerning this issue of examining the urine I would say the following. Examination of the urine is a practice not limited to quacks and the like, but also plays an important role in the medicine that is considered scientific today. There is, however, a big difference between the way in which medical practitioners do this and the people you are really speaking of—essentially not medically trained people. The reason is this. Examination of the urine has always played an extraordinarily important role in the investigation of diseases, from time immemorial. Only you have to consider the following. If you go back to the old medicine which continued until the eighteenth century — for medicine really was only reformed, going into materialism, in the eighteenth century in Italy—you will find that both the diagnosis of diseases and the principles of cure were entirely different. Modern scientists despise the old medicine, and to some extent that is justifiable, but it is not entirely justifiable. And we need to understand the difference between the old medicine and more modern medicine so that we may see what it really means today. The physicians of old knew very well that the human being is not only the physical body we see with our eyes, touch with our hands, but also a supersensible entity that is present throughout the body, something we have always made quite clear. You'll discover the differences between the old medicine and more modern medicine if you go a long way back in human life, to the time before birth. I am not speaking of the spiritual life before birth but of the physical aspect, the body of a human being in the womb. In modern medicine and science in general, the essential part of human development in the womb is believed to be the way the egg gradually develops. Initially one just has a fertilized egg. It is a tiny cell that can only be seen under the microscope. This multiplies and a kind of cup shape develops. In about the third week this cup turns up a bit on one side. And in the 6th or 7th week the human being looks rather like a small fish. Then the head develops on one side (Fig. 19). Here the first nerve strands develop; and so it goes on. And modern science seeks to gain insight into the development of human beings and also of animals in this way, by observing one form after another. But apart from all this, the human being in the womb is all the time surrounded by a thickish fluid. This thickish fluid is here like this [drawing], and only then do we have the womb all around. This thickish fluid, with all kinds of thickish inclusions, is discharged as the afterbirth when the child is born. It is thought to be waste matter, something of no importance, because everything one gets with a living creature today, that is, everything one gets in such a way that it comes out of it, is considered waste matter. But that is not the case, for it is like this. Here, in the way the cell multiplies and the physical human body develops, the forces of outer nature are active, while the element of spirit and soul is active in the fluid which is then discharged as the afterbirth. This element of spirit and soul is around the small human body to begin with; it only enters into it later. And we really must look for the spirit in the material that later becomes the afterbirth. This is very surprising, of course, but it is extraordinarily important. People are so much against looking into the spiritual aspect today that a friend of mine 20 Alfred Gysi (1864-1957), professor and lecturer at, and one of the founders of, Zurich University Institute of Dentistry. See also Steiner, R., Der Wert des Denkens fur eine den Menschen befriedigende Erkenntnis , S. 48-49, Basel 1958 ( The Value of Thinking for a Knowledge Satisfying to Man [in GA 164]). Tr. V.E. Watkin. Typescript, Rudolf Steiner House Library, London. Rudolf Steiner was thinking of writing a book on embryology in collaboration with Prof. Gysi. undertook to investigate the afterbirth in the light of what I have said, to see how it gradually passes the spirit to the embryo itself, to the physical aspect itself. It would be perfectly possible to make a scientific investigation in this area; it fails merely because modern scientists immediately remove everything found around an embryo if one does become available because the mother dies or an operation is necessary — which does not happen very often. One cannot get embryos that make it possible to investigate this. The way things are done today interferes with genuine scientific investigation. Materialism comes in, I would say, even when the development of the human being is studied. You know that human beings also produce secretions while they are alive. The things they secrete are not exactly popular in the outside world because they do not smell good. Almost all secretions do not smell good. Today all secretions are —quite rightly — regarded as something that needs to be removed, washed off, and so on. Human secretions are the one you mentioned, urine, in the first place, secretions of sweat, and also the solid excrement, stools, and some others. The nails you cut are of course also secretions. They are solid secretions. Some things that are secreted, on the other hand, are not seen as secretions, though in reality they certainly are secretions. You see, the eye is often considered to be the noblest human organ. You only have to think how easily an eye is removed. It has almost completely separated out in its cavity. And the fluid in the eye — I have explained it to you —is also a secretion. And secretion also plays a role in the various organs of hearing, of the ear, which can be seen from the production of ear wax, the outermost secretion. We thus have secretions produced everywhere in the human being; on the one hand the human being is built up, on the other he dissolves, secretes. What follows from this? Recently I told you something that may be helpful in this respect. I told you that people see nerves, the whole brain, as something that is an organ just like any other organs, like the liver or the spleen. This is not true, gentlemen. The brain is a secretion or excretion. The whole brain, I told you, is an excretion! And if you want to compare the brain to anything you should compare it to the intestine, and indeed to the intestinal contents. If you have a piece of intestine, this would be the intestinal wall (Fig. 20, below), and this the intestinal contents. The intestinal wall is wavy like this. In the brain, the nerve, you do not have the wall; it is there, but it is transparent, not visible, and you have only the contents (Fig. 20, above). You may say, quite rightly: 'What is it that fills the brain?' And if you call the intestinal contents muck, you may also say the brain is muck. Scientifically speaking that is perfectly accurate. For thinking activity is not a function of the brain but consists in the brain being excreted, secreted out of our thinking. The higher up you go in the human being, the more is the human being excretion. I have talked to you about the sense-perceptible and the supersensible human being, the human being you see, and the human being who is also part of us whom you do not see. What we see in the human being is something that is continually produced; it comes from the process in which the human being develops. Here he gets the stumps that will be arms (Fig. 19), here the leg stumps. The supersensible aspects, the astral body and the I, are there to secrete or excrete, they are continually secreting. Only the physical body and the ether are constructive. The astral body and I destroy what has been built up. When you build a house you want to build it as quickly as possible and live in it for as long as possible. Nature will gradually destroy the house, for otherwise the houses built in ancient India would still be standing today. But only a few of the houses in our area have existed 300 years ago. In human beings, construction and destruction are simultaneous. Construction comes first. We eat, take in foods that reach the liver where they are transformed. And destruction, secretion, starts at that point. These processes of construction and destruction are really the constant activity of a human being. If we were only to construct, we would be dull and dumb. We'd be a whole lot of dumb fellows. In fact we'd not only be dumb fellows but plants walking about mindlessly if we were only involved in construction. The fact that we destroy matter, continually secreting matter in the brain, for instance, and that we have secretory organs such as the glands, is the very reason why we are not dumb fellows but intelligent people, with variations, of course. Mind and spirit depend on destruction, however, not on construction. And this gives our secretions their special importance. You see, the thing is like this. The process which occurs when the afterbirth is discharged occurs with all forms of destruction in the organism. The spirit is at work as more and more is destroyed around the developing human being. And when the spirit is able to work in the human body itself once it is born, the afterbirth is no longer needed and is then simply cast off. But things are cast off throughout life. They are cast off as intestinal excretions that may be more or less solid or soft; they are cast off in urine, they are cast off in sweat, for example. You can observe the importance of sweat secretion if you ever have a real nightmare. Say you dream someone is after you to kill you or at least give you a real beating. You run away. In your dream you are running, running, running. Suddenly you wake up, and you are drenched in sweat. A process that has gone so far as to produce dream images that make you afraid takes the form of drenching you in sweat. Such sweats are a physical phenomenon that goes hand in hand with your nightmare. Or think of someone with serious lung disease, someone who is not in the terminal stage but whose lung is not all right. The lung cannot breathe properly and becomes compressed. The person suffers greatly from nightmares. He is also drenched in sweat every time he sleeps. And so you have the connection between the secretion of sweat and these mental activities, images that come in one's dreams. This is a situation, gentlemen, where the ether body is active, for a nightmare only develops at the time one wakes up. For we only think the nightmare went on for most of the night. The whole dream happens at the time one wakes up. We can prove that dreams happen at the time we wake up. Some time ago, when many of you were not present, I told you a characteristic dream which shows that the whole dream only flashes though our mind the moment we wake up. A student is standing at the door to the lecture theatre. Another student comes and jostles him. That is a terrible insult among students, to be jostled like that. The only possible consequence is a duel; there is no other way. So as soon as the other one has jostled him, he looks for a second; the other must also have a second ... it's a long story which the student dreams, with all arrangements made, and the seconds negotiating, the whole thing. It all seems to take a terribly long time. He dreams that they go out into the woods, take their positions, measuring the distance by walking it. The pistols are loaded—he dreams all this —they take aim, the first shot is heard, and that is when he wakes up! He instantly realizes that he has been restless in hi.c sleep and knocked over a chair; but the chair is still falling as he wakes up. The falling chair has thus made up the whole dream. The whole dream went through his head at that moment; it merely grew in length in his mind. In reality we only dream the moment we wake up. And this is also why those sick people have their nightmares only as they wake up; they sleep, they wake up, and are then drenched in sweat. The ether body is active in this. As we wake of our own accord in the morning our I and astral body, which have been outside the body during the night, return, and this causes us to break out in a sweat. When we sweat, therefore, it is mainly the ether body which makes us spiritual beings, for stones and plants do not dream, which is also why they do not have mind or spirit. Now to the elimination of urine. You see, people do not notice it as much as the excretion of sweat because sweat cannot do anything but come out, and it then covers the skin. But if the skin had small sacs in it, with the sweat secreted into them, and if a fine skin were to cover this over, then people would not notice it at all. It could be that one had small sacs in the skin. The sweat would go into these, and at certain times — there might be tiny muscles — the skin would be squeezed and the sweat would run out. In the same way as sweat is secreted through ether body activity, urine is secreted through astral body activity. But people do not realize, for instance, that if they have more lively feelings more urine is secreted than if their feelings are not very strong, and this is because the urine is not immediately discharged from the body. You see, it is like this. If someone is full of enthusiasm and goes on being enthusiastic — irrespective of whether this makes him do things or give thought and attention to something — and did not have a urinary bladder, he would have to pass urine all the time in his enthusiasm. That would be a terrible thing. People would not be able to visit a museum unless there were lots of toilets at hand when they looked at paintings and grew enthusiastic! But human nature has made provision for this elimination. It collects in the urinary bladder and can be discharged at intervals. But urine is mainly secreted because of astral body activity. The astral body is present in all parts of the body, and the urine comes from all parts, collects in the kidneys and then goes to the bladder. Intestinal elimination is above all governed by the I — in animals by the astral body, but in humans by the I. The eliminatory process involves not only the intestines but the whole human being. There is constant elimination in the whole human being. The intestine is merely the apparatus providing an outlet. We are thus able to say that when we consider eliminations, the ether body is active in secreting sweat, the astral body in secreting urine, and the I in the elimination of faecal matter. If you think about this you'll not consider eliminations to be something of no importance. Let us assume someone's urine is normal. Well, in that case the person's astral body is also functioning normally. But whether a person is healthy or sick depends on how the astral body is working. Everything in health and illness basically depends on the way the astral body works. If we eat eggs, for instance, and the eggs are to be digested, the egg must first of all enter the mouth, then the stomach; it then goes into the intestines and there its egg-nature is completely destroyed. The protein is destroyed. But the destroyed protein is rebuilt as it goes to the liver. Human protein develops from animal and vegetable protein on the way from the intestine to the liver. And only human protein then enters the blood. If you look at the human organism, you have the diaphragm here (Fig. 21); here is the liver, and here the heart— they are only separated by the diaphragm. Material reaching the liver from the intestine is transformed from animal and vegetable protein —I'll make it yellow —into human protein (darker yellow). It is held together in the liver and then passes on into the heart. The situation is like this. When we eat protein the astral body must work on it, so that animal and vegetable protein is transformed into human protein. If the astral body is lazy, if it cannot work well, the animal protein is not converted to human protein in the liver but goes directly to the kidney and is eliminated in the urine. If we then examine the urine — this is also done in modern scientific medicine — protein is found in it. Or imagine you are eating potatoes, gentlemen. The potato is largely converted in the mouth, for starch is altogether an important food and exists not only to starch your shirts. Potato consists almost entirely of starch. On the way from mouth to stomach and intestines the potato is gradually converted to sugar. Potato starch first becomes dextrin and then sugar. Potatoes are only bad in the mouth; 21 Potatoes are only bad in the mouth. Those are the words recorded in German. Translator. in the intestines they are uncommonly sweet, for there they are converted to sugar. But when the potato starch has been converted to sugar in the intestine, and the liver has converted potato sugar or any other sugar to human sugar, it gives this inner sugar to the body as a whole, which then grows warmer, gaining inner warmth from it. Again the astral body must function properly if this is to happen. If it does not function properly, the animal and above all the vegetable sugar will not be transformed properly into human sugar but go directly to the kidney. There the sugar is eliminated and the person develops diabetes. The sugar content of the urine will tell you that the person is sick. All these things are also done in modern medicine, and considered extraordinarily important. In fact, the first thing they do nowadays is to check the urine for protein and sugar. This immediately gives an indication if the person has perhaps one disease or another. Or take the following. You see, if we want to have a healthy head, and after all this is not entirely unimportant for physical human beings here on earth—people want the head to be healthy, for they believe it to be the most important human organ, so they want to have the head healthy —if we want to have the head healthy, we must bring a substance that is continually produced in us, oxalic acid, through the chest up into the head. A healthy head must have a certain amount of oxalic acid. We produce the oxalic acid ourselves, just as we produce the alcohol we need. But the head has to work properly in turn, so that oxalic acid may be produced. If it does not work properly and the acid remains below, we get a head that is anaemic, and the oxalic acid is taken up into the urine and discharged. So you see, gentlemen, that even today, a completely ordinary chemical analysis of the urine indicates the most important diseases. But the chemistry we have today did not exist in the past. Medicine did however exist in times gone by. The situation is like this. Let us assume someone has a temperature —I'll take a drastic situation. What does it mean when we say someone has a temperature? It does not mean that his astral body has grown weak and slack, but that it is excessively active, acting right up into the I. The I is stirred up by this, as it were, if the astral body is excessively active. But the I brings about the blood circulation. And an excessively active astral body, wanting to get into the organs everywhere and being unable to do so, so that it boils up in itself like an ocean whipped up by gales, produces a fever in itself. What will happen next? The blood is made to run too fast in the body. It does not go through its proper transformation. The blood does not have time to develop the organs, but goes from heart to kidney as blood and from there into the urine, and we get a urine that is very dark in colour. Someone able to judge the dark colour of the urine will know that whichever it may be — if it is a little bit darker or very dark—fever is flooding the human organism. Let us assume the astral body grows utterly indolent, and no longer works properly. Then the blood moves sluggishly in the body, the pulse is barely noticeable. One is able to tell from feeling the pulse how slowly the blood is moving everywhere. Everything gets stuffed up in the body. Pain develops in all kinds of places; the urine turns pale yellow or even white. Now there are all kinds of shades between dark urine and white urine. If someone trains himself to recognize the different shades and takes some urine and looks at it against the light, he can indeed read all kinds of things from the colours of the urine. The blood continually seeks to replace substance that is lost from the organs. It therefore always has a tendency to turn solid. When the blood rushes through the organs at an excessive pace it cannot give anything to the organs. But it wants to be solid. When it then comes from the kidneys as urine, the urine will be cloudy with that kind of blood. If the astral body becomes sluggish and the pulse weak, one does not have cloudy urine but urine that is almost as clear as water and pure. So it is not only from the colour but also the cloudiness or clarity of urine that we can draw many conclusions. If the urine looks like a thundery day in summer, with dark clouds, as we look through it, and all kinds of things appear in it, and all is aboil in it, as on a stormy summer's day, then the person has something that creates a high temperature. And if one is able to judge the situation it is possible to tell what disease it is. If the urine looks delightfully clear, like a bright summer's day, with the sun illuminating everything, we may conclude that the person's sickness goes in the opposite direction and he easily tends to have all kinds of organs perish; one organ ceases to function, another organ ceases to function, and so on. So you see, the situation is such that someone who has trained himself to know the substances eliminated in the urine is able to say a great deal from looking at urine. But that is indeed the difference between the modern medicine we have today and the earlier medicine. In the earlier medicine, people would look at the urine the way we look at a clear or a storm-tossed summer's day, forming more of a rough-and-ready opinion. But having trained themselves, they would base their judgement on the situation as they found it. Modern medicine is highly materialistic and urine is chemically analysed, finding protein, oxalic acid, sugar and so on in it. The difference is therefore that the one would do it more from direct perception, the way it presented itself, and the other does it more by using chemistry. Now of course it is like this. In earlier times, when people still took this direct inspection seriously, they would learn how to do it properly; they were not quacks. Today most of the people who do it are quacks; though I am not saying they are all quacks. Someone can train himself so well that he can indeed see a great deal, all kinds of diseases. That is a matter of individual training; it needs a great deal of experience and one must make use of that experience. The difference is this. People do not think much of the spirit today. The spirit is on the point of being got rid of. Anyone can learn what chemistry has to offer. To make a chemical analysis of a substance is easily learned in the three, four, five or six years at university. Basically any fool can make a chemical analysis. And that is indeed the aim. The spirit is to be got rid of. Everyone should be able to do the same. That was not the case in earlier times. Then the spirit was highly regarded. But you have to have spirit to be able to see things in urine. That is the difference. In the past, people were made spiritual by teaching them; today they are made into handymen. It is like this. You need hands if you want to work, and the hands should be guided by mind and spirit. We talk a lot today about people working with their hands or with their heads, doing mental work, but such a distinction should not be made. Someone who works with his hands should also be given the opportunity to develop his mind and spirit, so that he can get to the spirit just as well as someone said to be doing mental work. Differences can only be made between people if we come to appreciate truly spiritual work again. But people want to get rid of the spirit today. Well, gentlemen, you see from this that in earlier times it was more important in medicine to look at things directly. This also had another consequence. I don't know if you know that today's scientific medical people are rather stuck-up, looking down on the 'muck pharmacy' of old because medicines were made from all kinds of strange things in the past. People would say to themselves: 'Human beings eliminate secretions. If these are brought back into the body again in the right way, they'll immediately want to come out again. And what do they do in that case? They get a sluggish astral body to function in a more regular way again, or a sluggish ether body to function in a more regular way again.' Now you'll say: 'If one finds that someone's astral body has grown sluggish, one might give him sweat as a medicine.' You might say this. And you might say: 'Well, that's the old muck pharmacy, for that really had something of this.' Well, there is in fact no great difference. For if you were to investigate the products used for medicines today you would find that they are the same products as are found in sweat, only they are put together from outside, out of mineral substances. The ancients used the actual sweat. And it was in many respects more effective than the things one puts together, for—as I have told you on many occasions —nature is much cleverer than people are. People can combine things to make medicines which nature combines herself. It was a strange thing, but the ancients appreciated something that is not at all appreciated today. The ancients would say: 'When someone gets up a good sweat, he has a blanket of sweat all around him (Fig. 22). So that is the first thing. But people secrete sweat all over their body surface. If we could leave this sweat which the person secretes and take away the person, just think, it would be like this. Here someone is sweating terribly; the whole body surface is covered with sweat. Now imagine I could take the person away and the sweat would stay where it was. That would leave an impression of the whole person; we would have the whole person in the sweat! Most interesting, is it not? The situation is that sweat all the time seeks to reproduce the human form. The ancients also did something else. Not only did they look at sweat in this way, but they also looked at urine like this. So they would have a small glass of urine, for example (Fig. 23). They were still able to see things better in the spirit; and lo and behold, something like a spectre of the person would arise from the urine for them. Something the sweat created by itself, being on the surface, was rising up, as it were, from the urine. People really saw that in the past, if they had a vial of urine. So there arose —I don't know if you know the story of Venus, the goddess, rising from the sea foam —that is how a human astral spectre would rise from the urine. And when someone tended towards a particular illness, let us say, consumption, the astral spectre would be thin and dried up. When someone tended to be unnaturally fat, the spectre would be swelling up on all sides. You may call it fanciful that someone should see a different spectre arising from light-coloured urine than from dark urine. But they did see it. And as physicians of old they would judge diseases in this way. And the same thing happened at the time when people studied not only the urine but also the faecal matter passed as stools. These were particularly important in the past for determining diseases. Just imagine someone taking a look at the stools. One will find that the stools of one person contained much sulphur, those of another person much iron. Depending on what is in there, you may have more sulphurous intestinal contents. Dogs, for example, have much sulphur in their intestinal contents and this then goes outside. The more sulphur it contains, the more whitish and firm the faecal matter. The more carbon, carbon-type matter there is in it, the darker is the intestinal content; cats have this. It is therefore possible to conclude what illnesses people have by looking at the faecal matter passed as stools, much better even than from urine. With faecal matter the ancients also had a vision; it was in their nature to have such visions. This is something quite remarkable. They would say that when someone secreted sweat he enveloped himself in his own spectre. And when someone passed urine a spectre would rise from it. The situation with intestinal contents is that they have boundaries all round and distinct colours. And in ancient times diseases were widely diagnosed according to those visions or dreams, if you like. Today people will imitate this rather inaccurately, sometimes in a very silly way. They read it up in ancient tomes which we can hardly understand today. There are some who will diagnose illnesses from the stools, but usually this will not get them very far. But someone may gain considerable experience in this, and then it could prove fruitful. Modern scientists do not think much of this, however, for they prefer to use chemical analysis for everything. But, as I said, examination of the urine is as important in medical science today as it is in the unscientific medicine that is something left over from earlier times. Looking through ancient medical books you will come across a term which you'll not normally be able to understand. All kinds of mystics and people who fancy they have the whole of wisdom, not only knowledge but wisdom, will keep telling you what they have read in those ancient tomes. It does not mean much, for they do not understand those old books. But if you read them yourselves you'll find a particular term. Again and again you'll see the term 'mummy'. The books will say: if the 'mummy' is clear and bright, the person will be afflicted with all kinds of conditions that drive him to consumption and so on; if the 'mummy' is very dark, blackish, the person will have a fever, heated diseases. The books always speak of how the 'mummy' is, and diagnose diseases by this. What is this 'mummy'? People reading this today know only of Egyptian mummies. So what do they actually make of it if they read that the 'mummy' is bright or dark? They'll never know what is meant by this. But what did the people who wrote those ancient medical books mean? The form that is produced in sweat, the form that arose from the vial of urine and from the stools — that is what they called the 'mummy'. The mummy was in fact the spiritual human being. And the spiritual human being became visible through the eliminations. The ancients would say: when a child is born, the afterbirth is discharged, and with this the last remnant of the spiritual human being goes away. If people were to investigate this today they would find that when a little child is born it is sometimes only very little which is discharged as afterbirth, and therefore very little that is supersensible. But there are others where a great deal is discharged. These people, where a great deal is discharged — the spirit departs even as they are born — later become materialists. And that is how it is, gentlemen. Spiritual activity in the human being, astral and I activity, has extraordinarily much to do with secretion and elimination. When people spoke of the old muck pharmacy, this shows they no longer appreciated what used to be appreciated in the past. Waste phenomena are no longer appreciated today. In many ways it is of course a good thing if they are not given too much appreciation, for that may lead to all kinds of things. I once knew someone who wanted to stop washing, for having heard that the spirit lives in our eliminations he said we should keep our eliminations, including the dirt. And the result was that he had a great appreciation for dirt! Well, gentlemen, that may sometimes seem foolish. But it is not always foolish. Take horses, for instance. You know they have hoofs down below, and there is a transition from the hoof to the soft part of the horse's toe. Dirt collects in that part. And it may happen that a horse gets sick if you keep scraping off that dirt. You need an instinct to tell you for how long the dirt should be left, so that the horse can keep up with producing this dirt. But there in the horse it is perfectly easy to see the importance of the dirt, the elimination. In humans the matter is important for their spiritual aspect, including health and illness. And the ancients called the spiritual aspect of the eliminations the 'mummy'. If you find the word 'mummy' in old books from now on you'll know what it means, for I have told you how the 'mummy' develops from the products of elimination. You see, there is a vast science in the question Mr Muller asked, but a science we can only cope with if we consider the spiritual aspect. Otherwise everything that is eliminated is simply a product of elimination; one takes no heed of it. But people show by their eliminations what kind of spirit lives in them. And you need only take a superficial look to see this in the case of faecal matter. Compare horse dung with cow dung. Cow dung is larger, and it spreads. Horse dung consists of what are almost little round heads. If you have a feeling for beauty you cannot help but say, as you see a cow pat: 'The whole cow!' There we have its image, with its broad gait, its leisured activity, its inclination to lie down; the whole cow is there in that cow pat. And the horse, the jumping jack of the animal world, always wanting to come away from the earth, wanting to leap and jump away and out into the world — horse droppings reveal the whole horse! And that is how it is with the faecal matter of animals; one can see the whole animal in it. So you can see what the ancients meant by a 'mummy', and that it was simply astral. The supersensible animal, the supersensible human being, lives in the eliminations. We can cope with these things if we have the science of the spirit. Now of course, this should not cause our enemies to say that the science of the spirit concerns itself with sweat, urine and so on, and is therefore really a muck science. This would suit our enemies only too well! And so, gentlemen, because you have asked the question I had to show you the truth of it. But you may also point out, whenever the opportunity arises, that it is not a matter of studying something that is muck, but of studying the spiritual element. For a person will faint if the constructive principle is too powerful in him. Tumours will develop if he only constructs. He must also destroy, doing so in the right way. He will faint, be permanently insensible and not there in the spirit if a tumour develops in the brain, for in that case only construction takes place. The tumour develops when destruction is not playing its role in the brain. And the nerves of the brain are products of destruction, spiritual products of destruction. But if the process gets too powerful, then the blood comes in too strongly and inflammation develops. And there you have the difference between tumours and inflammation. If your urine is dark, you have a tendency to inflammation somewhere in the body. If your urine is light coloured, you tend to develop tumours. This is one thing. But you can diagnose all diseases in the urine, if you know how to examine it properly. We'll continue on Wednesday.

From Elephants to Einstein

Anabolism and catabolism in the human organism. Significance of secretions

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA352/English/RSP1998/19240223p02.html

Dornach

23 Feb 1924

GA352-9

Good morning, gentlemen. Has anyone thought of something for today? Mr Burle asked about the theory of relativity and what the situation was today. One read a lot about it, especially earlier. Now it had perhaps been forgotten again; at least one no longer heard so much about it. Rudolf Steiner. Well, you see, the situation with the theory of relativity is a difficult one, and so you'll probably have to pay careful attention today and in the end you'll still say, even if you did pay good attention, that you do not know it. But it is the same for many people who talk about the theory of relativity today. They talk about it, often praising it as the greatest achievement of our age, but they do not understand it. I'll try and speak of it in as popular a way as possible. As I said, it will be difficult today, but I am sure we'll get back to more interesting things the next time. Einstein's theory refers to the movements of any body. You know that bodies move by changing their position in space. To draw a movement we say: a body is in a position a and moves to another which we may call b. So if you see a railway train go past, standing somewhere outside, you will at first be in no doubt but that the train is rushing past you, that it is moving and you are standing still. But doubts may arise quite easily, for the moment of course only if you do not give it any more thought, if you are sitting in a railway carriage and are asleep at first, then wake up and look out of the window. A train is going past. You have the distinct feeling that a train is going past. This need not be true, however, for before you went to sleep your train was stationary, and while you were asleep your train started to move. You did not notice, being asleep, that your train started to move, and it seems that the other train is moving past. If you take a closer look you find that the train outside is stationary, but your train is moving. So you are in motion but believe you are at rest and the other train is in motion, when in reality it is at rest. You know it can also happen that you look out of the window and believe yourself to be at rest in the train you are in, and the whole train is going in the opposite direction. That is what the eye perceives. And so you see that the things we say about movement are not always correct. You wake up and form the opinion that the train outside is in motion. But you immediately have to correct yourself: Hey, that is not true; it is standing still and I am travelling! It has happened that an opinion had to be corrected in this way on a much larger scale on one or indeed several occasions in world history. We only need to go back six or seven centuries. People then held the view that the earth stood still in space, with the whole of the starry heavens moving past it. This view was corrected in the sixteenth century, as you may have heard. Copernicus 22 Copernicus, Nicolaus (1473-1543), Polish astronomer w o established the view that the earth and the other planets or it the sun. came along and said: 'None of this is true. The sun, the fixed stars are in fact standing still, and we with our earth are flying through space at a tremendous speed.' We thought we were at rest on earth—just as the person in the train thought he was at rest and the other train was moving—and we have now corrected this. Copernicus corrected the whole of astronomy, saying it was not true that the stars moved; they stood still, whereas the earth with the human beings on it was rushing through space at a vast speed. So you can immediately see that we may not always say right away how things are with movement—whether we ourselves are at rest and a body moving past is truly in motion, or we ourselves are moving and a body we think is rushing past is at rest. I think if you consider this you'll say to yourselves: 'Yes, it may be necessary to make such a correction for anything we recognize to be movement.' But just consider how long it took before the whole of humanity came to make the correction for the movement of the earth. It took thousands of years. When you are sitting in a train it may perhaps only take seconds before you correct your opinion. It therefore varies how long we take to correct such an opinion. This has made people like Einstein say that we really cannot know if something we see in motion actually is in motion or if we are not in some mysterious way in motion as we stand there motionlessly and the other is in fact motionless; let us therefore draw the final conclusion from this uncertainty. Well, gentlemen, in that case it might be like this. Let us assume this is a car. You drive the car from Hansi House up to the Goetheanum. But who can say that the car really comes up here? Who can say this with certainty? The car might be completely motionless, only its wheels turning, and the whole of the Goetheanum towards which one is driving might be moving down the hill in the opposite direction. It just needs for something to emerge the way it did emerge for Copernicus in relation to the earth! ( Laughter ) Einstein took such things and said: 'We can never be certain if it is the one body that moves or the other. All we know is that they move relatively to each other, that the distance between them changes; that is the only thing we know.' Of course we know it when we drive to the Goetheanum, because we come closer to the Goetheanum, but we cannot know if it comes to us or we go to it. Now you see, when we speak of being truly at rest or truly in motion, those are absolutes. What then is absolute rest or absolute motion? It would be a state of rest or a movement of which we could say: 'The body is at rest within the universe or it moves.' But that is an awkward business, for at the time of Copernicus it was still believed that it was the sun that stood still and the earth that moved around it. This is true for the earth, but not for the sun, for the sun is moving very fast, rushing through space at a terrific speed relative to an astral cosmos in the constellation of Hercules — and all of us with it, of course. 23 See M. Wilhelm Meyer, Die Gesetze der Bewegungen am Himmel und ihre Erforschung, Berlin, n.d. On page 96 he says (in Ger man): The only thing we know, incidentally, is that this tota motive energy of the stars is currently taking our solar s} stem through the universe and towards Hercules at a rate of some 30 kilometres a second, towards an unknown, dark destina tion that is infinitely far away for us. On the one hand we are orbiting the sun, but as we orbit the sun we rush through cosmic space with it. We thus cannot say that the sun is absolutely at rest in cosmic space. And because of this Einstein and others who held the same views said that we simply cannot be certain that anything is absolutely at rest or in absolute motion; we can only say that things are relatively at rest—relatively meaning in relationship to each other—they appear to us to be at rest or in motion. You see, gentlemen, there was an occasion during a course given in Stuttgart where someone thought we anthroposophists do not really know anything worth knowing about the theory of relativity, and being a fanatical adherent of that theory he wanted to show people that the theory of relativity really has validity. What did he do? He took a box of matches and said: 'Here's a match. I now hold the box so that it does not move and move the match away from me and towards it. It ignites. Now I make a second experiment. I hold the match so that it does not move and move the box towards me. Again the match ignites. The same thing happens. What has happened is that a flame has been ignited. But the movement I made is not absolute; it is relative. On the one occasion, if that is the box and this the match, I move the match in this direction, and on the other occasion the box. It does not matter if I want to make a fire if the box is moving or the match, but only that they move relative to one another.' This can be applied to anything in the world. You can say, speaking of the whole world, the situation is that we do not know if one thing moves or another, or one moves more actively and the other less so. All we know is that they move relative to one another, coming closer or going further apart. That is all we know. And we do not know if one body moves faster or more slowly. Let us assume you are in a fast train travelling at speed and a slow train goes past outside. You are looking out of the window. You cannot judge what is really going on, for as you travel in your fast train and the slow train comes along you have the feeling that your fast train is going much more slowly than it did before. Try it. At that moment you have the feeling that the train is suddenly going much more slowly. Your perception is that the speed is reduced by as much as the speed of the train that is coming the other way. So you get completely the wrong idea about the speed at which your train is travelling. If on the other hand a train is travelling next to yours that is going more slowly, you get the feeling that yours is going faster. You can never judge how two movements are relative to each other but only how the distance between them changes. We may stop at this point and say: 'This Einstein really was a clever fellow, he has finally realized that you cannot speak of absolute movement in the universe but only of relative movements.' It is clever, and, as you will understand, it is true for many things. For no one seeing a star, let us say, at rest can say it is a star at rest. If you move at a certain rate, the star seems to move in the opposite direction—but it may also be moving towards you. So you cannot say from just looking at it if it is at rest or in motion. It is necessary for us to know this; and knowing this, the whole way of putting things in some of the sciences today really ought to change. Let me give you an example of this. How do we gain knowledge of the stars? You cannot gain knowledge of the stars if you take the view a certain prince once took who went to an observatory where the astronomer had to show him the observations he was making, of course, him being the ruler of the land. So he let the prince look through the telescope and they observed a star. If you aim a telescope just anywhere you'll not see anything at first. You have to wait a little and then the star will appear and finally disappear again on the other side. The prince looked at this and then he said: 'Right, now I can see you know something about the stars; you know where they are and how they move. I see that. But what I fail to understand is how you can know the names of the stars, seeing they are so far away.' Such views will not get us far in astronomy. But what happens when we observe the stars? We have a telescope, and the astronomer sits there—seeing his head from above —looks into it and there is the reticle here, where two threads cross, and one establishes the location of the star. In the past, observers always thought one might say: 'Either the earth has moved, or one has moved the telescope on, moving the objective'— that is the objective or lens system, which is further away (the glass that is nearer to one is called the eyepiece)—'so far that one sees the star at res in it.' In the old days people thought the star moved. Toda] we have to say that we do not know anything about the resting or moving state of a star. All we can say is that at that moment the reticle of my telescope coincides with the image of the star. The two coincide. We cannot say more than what is immediately in front of our eyes. We would thus have no certainty about the world as a whole. This has tremendous implications. It is important when we consider the movements not only of heavenly bodies but also of bodies here on earth. And the consequences drawn by Einstein and others who think like him go a very long way. They said, for instance, that if motion was only relative and not absolute one could never say anything valid about anything, not about things happening at the same time nor about different times. If I have a watch in Dornach, for instance, and another in Zurich, with the hands in the same position, I am far from certain that it may not be true that my observation is wrong, for they are some distance apart. It is possible that there is no such thing as simultaneity, with things happening at the same time. So you see, enormous consequences were drawn from the matter. And the question is: shall we never be rid of this problem? Is there nothing at all we can say about the things themselves as they are in motion? That is the important question. What is certain is that we cannot say anything about their movements as we look at them. And it is also true in the widest sense that when I drive up to the Goetheanum in a car, it may just as well be that the Goetheanum is coming to meet me. But there is one thing, gentlemen, that does happen. Even the example of the matchbox which I quoted is not entirely true. For you see, I could have called out to the gentleman who gave such a fine demonstration: 'How about nailing the box to the table and see how well you can move it then! You'd certainly need a lot of strength to move the whole table to and fro.' So there is something not right somewhere. You can find out what it is if you consider the matter very carefully. Let us assume you go by car from Dornach to Basle. Now we might say it is not true that the car is moving; it is stationary and only the wheels are moving, and Basle is coming to meet it. Fine. But there is one thing that speaks against it. The car will be worn out after some years. And the fact that the car is worn out can only be due to the fact that it was not the road that moved but the car, and that it has been worn out, ruined, by what went on inside it. So if you do not only look at the movement but also inside the body itself to see what effect movement has, then you will realize that Einstein's conclusion does not apply all the way. So you'll find that the car wears itself out, and it is not only that the tyres are worn down from going round and round. Now someone might say: 'Well, they would also go round if the hill were coming towards one, or if Basle came towards one, for otherwise that would get worn down.' And then one might still say: 'Maybe it is like that after all. It is not easy to decide in the case of lifeless bodies.' And all you can say in the case of lifeless bodies is that it is uncertain how much the one or the other is moving. But a living organism! Imagine you walk to Basle, and someone else stays here in Dornach, standing still for the two hours you need to walk to Basle. Now, if you had not moved towards it but Basle had come to meet you, you would have practically done no more than the other person who remained standing still. But you've grown tired. A change has come over you. This change, which is happening inside you, does tell you that you have moved. And with living bodies it is possible, in a way, to tell from the change that happens in them if they are truly in motion or only in apparent motion and therefore at rest. And that is also what must help us to realize that one must not base theories on observations made in the world not even something that seems as obvious as movement does. We must base our theory on internal changes. So the situation is that with the theory of relativity, too, we have to say to ourselves: someone who only looks at the outer aspect of things will not get anywhere; you have to consider the inside. And then the theory of relativity actually helps us to make at least a beginning with the science of the spirit, with anthroposophy, for in anthroposophy we are always asked to consider the inner aspect. Einstein's theory has had some extraordinarily strange consequences. The matter gets particularly interesting, for instance, when Einstein gives examples. One example was his effort to prove that the change in location has no significance at all. He therefore said: 'If I fling a watch the hands of which are in a particular position out into space so that it goes out at the speed of light, turns round and comes back again, this movement has had no significance for the inner parts of the watch. The watch comes back unchanged.' That was the kind of example Einstein would give. 'If a body moves or not—we cannot tell. The watch is the same, it is the same to it if it moves or remains at rest.' But, gentlemen, one simply has to ask you to look at the reality of a watch flying out into cosmic space at the speed of light and coming back again. You won't see anything of that watch. It will have been pulverized so that you can no longer see it. What does this mean? It means one cannot think like that. It leads to thoughts that are thoughtless. And so you'll find on one hand that Einstein is a very clever man, and that he draws conclusions, forms opinions that people find most attractive. You know, ordinary people who are not the best of mathematicians will not understand much of Einstein's theory. And then they begin to read about Einstein's theory in some popular book. They read the first page and give a yawn; they read half the second page and then they stop. And they'll say: 'It must be something terribly clever. For if it were not terribly clever I would be able to understand it. And a lot of people are saying that it is something very clever.' This is how public opinion has been formed concerning the theory of relativity. But there are people who do understand it. And Einstein's followers come from among those who do understand it, their numbers growing daily. It is not that it has been forgotten, as Mr Burle thinks. University professors did not want to know about Einstein's theory if you tried to talk to them about it a few years ago. Today people in the academic world in particular are full of Einstein's theory. But people do develop strange notions about it. I once had a debate about Einstein's theory with university professors. Now, you see, for as long as one stays in the area which I have also been discussing here, Einstein's theory of relativity is correct. There's nothing you can do about it. It is like that with railway trains, with solar systems, with movements in the whole world. In that respect it is quite correct. But the academics then apply it to everything and say, for example: 'The size of a person is also relative. He does not have absolute but only relative size. It merely seems to me that he is that tall. He is that tall in relation— well, seeing we are here—to the chairs or to the trees, but one cannot speak of an absolute height.' Now you see, that holds true for as long as we are only dealing with geometry. The moment we stop dealing with geometry and come to life itself, the situation changes and we are singing a different tune. You see, someone who has no feeling for it can carve a human head that is a hundred times the size of your head. He then has a head. But someone who has a feeling for this would never do this, for he knows that the size of the human head is not relative, for it is determined by the whole of cosmic space. The person may be a little taller or shorter, but when someone is a dwarf that is because of an illness. When someone becomes a giant that, too, is due to illness. It is not just relative, for the absolute nature i already apparent. Human sizes do, of course, vary withii limits. But in the universe the human being is destined to have a particular size. So again we cannot speak of relativity. We can only say that a human being gives himself a particular size because of his relationship to the universe. Only one of the group of professors with whom I had the debate would admit this. The others had their minds twisted to such an extent by the theory of relativity that they said the size of a human being, too, is relative, for that is how we look at it. Now you know that if you have a painting it may be large; when you walk away it gets smaller and smaller, according to the law of perspective. The size of the painting, you see, is relative. The relativity theoreticians therefore believe that the size of the human being, too, is only the way it is because it is seen against a particular background. But that is nonsense. The size of the human being has a quality of being absolute, and a person cannot be much taller and not much shorter than predetermined. People think all this up because they have no real idea as to what is involved in a process or an object that is somewhere near us on earth. You will be able to realize from everything I have been saying that if that is the earth, and there is a human being on the earth, you know he depends not only on the forces of the earth but on forces that influence him from beyond the earth. Our head for instance reflects the whole universe. We have spoken of this. If it were of no importance what size a person is, what would have to be then? Let us assume Mr Burle's head, Mr Erbsmehl's head and Mr Muller's head is created out of the universe. Well, gentlemen, if the heads differ in three or four different ways here, then there would have to be an extra universe for each. But there is only one universe, and it does not grow bigger or smaller for the sake of an individual person but is always there, always the same, and because of this human heads must be approximately the same. Only people who do not realize that we all share the same world, which also has spiritual influences, believe it does not matter what size a person's head is and say that it is merely relative. It is not relative but depends on the absolute size of the universe. So we have to say to ourselves again: it is indeed the case that if one thinks about the theory of relativity in the right way that one comes to the science of the spirit and not to materialistic science. And if one looks more closely at the human being, one can see that people who think like Einstein run out of ideas when they come to the sphere of life or of the spirit. You see, as a boy I was able to take part in the lively debates held on the forces of gravity. Gravity— if a body falls to the ground, you say it has weight. It drops because it has weight, gravity. But the force of gravity is active throughout the universe. Bodies are attracted to one another. If this is the earth and this the moon (Fig. 24), the earth attracts the moon and the moon does not fly off like this, but moves in an orbit around the earth because the earth always draws it back to itself just as it is on the point of flying off. When I was a boy people were disputing with one another as to what really causes gravity. Newton, the English physicist 24 Newton, Sir Isaac (1642-1727) of whom I have been telling you before, simply said: 'Bodies are mutually attracted.' This is not an entirely materialistic view, for you only have to think what it takes for a person to take hold of something and draw it to him and you can see it needs all kinds of things other than the material. Now if the earth is to attract the moon, one really cannot speak of a materialistic view at all. Yet in my young days materialism was flourishing. We might also say it dried people up, making them wither, but we might also say it flourished. And people would say: 'That is not true; the earth cannot attract the moon, for it does not have hands to draw it to itself. That is not possible.' Then they said: 'The cosmic ether is everywhere (see drawing).' So what I am drawing red here is the cosmic ether; it consists of lots of small grains, tiny little grains. And these tiny little grains bump into here, and bump into there, but bump more there than they do in the middle. So if you have two bodies, earth and moon, and there is more pushing from outside than from the inside, it is as if they were attracted to each other. The force of attraction, of gravity, was therefore explained as pushing from outside. I cannot describe the painful process I went through to gain insight at that time. I really kept turning the matter over in my mind from my 12th to 18th year — does the earth attract the moon, or is the moon pushed towards the earth. For you see, the reasons people gave were mostly not exactly stupid but clever. But here we already have something of a theory of relativity. One asks oneself: is there something absolute in this or is it all relative? Perhaps it eally does not matter if we say the earth attracts the moon, )r the moon is pushed towards the earth? Perhaps the issue cannot be decided. You see, people gave the matter a great deal of thought. And what I really want to say is this: they did at least realize at the time that apart from visible matter there is also the ether. They needed the ether, for how could one speak of something that was pushing unless it was those grains in the ether. When Einstein first established his theory of relativity, people still believed in the existence of the ether. And Einstein thought of everything he described as relative motion as being in space, and space being filled with ether. Then he realized: 'Wow! If motion is merely relative, there is no need for there to be any ether. Nothing needs to pull, nothing to push. All this cannot be decided, and so it may also be that space is empty.' As time went on there really were two Einsteinian theories. It was of course one and the same person. The earlier Einstein described everything in his books as if the whole of cosmic space were filled with ether. Then his theory of relativity made him say: 'Space is empty.' Only with the theory of relativity there is no point in saying anything about the ether, for one simply does not know if it is like that. And some of the examples he gives are indeed grotesque. He says, for example: 'If that is the earth and there is some kind of tree, I climb up the tree; here I slip, and fall down' — it is something you probably all know; I certainly had it happen to me quite often as a boy that when I climbed up a tree and lost my grip I would fall down. And you say: 'The earth is attracting me. I have weight. This is because of the force of gravity, for otherwise I would have remained hanging in the air, I would be waving my arms and legs about if the earth did not attract me.' But Einstein thinks you can't say all this, for imagine the following. There you have the earth again and now I am up there on a tower. But I am not standing in a place where there is open world all around me, for I am in a box, and the box is suspended from above. If I drop off the tower in my box, my relationship to the walls remains the same. I am not aware of being in motion, for the walls come down with me. So now I cannot say if the rope on which my box is suspended is let down from above and I arrive at the bottom in my box because someone is letting me down, or if I get down there, if the box loses its hold, because the earth attracts me. I cannot determine this. I do not know if I am let down or if the earth is attracting me. But the situation with this example chosen by Einstein is just as it is with the example always given in schools. It is explained to the children how a planetary system develops; that at first there is a nebula, and the planets separate out from this misty nebula. The sun remains at the centre. And people say it is easy to prove that this is true. Take a little drop of oil floating on water, and in the middle a piece of card with a pin stuck through it. You put this into the water, and begin to rotate it. Tiny droplets then split off from the bigger one, and you have a tiny planetary system. 25 Reference to an experiment named after the Belgian physicist J.A.F. Plateau (1801-83). And it must be the same out there. Once there was a nebula; the planets split off, and the sun remained at the centre. How could anyone contradict this when they see that drop of fat even today! Well, yes, but one little thing has been overlooked, gentlemen, which is that I have to be there and rotate the pin if I am the teacher showing this to the children. If I do not rotate it, no little planetary system will develop! And so the teacher would have to tell the children that there is a huge teacher out there who once made it turn. Only then would the example be complete. And Einstein, if he were to think in terms of reality —if he ever gets to develop such an idea — would have to assume that someone up there is in charge of the rope. This is equally necessary. Otherwise you cannot say it does not matter how I come down off the tower, whether someone lets me down or I fall down; there must be someone up there. And giving his example Einstein would have to immediately remember to say: 'Who is holding the rope?' But he does not, for the materialism of our present age does not permit him to do so. So he thinks up examples that do not relate to reality, that one cannot think, that are impossible to think. And there is something else, too. Imagine a hill, gentlemen. There you have the town Freiburg im Breisgau. I set up a cannon on the hill so that you'll be able to hear it in Offenburg, if you like, when it is fired. If someone notes the time when he heard the bang in Freiburg and if someone else has heard it in Offenburg, you get a difference in time. The sound needed some time to get from Freiburg to Offenburg. Now you see, this business has also been made use of for the so-called theory of relativity. For people say let us assume I am not in Offenburg and hear the bang but in Freiburg. There I hear it as it happens. I now travel in a train from Freiburg to Offenburg. Moving away from Freiburg, I hear the sound a little later than when it happened. I would hear it still a little later if I were closer to Offenburg, and even more the further I go in that direction. But this will only happen for as long as you travel more slowly than the sound does. If you travel at the same speed as the sound going from Freiburg to Offenburg, what will happen? If you travel at the same speed as the sound, you arrive at Offenburg and it runs away from you—you still do not hear it. If you travel at the same speed you'll never hear it. You are meant to hear it, but it's gone. Now people will say: Wow, that is right, you don't hear the sound any more when you move at the same speed as the sound. And if you move even faster than the sound, what happens then? If the movement is slower you hear it later; if it goes at the same speed you don't hear it at all. If you move faster you hear it sooner than it happens! And people will say that is quite natural, it is properly thought out. So if you hear the sound two seconds later in Offenburg, moving more slowly than the sound, you do not hear it at all if you move at the same speed as the sound. But if you move faster than the sound you hear it two seconds earlier than the cannon was fired in Freiburg! Now I'd like to invite you to listen, really listen to the sound before it is produced in Freiburg! Try it to convince yourselves; see if you'll hear it sooner, even if you go ever so fast. The other thing that goes against this is that I would also like to ask you what you'll look like if you move as fast or even faster than sound. What follows from this? It follows that you can think what you like providing you do not stick to reality. With the theory of relativity, people finally arrive at the idea that you can hear the sound before the cannon is actually fired! ( Laughter ) It is perfectly possible to think these things, but they cannot actually happen. And, you see, that is the difference. People doing scientific work today mainly want to think logically; and Einstein is wonderfully logical in his thinking. But logical is not in itself real. You have to have two qualities in your thinking. In the first place, things certainly have to be logical, but they must also be in accord with reality. You must be able to live in the real world. Then you won't think up a box pulled up and down by a rope. You won't think of a watch flying out into space and back again at the speed of light. Nor will you think of someone moving faster than sound and hearing the sound before the cannon is fired. Many of these ideas presented in books today, gentlemen, are well thought out, but they do not relate to the real world. We are thus able to say that Einstein's theory of relativity is clever and does hold true for some things in the world, but you cannot do anything with it when you look into reality. For the theory of relativity will never tell you why someone gets extremely tired going to Basle, seeing he is unable to say if he is going to Basle or if Basle is coming to meet him. His tiredness would be inexplicable if Basle were coming to meet him, and why I do things with my feet when I walk. I might simply stand still and wait for Basle to come to me. You see, all this shows clearly that it is not enough to think correctly and cleverly, for there has to be something else. We have to accept the reality of life and decide on things in relation to life. This is what I am able to tell you about the theory of relativity. It has attracted a great deal of attention, but, as I said, people do not really understand it, otherwise they would reflect on these things. We'll meet again next Saturday.

From Elephants to Einstein

Einstein's theory of relativity. Thinking divorced from reality

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA352/English/RSP1998/19240227p02.html

Dornach

27 Feb 1924

GA352-10

Good morning, gentlemen! Has something come to mind for today? Mr Dollinger: I would like to ask why people living near a cemetery are often less lively and look so pale. (He gave an example that seemed to bear this out.) I'd like to know how the rhythm is in the bodies, and if it cannot also do something good. Rudolf Steiner: Well, I reckon I can answer this question quite well, because I lived right next to a cemetery from the age of 7 until I was 17. So I must have looked terribly pale in those days. It was a little bit true. Considering what you have said, this should have been the case, particularly for me. The cemetery was that of a small place 1 Neudörfl near Wiener Neustadt, at that time in Hungary. with a population of about 600, and so the cemetery was moderate in size. But it was right next to the house and the railway station where we lived. And people lived right next to it all around, as was usual in such places. You had the church, with the cemetery around it, and then the houses [drawing on the board]. It was always possible to see the state of health of the people who lived around the cemetery. Well, it is fair to say that there were considerable differences between the people, and that the priest, for instance, who lived not far from the cemetery, was neither pale nor frail; he was quite corpulent and also looked pretty good. So that is what I saw at the time. But one comes to see that, providing healthy conditions are created in other ways, and this was often done in places where you had cemeteries around the churches, you cannot assume that this is so terribly harmful. Many walnut trees would grow in those villages. The scent of walnut trees spreads, and it is extraordinarily good in strengthening health. You have to assume that people had pretty good instincts in villages where this was the general custom, and so they would plant chestnut or walnut trees, and above all also lime trees in places where the cemetery was right in the village. Limes and walnut trees counteract the harmful effects of a cemetery, balancing them out. Something else to be considered is this. You see, if you go into more detail with the things Mr Dollinger wants to know, that is, the effect on the higher bodies, we have to be clear that only the physical body and the ether body have a vitalizing effect, whilst the astral body and the I* do not have a vitalizing but essentially a paralysing effect; they are active in soul and spirit. And you will know from many other things I have said that the physical body and the ether body are like a plant; they grow, and organs develop. If we had only these two, we would be in a continual faint. We would have a sleep life, like the plants, if destructive processes were not continually at work in us; it is only because of these that we do not have the sleep life of plants. The astral body and the I destroy, they atomize. There is continuous production and destruction in the human being. And the astral body is the most destructive in our human nature. All the products we eliminate — I have spoken of these — have really been broken down by the astral body and I. The ether body is only involved a little in this, as I have told you. Now you see, gentlemen, the atmosphere that rises in a cemetery is related to the principle that is destructive in the human astral body, and it encourages the destructive processes. People are more subject to destruction if they live near a cemetery than if they live out in the woods somewhere. If they live in the woods, the productive forces are stronger; if they live near a cemetery the destructive forces are. But, as I said, 2 Lecture given to the workmen on 23 February 1924, vol. 6 in the German edition of these lectures (GA 352). if we did not have those powers of destruction we would be stupid all our life. We need those powers of destruction. Then there is something else. I have told you that I can speak on the subject because I know it from personal experience, having known it especially in my young days, a time when so many things develop. I have always had a tendency to think clearly. And I am convinced that I owe this to the fact that destiny made me live close to a cemetery. So that is the good thing about it, gentlemen, and it has to be taken into account as well. You'll agree that it is the dead bodies which are harmful in a cemetery. Those dead bodies merely continue in the process of destruction. When we die, the productive process stops. And because of this the astral body is really encouraged to think clearly when close to a cemetery. This, too, cannot be denied. In the area where I grew up, called the Burgenland today, villages everywhere had their cemeteries at the centre. The Burgenland is an area that was much fought over. There are a few larger towns, Eisenstadt and others, but these lie far apart, and villages are to be found everywhere, always with the cemetery in the middle. And it is true to say that people there had a certain rustic cunning. Nor can we deny that this cunning really developed under the influence of the cemetery atmosphere. They kept the harmful influences away by planting walnut trees and limes everywhere. It was also a wine growing area. The atmosphere created by the vine also helps to balance out bad effects. As you know, lime blossom is quite powerful, and walnut trees also have a powerful scent; this has more of a vitalizing effect on the astral body. And the atmosphere created by the vine has more of a vitalizing effect on the I. So there you get a powerful effect also on the higher bodies. Of course, we cannot deny that things change as civilization progresses. The moment the villages grow bigger, with many houses built, which reduces the effect of the trees, a cemetery begins to be harmful, and then you do, of course, see those pale faces around a cemetery. It can no longer be balanced out and the result is that people suffer from the cemetery influence. This has in turn led to a natural instinct, which is to put the cemetery outside when villages have grown into towns. Something else also has to be considered. It is something that happens when the effect goes further, affecting the ether body. You see, everything that rises as a subtle vapour in the atmosphere influences the astral body and the I. Both the subtle smell of bodily decay that is always present in and around a cemetery and the scent of walnut, lime and chestnut, which is particularly vitalizing, can really only influence the higher bodies; they do not reach the ether body to any marked degree. But the situation is that the water in a region acts particularly on the ether body. And the water in the area surrounding a cemetery contains slight seepage from the dead bodies. This water is drunk by people, it is used in cooking. And if the water in a village where the cemetery lies close to the dwellings is contaminated, trees do not help! Nature helps very little in that case. And the consequence is that people will easily get tuberculosis and suffer very severely from that disease. You see, this is something I was well able to establish. There was a village some hours away from the one where I lived — a small village. Almost everybody lived around the cemetery. These people were naturally slow to act. They had weak muscles, weak nerves, everything was flaccid; they were pale. And then I did wonder why. And, you see, this is most interesting. In our village of Neudorfl the people living close to the cemetery were relatively healthy. So that is a big question for someone who looks at the country and considers the conditions under which people live. You had a village where people lived around the cemetery, and all they did was to plant walnut trees; they did plant them, that was a very healthy instinct — but apart from this they would very often take the water they used in cooking from the village stream! Here would be the row of houses [blackboard drawing], between them the village stream; here the cemetery, here the church; this was where we lived, here the priest, this was the school house; then there was a row of houses here, with a stream in between, and walnut trees everywhere. People would simply take their water from the stream; that stream did of course contain residues and bacteria, bacilli, from the seepage coming from the cemetery. People, and especially the people who lived there, were not outstanding when it came to cleanliness; there were houses with thatched roofs and everywhere the dunghill right at the front door, with the pigsty also right there — you got a wonderful combination of pigsty and dung heap — again draining into the village stream, so that when you stepped into it you were wading in a brownish sauce. So you see, it was not exactly hygienic, as we would say today. And in spite of this the people were healthy. One has to say they were healthy. In the first place, if the people are healthy, the dead bodies, too, are not so bad, to begin with, compared to a place where people are sick. But this still left a big question. Why were these people healthy when those others were feeble and not fit to live? The explanation is as follows. Near this village was another place — very small but a health resort with a mineral water spring. 3 The resort was called Sauerbrunn. The whole village went and got its drinking water from that place. And the drinking water from there, being carbonated, also helped to counteract the contaminated water from the cemetery. The people in the other place, which was far away from the spring, did not have this water. So it was possible to see directly that carbonated water — as I once told you, it acts strongly on the I and on thinking — influences the I and the ether body, and in the ether body balances out the destructive effects of the cemetery seepage. Of course, if there is still a cemetery once the village has become a town, there is basically nothing there to help transform the cemetery atmosphere, at least not unless spring water is brought in from a long distance away. If a town is situated in such a way that the cemetery is still at the centre, and if water is still drawn from wells, you do, of course, have the worst possible conditions for health, for in that case the ether body is under attack; and the ether body is a principle that cannot be coerced any further by anything coming from the astral body and the I. You see, sanitary conditions are most interesting, especially from this point of view. Of course, we also have to take into account that the people who live around a cemetery, if they are still believers and have not yet become unbelievers, continually see the funeral ceremonies. These again provide a counterbalance. They influence the I. They have a strengthening effect. This, too, must be considered from the health point of view. It does balance things out. I suppose this is more or less what you wanted to know? Perhaps someone else has thought of something? Well, gentlemen, in that case I'll go on with this question, taking it from quite a different angle. You see, we have considered many things so far. Today let us take the insights we have gained and consider the following. If you look at a map, your interest may go in a direction where you say: Here one nation lives, and here another. We take an interest in the different nations living next to one another. But you may also say: Today I'll look at the map to see how humanity has evolved. And then the map really gets very interesting. Let us look at a bit of a map. I'll just make a rough drawing of it [blackboard drawing]. Going over to Asia, for instance, we have India here, Peninsular India — I have drawn this before when we were studying the races 4 Lecture given on 3 March 1923. In vol. 3 of the series of workmen's lectures in German (GA 349). — and here Arabia; this is Asia Minor. There Asia merges into Europe, and we are practically in Europe, the islands that look across to Europe. There we have Greece. Then we come to Africa here. And there we have a river; that is the Nile; here is Egypt — completely under British control today, as you know — it was a free country once. Now you see, different nations live in all these areas. In India the Indians, who are now struggling to their feet. They were ruled by the British for a long time, still are today, but they are getting on to their feet, and people with some insight in Britain are terribly afraid that the Indians may one day become independent. There is a major Indian movement today. Mahatma Gandhi 5 Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948), Indian reformer and statesman. has stirred up such a movement in India. He was locked up, but has been released again now, for health reasons. Here in the Arab countries live people who have also been more or less under British rule; that is still a fairly impassable terrain in the Arab countries. As you know, one of the things that caused the Great War was that a railway was to be built through Turkey, going this way, and a route established to India in one direction and Arabia on the other. This German plan aroused the envy and jealousy of many other countries, the intention being to build the Berlin-Baghdad Railway through Turkey and down into Asia. And this is where Syria used to be. 6 Syria historically included all of modem Syria and Lebanon, and parts of Israel, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. It was a province of the Ottoman Empire (1516-1918), becoming a French territory in 1920. The country gained its independence in 1944. You see, there are all kinds of aspects where it is interesting to ask ourselves: People have been living everywhere from time immemorial; they lived very different lives. We need only mention a few things to realize how different their lives were. In India for example there was strict segregation in castes, compared to which anything by way of classes in Europe is a mere shadow image. In India you would be bom into a caste. The highest caste were the Brahmins, priests and scholars. The children of the Brahmins all went to school in those early times. They were the ones who were able to write, the uppermost caste. Priests came from this caste, but not rulers. They came from the second caste, the military and the rulers. But it would never be possible for someone to rise from the second to the first caste; it was all strictly segregated. The third caste were peasants, country people, and the fourth caste were the people who did menial work. These castes were kept strictly apart. If it would ever have happened that someone moved from one caste to another in ancient India, it would have been as if a lion were to turn into a lamb. The castes were considered to be separate just as individual animal species are separate. And people had nothing against this. It would have seemed as crazy to them to see someone move from the third caste to the first, as if a lion had turned into an ox. The situation was entirely natural to them in ancient India. Let us move on to Egypt; they had castes, too. What I am telling you now, gentlemen, you can consider to have been at a time that was about 3000 or 3500 years, perhaps even 4000 years before the coming of Christianity. We thus have to go back five or six millennia to look at the time of which I am speaking. In Egypt, they also had castes, but not so strictly adhered to; there it was possible for someone to move from one caste to another. But the situation in Egypt was that the whole organization of the state came from the priesthood. The priesthood arranged everything. It was the same in India, but there the division into castes determined everything, while it was less strict in Egypt. But they made sure that everything by way of law came from the priests. The other peoples in Syria, in Asia Minor, correspondingly had their own particular ways; they differed. To show you the role things we have been learning play in human history, let me tell you something else about these particular nations. Let us take four of them — the Indians, then the Egyptians, and then the peoples who were in this area. Here Euphrates and Tigris enter the Persian Gulf, and the people who lived there were later called the Babylonians. They will be the third group we look at. And then, as you know, a nation emerged here that was later to play a great role in history — the Semites, the Hebrews, the Jews. They went across to Egypt, later moved back again to live here in Palestine, a relatively small nation but one that played a great role in history. We may thus consider the Indians, the Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Jews. You see, a special characteristic of the Indians was that they really looked at the people who lived there as distinct groups, like animal species, and divided them into four castes. Then there was the particular religion the Indians had in earlier times. They saw no difference between the world of spirit and the world of physical bodies; at the time when this Indian population first evolved in India, no difference was made between spirit and body. A tree would not be differentiated the way many other peoples did — this is the physical tree, and a spirit lives in it. No such distinction was made. The tree was at the same time a spirit, only a somewhat coarser spirit than a human being or animal. An animal was also not divided into body and soul; it was soul to the ancient Indians, as was the human being. And when an Indian of earliest times asked after the soul — and he knew that we inhale, inhale air — then to him the air that is inhaled was the spirit. And he would know: The air is out there; that is the spirit that is all around the earth. And when this spirit, which is around the whole earth, began to flow, to waft, he would call the spirit that moved everywhere on earth Varuna. But the spirit in him was also Varuna. When there were gales outside, it was Varuna; and inside — also Varuna. People often say today that those Indians had nature worship, venerating wind and weather, and so on. But it would be equally right to say they worshipped the spirit, for they saw the spirit in everything. The Indians had no notion of a physical body, and this being the case, every part of the human being was also a spirit: the liver was spirit, the kidney was spirit, everything was spirit. They did not distinguish between body and spirit. The secret of ancient Indian wisdom is that no distinction was made between body and spirit. Liver was liver spirit, stomach was stomach spirit. You see, if we consider the stomach today we find that there has to be something in the stomach if it is to digest things properly. We call this substance pepsin. If it is lacking, digestion does not take its proper course; we have to put in some hydrochloric acid in that case. The ancient Indian would say to himself — he did not yet have a name for it, but he knew that there was a spirit there — the stomach is like this: that is the stomach spirit. Today we still know the term 'stomachic spirits or elixir 7 Lecture given to the workmen on 21 February 1924, vol. 6 in the German edition of these lectures. for some medicines. They are of course called by their inventors' names now, Hoffmann's tincture (spirits of ether) or the like; but you will still find words used that refer to the spirit. The Indians thus saw the spirit everywhere. They therefore also took no offence at the caste spirit, seeing it as a spiritual principle, just as the different orders of animals were seen as a spiritual principle. If one goes more deeply into those Indian views, it is interesting to see that the Indians had accurate knowledge of all human organs. It was merely that they saw them as spirit. The human being was made up of many different spirits: lung spirit, stomach spirit, kidney spirit, and so on; they would only consider the physical body. With regard to the ancient Indians, therefore, we may say their whole thinking was in terms of the physical body. They saw it as something spiritual. 1. Indians — physical body — spiritual This is very interesting, for we have now discovered a people who in the first place had accurate knowledge of the physical body. Let us move on to the Egyptians. Here it is a strange story. The Egyptians had the Nile which we may say is really the father who feeds the country. Every July the river rises above its banks, returning to them in October. All an ancient Egyptian would know, therefore, was that the Nile held water; the waters would recede during the cold part of the year and then rise to flood the land again for the benefit of humanity. When the waters receded in October, fertile mud was left behind — the Egyptians do not need to use fertilizer. They would sow their cereal grains and so on in the mud; these would germinate and grow and be harvested before the Nile flooded again. And so the Nile really prepared their fields for them year after year. And the Egyptians were deeply conscious of the beneficial nature of water. They gave much thought to water in the world of nature. You see, today we admire the skill of engineers who are able to channel the waters. Well, the Egyptians were very good at this thousands of years ago! When the Nile rose above its banks and flooded everything, it would of course sometimes also go to places where it should not go. They therefore created a lake, one of the earliest man-made lakes, to control the flooding. Any excess water would collect in the lake. The Egyptians thus controlled nature. With all this, their attention focused on water to an extraordinary degree. Now I already told you when answering Mr Dollinger's question that water has a tremendous influence on the human ether body. The Egyptians still had the instinct that enabled them to say: The human being has not only a physical but also an ether body. This is interesting. You see, over yonder in India were some of the oldest nations; many of them had later migrated via Arabia to Egypt. A kind of old civilization existed in Egypt that had come from India. When the Indians came to Egypt they appreciated the beneficial qualities of water. And they said to themselves: This does not act on the physical body, which we got to know in India, but on a higher body in the human being. And so the Egyptians — and with them the Indians — really discovered the ether body through their experience of water. Having discovered the ether body the Egyptians developed the whole of their religion as a religion of the ether body. The most important aspect of ancient Egyptian religion is presented in the following legend. The Egyptians would tell this story everywhere, just as the Gospel stories were told all over Europe at a particular time. There is a sublime god — they called him Osiris. This sublime god is the benefactor of humanity. He is the source and origin of everything that comes to humanity through the element of water. But he has an enemy. He works for the good of humanity, but he has an enemy. This enemy lives in the hot wind coming from the desert. The desert was there [pointing to the blackboard]. The Egyptians thus had two gods: Osiris and Typhon, his enemy. To them, everything they saw in the natural world could also be seen in human life. But unlike the Indians they ascribed it not to the physical body but to the ether body. The legend continues. One day Typhon killed Osiris and carried him away. Then Isis, wife of Osiris, brought the body back again, burying different parts of it in different places. Monuments were built over them. From then on Osiris was the ruler of the dead. Before, he had been ruler of the living, now he was the ruler of the dead. The Egyptians did already consider death. As you know, for I have told you, the human ether body departs a few days after death; after this the human being gradually gains consciousness again. In the legend we hear that Osiris went away and was brought back again by Isis. The human being regains consciousness after death. We may say, therefore, that the Egyptians discovered that the human being has an ether body. This is most interesting. The Indians still took the physical body to be a spiritual principle. The Egyptians discovered the ether body and saw it as spirit: 2. Egyptians — ether body spiritual — Osiris Typhon Isis Everything the Egyptians believed, everything they worked for, was really for the ether body. This determined their view of things. Something Egyptian you have certainly seen already are the mummies. I spoke of them recently, when I said that when medieval physicians spoke of mummies this was something spiritual; I explained this to you.7 Today people only think of Egyptian mummies when they use the word. The bodies were skilfully embalmed and preserved. Why was this done? The Egyptians knew only of the ether body and would preserve the physical body so that the individual would find it again when he returned to life. If they had already known about the astral body and the I they would not have thought it necessary to preserve the physical body. They knew only the ether body, and this in a highly spiritual way. If they had known of the I and the astral body they would have said: They create their own physical body. But they only knew the subtle ether body and therefore believed they had to preserve the physical body so that the individual would find it again on his return. The Egyptians thus discovered the ether body. We now come to the third group, the Babylonians. They developed the ability to think to such a high level that much of their thinking still exists today; and above all they developed astronomy. They built great towers from which to observe the stars. And they realized that human beings depend not only on the things that exist on earth but also on the things to be found in the stars. They made special efforts to perceive the influence of the stars on human beings, and noted how the year is divided. The year in turn has great influence on humans through the stars. The Babylonians were thus the first to go beyond the earth in looking at life, creating astronomy and astrology, knowledge of how the stars influence human beings. This also made them aware of having to divide everything by 60 and 12 and so on. They divided their money into units of 60 and 12, for instance. The decimal system only came later. You still have this Babylonian system of 12 in the English shilling. This system was brought down from the heavens by the Babylonians. The question is, which part of the human being is specially influenced by the stars? It is the astral body, gentlemen. This is wholly and completely under the influence of the stars. But modern astronomers do not want to know about the astral body and therefore do not set out to observe the way the stars influence human beings. The things they calculate really have no particular influence on human beings. But the Babylonians had a fine science of the stars. And this led them to discover the human astral body. This is truly marvellous. We are able to say that the Babylonians discovered the astral body, spiritually. 3. Babylonians — astral body — spiritual The astral body actually owes its name to this. It was first discovered by the Babylonians. And it was called 'astral body' because they discovered it from the science of the stars — astrology, astronomy. So you see that successive nations made their discoveries out of the spirit — the Indians discovering the physical body, the Egyptians the ether body and the Babylonians the astral body. If we look to see what lies behind all Babylonian legends we find it is the stars. Don't let modern scholars and their books confuse you. There is one expert who says all religions had their origins in star worship, which must therefore be regarded as the original religion. Another will say: No indeed, religions evolved from the veneration of nature. Wind and weather were venerated. A third will say that all religions developed from the elements, from water and its effects. Well, gentlemen, why is it that people say such things? The one who says religion comes from star worship has only studied the Babylonian age and thinks it was the same everywhere as it was in Babylon. The one who says religion is based on the elements has only studied the Egyptians. He therefore 'Egyptianizes' everything. And he'll say: all religions derive from veneration of wind and weather. So the reason is that people are rather limited, studying only individual aspects. Religions have a wide range of sources. Now there is also, as I have told you, a small nation over there in Palestine — the Hebrews, the Jews. You see, they lived among those other nations and were not satisfied with anything they found there. You can read it in the Bible, in the Old Testament, how the Jews were never satisfied and came to a spirit who is completely invisible. The physical body is, of course, completely visible. The ether body came to expression in the floods, in the watery activities of the Nile; these were tangible. The astral body of the Babylonians would not be visible on earth, but could be found by studying the stars. The Jews wanted none of that, they wanted an invisible god. This invisible god influences the human I. Therefore, 4 .Jews — I — spiritual (Yahveh) The Jews found the I as a spiritual principle and called it Yahveh. So we now have history. You can read as much as you like in history books. You will not understand how the peoples of antiquity developed. You'll read about all kinds of things, wars and kings, and have chaos and confusion in your minds; for you'll have no idea what it is all about. Religions may also be mentioned, but no one knows where they come from. If you know, however, that the human body consists of physical body, ether body, astral body and I, and that these were discovered one after the other, depending on the way people looked at life, you find that the Indians discovered the physical body, the Egyptians the ether body, the Babylonians the astral body and the Jews the I. It gradually emerged that the human being has these different bodies. This did not come suddenly, out of the blue, but was discovered in relation to the way people lived. The Indians — and many people migrated through there, so that they differ in race — discovered the physical body. The Egyptians, who had to concern themselves a great deal with water, discovered the ether, and therefore the ether human being. Among the Babylonians, who took everything they needed for the astral body from other peoples, the priests got the idea of building high towers; they gained knowledge of the stars. And the Jews, who were always on the move — read the stories of Abraham, Moses and so on — were not inclined to venerate anything visible, be it above or below; they found Yahveh, the invisible god who created the human I and influenced it. Now the whole has meaning! You can see how humanity gradually found itself. The story continues, and we'll look at the rest of it. Well, gentlemen, today is Saturday, so we'll meet again next Wednesday.

From Beetroot to Buddhism

Effect of cemetery atmosphere on people

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSP1999/19240301p02.html

Dornach

1 Mar 1924

GA353-1

Well, gentlemen, has someone thought of something for today? Someone asked about the purpose of the Shrovetide carnival, if Rudolf Steiner could tell them something about it. What were the origins and the significance. Rudolf Steiner: You mean, what is the purpose of the Shrovetide carnival? Well, you see, the Shrovetide festival cannot really be understood if one asks about its purpose, for I think you'll admit that as the years go by people could manage without it, at least the way it is celebrated now. It would be fair to say that from the present-day point of view the Shrovetide carnival is essentially pointless. This is because it has lost its original meaning. The same thing has happened to it as to the orders, habits, etc. of old. They had meaning and purpose once but this has gradually been lost. The other festivals of the year are also gradually vanishing; little by little they lose significance unless they are given new meaning. So far nothing much has been done to give it meaning again. If it regained its original meaning, which it had in ancient Rome, for instance, it would have a profound influence on the whole of our social life. Let us go back to ancient Rome. People had different roles then, just as they have today. One would be a civil servant, another a soldier, the third a workman, and so on, and the divisions were much sharper then, at least socially, than they are today. A human being who was a slave could actually be bought! So we may say the differences between people were still very marked in ancient Rome. But there were to be at least a few days every year when people could forget that they had a particular social position. Today we speak of democracy and think that all people are equal, at least in theory. The ancient Romans believed no such thing; for them, someone had to be born into one of the upper classes before he would even be considered to be a proper human being. To this day some people still believe the old saying that to be human you must at least be a baron, meaning that anyone less than a baron is not a human being. This was a powerful thing in ancient Rome. They did not yet have a nobility in the sense that was to develop later on — for this is a medieval principle arising from the feudal system. But there were marked class differences in ancient Rome. For a few days in the year, however, people were to be equal and democracy should reign. It would not do, of course, for people to show their ordinary faces, for then they would have been recognized; so they had to wear masks. They would then be what their masks indicated them to be. One individual would be the carnival king and he could do anything he wanted during those days. He could issue commands where normally he would only be given them. And the whole of Rome went mad, topsy-turvy, for a few days. People could even behave differently to their superiors and did not need to be polite to them — just for a few days, to make people equal. This meant, of course, that people did not exactly weep or mourn on those days; for they were delighted to live like that for a few days. This developed into the carnival pleasures we know today. People would only do mad things for the few days when they were free. That was the origin of our carnival. People liked it so much that it survived to this day. But things survive without people knowing the original meaning. And so the carnival is now a time when people let things go topsy-turvy. Then the Church thought it necessary to let Ash Wednesday come immediately afterwards, when people are conscious of their sins, not allowed to do anything they want, and so on, and since Christians had developed the custom, at least in earlier times, that people should go without things, the fasting period of Lent was established. And it was sensible to let Lent follow on from the carnival time, when people had to restrain themselves as little as possible, doing anything that pleased them, in so far as it was possible. And afterwards it is much harder not to eat things one has been eating before. And so the two events came together. In Rome the carnival came much earlier, at about the time of our Christmas, for everything was afterwards moved to a later season. And so today's carnival has survived. I think the date is based on the date for Easter in most areas, but in Basel it is celebrated about a week later, as far as I know. I also hear that all this means is that people celebrate twice! So that would be what I can say in reply to this question. It can be said of many things in human life that they originally had meaning but that this was then lost as time went on. And one asks oneself why all this should be. Does anyone else have a question today? Someone wanted to ask if Rudolf Steiner would continue with the look at history from the last time. Someone else: I wanted to ask Dr Steiner if such a thing would be possible that people insult another person or cause him pain, that is, have an influence on them. Mrs A. had a 3-year-old child who would always see spirits come in through the door and the windows. The child often had disturbed nights, especially when the woman had washed their body linen — the woman would take things from the house-and then the child would always grow disturbed. In the end there was no more of this; the woman died later. I would like to ask Dr Steiner if such a thing might be possible. Rudolf Steiner:. These are, of course, things that affect all kinds of areas, and because people are superstitious, superstition would also play a role — superstition and also the facts. You simply have to understand that there are situations in the world that are not open to direct physical observation. Let me begin with some quite simple situations. Think of a grape harvest. You gather the grapes and press them, putting the wine in barrels in the cellar. You will find that it grows restless at the time when the next year's wine is fermenting. A connection is there, although there is no physical link. This is a simple fact and it shows that there are connections in the natural world that cannot be observed using one's eyes and so on. Today we have a method by which ordinary visibility can be bypassed. Even in lifeless nature we have situations today where visibility with the naked eye — not visibility of a more subtle kind — is done away with. Just think of wireless telegraphy. This is based on an apparatus that generates electricity that is not connected by wires but stands there by itself. Somewhere else, and in no way physically connected with it, is an apparatus with parallel plates that may be set in motion. It is called a coherer. To begin with, there seems to be no visible physical connection, but if you produce an electric current here, the signs move there; and if you link this up with an apparatus, you can receive telegrams, just as you can pick up electricity with wires. We know this is due to electricity spreading, but this is something we cannot see; it spreads without there being any tangible physical link. Here you have a connection in lifeless nature where we may certainly say: The visible sphere has been overcome, at least to some extent. We can take this further. Think of a pair of twins. There is no physical contact between them when they have grown older. One may be in one place, the other in another. Yet it is possible to see especially in the case of twins that one may fall ill, for instance, and the other, who lives further away, likewise. Or one may feel sad about something, and the other one too. Such things show that there are effects in this world where we cannot say they are due to a direct physical influence. When we come to the animal world, we soon find that animals have perceptions, for instance, that humans do not have. Let us assume an earthquake or a volcanic eruption is about to happen that will do great harm to those who live in the area. The people will stay where they are, feeling no disquiet; but the animals can often be seen to leave the area, sometimes days beforehand. This shows that animals may sense something that cannot be perceived by the physical senses. If it could be perceived in that way, the people, too, would know what was coming. You can see from all this that it is possible for connections to exist in the world that are not physical. If we go into these more subtle connections we find that people, too, will sometimes sense something that they have certainly not been able to perceive with the physical senses. Let us take an example. Someone gives a sudden start and sees some kind of image before him — this is only a dream, of course. He shouts: zMy friend!' But the friend may be far away. The person may have the experience in Europe when the friend is perhaps in America. 'My friend! Something has happened to him!' As it turns out, the friend has died. Such things do certainly occur. It is possible to establish that they happen, though there is no physical link. It has to be said, however, that it is a good thing for humanity that these things are none too common. Just think what it would be like if your head enabled you to perceive all the bad things someone else is thinking or saying about you — that would be a bad business! You know that when one has a telegraph, this has to be set up first, the wire has to be switched on, and then you get a transmission. With wireless telegraphy, too, this part must be functioning properly [pointing to the blackboard] or you get no transmission. Normal, healthy people are not connected to all the currents there are; they are switched off. In special cases it may however happen that someone is connected and able to receive something. Let us assume, therefore — I cannot go into your particular case and there is good reason for this, for you probably do not know how well it is proven to be true. I'll consider a similar situation, and this should also explain yours. I always want to speak only of things that are properly authenticated, otherwise it may well be just talk. You probably did not know the people involved personally but read or heard about it? Let us assume a woman, Mrs A, had a dispute with a Mrs B whilst she was pregnant. It happens, does it not, that people have disputes. Perhaps Mrs B, who lives in the neighbourhood, really cursed Mrs A, and Mrs A got a terrible fright when Mrs B was making such a hullabaloo. The result may be that the child, when it is born, shows a certain dependence on Mrs B, and Mrs B also on the child, and it may well happen that this makes the child sensitive to what is given to it as body linen or the like, with Mrs B washing it. Feeling some regret at what she has done to Mrs A, Mrs B needs something from her house, to soothe her. If the object is taken from her she will try to get it back by all possible means. People sometimes take all kinds of things though they are not thieves by nature. They only steal those things; they do not steal otherwise, but seek to get hold of those things by all means. And it may indeed happen that if it is taken away from them they sicken and die from a kind of inner consumption, a consumptive fever, for human health is also influenced by elements of soul and spirit. Or they may die of a heart attack or a paralysis. This may certainly be the case. We may say, therefore, that these things happen, and they can be explained because under certain conditions one person certainly has an influence on another even if there is no physical contact. But one must always be able to consider the cause. In the case you mention the cause may have been completely different. But if there had been a row during Mrs A's pregnancy that might have been the reason for the later connection between Mrs B and the child. Well, gentlemen I have been asked to continue with the subject I spoke of last week. I showed you that people's lives were completely different in ancient India, perhaps four or five millennia ago. Due to the special nature of those peoples, and the way the nations came together, the ancient Indians developed their view of the human physical body. The Egyptians, whose lands were completely under the influence of the Nile, and who owed everything they were to the Nile, as it were — a situation that makes people aware of the ether — developed a view of the human ether body. The people of Assyria and the Babylonians lived at some altitude where the air was particularly clear and the stars could be easily observed. They developed a view of the astral body. The Jews, who had to move from place to place in earlier times, and initially had no lasting abode, thought and felt more out of inner human nature. They developed a view of the human I. We thus see the gradual development of human awareness of the physical body, the ether body, the astral body and the I. You see, Yahveh actually means 'I am the I am'. That is the meaning of the word. And if Yahveh is worshipped as the greatest god, such recognition of the greatest god clearly points also to the human I. If we follow the evolution of history in this way, we find that all those peoples essentially gave expression in thoughts and feelings to the way they experienced life. Indians knew a rich, fruitful world of nature, a continual flowering and abundant growth. They really perceived the riches of the physical world and out of this developed their view of the physical body. The Egyptians saw that help came to them only from the Nile, which one can see; they therefore developed the concept of the ether, and so on. All those peoples really developed their views from their life experience. This was different with another nation. We may say [blackboard drawing]: Here ancient India, here Arabia; here then Egypt, this is where the Nile flows. Then over here we have a land that extends towards Africa and connects with Europe. This is where Assyria would be, as I showed the last time, here Egypt, here India; here we would have Palestine, where the Jews lived; and here we have Greece. People coming from many different parts of Asia and Europe settled and intermingled here in Greece. There were original inhabitants, but as time went on the Greek nation evolved on this European peninsula. The Greeks, we might say, were the first to open their eyes and see something of the world that was not purely inner experience. Indians knew the natural world from inside; the Egyptians had living experience of ether activity; the Assyrians gained experience of the astral body from the stars; the Jews had living experience of their I. The Greeks were really the first to look at the world outside. The others did not actually look at the world. We are thus able to say that the Indians, Egyptians, Babylonians and Jews did not have a real view of the natural world; they did not know much about it because they did not open their eyes to look at it. A view of the natural world developed among the Greeks because they actually looked. And humanity did not really perceive the outside world until the Greeks did so. You see, the Indian view was like this: 'This physical world here is part of the whole world, and I came from the realm of the spirit at birth and shall return to it when I die.' The Egyptians did believe it was necessary to preserve mummies so that individuals might be able to return to them; but they also had their particular view of the spirit. The Babylonians saw the will of the spirits in the starry heavens, the astral sphere, which they observed. And you know that the Jews held the belief that Jehovah, Yahveh, would take them back to the time of the Fathers. Essentially they were therefore also concerned with something that connects human beings with the world of the spirit. This changed in ancient Greece. The Greeks were really the first to grow fond of the outside world. They thought a great deal of it; there is a Greek saying that it is better to be a beggar in the upper world — meaning Greece, here on earth — than a king in the realm of shadows, meaning the dead. 8 Homer, Odyssey , 11th canto. The Greeks, then, came to love the world above all things, and thus were also the first to develop a view of the natural world. The other peoples developed a view of the human being. The Indians in particular, had a certain view of the human being in very early times. But they did not gain this by dissecting dead bodies! If that had been necessary the Indians would never have gained a view of the human being. They sensed how the liver, the lung, functions in a particular part of the human body; this was still possible at the time. The Indians gained great wisdom because they knew from an inner sense and feeling how the liver functions, and so on. Today we only know how a bite of meat tastes in the mouth. The Indians knew from inner experience how a bite of meat behaved in the intestines, what the liver did, what the bile did, just as today we have experience of the bite of meat in the mouth. The Egyptians developed geometry because they needed it. They had to establish the position of their fields over and over again, for the Nile would flood everything year after year. This, too, is something we produce out of the head. The Babylonians developed astrology, knowledge of the stars, again something beyond earthly concerns; they had no great interest in earthly things. The fact that the Jews had no great interest in earthly things is evident from the way their real interest lay anywhere except with the world we perceive through the senses. They were well able to think but had no real interest in the sense-perceptible world. The people who had the greatest interest for the world perceived through the senses were the Greeks. If one goes into this, it is interesting to find that they saw the whole world differently from the way we see it today. This is most interesting. We see a blue sky today. The Greeks did not see blue the way we do; their sky was much darker, almost blackish, with a slight tinge of green. They were particularly conscious of the colour red. Our perception of red is so weak, we can hardly imagine the impression that colour made on the Greeks. Humanity only gradually developed a feeling for blue, and with this humanity has come away again from that sensory impression. The Greeks therefore developed a particular liking for things that existed outside themselves. And because of this they specially developed something we call a mythology today. The Greeks venerated a whole world of gods — Zeus, Apollo, Pallas Athene, Ares, Aphrodite; they saw gods everywhere. They venerated those gods because the natural world around them, which they loved, seemed to them to be filled with life and with spirit. Not as dead as it is for us, but filled with life and spirit. They thus venerated the gods everywhere in the natural world that had become dear to them. Because of this, people who depended on Greek civilization, culture and spirit in those ancient days forgot the things the Indians, Egyptians and Babylonians had known in mind and spirit. You no doubt know the powerful effect Greece has had on the whole of human development. It continues to this day. Anyone able to send his son to grammar school today makes him learn Greek. This was much more widespread earlier on. You were an ass in those days if you did not know Greek or were unable at least to read the work of the Greek writers and poets. Greece has had a tremendous influence on the world because this was the first nation to take an interest in this outside world. Whilst the Greeks developed this interest in the outside world, the significant development happening in Asia was that the Mystery of Golgotha spread from there. This was when Greece had been conquered and everything was essentially under Roman rule. What was the significance of this Roman rule? It was full of the Greek spirit. Educated Romans would all know Greek, and the educated people in Rome knew Greek as a matter of course. The Greek spirit had the greatest influence everywhere. Whilst Greek culture was thus spreading, something else happened in Asia, in a little-known Roman province — that was Palestine at that time, with the Jews conquered. A man had appeared, Jesus of Nazareth, who said something very different from what people had ever said so far. And as you can imagine, because it was something different, people did not immediately understand him. At the beginning very few people understood what he said. What did this Jesus say, when he appeared in Palestine? He said, in the way he was able to put it in those days: 'People everywhere believe today' — this was the today of that time — 'that the human being is a creature of the earth. He is not, however. He comes from the world of the spirit and will return to it on his death.' Christianity has had an influence for almost 2000 years now, and so it may seem strange to hear of such a thing being said in those days. But the situation was very different. Asian and African ideas of the spirit were little known then; they had not spread far. People were more interested in the world. And what Jesus of Nazareth was teaching at that time was tremendously important, especially compared to the worldly Greek culture of the Romans. With this, however, Jesus of Nazareth would have done no more than bringing back to life what earlier peoples — the Indians, the Egyptians and so on — had already said in the past. It would merely have been a return of the things I have told you, things that were already known. But Jesus of Nazareth did not merely rehash something that was already known, for he also said the following. He said: 'If I had only listened to what people are able to tell me today, I would never have found the teachings of the spirit, for the truth is that people really no longer know anything about the spirit. This is something that has come to me from beyond this earth.' He had thus become aware that he was not only Jesus, but that a spirit had arisen in his soul who was the Christ. Jesus was to him the individual born of a woman here on earth. The Christ was the spirit who had entered into his soul at a later time. Then the truth arose in his soul that human beings are spiritual by nature. At this point we must ask ourselves how the ancient teachings of India, Egypt, Babylon and the Jews were kept alive. If you consider the life of mind and spirit today, you find the Church on one hand and schools on the other. At most those who rule the Church are in dispute with those who govern the schools as to how much influence the one should have on the other. They are, however, separate establishments. This was not the case among the ancient Indians, Egyptians, Babylonians or Jews. Anything connected with religion in those times was also connected with the schools; church service and school service were one. Much of this has continued on to the present time, but it is no longer the case, as it was then, that the priest would also be the teacher. Priests were teachers in India, Egypt, Babylon and so on. And they taught in the places where religious rites were also held. The religious rites were completely bound up with the teaching work. Those were the mystery centres. People did not have churches and schools but places that were both, places we now call mystery centres. The general view was, however, that one had to be cautious in what might be learned. You see, the ancient view was that people had to have the necessary maturity before certain knowledge was given to them. This is something that has been lost today. And the people who held the highest rank in the mystery centres were known as the Fathers. A remnant of this is that in the Catholic Church, for instance, certain priests are still called Father. In those early times, the Fathers were those initiated into knowledge in India, Egypt, Babylon and so on. And those they taught — people who had been admitted because the Fathers believed they could make them ripe for knowledge — would be called the sons. All other people, who were not admitted to the mysteries, were called the children of the Fathers, or also sons and daughters. You will understand that this created a certain attitude, which was that people — much more capable of belief at that time than people are today — truly felt those who served the mysteries to be their Fathers; they were glad to have them as their Fathers in the spirit. And above all people believed that these spiritual Fathers were communing more closely with the gods than those outside the mysteries who had to receive the message from the Fathers. People gradually became very dependent on those Fathers. A situation which, I believe, the Roman Catholic Church would dearly like to create today was taken as a matter of course at the time. This was so in all countries. And no one would object to it. People would say: 'To be truly human you either have to be a Father, and commune directly with the gods, or you have to learn about the gods from the Fathers/ You would be human therefore in so far as those who served in the schools, in the mysteries, told you something. A difference developed between children of God and children of man, sons of God and sons of man. Those who were part of the mysteries would be called sons of God, because they looked up to the gods as they did to the Fathers. Those who lived outside the mysteries, who were merely told what came through the mysteries, were called children or sons of man. Thus the distinction arose between sons of God and sons or children of men. This may seem almost ridiculous today, but at the time is was perfectly natural. Today a difference is made — perhaps not in Switzerland, though for all I know a bit of it exists here as well, but in neighbouring countries — between excellencies and ordinary people, the barons and the ordinary people. It is a bit less now, but not long ago it was taken as a matter of course. In earlier times it was a matter of course that a difference existed between sons of God, children of God, and sons of men. The individual who then called himself Christ Jesus, and who was called this, said: 'You do not become a son of God, a child of the spirit, through another person. Everyone becomes this through God himself. It is only a matter of being aware of this.' People of old would say that the Father from the mysteries must make them aware of it. Christ Jesus said: 'You have the seed of the divine in you, and you merely have to make the effort and you can find it in yourself.' He thus showed what makes people all over the world the same in their souls. And the biggest difference to be overcome by Christ Jesus was the one between sons of the gods and sons of men. This was later widely misunderstood — in the old days because people did not want a time to come when no distinction was made between sons of gods and children of men, and later because people no longer knew what was meant by it. Just as people later no longer knew what the carnival meant, so they no longer knew what was meant by 'sons of gods' and 'sons of men'. This is why we find all the time in the Bible that on one occasion Jesus Christ is called Son of God and on another Son of Man. All the passages where reference is made to the Son of God and the Son of Man really mean that the two terms may be used to say the same thing, which is why they are given in alternation. If one does not know this one cannot really understand the Gospels. And they really are very poorly understood today, especially by those who declare their belief in them. This, then, shows the principle that really came into the world through Christ Jesus at the level of feelings. Considering things in a more superficial way today, I have to say: You see, there were also other great differences between people everywhere. Just think of ancient India where a distinction similar to those between classes of animals was made between Brahmins, priests, peasants and workers. The Egyptians had a whole army of slaves. Their castes were not so strictly separate, but they did exist. Even in ancient Greece and Rome a difference was made between freeborn people and slaves. These outer differences have only been wiped away in more recent history because the difference between children of the gods and children of men had been removed. What happened in Palestine through Christ Jesus thus had a tremendous influence on the whole social life of humanity. Now we may indeed ask in the light of all this: Is it true that one can find out where the spiritual principle comes from that exists in the human being, having come from beyond this earth? You see, it is extremely difficult to speak of this today, because everything is considered in material terms. Think of language. You know people in different countries speak different languages. In spite of this all languages secretly have something in common. This may not be as clearly apparent as it is in Germany and in England, in Germany and in Holland. But it is indeed true that languages, however different, show a certain similarity. You may find, for instance, that if you enter into the language that is spoken in India, you may not immediately understand, but the shapes of individual words show similarity, for instance, with the German language. How do people try to explain this? They'll say: 'Well, such and such a language evolved in one place on earth — for everything is said to come from the earth — and then people migrated, taking their language to some other place, where it changed a little. But it all comes from one language.' That is the most misguided belief scientists have produced in recent times. For you see, gentlemen, the misguided beliefs of scientists are exactly as follows. Imagine someone living in India getting hot in the sun. The view then arises that a person may grow hot. Later on people in Europe discover that they, too, can grow hot in summer. And now they do not use their brains but their senses and say: 'The fact that we get hot is something we cannot explain in terms of the present situation; but people got hot in ancient India and they emigrated to Europe, transplanting the ability to grow hot to Europe.' Well, gentlemen, anyone saying that is, of course, mad. But that is what the language experts say! They do not say that there has been the same influence coming from outside the earth in India and in Europe; they say the language migrated. When people get hot in two parts of the world we don't say they have brought the ability to get hot with them when they migrated. Instead we look at the sun which shines in both places and makes people hot in both India and Europe. If you find two languages that are far apart geographically but show similarities, this is not due to migration but to a common influence, just as the sun's influence exists for the whole earth. Coming from beyond the earth it affects peoples in very different parts of the earth. People simply do not want to admit that there is such an influence on mind and spirit, and they therefore think up all kinds of things where one simply does not notice that they are crazy because they are so scholarly. If people were not afraid of being taken for mad they would also deny that the sun makes us hot; instead they would say: 'In very early times the capacity for getting hot developed, and this has been transplanted to all parts of the globe.' They would deny the sun's influence, except that this would be crazy. This is something to consider when we seek to understand how Christianity arose. It is too late today to take this further. We'll continue next Saturday.

From Beetroot to Buddhism

Aspects of human life that are not physical. Greek culture and Christianity

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSP1999/19240305p02.html

Dornach

5 Mar 1924

GA353-2

Good morning, gentlemen. I'll continue today with the things we have been considering before. You need to be really clear. Asia is over there in the east [drawing on the board]. From Asia people came to Europe in antiquity, to Greece, along a whole chain of islands. This was as far as Asia went; here came Africa; and there was the Nile — I have told you a lot about it. Here is Greece, the Adriatic Sea, here Italy and Sicily, the island. Many islands would be here — Samos, Rhodes, Cyprus and so on, and people came to Greece from Asia via these islands. This would be Greece, this the Roman Empire, the Italy of today. Now you need to call to mind the following, gentlemen. You see, from about the year 1000, 1200 before Christ, everything I have told you developed in Greece. With people learning to look at the world. Very soon, however, from the fourth and third centuries before Christ, Greece gradually lost its dominance, and this went to Rome, the capital. What happened was that Greeks who were more or less dissatisfied with conditions in Greece emigrated in growing numbers in very early times, settling down here in Sicily and southern Italy. For half a millennium, four or five hundred years, they brought Greek culture to these regions, so much so that Sicily and southern Italy were known as Greater Greece in those days. They would refer to their old homeland simply as Greece, calling the rest Greater Greece. Not only discontented people went there but also people like the great philosopher Plato who wanted to establish an ideal republic there. 9 Plato (c. 427–347 bc), Greek philosopher. After living for a time at the Syracuse court, Plato founded the most influential school of the ancient world, the Academy, in Athens. The people who were most important in developing that civilization really all lived in southern Italy and we have to say that life in that region was refined, with people highly educated. The brutal dominance of Roman civilization, as it came to be called, spread from the region above this. You know that the original population of Rome has a most peculiar origin. Chieftains, one of the best known of them being Romulus, called together all the rogues and scoundrels in the area, and effectively created the first robber state. This robber mentality continued under the first Roman kings. Soon, however, under the fourth and fifth kings, a northern tribe, the Etruscans, came and settled in Rome. They brought a human element to Rome, intermarrying with the descendants of the early robbers. But the whole dominion over the world later established by Rome, all the lust for power that continues even into our own time, really originated — we should be under no illusion here — from the original colony of rogues on the seven hills of Rome. All kinds of other things were added on top; the whole business has been much refined, but we cannot really understand how things were done in later times unless we know that originally a band of robbers had been gathered from the woods. All the lust for power and so on that spread over the whole of Europe and still plays such a great role today came from this. Something else that developed in Rome was the thinking through which the Church became increasingly tied up with worldly government. Medieval times evolved from this, and so on. Now you see, at the beginning of our era there was the Mystery of Golgotha. The Roman rule I have spoken of was established in the eighth century before Christ. At the time of Golgotha, Roman rule, established seven centuries earlier, spread far and wide, including the area where the Mystery of Golgotha took place. The Jews living in Palestine, among whom Jesus of Nazareth appeared, were also under Roman rule. It will be good, having said so much about the Mystery of Golgotha, to take some account also of what really had been happening on the Italian peninsula from very early times. It is absolutely true to say that Europeans really only understand the things that go back to Roman times. 'Educated' people have of course learned Greek, but there has really been very little understanding of Greek culture in Europe. You see, it is most interesting that a hundred years after the Mystery of Golgotha Tacitus, one of the most important Roman writers, 10 Tacitus, Publius Cornelius (c. ad 55–120), Roman public official and historian. His greatest works, Histories and Annals , covered the period from the death of Augustus to the death of Domitian (ad 14-96). wrote only a single sentence about Christ Jesus in his vast historical work. A hundred years after Golgotha, Tacitus wrote about the ancient Germans, for instance, in a way that simply was no longer possible afterwards. His works include a single sentence about Christ Jesus, which says: 'The Christ, as he was called, founded a sect among the Jews, and was later sentenced to death and executed.' 11 'The originator of this name (Christianian), Christ, was executed during the reign of Tiberius, under the Procurator Pontius Pilate.' Annals , Book 15, 44. So this is what Tacitus, an educated Roman, had to say a hundred years after the founding of Christianity in Palestine. So you can imagine, ships went to and fro all the time, all kinds of trade and cultural links developed, and a hundred years after the event no more notice was taken of Christianity in Rome than to make a note that a sect was founded and its founder condemned to death and executed! There was, of course, the aspect that the idea of the state developed from Roman culture. We cannot really call the Roman Empire a state in the proper sense, for the idea of a state as we know it only developed in sixteenth-century Europe. Thus we may say that Tacitus was already thinking so much in terms of state that the most important thing to him was that Christ Jesus was properly condemned and executed. That is one thing. You also have to consider that in its early days Christianity was not what it became later. Originally it had a real air of freedom. It would be fair to say that people had all kinds of different views, and only came together in that they saw Christ Jesus to be something special; apart from that they had very different views. Well, gentlemen, you'll only be able understand what came into the world with Christ Jesus — and why it was after all necessary for me to show you that the surroundings of our earth have an influence on it, even in language — if I now attempt to show you how Christianity developed as teaching, as a view, a view of the world and of life, and how Christ Jesus came into this evolution of Christianity. It is really something very special to see that Christianity was founded there in Jerusalem, and a hundred years later the most erudite Roman author knew no more about it than I have told you. People were, however, always migrating from Asia via Africa to Italy. And this Christian sect was spreading beneath the surface, I would say, of human affairs as they were seen in Rome. When Tacitus wrote those words, the Christians, Christianians as they were called, had long since spread among the populace, which would not interest a noble Roman. But what did they do with the Christians? Well, you see, the descendants of Romulus the robber, too, had gradually reached a point where they were 'really educated'. Their education consisted among other things in building vast arenas where fights with wild animals took place. They took great pleasure in throwing those whom they did not consider to be part of humanity in the Roman sense to the wild animals and delighted in watching them being eaten, having first been forced to fight. That would be a 'noble' pleasure. The despised sect called the Christians were particularly suitable for throwing to the wild animals at the time when people thought like this in Rome; they were also particularly suitable for being painted with pitch and set fire to, so that one could see them as torches in the circus. But the Christians still found ways of surviving. They did so by holding their ceremonies and so on in secret. They would spread what they felt it was important to spread below ground, in the catacombs. Catacombs are large underground spaces. There the Christians buried those of their dead whom they loved. So there would be the graves, and the divine services were held over the graves. It was generally the custom in those days to hold divine services over the graves. You can still see this today if you look at the altar in a Roman Catholic church. It is in fact a burial place [sketching], with relics such as the bones of saints kept inside. In earliest times the altar was an actual gravestone, with divine services performed on it. Below ground, in the catacombs, the Christians of those early centuries were able to hide the things which they had to do. A few centuries later the picture had changed a great deal. What happened then was this. You see, the Romans were up above in the early centuries after the founding of Christianity, amusing themselves in the way I have told you, and below, in the catacombs, were the Christians. A few centuries later the Romans had gone and the Christians began to rule the world. The question as to whether they did better or worse is something we can discuss on another occasion; but they took over world rule. It proved extremely harmful to Christianity to be thus connected with world rule, for as world history progresses the religious life is less and less compatible with the state system and world rule. The matter is as follows. We can only understand the evolution of Christianity, the involvement of Christ Jesus in the evolution of Christianity, if we understand the nature of religious life in earlier times, when it was part of everything. I have told you of the ancient mysteries. To use a modern term, the mysteries were institutions where everything a person could learn was learned. And at the same time they were the religious institutions and the art institutions. All cultural life came from the mysteries. And people did not learn the way they do today. How do people learn today? People have things drummed into them in grammar schools and secondary schools; they then go through some years at university and this leaves them the same as before. But in the mysteries you became a different human being. You had to gain a new relationship to the whole world. In the mysteries you had to grow wise. The institutions we have in the modern world do not make anyone wise; at most you can become learned. But two things may be compatible or not compatible; wisdom does not go with stupidity, but learnedness can easily go hand in hand with great stupidity. So that is the situation. In the ancient mysteries people were made into wise human beings and truly cultured. They became human beings who could take the spiritual realm seriously. They had to go through seven stages, with only very few reaching the highest stage. Those seven stages had names which we must learn to understand so that we shall know what the individuals who had reached them had to do. If we translate what a person had to do when first admitted to the mysteries, we arrive at the term 'Raven'. The first stage thus were the Ravens. Admitted to the mysteries you became a Raven. What did Ravens have to do? Well they primarily had to maintain communications between the outside world and the mysteries. They did not have newspapers then. The first newspapers only came thousands of years later when printing was invented. The people who taught in the mysteries had to gain information by sending out trusted individuals who would observe the world. The Ravens may be said to have been the confidential agents of the people who served the mysteries. And this was something you had to learn first, to be someone who could be trusted. Today political parties and so on employ many confidential agents, but one has to ask oneself if they can always be trusted! Those employed as Ravens in the mysteries were only accepted as confidential agents after being tried and tested. Above all they had to learn to take the things that they saw seriously and report them truthfully. But in the first place it was also necessary to learn what truth signifies in human beings. I am sure people were no less deceitful in antiquity than they are today. But today lying and deceit come into everything; whereas in those days you first had to learn to be a true human being. This was what you had to make your own in the years of being a Raven, a confidential agent of the mysteries. The second stage was something people find most unacceptable today. It was the level of the Occultists. Occult means hidden, secret. They would not be sent out but had to learn something modern people do not like to learn — to be silent. One level of learning in the ancient mysteries was to learn to be silent. You'll think it grotesque, a real joke, that people had to keep silence for a year at least, or even longer. But it is true. You learn a great deal from keeping silence. It is something that can no longer be done today. Imagine schools were required to make young people between the ages of 17 and 19 be silent for a year instead of having to go into the army. It would indeed be very useful for the gaining of wisdom, for keeping silence would make them terribly wise. But it can no longer be done today. Something else can be done, however. I know you cannot stop people talking, they don't want to be silent but want to chat, and everyone knows everything, and if you meet someone today he has above all what we call a 'point of view'. Everyone has a point of view, of course, but the world looks different from another point of view, and this is nothing new for anyone who knows the world; it is understood. If you stand here, the mountain looks different compared to the way it would look if you stood over there. The same holds true in cultural life. Everybody has his point of view, and every person is able to see something else. And if you have a dozen people they will, of course, have thirteen opinions! That need not be so. But it need not surprise us that they have twelve points of view; only they should not take it so seriously. Everybody considers his own point of view to be most important, terribly important! In earlier times people simply had to keep silence about the things they were to learn; they were merely listeners. One could not call them anything but 'Listeners' in the occult world, for they had to listen. Today the students at German universities are called 'hearers' and no longer pupils. 12 Rudolf Steiner was able to use wordplay in German here that cannot be reproduced in English. The two German verbs hören and zuhören are 'to hear' and 'to listen'. The zu prefix signifies attention. Steiner said this had been omitted in referring to university students, who may hear but not necessarily listen. Translator. But they often do not hear, for they chatter. Some actually consider it more important to chat to their fellow students than to listen in the lecture theatres. And sometimes listening is no longer something that makes people particularly serious. This, then, was the second stage. People learned to keep silence. And when there is silence it happens — this is like a cause and effect relationship — that the inner nature of the human being begins to speak to him. This is the way. Imagine you have a basin of water; if you use a hose to siphon off the water, the water will run away — if you have a basin, not a spring — and then there is none left. And this is what happens when people chatter all the time. Everything runs away with those words, and nothing is left. The ancients knew this, and because of this their Listeners were first of all made to keep silence. They thus learned to appreciate the truth and then to keep silence. The silence came afterwards. The third stage was one we might translate as the 'Defenders'. Now these people were allowed to talk. They were now permitted to defend the truth they had learned by keeping silence in the mysteries. Above all they were asked to defend the spirit. 'Defence' is the word we may reasonably use for this third stage. The people who were at this stage had to know enough to lend weight to anything they said about things of the spirit. It was therefore not permissible in the mysteries simply to talk about the spirit; you had to learn about it first and have become a proper Defender. People would then advance to the fourth stage. We may translate this as 'Lion'. That is how it is usually translated. It would be even better to say 'Sphinx'. The word signifies more or less that one has become a spirit. You would still go about in a human body but you would behave among people the way gods behave. People did not make a great difference between humans and gods; you simply became a god as you progressed through the mysteries. The ancients had a much more open way of looking at things. People of later times saw the gods as always being above humanity. That was not the view held by the ancients. Today people say: All right, man is descended from the apes. Du Bois- Reymond, a famous scientist, 13 Du Bois-Reymond, Emil (1818–86), physiologist in Berlin. The quote comes from his Über die Grenzen der Naturerkenntnis , 7. Aufl. S. 46; Leipzig 1916. actually said there had been a giant leap from anthropoid apes to humans, a giant step also in the size of the brain. The brain was suddenly larger than it was in the anthropoid apes. That was a strange statement for a modern scientist to make. One would assume that someone who says such a thing would have dissected an anthropoid ape and know how big the brain was. But if you look it up you'll find that scientists have to admit that the anthropoid ape has not yet been discovered! Dr Du Bois-Reymond, the famous scientist, was therefore referring to something that has not yet been found, something nobody has seen so far — the anthropoid ape. That is the kind of 'conscientiousness' applied in science today. People would never think that Du Bois-Reymond might speak of something he has never seen. They think a famous scientist knows everything! People are more credulous today than they were in antiquity. The ancients thus certainly believed that human beings can develop and are able to gain the conscious awareness of gods. Someone who had reached the fourth stage and was a Sphinx would no longer speak like a Defender of the third stage but use a language in which he expressed himself in such a way that it was really difficult to understand him; you had to reflect on how he should be understood. It is difficult for people today to get an idea of the language spoken by the Sphinxes because we no longer see things the way they saw them then. Even in the Middle Ages, in the seventeenth century, for instance, something of that language still survived. At that time, two hundred years ago, they had the Rosicrucian schools, for example. In them, certain initiates would speak in a language that was slightly veiled and had to be studied first; they would above all speak in images. Two hundred years ago you would still find an image — you may find this interesting — that was used everywhere to explain the human being to some extent. This image [blackboard drawing] was a human form with a lion's head, and next to it a human form with an ox head. Speaking to the people under instruction they would refer to the relationship between the two as 'the creature with the ox head', 'the creature with the lion's head', meaning man and woman. They would not use the words 'man' and 'woman', but 'the creature with the ox head — meaning the man — and 'the creature with the lion's head' — meaning the woman. The relationship between ox and lion was seen to be like the relationship between man and woman. This sounds funny to people today, but the tradition has survived. And the Sphinxes always used the names of animals to give clearer and more characteristic expression to anything that Eves in a human being. This, you see, would have been the language of the Sphinxes, who were already speaking more out of the spirit. There followed the fifth stage. These people were obliged to speak only out of the spirit. Depending on which nation they belonged to they would be called 'Persian' or 'Indian' or 'Greek'. In Greece, it was they who were the real Greeks. People would say to themselves: 'Someone who belongs to a nation has private interests, wanting this or that; wanting something different from someone belonging to another nation. It is only when he has advanced to the fifth stage that he no longer wants something for himself but only what the nation as a whole wants; this is also what he wants. He has become like a spirit of the nation.' Those spirits of the nations in the ancient mysteries, and still in ancient Greece, were exceedingly wise people. They would not say: 'When something comes up I'll stand there and have my own point of view, knowing everything.' No, although they had advanced to the fifth stage they would go through long periods of exercises that would allow them to judge situations. You see, if you have a modern statesman, a point may be raised in parliament and he has to answer. Just think what it would be like if things were done the way they were in those earlier days, when someone required to answer would say: I must first withdraw from the world for a week, go into myself, so that I may form an opinion. Well, I'd like to know what the parliamentary parties would say to Mr Stresemann 14 Stresemann, Gustav (1878–1929), German foreign minister (1923–29). He shared the 1929 Nobel Peace Prize. or to other bodies if someone asking a question were to be given the answer: 'To give a considered opinion on the issue I must first withdraw for a week.' That is how it was in those days. People believed in the world of the spirit and knew that it would not speak to them in the hustle and bustle of life but only when they were able to withdraw from this. One will then of course also develop the ability to withdraw in the midst of the hustle and bustle; but it has to be learnt first. Once it had been learnt, the individual would progress to the sixth stage. At the sixth stage the individual no longer had an earthly point of view, not even that of his people. He would say to himself: I am a 'Greek', my brother initiate who has reached the fifth stage in Assyria is an 'Assyrian', the one who lives even further away a 'Persian'. But those are all one-sided points of view. The sun moves through Persia and then on to Greece; it shines on us all. Initiates of the sixth stage no longer wanted to learn from what a nation was saying; they wanted to learn from what the sun was saying. They became Sun People, no longer people of the earth but of the sun. You see, those Sun People would seek to consider everything from the sun point of view. People have no idea today of the things that were done in those days, for they know nothing of the secrets of the world. To gain insight into such things we have to consider the bllowing, for example. Some time ago a man came to me ind said: 'A strange book has appeared in which it is shown that the Gospels were written in a numerical code.' If we were to take a particular word in the Gospels, let us say the word 'beginning' in John's Gospel: Tn the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was a God', and divide the phrase up, and we were to find that one particular part was twice the length of another, and each word had a numerical value — there you have a word with a numerical value of 50, followed by 25, another word, 50, and another word, 25. And one would be able to calculate which word should be written in which place. It is interesting to see if this works. Let us take a word — I'll use one that we also have in German — the word Eva. Let us assume the E has the value 1, the V a two, the A a three. Let us assume it is so. In the past every letter had a numerical value; it was not only a letter and people knew that if you had an L, for instance, this also meant a number. You can still see the numerical values in Roman letters: I = one, V = five, X = ten These are letters but they also have numerical value. So with Eva as an example, it is not really 1, 2,3, but we'll assume it is: 1 2 3 = Eva Eva is the mother of all that lives. Now we turn it round: 3 2 1 and we have 'ave', which means the end of life. Going in opposite directions, read in reverse from the back: 1 2 3 = Eva; 3 2 1 = ave Changing the numbers you'll always find that figures and letters agree. And so there is a numerical code. We may say, let us look at the first line in John's Gospel. The numbers are these. Let us look at the second line. The numbers are in a different order, and that signifies something. Now you see, gentlemen, people are amazed at this. But, you know, a man called Louvier 15 Louvier, Ferdinand August, Sphinx locuta est. Goethes Faust und die Resultate einer rationellen Methode der Forschung (2 Bände ), Berlin 1997. launched himself at the 'Sphinx': 'The riddle is solved'. He applied these numerical relationships to Goethe's Faust and it worked. Goethe never thought of composing his Faust on the basis of some law of numbers. But it works nevertheless, because all composition involves numerical elements. But if you just try and say something I can also apply a numerical code to your statement; this is something that lives in speech itself. A spiritual principle is at work in your speaking. And that, gentlemen, is the element from beyond this earth, the sun influence. These Sun People therefore studied the secrets of the sun. The pyramids were probably not just built to be royal tombs, for instance, but had specific openings where a sunbeam might enter at a particular time of the year. The sunbeam would write a figure on the earth. The Sun People studied this figure and let it inspire them. In this way they studied secrets of sun life. Someone who had become a Sun Person was able to say he did not go by earthly things at all but by the sun. And when he had been one of the Sun People for a time and had taught humanity about things beyond this earth, he was elevated to the rank of Father. This was the highest rank, and few attained it. These were the people who had full maturity, people who were obeyed and followed. Others would obey them firstly because they had grown old in years — for by the time you had gone through these seven stages you had grown old in years — and because they had wisdom of life and also wisdom of the world. Mysteries: 1. Raven 2. Occultist: listener 3. Defender — defence of the spirit 4. Sphinx 5. Greeks: spirit of a nation 6. Sun Person 7. Father Now just imagine, gentlemen, that Christ Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, lived at a time when people everywhere in Asia still knew something about those mysteries. It was still known, for example, that there were people who taught sun wisdom. Jesus of Nazareth wanted people to be enlightened and to understand not only within but also outside the mysteries that what the sun does for human beings is already there within them, it is there in every human being. That is the most important thing about Christ Jesus that he is sun truth, teaching the sun word, as it was called, to be held by all people in common. You need to note the great difference between Christ Jesus and the other Sun People. If you do not understand this you'll never gain insight into the Mystery of Golgotha. For you see, it is like this: What did people have to do to become Sun People in those early days? They had to be Raven first, then Occultist, Defender, Sphinx, Soul of a Nation — before they could advance to being a Sun Person. There was no other way. You had to be admitted to the mysteries. What did Jesus of Nazareth do? He had himself baptized in the River Jordan, as was the custom among the Jews then. And on this occasion, that is without having been in the mysteries first, the wisdom came to him that was held by the Sun People. He was therefore able to say that his wisdom had come from the sun itself. He was the first to relate to heaven without the mysteries. What did a Sun Person in the mysteries say when he looked up to someone who had reached the seventh stage? He would say: Behold, that is the Father. That individual would be standing at the altar in the white garment of a priest. That was the Father, the Father among those who had gone through the different stages in the mysteries. Christ Jesus did not go through the mysteries but received it from the sun itself. This is why he said: 'My Father is not on earth' — meaning not in the mysteries — 'but my Father is up above in the world of the spirit.' He was thus clearly speaking of the Father in the world of the spirit. Christ Jesus wanted to make people, who in the past had received all things of the spirit from the earth, aware of the spiritual sources that lie beyond the earth. And this has always been misunderstood. People would say, for example, that Christ Jesus taught that the earth would perish and a kingdom of the spirit would come very soon that would last a thousand years. The clever people of today, sometimes feeling benevolent towards the ancients in their cleverness, say: 'Well, this is something current at the time and Jesus quoted it; after all, he was a child of his time and would accept what people said.' But that is nonsense, for the thousand-year kingdom did indeed come, only it did not look the way people thought it would. It was like this. In earlier times people gained ideas and also experience of the spiritual world by the means I have described. It was the custom in those days, when people were different. This had ceased at the time when Christ Jesus lived, and people had to find the spirit in a different way. The spirit had to be found by direct means. Christ Jesus did so. And if he had not done what he did, humanity would have gone into a complete decline. Life would have become meaningless. This is not to deny that much that is meaningless has later emerged particularly through Christian institutions; but originally there was none of this. So people would have become witless. The mysteries would have perished the way they did indeed perish; but people would not have known anything of what was taught in the mysteries. Take the Sun Person of old. What was said of him? People knew that he had the knowledge to be gained from the viewpoint of the sun, that he had died where life on earth was concerned. Speaking of a Sun Person, they would say he had died where life on earth was concerned. This was the reason why a ceremony imitating death and burial was performed in the mysteries before someone became a Sun Person. Christ Jesus put death and burial openly before the whole world; what happened publicly at his death was something that had always been part of the ritual in the mysteries. It had been a secret of the mysteries, and then it was there for all the world to see on Golgotha. You see, it really was true that a Sim Person had died where the earth was concerned. Because of this he was in between, between death's world of decline and the world of resurrection, the world of the eternal. Things sometimes remind us of old customs where we can no longer perceive the meaning. Think of canonization in Rome, for example. It is a major ceremony when someone who died hundreds of years earlier is canonized in Rome. The ceremony is as follows. First the Advocatus dei , the defender of the divine, appears. He presents all the good qualities of the person to be canonized. Then the Advocatus diaboli , the devil's advocate, speaks of all the bad qualities of the saint. The decision lies between the two; I am not saying it is always the right decision, but it lies between the two. The ceremony is still performed today. When someone is canonized, for instance Joan of Arc, the two advocates appear. The saint stands between the two advocates, in the spirit. You remember that in pictures of Golgotha one always has Christ Jesus on the cross that is in the middle, and beside him the two thieves, or robbers. But the strange thing is that the Christ said to one of them: 'Today you'll be with me in Paradise.' This one went up above, therefore, and the other one went below. Lucifer and Ahriman are those two advocates. This also held true for the Sun Person of old. He made the acquaintance of Lucifer and Ahriman, meeting the principle that wants to draw us up into the world of the spirit, making us wholly spiritual — which is not the right thing for a human being — and the principle that wants to take us down into the earth's sphere, which also is not right for a human being, for the human being is at the in-between stage. In the Mystery of Golgotha, the whole world could see something that had only happened in the mysteries before, where it was only a metaphor, for the initiates would not really die. They became Fathers. The Christ did really die. But he said: 'My spirit does not die; it goes to the Father, for the Father is now no longer working down here as the ancient Father; he is working in the world of the spirit.' This is something that came entirely from the mysteries. We must look in the old mysteries for the Father idea, and only then do we really understand how Christianity evolved. Now you see, gentlemen, everything I have told you was very much the custom over there in Asia. It also had an influence on the founding of Christianity. But even the Greeks knew extremely little of this, for they were developing outer civilization. And the Romulus people, descendants of a robber colony, knew nothing at all of this; they knew only about ruling the world in outer terms. They knew so well how to rule the world that the Roman Caesars, or emperors, behaved as if they were initiates. One of the early Roman emperors was Caligula. 16 Gaius Caesar Germanicus, called Caligula (ad 12–41), Roman emperor ad 37-41. Now you see, in the 1890s a German historian wanted to describe the German emperor Wilhelm. 17 William or Wilhelm II (1859–1941), German emperor 1888–1918. But this could not be done, for anyone writing such a description would have been put in prison. The historian therefore wrote a small book entitled Caligula 18 Quidde, Ludwig, Caligula , Leipzig 1894 6 He wrote about the Roman emperor Caligula but every trait applied to Wilhelm II! Everybody who knew about these things realized: that is our Wilhelm II. That was the only way of doing it. Caligula had also been an initiate, for by that time it had all become outer form. It was possible to understand the function of the Ravens by seeing what the princes did, at least at a superficial level. Caligula had become a Sun Person but only superficially, more or less the way a 5- or 6-year-old becomes a 'general' by putting on a uniform. Caligula was also supposed to initiate others. And during one of those ceremonies it happened that when one of the Sphinxes was given the symbolic stroke of the sword, Caligula actually killed him with the sword. 19 What is said here about Caligula refers to Commodus (ad 161–192; Emperor of Rome 180–192). See lecture of 5 May in this volume, also the lecture of 20 May 1917 in Mitteleuropa zwischen Ost und West (GA 174a). The probable source was H.P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine (vol. 3): 'Ragon [J.-M. Ragon, Orthodoxie maçonnique , Paris 1853, p. 101] speaks of rumour accusing the emperor Commodus — on an occasion when he played the role of initiator — to have taken his role in the initiation drama so seriously that he actually killed the seeker when he struck him with the axe.' This, of course, would not have been a problem for a Caesar. Everything had become outer form with the Romans, and they did not understand the inner meaning of any of it. No wonder they were quite unable to understand Christianity. In Rome, therefore, Christianity became connected with worldly, or temporal, rule. When Christianity came to Rome, they had a temporal ruler who, however, saw himself as a god — naturally, for you became a god if you were an initiate. Augustus 20 Augustus, originally called Octavian (63 BC–14 AD), first Emperor of Rome (27 bc-ad 14). was considered to be a god, and so were his successors. They also had the pontifex maximus , the 'great bridge builder'. He was the spiritual ruler but gradually faded away to a mere shadow in Rome, having no real role to play; the temporal ruler had all the power. This was only to be expected in a nation descended from Romulus who gathered all the rogues together. And then, you see, Christianity became worldly exactly through its connection with Rome. This is what I had to tell you today concerning the outer aspect of Christianity. I'll speak about the inner aspect, the true influence of the sun on Jesus, the next time, which will be next Wednesday.

From Beetroot to Buddhism

Christianity coming into the world of antiquity and the mysteries

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSP1999/19240308p02.html

Dornach

8 Mar 1924

GA353-3

We will continue our study of the Mystery of Golgotha. At the very outset it must be realised that happenings on the Earth are not determined by earthly conditions alone but by the whole Universe. It is difficult for the modern mind to grasp what this means, but without the knowledge that influences pour down unceasingly upon the Earth from cosmic space, no event of human life, however simple, can be understood. I have spoken about this on many occasions and I shall speak of it to-day in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha. I told you that the Jews — I mentioned them as the fourth people in the evolutionary process 1 See the lectures in the first volume of this series: The Birth of Christianity , and Christianity and the Mysteries of Antiquity . — experienced the reality of the fourth member of man's being, namely the “I,” the Ego. This fourth member, which the Jews conceived to be the divine, innermost core of the human being, they called Jahve. And they saw a connection between Jahve and the universe of stars. You know, of course, that Palestine was the birth place of Christianity. Jesus of Nazareth lived in Palestine, in a Jewish environment. The Jewish religion prevailed in Palestine and although the Romans were the political rulers, in those far-off lands they were not in a position to abolish the established religion. Jesus of Nazareth, therefore, grew up in the environment of the Jewish religion. It will be easier for you to understand the character of the Jewish religion if I say something about the peoples who were living in Mesopotamia, that is to say, further to the East, namely, the Babylonians, the Assyrians. These peoples were neighbours of the Jews and their religion was connected essentially with the stars — it was a Star Religion. One often ears it said that the Assyrians “worshipped” the stars. They did not worship the stars but the instinctive wisdom of those times enabled them to know much more about the stars than is known nowadays, despite the claims of modern scholarship. You may have read in the newspapers recently that this hitherto undisputed knowledge of the stars threatens to collapse as a result of the discovery that the Earth is not surrounded by empty, celestial space but that at a height of 400 kilometres there are solid crystals of nitrogen! It would seem, therefore, that science is finding confirmation of the “crystal heavens” spoken of in Greek antiquity. I mention this merely in parenthesis. Such things may bring home to scholars how little is really known about the world of stars. And now imagine a being inhabiting the planet Mars. If such a being were to look downwards without a powerful telescope, he would not see any human beings on the Earth: he would simply see the Earth radiating a greenish light into cosmic space. Yet the Earth swarms with human beings who are in turn connected with Spiritual Beings. And just as the physical forces of the stars have an influence upon the Earth, so too the spiritual forces of the stars have an influence upon the Earth, above all upon man. The ancient, instinctive wisdom of the East revealed the existence of Spiritual Beings in the stars and it was to these Spiritual Beings, not to the physical stars, that men looked with veneration. In this sense the religion in Western Asia in those early times was a Star Religion. It was accepted as a matter of course that Spiritual Beings belonging to Saturn, Jupiter and the other heavenly bodies have a certain influence upon men and upon their earthly life. Now what the Jews had adopted from ancient religions was the teaching concerning the influence of the Moon ; they paid little attention to the other heavenly bodies. Jahve or Jehovah was connected with the spirituality of the Moon. The Jewish religion in its earliest, original form taught that Jahve, or Jehovah, as a living reality within the human “I,” was connected with the spiritual forces of the Moon. This is not a mere legend, neither is it an idea born of religious superstition; it relates to something of which there is scientific evidence. During the pregnancy of the mother — a period of great importance for earthly existence — when the human being is still an embryo, he is essentially dependent on the Moon. This dependency of the human embryo on the Moon has long been known and the period of pregnancy computed as ten lunar months. It is only comparatively recently that the ten lunar months have been changed to nine solar months. But these ten lunar months, which have rightly been connected with the period of pregnancy, are in themselves an indication that the embryonic human being in the body of the mother is dependent on the Moon. What does this mean? In its earliest condition after fertilisation, the ovum really contains earthly substance that has been broken down, pulverised, and nothing whatever would arise from it if it were exposed to the influence of earthly forces alone! The development into a human embryo is only able to take place because influences from the Moon play down upon the Earth. It can truly be said that the forces of the Moon lead the human being into earthly life. And so in its veneration of Jahve as a Moon God, the Jewish religion was really pointing to this dependency of the human being upon the forces of the Moon when he is entering earthly existence. Now the peoples living further to the East, in Asia — the Babylonians, the Assyrians — recognised other planetary influences as well as those of the Moon. They said, for example: Whether a human being subsequently becomes wise or remains a dullard, depends to a certain extent upon the influence of Jupiter. But the Jews did not concern themselves with these other influences. They venerated the one God — a Moon God. The fact that the Jews turned from many Gods to one God is generally regarded as a great step forward in religious life. Jesus of Nazareth heard much of the one God, the God Jahve, for the Jewish religion was all around him and He was instructed in its teachings. You can understand why a people who venerated only the Moon God, the God whose influence upon the human being works above all during the period while he is in the mother's body, believed that a man brings the whole of his being with him when he comes to the Earth. And this found expression in the ancient Jahve religion. If an ancient Jew who had fallen sick were asked: Why has this befallen you? — he answered: It is the will of Jahve. If his house had been set on fire and he were asked: Why has your house been burnt? — again his answer would have been: It is the will of Jahve ... He attributed everything to the one God, Jahve, through whose power man is led into the earthly world, and he saw the will of Jahve in everything that happened. Hence there was a kind of frozen rigidity about the Jewish religion. Through the whole of his life a man felt that his existence was determined by what he had brought with him to the Earth. Other religious teachings, as well as those of the Jews, came to the knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth. These other religions taught that many heavenly bodies — not only the Moon — have an influence upon the human being. There is an indication in the Gospels of a connection between the Star Religions of the East and the country inhabited by the Jews where Jesus of Nazareth was born. For the Gospels tell of the Wise Men from the East who had seen a star and were led by this star to the birthplace of Jesus. The story as it stands in modern versions of the Gospels gives rise to misunderstanding. The truth of the matter is that with their knowledge of the heavenly constellations the Wise Men recognised from the position of the stars that a momentous event was about to take place. And so at the very birth of Jesus of Nazareth we have the indication of a link with the Star Wisdom of Asia, of the East. And this link remained. The aim of Jesus of Nazareth was to enable man — while he is actually living on the Earth — to become aware of an inner reality of being, an inner selfhood. The Jews said: Everything comes from Jahve. — But in reality it is only until birth that the influence of Jahve holds sway, and once the human being is born, his life on the Earth is not simply a continuation of the Jahve impulse. The great truth brought by Christ Jesus was that during earthly life man is not like a rolling ball, impelled only by the impetus given by Jahve before his birth, but that he possesses an inner power of will by means of which he can ennoble or debase his own nature, his own personality. This was a truly epoch-making teaching. For the Star Wisdom had been kept very secret; nothing was known of it in Palestine, let alone in Rome. The Star Wisdom had been kept strictly secret and it was therefore profoundly significant that Jesus of Nazareth should have taught: It is not only from the Moon that influences pour down upon man; influences also pour down upon him from the Sun. This was a momentous teaching. But such things must not be regarded merely as theories; they must be studied in the light of reality. What is it that the influence of the Moon really brings about while the human embryo still rests within the body of the mother? The being of soul, the being of soul-and-spirit comes from the Moon-sphere and passes into the physical body. Man descends as a soul from the heavens by way of the Moon. When the Jews said: Jahve has an influence upon the human being in the womb of the mother — what did this really indicate? It indicated the view: The soul-and-spirit of man comes from the Moon; there, in the Moon, is the Creator of the soul. The physical, material constitution of man comes from the Earth; but the soul-and-spirit comes from the great universe, entering into man by way of the Moon. — The Jews, therefore, maintained that the soul entered into man by way of the Moon and received its endowments and gifts from the Moon God. Jesus of Nazareth taught that in truth man has the soul within him but that the soul can change, can be transformed in the course of his life because he has freedom of will. What underlay this teaching of Jesus of Nazareth? This question is profoundly significant and in order to find the answer we must consider the following: The Jews are always distinguished in a certain way from other peoples of the Earth. The difference is due to the fact that throughout the centuries the Jews have been brought up in the Moon religion and have refused to recognise any other influence. Real understanding of these things requires a knowledge of certain characteristics of Judaism. There is abundant evidence that the Jews have a great talent for music; but on the other hand they have no outstanding gift for sculpture, painting and arts of this nature. The Jews have a flair for materialism but little aptitude for acknowledging the reality of the spiritual world. And this is because their veneration has always been paid to the Moon and the Moon only; the rest of the super-earthly universe has hardly entered their ken. The Jewish character and the Greek character are in complete contrast. The talent and inclination of the Greeks lay above all in the direction of sculpture, pictorial art, architecture — architecture which embodied the art of sculpture. The Jews have always been, and are by nature, a musical people, a sacerdotal people; they unfold more particularly the inner activity which has its source in the talents bestowed during embryonic life. At the time when Jesus of Nazareth lived, this tendency was very strongly marked. The Jews one meets in Europe to-day have of course been living among other peoples for a long time, and they have assimilated many traits from them. But anyone of discernment can readily distinguish the fundamental character of the Jews from that of other peoples. As I said, the hearts and minds of the ancient Jews were directed entirely to the Moon God. Therefore they developed the traits which are connected with the Moon, not those which are connected with the Sun. The Sun was completely forgotten. If Jesus of Nazareth had remained a Jew, even He could only have taught a Moon Religion. But a different impulse, a spiritual influence proceeding directly from the Sun entered into him in the course of His life. As a result of this, He was “born a second time.” Eastern religions all knew what it meant to be born a second time, but to-day it is nothing more than a tradition and is no longer understood. At a certain moment in His life, Jesus of Nazareth knew that he had been born again, that the soul with which he had been endowed by the forces of the Moon while still within the mother's body had been quickened and filled with new life by the Sun ... And from that moment, He who had been Jesus of Nazareth was known among the initiated as Christ Jesus. It was said: Like all other Jews, Jesus of Nazareth became a man through the forces of the Moon; but because at a certain moment in his life the Sun influence poured into him, He has been born a second time — as CHRIST. Obviously, an average man of to-day who cannot take these things in their spiritual sense, will never be able to make anything of them. Having no idea that the human being is united with his soul in the mother's body before birth, he thinks that the soul must come in some way from the external world. And he certainly can make nothing of the teaching that a Sun Being, a second “personality” as it were, entered into Jesus of Nazareth. Just as the first personality enters into the mother's body, so did the Sun Being enter into Jesus of Nazareth as a second personality. The words used in the rituals of the Roman Catholic Church make no reference to what I have just told you. But at any celebration of High Mass you will see on the altar the Sanctissimum, the Monstrance containing the Sacred Host, and here (sketch on blackboard) rays are depicted. It is a representation of the Sun and the Moon. The very form of the Monstrance tells us that Christianity originates from a religious conception which, unlike that held by the Jews, recognises not only the influence of the Moon but also that of the Sun. Just as the influence working in the process of the birth of a human being is that of the Moon, so the influence working in Christ Jesus is that of the Sun. Having heard this, you may imagine that it is possible for every human being to be born a second time and to receive the influence from the Sun during the course of his life. But the truth is rather different. What happened in the case of Christ Jesus was that the influence streamed directly to the “I,” the Ego. Upon which member of man's being does the Moon influence work during embryonic life? As you know, man is composed of physical body, ether-body, astral body, and the “I.” The Moon influence works upon the astral body: the astral body, of which a man is not normally conscious, is influenced by the Moon. But in Christ, the Sun influence poured into the “I” — the free and independent “I”! If the Sun influence had ever worked upon man in exactly the same way as the Moon influence, what would have been the result? Think of the following: — As individuals we have no very decisive influence upon our own birth; our birth dispatches us as it were into the world. If the Sun influence were of exactly the same character as the Moon influence, we should simply receive the Sun influence at, say, the age of 30, and we should have no more say in this than we have in our birth. At the age of 30 we should suddenly become different persons, we should actually forget what we had been doing before that time. Just imagine what it would be like if you were to be going about until your 29th year and then, at 30, were to be born again! After this second “birth” you might come across someone not yet 30, who greeted you as an acquaintance. You would say: I know nothing about you ... I have only been here since to-day and I do not know you. That is what would happen if every human being at the age, say, of 30, were actually to receive the Sun influence. All this may seem very questionable but it is true nevertheless. It has simply been forgotten because history has been so greatly falsified. An exactly similar process was at work in very ancient times, although not in quite as drastic a form as I have described to you now ... In the very distant past, about seven or eight thousand years ago in India, men were like new beings when they reached the age of 30, and they knew nothing about their earlier life. Then the people around took charge of them and sent them to some “official” (I am using a modern term) who told them their names and who they were. This transformation was less and less marked as time went on, but in those olden times it did indeed take place. Even the ancient Egyptians who had reached, say, the age of 50, did not remember back to their childhood but only to their thirtieth year; they were told by the people around them about their earlier life, just as we are told to-day what we used to do when we were babies of one or two years old. History says nothing about this change that has come about in the life of man, but it is a fact. The last human being destined to receive the direct influence of the Sun was Jesus of Nazareth; for others this was no longer possible. There is a hint about this Sun influence in the Gospels but it is always misinterpreted. The Gospels tell us that when Jesus of Nazareth went to the Jordan to be baptised by John, a Dove descended upon Him from heaven. The Dove is the symbol of the Sun influence, of the Sun Being who entered into Jesus. But He was the last, the very last. The bodily constitution of other men in His day was such that they were not able to receive the Sun influence. Jesus was the last. In the ancient East, men could say with truth: The Sun influence comes to everyone in the course of his life, and when this happens he becomes a new being. This could no longer be said in the epoch when Christ Jesus lived, and the priests knew of it merely through tradition, not through their own vision. In the ancient past, before the days of the Jews, veneration was paid to the Sun, because the Sun was known to be the source of this all-powerful influence during life. When no such influence was received, men ceased to venerate the Sun. By whom, then, was the Sun replaced? By Christ Jesus Himself ! Before the founding of Christianity there had been a Sun Religion in which the Sun itself was the object of veneration. Christ Jesus was the last to receive this Sun influence, and thereafter men could do no other than point to Christ, saying: There, within Him, is the Sun Spirit! Herein lies the great and fundamental change. It denoted a sheer revolution in thought to be able to say: Christ Jesus brought down upon the Earth that which was formerly in the Sun. In the first Christian centuries, Christ was always called the Sun and in the Gospels we still find the words: “the Sun, the Christ.” Later on, the meaning was entirely forgotten. At every High Mass the truth is visibly portrayed in the Monstrance; but if anyone says in so many words that what is represented there is a fact, he is denounced as a heretic. For the Christian Church has always considered it dangerous to proclaim truths which have to do with the Stars, and therefore also with the Sun. Why is this so? Here again we must go back to the ancient Mysteries and compare them with Christianity. You know that the Mysteries were not open to everyone. I told you about the different stages. The Initiates were known as Ravens, Occultists, Defenders, Sphinxes, Spirits of the People, Sun Men, Fathers. 3 See Christianity and the Mysteries of Antiquity . These men knew that influences come from the stars and the initiated priests were careful to ensure that the knowledge was in the possession only of those who had actually been received into the Mysteries. For knowledge is a power! True, it is often suppressed ... but when the authority of the priesthood is strong, knowledge is certainly a power. The Star Wisdom had, however, been lost. And now came Christ Jesus who brought it to life again — but in a new form — teaching that the Sun God must now have his place upon the Earth. If Christ's teaching had gained the victory, knowledge of the Sun influence and indeed of the ancient Star Religion in its entirety would again have been present in the world. Moreover in the early Christian centuries this was in many ways the case. There was a certain revival of the ancient Mystery teachings. But Christ Jesus had brought about the great and fundamental change in that He placed as a reality before all the world what had previously been guarded as a close secret in the Mysteries. Thereafter it would have been within the reach of all human beings, but no effort succeeded in spreading the knowledge. A certain Roman Emperor, Julian, called the “Apostate” tried to introduce the ancient Star Religion once again but he was murdered while on a journey to Persia What happened in Rome was this. The Star Wisdom that had in truth been brought again to the world by Christ Jesus was denounced as superstition — and not only as superstition but as a creed of the devil. The very means, therefore, of leading men to a real knowledge of the Spiritual was denounced and practically exterminated. People were expected to believe only in the external, historical event of the presence of Christ Jesus in Palestine — in the form in which the Church proclaimed it. Consequently the Church became the supreme authority for all believers in the matter of how and what they should think. It was not by way of Rome that real Christianity came to Europe; what Rome brought to Europe was a changed Christianity — a Christianity which accepted only the outer event in Palestine and ignored the whole cosmic setting of that event. Why did it happen so? As I told you, Rome originated from a band of brigands who had once gathered together, 2 See Christianity and the Mysteries of Antiquity ; also Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History . and echoes of their mode of life persisted for a very long time. Rome has always striven for power in worldly affairs and in the religious life at the same time. And in the course of the Middle Ages, the Pope took the place ... well, not of the ancient High Priest, the “Pontifex Maximus,” for it was only the name that continued ... the Pope assumed the position that had once been held by the Roman Emperors. At one period — it was at the beginning of the eleventh century — an attempt was made by a certain German Emperor to achieve something in the same direction as Julian who had been called the Apostate. It is a very interesting story. Henry II was a good and faithful advocate of Christianity and was looked upon as a kind of saint. He reigned as Emperor from 1002–24. In history, too, he is known as Henry “the Saint” and he still figures among the saints named in the breviary of Catholic priests. Henry II was one who wished to point to the ancient wisdom, to preserve for Christianity the conception that in Christ Jesus there had lived the Sun Spirit. He wanted to establish an Ecclesia catholica non Romana , that is to say, a Catholic Church that is not Roman. This attempt was made at the beginning of the eleventh century. Lutherism came considerably later. If Henry II's attempt to establish a “Catholic Church that is not Roman” had succeeded at that time, the whole cosmic setting of Christianity would have come to the knowledge of Europe and through the religious life men would have been led to a truly spiritual science. But Rome conquered — that is to say, semi-religious, semi-imperial Rome. No Ecclesia catholica non Romana came into being and the Ecclesia catholica Romana lived on. The aim of Emperor Henry II had been to separate the Catholic Church entirely from the sphere of worldly dominion. It would have been a momentous deed, for if it had succeeded, the subsequent, very widespread persecution of heretics and heresies would never have taken place. Such persecutions are simply the outcome of authority exercised over men's thoughts. But in reality, nobody can have permanent authority over thoughts. Authority over thoughts can only be exercised when a human being is subject to the sway of worldly power, when he is obliged to attend particular schools where certain doctrines are inculcated into him, when he is put into a certain class which influences his point of view, and the like. Thoughts, in reality, cannot be made to submit to authority. No Church could ever have worked harmfully without the help of the worldly dominion to which man is subject as a physical being. For the Church can only teach; the response must come from human beings themselves. That is the principle which Henry II tried to establish. But as I said, the victory was won by Rome — by the ancient, imperial power working in the person of the Pope. The power of worldly dominion was very great in the days of Henry II. And if the attempt to establish a “Catholic Church that is not Roman” had succeeded at that time, the teachings of the Church would have remained apart from the sphere of worldly dominion. Fundamentally, the Crusades were pursuing the same aim. It is commonly said that the Crusades were undertaken in the service of Rome, that because the wicked Turks had conquered Jerusalem the pilgrims there could no longer perform their devotions in safety. Then Rome intervened and sent Peter of Amiens out into Europe to preach. Numbers of men were urged to come together in a Crusade to the East, to Jerusalem, and a great band of Crusaders gathered as the result of this preaching under the leadership of Peter of Amiens and Walter the “Penniless.” (Perhaps you can guess why he was called the “Penniless.” He was like all of us here, for we could not raise enough money between us to pay the cost of a crusade to Asia!) But this whole band of Crusaders perished on the way and nothing was achieved. Then came others, under the leadership of Godfrey of Bouillon. These men were not in the service of Rome but their aim had certain points in common with that of Henry II. They wanted to do away with the element of worldly dominion. ( Dr. Steiner makes a sketch on the blackboard .) Here is Italy, here Greece, here the Black Sea, here Asia, here Palestine, here Jerusalem. The aim of the first real Crusade was that Jerusalem, not Rome, should stand as the centre and citadel of the Christian religion. This was again an attempt to make the Ecclesia, the Church, independent of worldly dominion. None of these attempts succeeded. Roman princes and nobles again found their way into the later Crusades. The story can be read in any history book. And so this basic principle of Christianity, enshrining the great thought that in Christ Jesus the Sun Force itself was brought down to the Earth and that realisation of this makes every human being free ... “Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free ...” — this whole conception has remained in oblivion through the centuries and true Christianity must be discovered again to-day through Spiritual Science. It is not surprising that the representatives of Christianity in the form it has now assumed, oppose the Christianity which genuinely adheres to Christ Jesus and teaches the same realities as He Himself taught. This is what Anthroposophy does. Again it is not surprising that those who only know Christianity in its present form often have an aversion to it. This aversion, however, it not to be laid at the door of Christianity itself. Christianity has brought about tremendous progress in the social life. Slavery was gradually abolished, for one thing. And without Christianity there would have been no science as we know it to-day. Most of the really epoch-making discoveries were made by monks (the air-pump produced by the worthy Burgomaster Guericke von Magdeburg is one of the exceptions). Copernicus was a dignitary of the Catholic Church; and the schools and academies of learning were all dependent upon the monks. But something else must also be remembered. — The monasteries were not, at first, welcome in the Church, because the monks had preserved a good deal of the ancient knowledge. Among the monks (only they were not allowed to speak) there did indeed exist knowledge of the ancient Star Wisdom. Ample evidence of this can be found by anyone who looks for it. It was through monasticism, not through any external regime that knowledge of the kind of which I gave you an example in the last lecture, had been preserved and it was not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that it was completely swept away. The Middle Ages were by no means as “dark” an epoch as people generally believe. It is only what comes within the range of ordinary observation that is “dark.” In secret there was a great deal of wisdom, only it is not understood to-day. We can truly say: The greatest thought enshrined in Christianity is that the Sun Force in all reality came down upon the Earth. Not until then did history, as we know it to-day, really come to birth. For whereas in olden times men in the East possessed a glorious Star Wisdom, they attached no value to “history.” Those who were knowers and sages in the East always declared: It is there, in the Heavens, that the act of Creation takes place. They did not concern themselves to any great extent with the life and doings of human beings on the Earth. — True, something in the nature of history appears when the Jews come upon the scene, but it is history that begins with Star Wisdom — for the story of the “seven days of Creation” is pure Star Wisdom. Later on, events become chaotic, a medley. True history — and true history divides the whole process of evolution on the Earth into the pre-Christian and the post-Christian — really begins when Christianity is born.

Star Wisdom, Moon Religion, Sun Religion

Star Wisdom, Moon Religion, Sun Religion

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSPC1950/19240313p01.html

Dornach

12 Mar 1924

GA353-4

Gentlemen, let us continue today by my showing you some other ways in which Christianity came alive in Europe. In the early days after its founding, Christianity first of all spread through the south, across to Rome and then later, from the third, fourth and fifth centuries onward, to the north. Let us take a look at Europe as it was when Christianity spread, that is, the time when it was founded and a little after. The question I want to consider is, what did Europe look like at the time when Christianity came to it? Let us think of Asia over there [drawing on the board]. Europe is like a small appendage, a small peninsula. As you know, it looks like this. Here we have Scandinavia, then the Baltic; here we come across to Russia, and here is Denmark as it is today. Here we come to the north coast of Germany, here into Dutch and then French territory. We move on to Spain, and across to Italy. We now come to regions we know already: the Adriatic, Greece and the Black Sea. We then come to Asia Minor, and down there we would have Africa. Here, on the other side, we would have England and Wales, and here Ireland, which I'll just indicate here. I am going to try and show what Europe looked like at the time when Christianity gradually spread and then reached it. Here, Europe is closed off from Asia by the Urals. We then have the huge Volga river, and if at the time when Christianity came up from the south we had gone to the regions that are now southern Russia, the Ukraine, and so on, we would have found a people who later disappeared completely from there, moving further west and merging with other peoples: the Ostrogoths [eastern Goths]. You'll see in a minute how all these peoples started to migrate at a particular time. But at the time when Christianity was coming up from the south, these peoples lived in this part of Europe. Now if you take the Danube, you have here, further along, the Romania of today, and this is where the western Goths were. Over here, where western Hungary is today, north of the Danube, were the Vandals. Those were the names of the peoples in those days. And in the area where we have Moravia, Bohemia and Bavaria today were the Suevi, the Swabians of today. Higher up — this is where the river Elbe rises which then flows into the North Sea—here it was all Goths. But here —this is the Rhine, which you know well, with today's Cologne about here — here in the region around the Rhine lived the Ripuarian Franks and up near the mouth of the Rhine the Salian Franks. Over here, towards the Elbe, were the Saxons. They were given their name by people to the south of them who had noted that they lived preferably or almost exclusively on meat and therefore called them 'meat-eaters'. The Romans had spread to these regions here, including modern France, Spain, and so on. Here, too, you would find Graeco-Roman peoples everywhere. Christianity spread first among them, before moving further north. We may say that in these areas Christianity reached the northern parts earlier than it did in areas further to the west. One of the early bishops among the Goths was Ulfila, or Wulfila, meaning Tittle wolf'. 31 Ulfila, or Wulfila (c. 311–83). Ulfila translated the Bible into Gothic at a very early stage, in the fourth century. His translation is particularly interesting because it differs from those that came later. It is found in a most valuable volume at the Library in Uppsala in Sweden. 32 Codex argenteus (silver book), Gothic sixth-century Gospel manuscript written in silver and gold letters on deep crimson parchment originating in northern Italy; contains Ulfila's Gospel translations. We can see from this that Christianity spread earlier here in the east. Looking at the blackboard we thus see that the Greeks and Romans were there; but in very early times you still had here everywhere a much older European population and this is of great interest. This population — I have marked it in red — had already been pushed further west at the time when Christianity came. Originally they lived more to the east. You have to visualize them living on the border between Asia and Europe. The Slavs of today were even further into Asia in those days. The question is this. If we were to go back to the times before the origin of Christianity, I would have to hatch this whole map of Europe in red, for an ancient Celtic people also lived everywhere in Europe. Everything I have drawn on the board for you only came across from Asia later, a few centuries before and after the founding of Christianity. So Tie question is, why were those peoples migrating? At a certain point in world history they started to move, pushing across into Europe. The reason was this. If you look at Siberia as it is today, it is really a vast, empty, sparsely populated space. Not that long ago — not long, a few centuries, before the coming of Christianity — Siberia was much more low-lying and relatively warm. It then rose. The land does not have to rise by much and it will be cold where it was warm before, the lakes dry up, and it grows desolate. Nature herself thus made people move from east to west. The Celtic population of Europe were most interesting people. The peoples migrating from the east found them there, a relatively peaceful population. They still had the original gift of clairvoyance. If they took up a trade they would think the spirits were helping them in their work. And when someone felt he was good at making boots — they did not have boots then, but something to protect the feet — he would see his skill to be due to help from the spirits. And he would actually be able to perceive the element from the world of the spirit that gave him help. The way those ancient Celts saw life was that they were still on familiar terms with the world of the spirit, in a sense. And the Celtic peoples produced many beautiful things. They also went to Italy in very early times and brought beauty to it. This softened the rough edges of the original robber mentality at a time when the Romans had achieved a high life-style. The influence of the Celtic peoples softened the brutal nature of the Romans. In earlier times, therefore, Celts were to be found everywhere in Europe. To the south you then had the Roman and Greek, Romance-Greek, Graeco-Latin peoples. And, as I said, when Siberia grew colder, these peoples moved west. As a result, the map of Europe looked like this at the time when Christianity moved northwards from the south [pointing to the board]. It is a strange thing, gentlemen — certain characteristics of peoples survive well, others less so. Among the peoples coming to Europe from Asia were the Huns, for instance, with Attila the most powerful of their kings. 33 Attila, king of the Huns from 434 to 453. Attila was, however, a Gothic name meaning Tittle father'. Many of the peoples whose names I have written on the board also accepted Attila, the king of the Huns, as their king, and that is why he was given a Gothic name. The Huns were, however, very different from the other peoples. You see, the wilder peoples migrating to the west had originally been mountain tribes in Asia. The slightly less wild people, such as the Goths, were more plains people. And the wild doings of the Huns, and later also of the Magyars, were due to the fact that they had originally been mountain people in Asia. As the Romans extended their rule more and more to the north — this was independent of Christianity — they encountered the peoples coming from Asia. Many wars were fought between the Romans and the peoples here in the north. I have mentioned Tacitus to you, the important Roman historian. 34 See note 10. He wrote a great deal about Roman history and also a truly tremendous little book called Germamia , 35 De origine et situ Germanorum (about the origin and homelands of the Germanic tribes), written in Latin, probably in about the year 100, and generally known as the Germania . in which he described the tribes who lived there so well that they truly come to life. I have also told you that Tacitus, a highly educated Roman, had no more to say about Christianity than that it was a sect established by a certain Christ over there in Asia, and that the Christ had been put to death. Writing in Rome at a time when Christians were still suppressed and lived in their underground catacombs, he did not even get this right. At that time Christianity had not yet reached these peoples in the north. They had their own religion, however, and this is very interesting. Please call to mind, gentlemen, how religious ideas arose among the peoples in the south and the east. We have spoken of the Indians who considered above all the physical body, that is, one aspect of the human being. The Egyptians considered the ether body — another aspect of the human being. The Babylonians and Assyrians considered the astral body — yet another aspect of the human being. The Jews considered the I in their worship of Yahveh — again an aspect of the human being. Only the Greeks — and the Romans took this over from them — looked less at the human being and more at the world of nature. The Greeks were truly magnificent observers of the natural world. These peoples in the north, however, saw nothing of the human being as such, of the inner human being; they saw less even than the Greeks. This is interesting. Those people in the north completely forgot the inner human being; they did not even have memories of any thoughts people might have had before about the inner human being. The Greeks and Romans at least still had memories, being the neighbours of peoples all over the Near East — Egyptians, Babylonians and so on. They remembered what those ancient peoples had thought. The peoples of the north looked only at the world around them, outside the human being. And they did not see nature but the nature spirits. The ancient Greeks saw the world of nature; the peoples here in the north saw the nature spirits. And the most wonderful stories, fables, legends and myths arose among them, because they always saw the spirits. The Greeks would see Mount Olympus rise high, and their gods dwelt on Olympus. The people in the north did not say: gods live on a mountain. They would see the god himself in the mountain top, which did not look like a rock to them. When the rosy dawn shone on the mountain top, making it golden all over, and the morning sun rose, these people did not see the mountain but the way the morning sun moved across the mountain, and this they felt to be divine. It seemed to have spirit nature to them. It was quite natural to them to see spirit nature spread over the mountains. The Greeks built temples for the gods. Everywhere over there in Asia people built temples for the gods. The peoples of the north would say: 'We do not build temples. What would be the good of building temples? It is dark in there, but up on the mountains it is light and bright. And the gods must be venerated by going up the mountain.' Their thoughts about it were like this. When the light shines in the mountains it comes from the sun; but the sun is most beneficial in midsummer, when St John's-tide — as we call it today — approaches. They would then go up into the mountains, light fires and celebrate their gods not in a temple but high up in the mountains. Or they would say: 'The light and warmth of the sun go down into the soil, and in the spring the powers the sun has sent into the earth rise from the soil. We therefore must venerate the sun also when it lets its powers rise from the soil.' They were particularly aware of the beneficial gifts of the sun coming from the earth in their forests, where many trees grew. They therefore venerated their gods in the forests. Not in temples, but on mountains and in forests. These peoples saw everything spiritualized. The ancient Celts who had been driven away by them had still seen the actual spirits. These peoples no longer saw the spirits but to them everything that was light and warmth in the natural world was divine. That was the old religion of the German tribes which was then driven out by Christianity. Christianity reached those areas in two ways. On the one hand it penetrated southern Russia and the areas which are Romania and Hungary today. This is where Ulfila translated the Bible. The Christianity that came to the people there was much more genuine than the Christianity that spread from Rome, which was the second route. There it had more the character of dominion. It would be fair to say that if the Christianity that spread over here, moving up through Russia in the east, had spread there at a time when the population was not yet Slavic, it would have been very different, more inward, having more of an Asiatic character. The Christianity that spread from Rome was more superficial, finally becoming dead ritual because the significance was no longer understood. I have spoken to you about the monstrance with the host, which is really sun and moon, but that was suppressed; it was no longer given any significance. And so a ritual spread that had no reality to it. This was taken to Constantinople by a Caesar who also had no reality; Constantinople was founded. And later this altered Christianity also spread through other countries. The Christianity that exists in Ulfila's Bible translation, for instance, has completely vanished from Europe. The more superficial, ritual Christianity spread more and more. And in the east, too, this ritual, with little inwardness, spread even more when the Slavs came. The things I have told you about religious ideas of these peoples later went through a change. It is always the same. Initially people know what something is about; then a time comes when they no longer know what it is about and it becomes mere memory. Some outer aspect remains. And so the gods that had once been seen by people, the spirits found everywhere in nature, became three main gods. One was Woden or Odin, who was really still thought to be like the light and air that floats above everything. He would be venerated, for example, when the weather was stormy. Then people would say: Woden blowing in the wind. Those peoples tended to express anything they experienced in nature in their language. And so they venerated Woden blowing in the wind. Can you feel the three Ws when I say these words? 36 German: Wotan weht im Winde — German W is English V sound. See pronunciation table. It made those people shiver when a storm came and they imitated the storminess in those words. These are the words as we say them today, but they were similar in the old language. When summer came and people saw lightning flash and heard the rumble of thunder they saw a spiritual element in this, too. They would imitate this in words, calling the spirit who rumbled in the thunder Donar, Thor: Thor thunders in thunder. 37 German: Donar dröhnt im Donner . See pronunciation table. The fact that this came to expression in speech shows that these people related to the outside world. The Greeks were less strongly connected with the outside world. They looked for these things in rhythm rather than in the shaping of speech. With these northern peoples, it was in the speech itself. And when these peoples went across into Europe and first met the Celts, there were constant wars and battles. Making war was something people did all the time during the centuries when Christianity spread. They saw spiritual elements in the blowing of the wind and the rumbling of thunder, and in the roar of battle. They had shields, and would rush forward in closed ranks carrying their shields. That was still their way when they met the Romans. And when the Romans opposed them as they rushed down from the north, the Romans would above all hear a terrible cry. The people from the north would shout into their shields from a thousand throats as they rushed forward. And the Romans were more afraid of the terrible war cry than they would be of the enemy's swords. In present-day words the war cry was something like Ziu zwingt Zwist . 38 German: Ziu zwingt Zwist (Ziu forces strife, see pronunciation table)—all three phrases were written on the blackboard. Translator. Ziu was the spirit of war and the ancient Germans believed him to be rushing before them. The Romans would hear the dull reverberations of the cry roaring above their heads. As I said, they were desperately afraid of this, more than of bows and arrows and the like. A spiritual element was alive in the courage and thirst for battle shown by those tribes. If they were to come again today — and they do, of course, because there is reincarnation, but they'll have forgotten all about the past — and if they still were the way they were then, they would look at people today and immediately put a nightcap on everyone's head, saying: 'It's not right for people to be such sleepyheads. Let them put on a nightcap and go to bed!' They looked at life in a very different way; they were mobile. There would of course also have been times when those tribes could not go to war. In that situation they would lie down on bear skins and drink — they were terrible drinkers. That was their second occupation. It was considered a virtue in those days; and their drink was not as harmful as drink is today; it was relatively harmless, being brewed from all kinds of herbs. Beer came to be produced later, and was of course very different. They would feel truly human when mead, a beer-like sweet drink, coursed through their bodies. You sometimes still see people who feel themselves a little bit to be descendants of those ancient Germans. I met a German poet once in Weimar who drank almost as much as the ancient Germans. We started to talk and I said to him: 'Surely no one can be as thirsty as that!' He answered: 'Ah thirst — I drink water when I'm thirsty. I actually drink beer when I'm not thirsty. When I drink beer it is not for the thirst, it is to get merry!' and that is how it was with the ancient Germans. They grew merry and active when the sweet mead-like drink coursed through their limbs as they lay on their bear skins. Their third main occupation was hunting. The tilling of the soil was very much a secondary occupation performed by subjugated tribes. When such a tribe gained new territory they would subjugate others who then had to till the soil. They were unfree. In war they had to take up arms, and so on. The difference between free and unfree people was enormous at that time. The free people, who went to war, hunted and lay on their bear skins, would meet to organize affairs. They would discuss judicial or administrative matters and so on, whatever was necessary. Nothing was written down, for they were unable to write. Everything was by word of mouth. Nor did they have towns or cities. People lived in scattered villages. About a hundred villages would form a community and be called a 'hundred'. Several hundreds would make a gau . The hundreds had their meetings, as did the gaus . The whole was truly democratic among those who met, which would be the free people. Their name for it was not parliament, diet or the like, which would be a much later term, but a Thing, which was a meeting on a fixed day. You often hear English people say 'thing' when the name of something does not come to mind. The word has fallen into discredit today. I got into trouble once about this word. I had been asked to set up a resolution that had been discussed, and included the word 'thing'. The chairman, a famous astronomer, took this very much amiss because the word is so poorly regarded today; it should not be used, he said, when people meet to discuss serious matters. But in the old days it was called a Thing. People would not say they were going to parliament, or the diet, but to the Thing , the Tageding . When someone spoke about something, they would say he vertagedingt the matter, which has later become verteidigt, defended. That is how words evolved. Today one usually has a 'defender' in court, and here in Switzerland they don't say defender but advocate. This, then, was how those tribes lived with one another and with their gods. And the peoples from the south brought Christianity to them. Again there were two ways in which Christianity arose over there in the west. Part of it came directly from Rome; but there was another route — from Asia through all those more southern regions where the Graeco-Latin element ad not gained much influence, through Spain and on to Ireland. Christianity spread in a very pure form in Ireland in the early centuries and also over here in Wales. Christian missionaries then went to Europe from there. They brought Christianity to some, whilst others had it from Rome. You'll remember I said that in the monasteries and also in the early universities people still had much of the old wisdom, and Christianity was thus linked with the old wisdom. The old star wisdom that survived, only to disappear completely from Europe at a later time, really all came from Ireland. What had come from Rome had really only been ritual. Later, when central Europe turned to the Gospels, these were added on to the ritual. But much of what lived among the people had come from Ireland. You see, in Europe Christianity gradually became part of temporal rule. And the good elements that existed here in the upper areas, where Ulfila produced his Gothic translation of the Bible, and those that had come from Ireland had more or less disappeared later on. Quite a bit survived into the Middle Ages, but then it largely disappeared. You see, the people who came from Rome were very clever. The tribes whose names I have given, originally forced by natural conditions to migrate from an Asia grown desolate to Europe, developed a certain wanderlust, a desire to be on the move. And it is strange to see what happened. Here we have the River Elbe, for instance. The people who lived there soon after the coming of Christianity were the Lombards. They lived to the north-east of the Saxons, on the Elbe. Soon after, about 200 years later, we find them down there by the river Po in Italy! They had migrated. Before the coming of Christianity the Goths, the Ostrogoths, were to be found here by the Black Sea. A few centuries later they were here, where the Vandals and the western Goths had been before. The western Goths had moved further to the west and after some time could be found in Spain. The Vandals had been here, on the Danube. A few centuries later they were no longer to be found in Europe, but over there in Africa, opposite to Italy. The peoples were migrating. And as Christianity spread they moved further and further to the west. The Slavs only came much later. What was happening in the west? The Romans already ruled the world when Christianity evolved. They were really very clever. At the time when these tribes moved westward and encountered Roman civilization, the Romans had grown feeble, quite worn out, and really could not do much more but stand with quivering legs when the roar of Ziu zwingt Zwist rolled into the shields from up there. They were quaking in their boots. But they were crafty, arrogant and proud in their heads. The difference between them and the tribes was enormous. They had their lands, their fields, were settled, with something to fall back on. The tribes did not care much about places. They were on the move. The Romans would take in the tribes that came rushing south and give them land, of which they had more than enough. The tribes then changed from being hunters and warriors to being tillers of the soil. The Romans had their own way of giving land, however. They remained in control, running the administration, and in this way gradually became the rulers. Their rule was most powerful here to the west. In the area later populated by the Germans, people resisted for a long time. But tribes like the Goths went down to Italy, mingling with the people who lived there and becoming dependent. The Roman, Latin people were clever, therefore. They said: 'It no longer works so well if we take up the sword.' They had grown feeble. So what did they do? They made the peoples who came from the north into warriors. The Romans waged their wars by sending the Germans — who were given land but had to fight in return. The ancient Germans who had remained in the north were thus fought by their own former warriors. And in the early days when Christianity spread, wars were really waged by the southern people, the Romans, with the help of those ancient Germans who had joined them. Only the generals of the Roman armies were normally Romans. The mass of soldiers really consisted of ancient Germans who had become Roman. It was then a question of introducing the religious element in a way these people would accept. In those very early times people were much more attached to their religion than later. And so the following would happen, for instance. You see, those people always saw the light and air in the natural world as something spiritual. They felt it was hard when the snows came in October or November, covering the ground, so that everything spiritual really had to disappear. But they specially venerated the time when we celebrate Christmas today. They could feel that the sun was returning. This was the feast of the winter solstice, when the sun returned to humankind again. These tribes therefore were inclined to accept the spiritual element in nature. The Romans, who had already made Christianity part of their system of rule, let the tribes keep their solstice. But they said it was not to celebrate the solstice but the birth of Christ. The tribes were thus able to celebrate their feast as before, but it had been given a new meaning. The ancient Germans always perceived a spirit in any tree that stood out more. The Romans made the spirit into a saint. Essentially they took everything of the old pagan religion and gave it a new name. People would not notice this so much, and that is really how Christianity spread among the ancient German tribes. Feasts like those of the returning sun and so on were celebrated, taking account of the fact that the tribes liked to celebrate their gods in the open air, in mountains and forests. We may thus say that cleverness was the main principle in the founding of Christianity coming from Rome. Essentially Europe has been governed using such cleverness for centuries — Roman cleverness. This went so far that the Romans preserved the old Latin language in the schools, with the vernacular really only spoken among the people. When the Romans introduced scholarship with their Christianity, this would not be in the vernacular but in Latin. The vernacular only came into scholarship in the eighteenth century. Roman culture thus persisted in its original form for a long time. To the west, going through Spain, France and finally Britain, Roman culture remained alive. A language has developed in which it lives on. Here, in central Europe, the Germanic element gained more of the upper hand. The German languages developed. Over here the Romance element prevailed and therefore Romance languages. But in their origins all those people were really German, those who went to Spain and also those who went to Italy. I mentioned the Ripuarian Franks, the Salian Franks. They went over there later, German tribes settling in France. And the Romance language spread over them like a cloud. French has evolved from it, and so has Spanish. There the old Latin language lives on in a new form. Further to the east, from the Rhine onwards, people as a nation would say: 'Well, the scholars in the schools, wearing their wigs, may speak Latin, and anyone wishing to be a priest may as well listen to them.' But the ordinary people kept their language. This has given rise to the difference that Europeans are still finding hard to swallow today, the difference between central and western Europe.

From Beetroot to Buddhism

What did Europe look like at the time when Christianity spread?

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSP1999/19240315p02.html

Dornach

15 Mar 1924

GA353-5

The question which has been asked, Gentlemen, is wide-ranging, and we'll need a few sessions to discuss it. Today I'd like to go into more detail about the later part of the time when Christianity spread. If we look at Christianity today, it has three forms. These have to be considered if we want to find the right way of tracing what really happened because of the Mystery of Golgotha, considering the ideas that are held today. Let us first of all consider Europe. As I have shown the other day, we have Asia over there, with Europe really a kind of peninsula of Asia. As you know, it looks like this [sketching]. This would be Norway, then Russia over here; this takes us to the north coast of Germany; and here is Denmark. Over here we come to Holland, France, and this would be Spain. Here we have Italy, Greece, the Black Sea, and we then come to Asia. Africa would be down below. It is difficult to speak about the spread of Christianity in the present day and age because conditions are unusual in this respect. But if we consider Christianity as it was before the World War in these parts of Russia we are able to say: This eastern Christianity still had more of the original religious character that came from Asia. I have spoken of the different forms it took with the Egyptians, Indians and Assyrians. Much of the ritual, the offering ritual, for instance, that was well understood in Asia has flowed into the religion into which Christianity then entered in these eastern parts. When you get to know the religious practices of these parts you get a direct feeling that the ritual is much more important than the teaching. The teaching seeks to express something that belongs to the world of the spirit in human words, or at least as much as human feeling can grasp of that world. It always seeks to address the human intellect. The ritual on the other hand is much more conservative, and religion is conservative by nature in areas where ritual predominates. We may thus say that the eastern religion is conservative by nature, with ritual considered more important in bringing religion, religious life, to human hearts than in areas that lie more to the west. The second stream in Christianity came from Rome, spreading to the north, and was then strongly influenced by missionaries coming from Ireland. This southern and central European Christianity under the influence of Rome has kept its ritual, but it also put more emphasis on teaching than the eastern religion. People are thus much less aware of the significance of ritual than of the preaching, the teaching. There has been much more dispute about the teaching within the Roman Catholic Church than in the Eastern Church. There was also another influence. Christianity arose at the beginning of our era, with Islam arising five or six centuries later. I drew Arabia for you the other day. If I draw Asia Minor again, we come to Arabia down here, with India over there. This would be Africa, with Egypt here. Here in Arabia, Islam came through Mohammed. 39 Mohammed (Arabic for 'the one who is praised') (570–632). Islam spread with great rapidity in the second half of the first Christian millennium, from Asia initially towards Syria and here to the Black Sea, then through Africa over to Italy, Spain and the west of Europe. The special characteristic of the Islamic religion is that it combines a fantasy element with one that is sober and rational. The main principle of Islam, which spread so rapidly in the seventh to ninth centuries, is that there is only one God, the one proclaimed by Mohammed. We need to understand what it means in world history that Mohammed insisted on this principle of one God. Why did he stress this point so much? He knew the Christian faith; this does not have three gods, but it has three divine figures. People are no longer conscious of this. They do not realize that Christianity has from its very beginning not had three gods, but three divine figures — Father, Son and 'Holy Ghost'. What does this mean? You see, the original Latin meaning of 'person' was 'figure, mask, the character represented'. And in the original Christian faith people did not speak of three gods but three figures through whom the one God was revealed. They had a feeling for the true nature of those three figures. Let us consider what is the real situation with those three figures. Today, we have a science that is distinct from religion, and so we are no longer able to understand this situation. Scholarship has become quite independent of religion, and people do not think of religious life when they speak of the life of scholarship or science. It was different in earlier times, including early Christian times. All scholarship was gained together with religion. They did not have separate priests and scholars, for their priests were also scholars. This was above all the case in the late mysteries I have described to you. In those mysteries the human being was seen to be part of nature, born from the womb as a physical human being with the aid of natural forces. This, they felt and thought, was where forces of nature were active in the human being. If I consider the way a physical human being comes into existence, I am looking at forces that can also be seen in a growing tree, in evaporating water and in falling rain. These are forces of nature. But in earlier times people perceived spiritual forces behind those forces of nature. Spiritual forces are at work throughout nature. They are at work when a crystal develops in the mountain, and the stone grows, when a plant appears in spring, when water evaporates, clouds form and rain falls. The same spiritual forces are active in the human embryo developing in the womb. They are active in the blood coursing through the veins and the breath going in and out. The ancients saw everything in nature as spiritual and everything in the human being as the Father Principle, calling it the 'Father' because nature study was also religion at the time. They would say to themselves: 'Someone who has achieved the highest level of enlightenment in the mysteries is an image of this Father Spirit; he knows about everything that exists in nature.' This was the 7th stage in the mysteries. The next level was that of the Sun Spirit, as I have told you. What did people mean by this Sun Spirit who was later called the Son? As I said, the Christ referred to himself as Sun Spirit. People would say: 'Human beings are born through forces of nature, the same forces that make plants grow, and so on; but they develop during their lives on earth. In the state in which they are born through the forces of nature, we can no more call them good or evil than we can a plant.' You would never dream of calling a deadly nightshade plant evil because it is poisonous to humans. You would say it cannot help it. A deadly nightshade plant does not have a will living in it, whereas a human being does. And when a child is born we cannot say that it may be good or evil because of the forces of nature. It becomes good or evil because the human will gradually develops. In contrast to the forces active in nature, therefore, people would call the principle active in the human will — a principle that may be good or evil — the Son of God or the Sun Spirit. Someone able to reach the 6th stage in the mysteries would merely be a representative of this. All the individual representatives of the 6th level were representatives of the God principle on earth. And people knew the sun to be not merely a body of gas; the sun was giving out not only light and warmth, but also the powers that developed the will. Thus not only light and warmth came from the sun but also the sun spirit. The Son God was also the Sun Spirit. People would say, therefore, that the Father God was to be found everywhere in the natural world, and the Son God wherever human beings developed an independent will. People then thought of something very strange. They would ask: Does it make a human being worth more or worth less when he develops an independent will? They were still asking themselves this question at the time when Christianity came. Gentlemen, think of any natural product, even going as high as an animal. Now if a cow has grown old, you may say people pay less for it than when it was young. It would then be worth less than it was when it was young. This is true, but it is not the point, for we realize that the cow has become worth less not because of something active within it as will, but because of a natural event. A human being who does bad things, however, developing his will in a way that is not good, will be worth less than he is by nature. Human beings therefore need a third deity who can guide them to make their will good again, really good, to hallow a will that has grown unsound. And that was the third form of the divine, the Holy Spirit, who was always represented as the 5th level of initiation in the mysteries, and given the name of the nation. The people of past times thus said the divine principle came to revelation in three ways. You see, they might have said: there is a god of nature, a god of will, and a god of spirit, where the will is hallowed again and made spiritual. They actually did say this, for the old words meant just that. 'Father' was something connected with the origins of the physical world, a natural principle. In the languages we have now, the significance of these words has been lost. But those people of old would add something when they said there is a god of nature, the Father, a god of will, the Son, and a god of spirit, the Holy Ghost who heals all that has grown sick because of the will. They would add: 'These three are one.' Their most important statement, their greatest conviction therefore was this: 'The divine has three forms, but these three are one.' Something else they would say was: 'If you look at a human being, you see a big difference from the natural world. If you look at a stone, what is active in it? The Father. If you look at a plant, what is active in it? The Father God. If you look at the human being as a physical human being, what is active in it? The Father God. However, if you look at the human being as soul, in his will, what is active in this? The Son God. And if you consider the future of humanity, how it shall be one day when all shall be healthy again in the will — that is where the Spirit God is at work.' All three gods, they would say, are active in the human being. There are three gods or divine forms; but they are one, and they also work as one in the human being. That was the original Christian belief. Going back to early Christian times we would find people still saying they were convinced of this. They would say: 'Yes, this healing spirit that brings health must act in two ways. In the first place it must act on the physical aspect that comes from the Father, because nature can fall into sickness. And it must act on the principle that comes from the Son, because the will, too, must be healed.' What they said, therefore, was that the Holy Ghost had to act in such a way that it arose from both the Father and the Son. That was the original belief held by Christians. Mohammed may be said to have grown anxious, as it were. He saw that ancient paganism with its many gods would go into a decline and ruin humanity. He saw Christianity evolve and said to himself that this, too, held the danger of a multiplicity of gods, that is, three gods. He did not realize that these were three forms of the divine and he therefore went into opposition, emphatically saying that there was only one God, proclaimed by Mohammed and that everything else said about the gods was wrong. This dogma was proclaimed far and wide with great fanaticism, and as a result the thought of three divine figures was completely absent from Islam. They would speak only of the one God whom they felt to be the father of all that exists. The thinking in Islam therefore also was that just as a stone does not grow to be what it is out of its own free will, as a plant does not have its own will but is given yellow or red flowers by nature, so everything in the human being, too, would grow out of nature. This gave rise to a rigid notion of destiny in Islam — we call it fatalism — that human beings have to submit to a wholly unconditional, predetermined fate. If they are happy, this is so because the Father God wills it; if they are unhappy, it is so because the Father God wills it. They have to submit to their fate. That was the religious aspect of Islam. Mohammed saw everything in the human being to be the same as it is in nature, and this made it much easier for him to accept the whole of the ancient art and the whole of the old way of life than Christianity. Christianity was above all concerned with the healing of the human will. Islam was not concerned with this, seeing no reason for doing so. If it is determined that a person is to be evil, then that is the will of the Father God. Christians would say: "The pagans of old were mainly concerned with the Father God; we must set up the Son God against this.' Mohammed, and above all his followers, did not say this. They said: 'The pagans of old may have had many gods, but they also venerated nature, and the one God is at work in this.' Much of the old knowledge and art has therefore been preserved in Islam. In the ninth century, for example, Charlemagne, 40 Charlemagne (742–814). king of the Franks and later emperor, one of the greatest medieval rulers in Europe and a well-known historical figure, found it a great effort to learn his letters and was not yet able to write. His achievements in the arts and sciences were very little compared to those made under Harun al-Rashid 41 Harun al-Rashid (763?–809), Caliph of Baghdad 786–809. who was Caliph of Baghdad at the time. Much of the art and science from earlier pagan times had been preserved there; it came to Europe later, from the south, through Spain. Christianity spread from Rome. We might say that Islam, coming from Asia, skirted around it. Great battles were also fought between them. And the followers of Islam did something very strange. You know that if there is an army somewhere, much can be gained strategically by secretly moving around it and attacking from the other side. This is really what happened with Islam and Christianity. The followers of Islam skirted around Christian areas in the south and then attacked from the left flank. But you see, if this had not happened, if all that had happened would have been the spread of Christianity, we would have no science today. The religious element of Islam was rejected, fought against. But the element that did not involve religious strife but preserved earlier knowledge and took it further did come to Europe with Islam. There the Europeans learned the things that have become part of modern science. Two things therefore live in the European soul today: we have the religion that has come with Christianity and the science that has come with Islam, though in a roundabout way. And our Christianity has only been able to develop the way it did because knowledge, science, has been influenced by Islam. This aroused an ever greater desire in the European west to defend Christianity. Where ritual prevails you have less need to defend religion, for ritual has a great influence on people. Here the tendency coming from Rome was to make ritual less important, though it was retained. Dogma pre19 dominated and had to be defended all the time against the Muslim onslaught. The whole of the Middle Ages really passed over these struggles which were fought in the field initially and then in human minds. Everything we call European culture or civilization has gradually evolved in the second half of the Middle Ages. What did evolve there? Over in the east, all the way to Russia and indeed Greece, Christians could do no other but remain true to the old traditions. This meant to perform outer acts, even if they were purely symbolic by nature. One had to take account of the natural world. And one was much more inclined to put the emphasis on the Father God rather than the Son God. Just as the destiny principle that came to Mohammed was to submit entirely to what the Father God ordained, so this Father God also emerged more strongly in eastern Christianity than the Son, the way the tenor of belief went. The strange shift in thinking that occurred was that the people in the east did hold firmly to the Christ, but they transferred the attributes of the Father God to the Christ. Something of a cloud was cast over it all here; people would speak less of the Son God; they would become Christians, recognizing the Christ to be their God, but they saw in him the attributes of the Father God. The view that evolved in this eastern religion was really: Christ, our Father. This notion of Christ, our Father, is to be found in the whole of the eastern religion. Over here, in Europe itself, people wanted to fight Islam, the idea of only one God who did not have three forms, and so the concept of the three divine persons took a deep hold. Well, as you know, gentlemen, you can fight for a time; people may sit down together and be in continual dispute; one says one thing to another person, who then says something else. So they fight. But what is generally the result? They finally separate, each going his own way. The end of the dispute is that people agree to differ. It is extremely rare for agreement to be reached, especially if the dispute is of some magnitude. You'll remember how first there was a socialist party; that had many disputes. There was a right wing and a left wing. In due course the wings became separate party organizations. And that is how it was with the spread of Christianity. It spread. Over in Asia, that is in the East, people thought more of the Father God, though they held to the Christ; in Europe they made more of a distinction between the Father and the Son. They disputed and fought over the issue until the ninth or tenth century. Then came the great split. The eastern Church, called the Orthodox Church today because it has continued with the old, original things, separated from the western Church, the Roman Catholic Church. That was the time when the great division appeared between the eastern Church, eastern Christianity, and western Christianity. This continued for a time. In the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries people got used to the idea of an eastern and a western aspect. But then something happened that in some respects upset it all again. It was the Crusades. Mohammed had originally worked among the Arabs who were the first to take up Islam. The Arab people had a strong nature religion and therefore were prepared to understand the idea of the Father, and recognize the Father God. In the early days of Islam the idea developed of a Father God who worked through nature, including human nature. Then, however, tribes came from the far regions of Asia. Their descendants today are the Turks. They fought wars against the Arab people. The strange thing about those Mongols, whose descendants are the Turks, is that they did not really have a nature god. Like the people of early civilizations they did not have the eye for nature which the Greeks later developed so strongly. The Turks came from their original homes with no feeling for nature but a tremendous feeling for a spiritual God, a God to be approached in thought only who could never be seen with one's eyes. This particular way of approaching the Godhead became part of Islam. The Turks accepted the Muslim religion of the people they conquered but changed it to fit in with their ideas. And whilst Islam had accepted much that came from earlier times, both art and science, the Turks really threw out anything that might be called art or science and really became hostile to art and science. They were the terror of the western peoples, a terror for all who had accepted Christianity. You see, the region where Christianity arose, in Palestine, with Jerusalem, was particularly sacred to the Christians. Many made pilgrimages there from all parts of the West, which called for great sacrifices. Many people were extremely poor and it was hard for them to get the means together for the journey to Palestine to visit the Holy Sepulchre, as it is called. And they made the journey! When the Turks came, the journey became dangerous, for the Turks extended their rule to Palestine and maltreated the Christian pilgrims. The Europeans then wanted Jerusalem to be freed so that people might go there. They wanted to set up their own European rule in Palestine and therefore undertook those great campaigns called the Crusades. These did not achieve what they were meant to achieve but they reflect the war, the battle, between western Christianity and also eastern Christianity on one hand and Turkish Islam. Christianity was to be saved in the face of a Muslim religion grown Turkish. Many people then went to Asia to fight. What did they find there? The Crusades started in the twelfth century and continued for some centuries, and so they were in the middle of the Middle Ages. What was the first thing the people who went to Asia as Crusaders would see? They saw that the Turks are fearsome enemies to face. But when a Crusader looked around a bit on days when there was no fighting, he might find some strange things. He might have met an old man who had withdrawn to his poor hovel somewhere and did not concern himself with Turks, Christians or Arabs but had shown remarkable faithfulness in continuing the culture, the wisdom and religious knowledge of earlier pagan times. The Turks had paid no regard to this. Official civilization had eradicated it; but there were many such people. And so the Europeans got to know much of the old wisdom that no longer existed in Christianity. This they brought with them to Europe on their return. Imagine how things were at the time. Earlier on, Arabs had come to Europe via Italy and Spain, bringing their art and a scientific thinking that spread and has become our modern science. Now the ancient wisdom from the East was brought back and the two became mixed. As a result, something special developed in Europe. You see, the Roman Church adopted the ritual, using it less, however, than the eastern Church did. It adopted the ritual but also went strongly into teaching. But in the old Church teaching, religious instruction was connected with the person. It remained such until the time of the Crusades. Instruction consisted in what was proclaimed from the pulpit and approved by the Councils that were held. And apart from this there was also the 'New Testament', as it was called, the Bible. People who were not priests were, however, forbidden to read the Bible, and this was strictly enforced. It was considered a terrible thing for someone to want to read the Bible in those earlier times before the Crusades. It was not permitted. The lay people, the faithful, therefore had only what the priests taught, they did not have access to the Bible. The science brought by the Arabs and the ancient wisdom of the East made many people feel: 'This is some19 thing the priests who are giving instruction do not know. There is a great deal more wisdom than is taught by them.' And a tendency, an intention arose to read the Bible oneself and get to know the New Testament. Protestantism, the third kind of Christianity, developed out of this, with Luther 42 Martin Luther (1483–1546). its special representative, though the intention was there even before he came. Take the areas, for example, where Czechoslovakia, Bohemia and Bavaria are today; take these areas along the Rhine, from Holland down into Germany — I could mention other areas as well. Brotherhoods were developing everywhere in those areas. Here, down the Rhine, the Brotherhood of Communal Life developed, here, more to the east, the Moravian Church or Renewed Church of the Brethren came into being. What were their aims? The brethren would say: 'The Christianity that has come from Rome is not the true Christianity. The Christian faith is something you have to find out of the inner life.' Initially the aim was to find the origins of Christianity in an inward way. Later they would also say that one had to know the Gospels. Both aims came from the same source. You see, that was the great difference between Huss, 43 Huss, John, Czech Jan Hus (1369–1415). who lived and worked in today's Czech region, and Luther. Huss was less concerned with the Gospels; what mattered to him was that Christianity came inwardly alive. Later this took more of an outward form in the study of the Gospels. The Gospels were, however, written under very different conditions of life. They spoke in images, and those images were no longer understood in later times. Let me give you an example. A Gospel story tells of the Christ healing the sick. At the time nervous disorders were much more widespread in the areas where he taught than diseases connected with particular organs. Nervous disorders can often be cured by kind words, with the love one human being gives to another. Most instances we are given of the sick being healed there are of that kind. But then we read: 'When the sun had set, the Christ gathered people around him and healed them.' 44 Mark 1: 32. 'When evening came and the sun had set, they brought to him all those who were sick or possessed by demons and the whole town was gathered round the door. He healed many people...' ( The Gospel of Mark , translated by Kalmia Bittleston, Edinburgh: Floris 1986). People do not consider the passage significant when they read it today; it seems to them that it merely refers to the time of day. The question is, why is the time given at this point? Because the writer wanted to say: 'The powers a human being develops when he seeks to heal others are greater when the sun is not in the heavens above and its rays come through the earth than they are when the sun is up above in the heavens.' It is most significant that it says there: 'When the sun had set, the Christ gathered people around him and healed them.' People no longer take note of this. It was meant to say that the Christ used the natural powers that resided in human beings when he healed them. The Gospels were thus translated in an age when it was no longer possible to understand them. Essentially very, very little of the Gospels is really understood. It really was true of all these areas, both in eastern Christianity and in western and Protestant Christianity, and I have spoken of this on many other occasions. Something that had originally been well understood continued by tradition but was then no longer understood. I would say each of the three forms of Christianity had one main aspect. Eastern Christianity had the Father God, though he was called the Christ. The Roman Catholic Church of the west had the Son God, merely looking up to the Father as an old man with a long beard who would still appear in their paintings, but they would not speak much of the Father God. And Protestant Christianity had the Spirit God. They would discuss questions such as 'How do we free ourselves from sin? How can we be healed of sin? How does man justify himself before God?' and so on. Christianity originally had one God represented in three figures. It fell apart into three confessions. Each of them has a piece, a genuine piece, of Christianity. It will not be possible, however, to regain original Christianity by putting the three pieces together. It has to be found again by people finding the right powers in themselves, as I began to show the other day. I wanted to mention this today so that you may see how hard it is to come back to original Christianity. If you ask Christians in the East: 'Which is the true Christianity?' they will say, 'Everything that relates to the Father,' and they will call the Father 'Christ'. If you ask people in the Roman Catholic Church what is the essence of Christianity, they will speak of everything connected with the sinfulness of man, the evils of human nature, and that human beings must be redeemed from their suffering, and so on. They will speak of everything connected with the Son, the Christ. If you ask Protestant Christians about the essential nature of Christianity they will say: 'It all has to do with the principle of gaining health in the will, letting the will be healed, and justification before God.' They speak of the Holy Ghost, calling him the Christ. This is how everything we have today has come about. People did not think: 'We must now bring together the three different aspects of Christianity.' They said: 'We don't understand any of this any more!' This has created the mood we have today, and the need to find Christianity again. Next Saturday 45 The next talk was, in fact, not given on the Saturday but on the following Wednesday. I would like to talk to you about the Mystery of Golgotha in this way. I hope it will then be possible to finish answering this particular question.

From Beetroot to Buddhism

The Trinity. Three forms of Christianity and Islam. The Crusades

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSP1999/19240319p02.html

Dornach

19 Mar 1924

GA353-6

Good morning, gentlemen. Today we shall add something more concerning the question of Christianity. I am sorry I was not able to talk to you last Saturday, when I had to go to Liestal. We have tried to say something about the true nature of Christianity and the elements that entered into it in the course of human evolution. We have spoken of the struggles that arose over Christianity in Europe, struggles that for a long time were essentially due to one party putting the emphasis more on the Father Principle, which would be the Christianity of the East, the other party more on the Son Principle, as the Roman Catholic Church did, and a third party, the Protestant Church, on the Spirit Principle. It is really difficult to speak about these things because most people ask today: 'Can you really fight over such issues?' Today people fight over other issues in this world, as you know, and it is difficult for them to understand that people once made war on each other in the most terrible way because they put the emphasis on some principle or other. But this is something that needs to be understood, for times will come when people will be unable to understand why there has been strife over the things that are fought over today. This will happen in the not too far distant future. And if you consider this you'll also understand why people in earlier times fought over very different issues than people do today. But we should know what they fought over, for it is still alive among us. What has survived most strongly as an outer impression of Christianity? For a long time now it has been the dying Christ — the cross, and on it the dying Christ. If we go back to very early times we find that the most commonly accepted image of Christ Jesus was of a youngish man with a lamb on his shoulders — a shepherd. He was known as the good shepherd. This was really the most widely known image in the first, second and third centuries of the Christian era. The images representing the dead Christ hanging on the cross really only came up in the sixth century — the crucifix, Christ crucified. The early Christians did not really use images of Christ crucified. Something important lies behind this. You see, the early Christians still believed that the Christ entered into Jesus from the sun, and that the Christ was a spirit from beyond this earth. This was later misunderstood and the whole was made into the dogma of the immaculate conception, saying that Jesus himself was not conceived and born in the ordinary human way. It was only when people no longer understood that Jesus had initially been a human being — though a very special human being — and that the spirit called the Christ only entered into him in his 30th year that the idea came up to show the dead Christ on the cross, the dying Christ, and on the other hand put the time when the Christ entered in the spirit back to the time of the birth. This misunderstanding only arose in the sixth century. It allows us to look deeply into things. Between the time when Christians still saw Jesus Christ as the good shepherd and the time when he was represented as Christ crucified lay a particular event. It was decreed at a Council 46 This was a long process which culminated in decisions taken at the 8th Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople in 869. that the human being consists not of three parts — body, soul and spirit — but only of two parts — body and soul. The soul, they said, had some spiritual qualities. This is most important, gentlemen. For you see, the trichotomy, the division into three, of the human being was said to be heretical throughout the Middle Ages. No adherent of the true faith was allowed to believe in the threefold nature of the human being. They were not allowed to say: 'The human being also has spirit' but had to say: 'The human being has body and soul, and the soul has some spiritual qualities.' When the spirit was thus got rid of, as it were, the way to the spirit was blocked for humanity. Today knowledge of the spirit has to be regained, restoring to humanity what has been taken from it. The early Christians knew above all that the Christ who lived in them could not be born, nor could he die. This was not something human. A human being is born and he dies. But the Christ, who entered into Jesus during his life, was lot born in a human way, and cannot have been touched by the death of Jesus on the cross. Just as a person may put on another suit and still be the same, so the Christ took another form, a spiritual form. To represent something spiritual — you'll agree we cannot see it with our eyes — we have to use an image. The people at that time wanted to show that the spirit is on guard above the human being, that the spirit is a good counsellor, by representing Christ Jesus as the good shepherd. Something of this has survived, but people no longer understand it. It happens quite often that only part of an image survives. People will often say 'the Lamb of God' when speaking of the Christ. It appeared in the pictures produced in the early centuries. The part of the picture that showed the lamb, carried on the shoulders of the Christ, remained. In earlier times it was customary to call people by some part. So if someone was called Kappa, or Cappa, that was once a small cap worn on the head, and some people got their name from it. Someone called Eagle would once have had an eagle in his coat of arms, and so on. And the name 'Lamb of God' has remained, having once been a part of the picture. By the sixth century all understanding of the spirit had really been lost, and people believed one could only speak of the human destiny of Christ Jesus. They did not see the living Christ, who is spirit, but only Jesus, the mortal human being, and their interpretation was that this was the Christ. The event of his death thus gained real importance from the sixth century onwards. You see, materialism was already playing a role then. And we can really see materialism develop when we study the evolution of Christianity. Many things that happened in later times would not have happened without this. As I told you, gentlemen, 47 Lecture given on 12 March 1924. the knowledge that the Christ is a spirit coming from the sun, a spirit who lived in Jesus, the human being, is reflected in a symbol we can see on every altar today during high mass: the monstrance [Fig. 2] — the sun at the centre and the moon supporting it. This made good sense when people still knew that the Christ was a spirit from the sun. What is kept in the monstrance? A wafer made of flour. How did the flour come into existence? It came into existence because the sun's rays reach the earth, the sun lets light and warmth come to the earth, the corn grows and is made into flour. It is therefore a real sun product. We may call it substance created by sunlight. For as long as people knew this, the whole had meaning. What is more, the moon was shown as a sickle because this seemed the most important aspect. And as I told you, the powers that give human beings their physical form come from the moon. The whole had meaning when people still knew these things to be what they are. But they gradually lost significance. Let me tell you something that will show you the significance that lies in such things. The Turks, or Muslims, as I told you, considered only the one God, not the three forms. They related everything to the Father God. What sign did they have to use therefore? The moon, of course. The Turks therefore have the half moon for their symbol. Christendom ought to know that their symbol is the one where the sun gains victory over the moon. And the early Christians had this as their main sign — that the sun gains victory over the moon through the Mystery of Golgotha. What does this mean, however? You see, now everything is topsy-turvy in the life of the spirit. For if you understand what the image of the sun signifies you say to yourself: 'Anyone who knows about this image of the sun assumes that human beings have free will in life, that something can enter into them that has significance for life.' Those who believe only in the moon will think that human beings were given everything at birth and cannot do anything of their own accord. That, of course, is Turkish fatalism. And the Turks still know something of this today. In a way they are wiser than the Europeans, for the Europeans once had the sun for their sign but they have forgotten its significance. If you consider that people really no longer knew anything of the spiritual Christ you will understand why in medieval times — around the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth centuries — disputes suddenly arose about the meaning of the eucharist. It has meaning only for those able to see an image of a spiritual quality. This they were no longer able to do and so they fell into dispute. Some would say: 'The bread truly changes into the body of Christ on the church altar.' Others could not believe this, for they could not imagine the bread to have become flesh, seeing it looked just the way it did before. Disputes thus arose in the Middle Ages that were to have dreadful consequences. Those who said it did not matter whether the thing could be understood or not, but they believed that the bread had indeed become flesh, later became the Roman Catholics. Those who said they could not believe this and that the whole could at most have symbolic meaning later became Protestants. All the religious wars of medieval times really were over this issue, culminating in the dreadful Thirty Years War from 1618 to 1648. This started because Catholics and Protestants could not agree. As you know, it began with the event called the Defenestration of Prague. Two governors were thrown from a window by the opposition. It was only from the second floor and they fell on a dung heap and therefore were not harmed. The dung heap was not made of cow dung or horse manure but bits of paper and so on, for it was the order of the day in Prague simply to throw bits of paper, envelopes and so on out of the window. It served well, however, for when governors Martinitz and Slavata together with private secretary Fabricius were thrown from the window — this was quite common in those days and far from unusual — all three were saved. But it started the Thirty Years War. You must not think, of course, that the whole of that war was over religious disputes. In that case it probably would have ended sooner. But added to this were disputes among the princes. They made use of the strife between people. One joined one side, another the other, and they pursued their own aims under the pretence of religious disputes, with the result that the war lasted 30 years. But it really started with the event I have told you about. Now people were fighting over such issues until the Thirty Years War, that is until the seventeenth century, which is not that long ago. And the Protestant Church may be said to have developed out of this dispute. You will say, 'Yes, but if the spirit had been got rid off, how can you say that the Protestant Church adopted the spirit, which was one of the three forms of the divine?' The answer has to be that the Protestants did not actually know they were venerating the spirit, which after all had been got rid off. They were not aware of it. But as I have said to you on other occasions, people may not know about something but it can nevertheless exist. And a spiritual principle, though not exactly a major spiritual principle, was active in the Protestant Church, even if they did not know it. You see, if everything professors do not know, for instance, did not exist, what would there be in this world? The point is, gentlemen, you have to understand that it is possible to speak of something people do even when they are not aware of it. And speaking of the origins of Protestantism we may indeed say that the element that mattered was the third form, the spirit. But you can literally see materialism arise. The earliest Christians did not have to dispute over flat flour cakes being physically transformed into real flesh, for it would never have occurred to them to think about such a thing. It was only when people wanted to think in material terms that this matter, too, became material. This is altogether rather interesting. Materialism has two forms. Initially everything spiritual was seen in material terms, and then the spirit was denied. That is the route people follow in materialism. It is interesting to see that later on, even after the sixth century, people had a much more spiritual view in central Europe than later. Christianity first became materialistic in the south. In central Europe, we have two beautiful poetic works. One was Otfried's Gospel Harmony , written in Alsace in the ninth century. 48 Evangelienhamionie (Harmony of the Four Gospels) written by the Alsatian monk Otfried von Weissenburg c. 800–70 in Old High German verse. The other, called the Heliand , The Saviour, came from the area where Saxony is today. 49 Heliand , Gospel Harmony written in stave-rhyme between 822 and 840. Reading the Heliand you will discover that the monk — a monk of peasant origin — wrote of Christ Jesus in a special way, describing him the way the Germans would describe a prince of earlier times who rides at the head of his army, fighting and overcoming his enemies. You feel yourself to be in Germany and not at all in Palestine. The work relates the events that are told in the Gospels, but in a style as if Christ Jesus had been a German prince. The things Jesus did are also told in that style. We have to ask ourselves what this means. It means that the outer circumstances, the things one would have seen with one's eyes in Palestine of old were of no interest to the writer; he was not intending to give a faithful description of them. The external situation was immaterial to him. He wanted to speak of the spiritual Christ and felt it did not matter if he moved around the world as a German prince or a Palestinian Jew. People really still believed in the spiritual Christ at that time in central Europe; they had not yet become materialists. In the south, this had happened; the Romance and the Greek peoples had already become materialists. But in central Europe people still had a feeling for the spiritual, and the Saxon monk who wrote the Heliand was speaking of the Christ, but in the image of a German prince. You can see from this that it is possible to prove that here in central Europe the Christ was originally seen in a wholly spiritual way, in fact as the Sun Spirit I have described. If we then study the character given to the Christ in the Heliand we find that the main point is that the Saviour, the Christ, is shown to be a 'free man' in this book, meaning that he has the sun principle in him and not only the moon principle, which makes him a free man. It is really true that the whole connection the Christ had with the world beyond this earth has been completely forgotten and is no longer perceived today. There is something else I want to tell you. If you go back to the ancient mysteries of which I have spoken, which were centres of education, religion and art, you find that festivals relating to the seasons of the year were celebrated there. In the spring they would always have the festival of resurrection, as they called it. Nature does rise again at Easter-time. People would say to themselves: 'The human soul can celebrate its resurrection just as nature can. Nature has the Father. In spring its forces are renewed. In the human being, if he takes the right care and works on himself, the powers of the soul are renewed.' The main aim in the ancient mysteries — the aim of those who really knew, the people said to have wisdom — was for the soul to gain a kind of spring experience in human life. This was a spring experience where one might say of oneself: 'Everything I have known before is really nothing. Now I am as if new-born.' It can happen in one's life that a moment comes when one feels as if new-born, born again out of the spirit. Now this may sound strange to you, but throughout the East, in Asia, people were divided into those born once and those born twice. Everyone would speak of the twice-born. Once-born people were born through the powers of the moon and remained like that all their lives. The others, the twice-born, had been instructed in the mysteries, had learned something and knew that human beings can make themselves free, they can act out of their own powers. This would be shown in image form. Now you can go back a very long way. Everywhere there would be a festival at springtime where it would be shown in the mysteries that a god, who had human form, died, was buried and rose again after three days. This was a real ceremony performed in the spring in the ancient mysteries. People would gather. There would be this image of the god in human form. It was shown how the god died and the image would be buried. After three days the image would be taken from the grave again and carried around the area in solemn procession, with everyone shouting: 'The saviour has risen for us again!' During the three days when the saviour image lay in the grave they had a kind of mourning feast and this would be followed by a joyful feast. You see, gentlemen, this means a great deal; it signifies that the event which happened on Golgotha had been celebrated in image form year after year in the ancient mysteries. When the Gospels tell us of the cross on Golgotha on which Christ died, this is a historical event. But the image of it had existed throughout antiquity. For the early Christians the actual event was thus the fulfilment of a prophecy. And they would say: 'The people of the ancient mysteries were prophets of what happened in the Mystery of Golgotha.' One of the most important saints in the Roman Catholic Church is St Augustine, who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries. 50 Marcus Aurelius Augustinus (354–430). The 'strange words' may be found in his Retractiones I,13,3. Initially pagan, he converted to Christianity and became one of the most renowned priests and saints in the Roman Catholic Church. He wrote a strange thing, saying that Christianity existed before the coming of Christ Jesus; the wise people of old had been Christians, though they were not yet called such. It is tremendously significant that it was admitted that Christ Jesus openly revealed a Christianity that had already existed in the ancient mysteries at a time when the mysteries no longer survived. It thus had to be an event that happened once and for all for the whole earth. Awareness of the fact that Christianity had been part of ancient paganism has also been lost. Materialism simply destroyed many things which humanity had already discovered. The wise initiate of old saw his own destiny reflected in the image that every spring represented the resurrection of the human god who had died. He would say: 'That is what I must become; I must develop a wisdom within me that allows me to say that death only has significance for the part of me that has come into being through forces of nature and not for the part of me that arose in me on a later occasion, something I have gained through my own human powers.' In early Christianity people still said to themselves: 'To be immortal, human beings must awaken the soul in themselves; then they will truly be immortal.' A false view cannot go against this, of course. But there was a false view that did fight against it. In the early centuries the people who spread Christianity would say: 'We must nurture the human soul so that it does not die.' Later the Church preached a different view. Instead of letting human beings care for their souls it wanted to do this for them. The Church was to take on the care of human souls. This also meant that people could no longer see that to care for the soul in the right way meant to let the spirit, the sun principle, be reborn in it. I think you'll agree that we cannot take care of the sun principle in a materialistic way. How would one take care of the sun principle in a materialistic way? Well, perhaps by organizing an expedition to the sun so that one might collect from there whatever people were to be given. This, of course, cannot be done. And so the whole of it was falsely presented. You see, gentlemen, everything I have to tell you in this respect shows that materialism gradually took hold more and more, with the spiritual element in man no longer understood. Today we have a situation where the principle according to which human souls must not care for themselves but be cared for by the Church has taken the life of the human soul. If this principle were to continue it would not take long before souls would die with their bodies. Today, human souls are still alive; they can still be woken up if there is the right knowledge of the spirit. In a century or two this will no longer be possible unless there is a science of the spirit. What would happen if materialism continued? Well, you see, this materialism would gradually and inevitably make itself ridiculous. Even education has to be out of mind and spirit. You cannot teach and educate without speaking of mind and spirit. But if things were really to go that far — and we can already see it in some places — materialism will either have to make itself ridiculous when speaking of mind and spirit, or it will have to become honest. When I myself and some anthroposophical friends had spoken at the congress held in Vienna in 1922, an article 51 So far it has not been possible to trace this. was published afterwards in which the author said: 'We wage war against the spirit!' He wanted to dispose of us with these words. The question is, what would happen if the war against the spirit was waged honestly? People honestly wanting to educate a 6-year-old child would have to say: 'Confound it! This is actually matter, and it actually presupposes the spirit! Perhaps we should give the child a pill or something similar so that his matter is changed; this will make him clever, and then he'll know things.' This is what you get when materialism is honest. Children would enter school and just as today we vaccinate them against smallpox, for instance, we would have to vaccinate each in turn with cleverness. If cleverness is a material thing it must be possible to inoculate it. Human children would thus have to be inoculated with cleverness. And materialism would then be honest. For if someone says he thinks with his brain, not with his soul and spirit, then it must be possible also to make the brain clever in a material way and not through mind and spirit. That is the kind of terrible contradiction in which materialism would get itself caught up. The only salvation is to gain knowledge of the spirit again. It has indeed been necessary for a science of the spirit to come in this day and age. For otherwise human souls would die.

From Beetroot to Buddhism

Past and more recent ideas of the Christ

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSP1999/19240326p02.html

Dornach

26 Mar 1924

GA353-7

(The first few paragraphs contain the answer given by Dr. Steiner to a question. The lecture on the Easter Festival begins on page 25.) Dr. Steiner : As I shall be away next week I wanted to speak to you to-day about the Easter Festival. Or have you some other question of importance at the moment? Questioner : I had a question but it has nothing to do with the Easter Festival. An article in a recent Parisian newspaper stated that it is possible to be taught to read and to see with the skin. Would Dr. Steiner say something about this? I was very astonished by it. Dr. Steiner : A great deal of caution is necessary when information about a matter of this kind comes from a newspaper and careful investigation is called for. The article says that certain people ... the man really means everyone ... can be trained to see with the skin, to read with certain parts of the skin. Now this has been known for a long time. It is possible to train certain people to read with some part of their skin. But let me say at once that such a thing is really not so very astonishing. Human beings do not by any means learn everything that they could learn; they do not develop all their powers. Many faculties could be developed quite quickly by setting to work in earnest. Children, for example, could all be trained to read with their finger-tips by making them touch and feel letters on a piece of paper. In the blank spaces between the letters the paper is quite different to the touch. If you were to make letters which stand out a little from the paper it would be quite easy to read them! Letters made of wood could be read by touch with the eyes shut. It is only a matter of refining this faculty, making it more delicate. When I was a boy I trained myself to do something rather unusual, namely, to hold a pencil between the big toe and the next toe and write with it. All these things that one does not generally learn can be learnt and then certain faculties will develop. These faculties can become so delicate and sensitive that the result is quite astonishing. But it really need not be so; what has happened is that the power of touch has been greatly enhanced, and every part of the body has this power. Just as we become aware of a jab from a nail, so we can become aware of the tiny roughnesses caused by letters on paper. This, however, does not quite cover the case you mentioned, for the man claims that he can develop in everyone the faculty of being able to read with the skin. From the statement as it stands, the details could not all be put to the test and it would be better to wait for scientific confirmation before believing that if a page of a book were placed, say, over your stomach, you would eventually be able to read it. One must be able to discriminate whether it is a matter of a delicate and highly sensitive faculty of touch or whether there is something bogus about it — and this cannot be discovered from the newspaper report. I myself was not at all astonished at the statement because I can well imagine that such a thing might be possible; but what did astonish me was the stupid comment of the journalists, who said that if such a thing were really true, then it must have been discovered a long time ago. — I ask you, how can anyone say about the telephone, for example: If this is really true, then it must have been known for a very long time! This kind of comment astonished me far more than the phenomenon itself. The phenomenon itself is not so very astonishing because a human being can do a great deal towards developing his organs of feeling and touch. Seeing with the eyes is not everything. The fingers, for example, can be developed into most delicate organs of perception. And so reliable scientific investigation would be necessary in order to prove whether or not, after years of training, the man can make every part of the body able to see. I have read reports in German, English and French newspapers and I find it impossible to gather from them whether the man in question is a lunatic, a humbug or a serious scientist. Now let us think about the Easter Festival in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha. As you know, Easter is a movable festival — every year it is celebrated on a different date. Why is the date variable? Because it is determined, not by terrestrial but by celestial conditions. It is fixed by asking: When does spring begin? March 21st is always the beginning of spring and the Easter Festival takes place after this. Then there is a period of waiting until the Moon comes to the full, then another pause until the following Sunday, and Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full Moon after the beginning of spring. The first full Moon can be on 22nd March, in which case Easter is very early; or the first full Moon can be a whole twenty-nine days after 21st March. If, for example, there is a full Moon on 19th March, spring has not yet begun and then after some twenty-eight days the Moon is again full; the Easter Festival in that year will fall on the next Sunday — quite late in April. Now why has the Easter Festival been fixed according to conditions in the heavens? This is connected with what I have been telling you. In earlier times men knew that the Moon and the Sun have an influence upon everything that exists on the Earth. Think of a growing plant. ( Sketch on the blackboard .) If you want to grow a plant, you take a tiny seed and lay it in the soil. The whole plant, the whole life of the plant is compressed into this tiny seed. What comes out of this seed? First, the root. The life expands into the root. But then it contracts again and grows, still in a state of contraction, into a stem. Then it expands and the leaves come and then the blossom. Then there is again contraction into the seed and the seed waits until the following year. In the plant, therefore, we see a process of expansion — contraction; expansion — contraction. Whenever the plant expands, it is the Sun which draws out the leaf or the blossom; whenever the plant contracts (in the seed or the stem) the contraction is due to the forces of the Moon. Between the leaves, the Moon is working. So that when we take a plant with spreading leaves and root, we can say, beginning with the seed: Moon — then Sun — again Moon — again Sun — again Moon, and so forth ... with the Moon at the end of the process. In every plant we see Sun forces and Moon forces working in alternation. In a field of growing plants we behold the deeds of Sun and Moon. I told you that the fashioning and shaping of the physical human being when he comes into the world, is dependent on the Moon; 1 See the previous lecture. inner forces which make it possible for him to transform his own character, come from the Sun. I told you this when we were speaking about the Mystery of Golgotha. In earlier times these things were known but they have all been forgotten. Men asked themselves: When is there present in spring the influence that does most to promote the thriving and growth of vegetation? It is when the influences of Sun and Moon together are at their strongest. This is the case when the rays of the first full Moon after the beginning of spring shine down upon the Earth, adding strength to the rays of the Sun. The influences of Sun and Moon are mutually enhanced when the springtime Sun at its strongest works in conjunction with the Moon which is also at its strongest when its cycle of four weeks has been completed. The time for Easter, therefore, is the Sunday — the day dedicated to the Sun — after the first full Moon of spring. The date of the Easter Festival was based on knowledge relating to the winter solstice and the subsequent beginning of spring. Now the Easter Festival did not begin in the Christian era before the rise of Christianity there was an old pagan festival — the Adonis Festival as it was called. What was this Adonis Festival? It was instituted by the Mysteries — those places for the cultivation of art, learning and religion which I have described to you recently. And Adonis was personified in a kind of effigy or image, representing the spirit-and-soul in man. It was known, furthermore, that man's life of spirit-and-soul is united with the whole universe. The ancient pagan peoples took account of spiritual conditions and celebrated this Adonis Festival in the autumn. The old Easter Festival — which in a certain way resembled our own — fell in the autumn . 2 Dr. Steiner spoke in similar terms in four lectures given at Dornach, 19th–24th April, 1924. The Adonis Festival was celebrated in the following way. — The image of the eternal, immortal part of man was submerged in a pond, or in the sea if the place happened to be near the coast, and left there for three days, to the accompaniment of songs of mourning and lamentation. The submerging of the image was the occasion of solemnities resembling those which might be associated with the death of a member of a very united family. It was essentially a ceremony which had to do with Death, and it always took place on the day of the week we now call Friday. The name “Karfreitag” originated when the custom found its way into the Germanic regions of Middle Europe. “Kar” comes from “Chara” (Old High German) meaning mourning. It was therefore the Friday of sadness or mourning. So little is known of these things to-day that in England this Friday is called “Good” Friday, whereas in olden time it was the Friday of Death, the Friday of mourning and lamentation. It was a festival connected with Death, dedicated to Adonis. And in places where there was no water, an artificial pond was contrived into which the image or effigy was plunged and taken out after three days, i.e., after the Sunday. The image was taken out of the water amid songs of jubilation and rejoicing. For three days, therefore, the people were filled with deep sorrow and after these three days with ecstatic joy. And the theme of their songs of jubilation was always: “The God has come to us again!” What did this Festival signify? — I must emphasise again that originally it was celebrated in the autumn . On other occasions I have told you that when the human being dies, the physical body is laid aside. Those who have been bereaved mourn in their own way for the dead with solemnities not unlike those which accompanied the submerging of the Adonis image. But there is something else as well. For a period of three days after death, the human being looks back upon his earthly life. His physical body has been laid aside but his ether-body is still with him. The ether-body expands and expands and finally dissolves into the universe. The human being then lives on in the astral body and the “I.” The purpose of those who instituted the Adonis Festival was to make men realise that the human being does not only die but after three days comes to life again in the spiritual world. And in order that this might be brought every year to men's consciousness, the Adonis Festival was instituted. In the autumn it was said: Lo, nature is dying; the trees lose their leaves, the earth is covered with snow; winds are cold and biting; the earth loses her fertility and looks just as the physical human being looks in death. We must wait until spring for the earth to come to life again, whereas the human being comes to life again in soul and spirit after three days. Of this men must be made conscious! ... A festival of Death was therefore followed immediately by a festival of Resurrection! — But this festival took place in the autumn — the season when it is easy to realise the contrast between man and nature. Nature is about to consolidate her life; she will lie dead through the whole winter. But in contrast to nature, man lives on after death in the spiritual world. When nature sheds her leaves, is covered with snow, when cold winds blow, then is the time to make man conscious: You are different from nature, inasmuch as when you die, after three days you live again! It was a most beautiful festival, celebrated through long ages of antiquity. Men gathered together at the places of the Mysteries for the period of this festival, joining in the songs of mourning; and then, on the third day, the consciousness came to them that every soul, every “I” and every astral body come to life again in the spiritual world three days after death. Their attention was turned away from the physical world and their hearts and minds were drawn to the spiritual world. The very season of the year played a part, for in those days the festival did not take place in the spring when the people who lived on the land were occupied with other tasks. The old Easter Festival, the Adonis Festival, was celebrated when the fruit had been harvested and the grape picking was over, when winter was approaching. It was the appropriate season for an awakening in the Spirit, and so the Adonis Festival was celebrated. The name varied in different territories but the festival was celebrated in all ancient religions. For all ancient religions spoke in this way of the immortality of the human soul. Now in the first centuries of the Christian era itself, the Easter Festival was not celebrated at the time it is celebrated to-day; not until the third or fourth century did it become customary to celebrate Easter in the spring. But by that time men had lost all understanding of the spiritual world; they had eyes only for nature, concerned themselves only with nature. And so they said: It is not possible to celebrate resurrection in the autumn, when nothing comes to life! — They no longer knew that the human being comes to life again in the spiritual world, and so they said: In the autumn there is no resurrection; the snow covers everything. Whereas in the spring, all things burst into life. Spring, therefore, is the proper time for the Easter Festival. — This kind of thinking was already an outcome of materialism, although it was a materialism which still looked up to the heavens and fixed the Easter Festival according to Sun and Moon. By the third and fourth centuries of the Christian era, materialism was already in evidence but at least it still looked out into the universe; it was not the “earth-worm” materialism which has eyes only for the Earth and has been described as such because the earthworms live under the soil and only come up when it rains. And so it is with the men of modern times; they look simply at what is on the Earth. When the Easter Festival began to be celebrated in the spring, even materialism still believed that the myriad stars have an influence upon human beings. But from the fifteenth century onwards, that too was forgotten. At the time when the Easter Festival was transferred to the spring, certain attempts were being made by the Christians to sweep away the ancient truths. — I mentioned this when we were speaking about the Mystery of Golgotha. — By the eighth or ninth centuries, men had not the remotest inkling that Christ's Coming was in any way connected with the Sun. In the fourth century there were two Emperors, one a little later than the other. The first was Constantine, the founder of Constantinople and an extremely vain man. He ordered a certain treasure that had once been brought from Troy to Rome to be transferred to Constantinople and buried in the ground under a pillar which had upon it a statue of Apollo, the old pagan god; then he sent to the East for wood said to have been taken from the Cross of Christ, and caused a wreath to be carved, with rays springing from it. But in the figure crowned with this wooden wreath, people were expected to behold Constantine! And so from then onwards, veneration was paid to Constantine, standing there on the pillar that had been erected over the precious Roman treasure. By external measures, you see, he brought it about that men ceased to know anything about cosmic secrets, about the fact that Christ is connected with the Sun. The other Emperor, Julian, had received instruction in the Mysteries which still survived, although under very difficult conditions. Later on they were exterminated altogether by the Emperor Justinian but for centuries already their existence had been highly precarious. They were not wanted; Christianity was their bitter enemy. Julian the Emperor, however, had received instruction in the Mysteries and he knew: There is not only one Sun, but there are three Suns 3 See the lecture: The Threefold Sun and the Risen Christ . Given in London, 24th April, 1922. — This announcement caused an uproar, for it was a secret of the Mysteries. When you look at the Sun you see a whitish-yellowish orb or body — it is the physical Sun. But this Sun has a soul: it is the second Sun. And then there is the third Sun: the spiritual .Sun. Like man, the Sun has body, soul and spirit. Julian spoke of three Suns and maintained that in Christianity men should be taught: Christ came from the Sun and then, as Sun Being, entered into the man Jesus. Now the Churches did not wish this knowledge to be in the possession of men. The Churches did not want the real facts about Christ Jesus to come to light, but only such knowledge as was authorised by them. Julian the Emperor was treacherously murdered on a journey to Asia, in order that the world might be rid of him. That is why Julian is always known as the Apostate, the heretic: Julian the Heretic! He desired that the connection between Christianity and the ancient truths should be maintained, for he thought: It will be easier for Christianity to make progress if it contains the truths of the ancient wisdom than if men are allowed to believe only what the priests tell them. So you see, at the time when the Easter Festival was transferred to the spring, knowledge that this festival is connected with resurrection still survived. Although knowledge of the resurrection of man had been lost, the resurrection of nature continued to be celebrated in a festival. But even that has been forgotten in places where Easter is still celebrated without any inkling of what it really signifies; and to-day people have come to the point of asking: Why need Sun and Moon have anything to do with the date of Easter? If Easter were always to fall on the first Sunday in April, book-keeping would be greatly simplified! The suggestion, therefore, is that the date should be determined by commercial considerations! ... As a matter of fact, the people who clamour for this are more honest than the others who insist that conditions in the heavens shall still be the determining factor, without having the slightest notion of what this means. Those who say from their own point of view that conditions in the heavens need not be taken into account are really the more honest. But the sad thing is that people can only be honest about this because they know nothing of the real connections. What we have to do to-day is to emphasise that the Spiritual must always be the decisive factor! And so in olden times men waited for the last full Moon after the beginning of autumn and celebrated the Adonis Festival on the preceding Sunday. Sun and Moon were taken into account but it was known that conditions are quite different, indeed the reverse, when snow will soon be falling from the heavens. The old Easter Festival, the Adonis Festival, always took place between the end of September and the end of October. This was the best time to be reminded of the resurrection of man, because at that season of the year there was no question of a resurrection in nature. This early festival, therefore, was known to be connected with Death and also with Resurrection ... but this knowledge too has been lost. It is important to be reminded of the ancient significance of these festivals, for we have again to find the way to the Spirit. We must not celebrate Christmas and Easter thoughtlessly but realise that such festivals have deep meaning. Now the world cannot be turned topsy-turvy; nobody would wish the Easter Festival to be transferred to the autumn. But it is good to be reminded that when a man dies, he lays aside his physical body and looks back upon his earthly life; then he lays aside the ether-body and comes to life again in the spiritual world as a being of spirit-and-soul. Such knowledge can greatly deepen our understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Mystery of Golgotha presents in external reality what was always presented in an image at the Adonis Festival. The men of antiquity had an image; Christians have the actual, historical event. But in the historical event there are certain points of resemblance with the imagery used in olden times. At the Adonis Festival the image of Adonis was submerged and raised after three days. It was a true Easter Festival. — But then, what had once been presented as an image, came to pass as an actual happening. The Christ was in Jesus. He died and rose to life again. And at Easter now, this is all that is remembered. In a way, there is a good side to this. For why was an image always set before the people at the Adonis Festival? It was because they needed something that their senses could perceive. Although they still looked at the universe in a spiritual way, in the material world they needed an image. But when Christ had passed through the Mystery of Golgotha there was to be no image; men were called upon to remember purely in the Spirit what had happened at that time. The Easter Festival was to be an essentially spiritual celebration. Men must no longer make a pagan image but perform the act of remembrance entirely within the life of soul. It was thought — and Mysteries still existed in the days of Christ Jesus — that the Easter Festival would in this way be spiritualised. Think once again of the old Adonis Festival. It is impossible in present-day Europe to realise what such festivals meant to the ancient pagan peoples. You yourselves would say: This is only an image — and those at least who had been initiated in the Mysteries would have regarded it as such. But every year the statue of the god was displayed to large numbers of the people and then submerged. This gave rise to what is known as fetishism. A statue of such a kind was a fetish, an idol, a god; worship of such an object was called fetishism — and that of course is undesirable. And yet in a certain respect, an element of the same tendency has remained in Christianity, for the Monstrance with the Sanctissimum, the Sacred Host, is worshipped in Catholicism as the Real Christ. It is said that the Bread and the Wine are transformed, in the physical sense too, into the Body and Blood of Christ. This is a survival, not of enlightened pagan wisdom which beheld the Spiritual behind every sense-phenomenon, but of the fetish-worship in which the statue was taken to be the god himself. Nowadays — unless examples have occurred in one's own experience — it is almost impossible to picture the intensity with which people believed in these images of the god I myself once knew a very clever professor — all such men are clever, only modern science does not lead them to the Spiritual. The man was a Russian and he made a journey from Japan across Siberia. In the middle of Siberia he became aware of a deep uneasiness, he felt lonely and forsaken. And what did he do? Something that none of you, nor indeed any Westerner, would ever think of doing. But although this man was very learned, he was half-Asiatic. He made a figure of a god out of wood, took it with him on his further travels and prayed to it fervently. When I knew him his nerves were in a terrible state; the illness had come from worshipping his wooden god. It is difficult for you to conceive what it means to worship an idol of this kind! Now the Mysteries still existing at the time of the founding of Christianity were deeply concerned as to how men might be led to the Spiritual. And so what in earlier epochs had been presented before their eyes in the Adonis Festival was now to be revived in remembrance only, by prayer. This was the intention ... but instead of becoming spiritual, everything became materialistic; it was all externalised, made formal. By the third and fourth centuries A.D. all kinds of emotions were aroused in the people on “Kar” Friday; the priests offered up prayers; and at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the hour at which Christ is said to have died, the bells stopped ringing. Everything was still. And then, outwardly again, just as in the old Adonis Festival, the Crucifix, a figure of Christ on the Cross, was buried; at a later period it was covered with a veil. After three days came Easter — the festival of Resurrection. But the manner and form of the celebration are the same, fundamentally, as in the old Adonis Festival. The form of the celebration indicates that little by little the souls of men were coming under the authority of Rome. In many districts, for example in the place where my youth was spent — whether it happens here I do not know — it is customary on the Friday before Easter for the boys to gather around the Church with rattles and musical toys, singing the words: Wir rätschen, wir rätschen am Dom. Die Glocken ziehen nach Rom . 4 Approximate translation: We shake our rattles around the church ... but the bells draw us to Rome. Everything, you see, pointed towards Rome, especially at the time of the Easter Festival. Men of the present age must emerge from materialism into a life of spiritual knowledge; they must learn to understand things in a spiritual way, above all such things as the Easter Festival. Every year at the Easter Festival we can remind ourselves that the day of mourning, the Chara , commemorates the departure of the human being from the physical world; for three days after death he is still looking back on the physical world; then he lays aside his ether-body as a second corpse; but then in his astral body and “I,” he rises to life again in the spiritual world. This, too, is part of the act of remembrance, although it would be barbarous to expect songs of jubilation three days after a death has occurred. And yet we can be reminded of these songs of jubilation when we think of the immortality of the human soul and of how, after three days, the soul comes to live again in the spiritual world. There is a connection between the Easter Festival and every human death. At every human death our attitude should be that although mourning is inevitable, the Easter Festival is near, when we shall remember that every soul after death rises to life again in the spiritual world. — You know, of course, of the festival which commemorates the death of all human beings: it is called the Festival of All Souls and is still celebrated in the autumn. When the knowledge of its connection with the Easter Festival had been lost, the Day of All Saints, All Saints' Day, was placed before it in the calendar. But All Souls' Day should, in reality, be celebrated as the day of the Dead and the Easter Festival as the day of Resurrection. They belong together although they are separated now by the span of nearly half a year! From the calendar as it now stands it is often impossible to understand what really lies behind these festivals. But remember: everything on Earth is in reality directed by the Heavens. People are surprised if it ever snows at Easter because that is the time for the plants to be sprouting, not for snow. They are surprised because they feel that the Easter Festival is intended to commemorate the resurrection, the immortality of the human soul. This attitude and knowledge make the whole Easter Festival into a deep, heart-felt experience, reminding those who celebrate it of something that is connected with man himself and with his life as the seasons of the year run their course. The only kind of connection with the yearly seasons to which any thought is given to-day is that in the winter one puts on a winter coat and in the summer a summer coat, that one sweats in the summer and shivers in the winter — all purely material considerations. What is not known is that with the coming of spring, spiritual forces are actively at work drawing forth the plants from the Earth and that with the coming of autumn, spiritual forces are again in operation as forces of destruction. When this is understood men will see life and being in the whole of nature. Much of what is said about nature to-day is nonsense. People see a plant, tear it out of the soil and set about studying botany ... because they know nothing about the essentials. If I were to tear out a hair and proceed to describe it, this would be nonsense, because the hair cannot arise of itself; it must be growing on a human being or an animal. Nothing that you might apply to any part of a lifeless stone will make a hair grow from it. For a hair to grow, life must be at the source. The plants are like the hair of the Earth, because the Earth is a living being. And just as man needs the air in order to live, so does the Earth need the stars with their spirituality; the Earth breathes in the spiritual forces of the stars in order to live. Man moves over the Earth and the Earth moves through the Cosmos, lives in. the Cosmos. The Earth is a living being. This remembrance at least can still come to us at the Easter Festival — the remembrance that the Earth herself is a living Being. When the Earth brings forth the plants she is young, just as the child is young when the soft hair grows. The old man loses his hair just as in autumn the Earth loses the plants. It is only that the Earth's life runs its course in a different rhythm: youth in the spring, age in the autumn; youth again, age again — whereas in man the periods are much longer. Everything in the universe is alive. In thinking of the Easter Festival and with the spectacle of newly awakening nature before us, we can say: Death is not ever-present; beings have to pass through death but life is the essential reality. Life is everywhere victorious over death. The Easter Festival is there to remind us of this victory and to give us strength. If men gain this kind of strength it will enable them to set about the improvement of external conditions with insight and intelligence — not in the way that is usual at the present time. First and foremost we need Spiritual Science in order again to ally ourselves with the spiritual world — which is a world of life, not of death. In this sense I hope that the Easter Festival will be as full of beauty in your souls as are the spring flowers growing out of the Earth. — After Easter we shall meet together again and speak about scientific matters. At the Easter Festival, then, let us feel: Men can go to their work with fresh courage and with joy. Even if in these days there are not many opportunities of finding joy in daily work, perhaps here it is different! In any case I wanted to say these things to you to-day and to wish you a beautiful Easter in the sense of the knowledge born from Spiritual Science.

Star Wisdom, Moon Religion, Sun Religion

The Easter Festival and Its Background

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSPC1950/19240412p02.html

Dornach

12 Apr 1924

GA353-8

Questions. The first question was why a wound, a cut, for example, heals up completely, but when you cut away a piece of flesh a scar remains. The questioner has had no sensation in such a skin area for 30 or 40 years. He wanted to know why that is so, because it is said that the body renews itself every seven years. The second question was about archaeological finds in Egypt. It had been reported that a mummy, a grave, had been found and that two engineers, the leaders of the group, had died from poisoning on opening the grave or on working their way into the passage. The first one was thought to have died of a heart attack or the like, and then the other one also died. The papers said poisons might have been used to embalm the mummy to prevent people reaching the burial places. The speaker said he could not believe that poisons would persist for so long. Or was it perhaps that gases evolved in the inner chambers, causing death within a short time? Or was it possible that the poisons they had in Egypt would keep for so long? Clothing found in the burial chambers had fallen to dust as soon as they were brought outside. Chemicals were used to treat the clothing so that it might be preserved for posterity. Cereal grains had also been found in the tombs of the Pharaohs. They had been there for thousands of years but still germinated when put in the soil. The questioner wanted to know if any of this would have been possible under normal conditions. It said in the papers that it took 80 days to cope with the main stone. But it was as if the mountain had collapsed, and the gravestone, a large stone, had been rolled on top. Or as if everything had later collapsed by being blown up, and it had been difficult to reach the burial chamber. How had this been possible? Rudolf Steiner: First of all, as far as the healing of wounds is concerned — if we answer the questions in sequence. Cuts made during operations heal more or less well. This is important to remember. You can see that these cuts sometimes heal extraordinarily well, so that one has to look carefully later on to discover the scar. Other cuts — and you are not only thinking of surgical wounds but of when one cuts oneself, is that right? — do not heal at all well. The scar is thick and it may often also be hard. As a boy I often carved wood. It was a foible of mine that I always had to have a pocket-knife — it was a long way to school, and one has to have such things, you know. But I would always lose my pocket-knife and therefore needed many new ones. I was doing a great deal of whittling and would cut myself quite badly every now and then, which is the way these things go. You'd have to look very carefully, however, to see the traces of this; it has healed over almost completely. If you look closely you can see this cut, which had been a gaping wound and bled a great deal. But it is hardly visible now. With some cuts, however, the edges, the thick scars, can be seen for a long time. The question is, how do thick scars develop? You see, the human body is entirely developed from inside; you'll remember how I described the development of the human body. I also told you that everything the human body produces has to be produced from inside, all the way to the skin surface. Now, how do colds develop? This is something else we spoke of. Colds develop when external heat or cold act on us, so that we are more or less treated by the environment as if we were a log of wood. We are soon cold and get chilled, and we experience the coldness as a stimulus that goes against something coming from inside us. All this is foreign to the human body, which will fight it. When you cut yourself, be it because you're clumsy, in an accident, or in an operation, you have a foreign instrument in a place where only the human body should be active. The knife enters into the space where really blood, nerve, muscle and so on should be active. A lively struggle develops in that place between the powers you have inside the body and the forces that enter from outside. These are invaders. To fend them off, the inner physical matter of the human body gathers itself together and creates a scar. It comes together to prevent those forces getting in. A scar is therefore in the first place a protective covering created to stop the foreign forces getting in. Initially you always get a scar. Now let us assume you are young, very young, for example, as I was when I did my whittling; I was 10,11 or 12 at the time. When you are as young as that the ether body is extraordinarily active. And when it is as strong as it is in early youth, the scar will gradually heal completely once the physical matter has dropped away, with the physical tissues appropriately organized. Then let us assume you are older; the ether body is less powerful then, especially in the place where the scar is; it is not strong enough to overcome it. It tries again, being unable to overcome the material that has collected in the scar. It always depends on the strength or weakness of the ether body if a scar develops or is gradually got rid of. Injuries suffered in childhood will always leave less severe scarring than injuries one sustains later. But people differ. Some have an extraordinarily powerful ether body all their lives and in that case scars will be more easily overcome than in others whose ether bodies may be weaker. A farmer who is always working in the open air and not so much in an atmosphere full of carbon dioxide has a stronger ether body. He may be in that atmosphere in winter, when he is not working, so that he alternates between open air in summer and bad air in winter. We thus cannot say that he is always in the open air. There is a saying. Why is the air so good in the country? Because the farmers do not open their windows! The air would not be so good if they did open their windows. But that is by the way. People who live in the country experience marked alternation between air with high oxygen levels and air with much carbon dioxide in it. These are much healthier conditions. The effect can be seen not only in the way scars form but also in other ways. Out in the country people walk barefoot, without their boots, in the summer. It is quite common for someone to get a rusty nail in their foot, but it does not signify much. They pull out the nail, wipe off the blood with a dirty finger — everything is dirty; the nail is dirty and so is the blood they wipe off — there'll be a bit of pus developing but it all heals up in a short time. It is not much of a problem. Townspeople have much more sensitive ether bodies. Someone may have a small pimple; he shaves, cuts himself — and dies! I am telling you something that is really true. Someone with a small pimple hurt himself shaving and died of that small pimple because he immediately developed blood poisoning. This happened because the ether body was weak. It was no longer strong enough to remove the poisons, the foreign matter that got in, quickly enough. This needs a robust, vital ether body. Farmers have such ether bodies. Nowadays they are getting weaker, but if you went out into the country in my young days it was a great pleasure to see the farmers' brimming ether bodies. When they reach the appropriate age, of course, farmers in particular tend to collapse, for the ether body goes down fast and the astral body is not so strong in farmers. But their ether bodies are very strong and that is why everything heals much more quickly than in city people. Working on the soil is tremendously healthy. It is possible to know these things but under present-day social conditions we cannot change them. They must first be made more widely known. I think it is not difficult to understand that scars develop more or less strongly depending on whether the ether body acts more strongly or more weakly, and this also affects the body coping with things that do not belong in it. A knife is an external substance, for instance, and so is dirt getting in; the body must immediately defend itself. Knowing this, one is not surprised to learn that some wounds do not heal at all because the people concerned have emaciated, eaten-up ether bodies. This is the case particularly where the work people do is no longer in harmony with nature. It is not so much due to the carbon dioxide in the air but simply to the fact that people are no longer connected so much with nature. When people are in an office or on a shop floor all day long, the work they do has nothing to do with nature any more. Our unbelievable civilization which has gradually evolved cuts people off completely from the natural world, creating substances that are increasingly more harmful, increasingly more foreign to the natural state. This has brought a sudden great change in recent times. People do not usually consider these things from the spiritual point of view, but they need to consider them from that point of view. Just consider this. In the past people would write. Today they work for the typewriter. What is important for health when we write, apart from movement and so on? I would say one of the less obvious things to affect our health when we are writing is the smell of the ink. With the kind of ink manufactured in the past, the smell was not harmful but in a sense acted as a corrective. When people had worn themselves down by being in an unnatural position, putting strain on their writing hand, the old-style ink made from oak apples would restore the balance. The smell of the substances obtained from oak apples was such that it actually strengthened the ether body — not much, but a little. When aniline dyes came to be used, so that one no longer drew on nature but made synthetic ink, as chemists call it, the human being was completely closed off. Aniline ink has a smell that is literally the opposite of the effect the smell of ink used to have. Today many people have changed to using a typewriter. The movements that are required for this and the rattle of the keys — there are typewriters now that write quietly, but that is a very new design — are not the worst part of it. The worst thing is the dirt used to make the ink for the letters. This completely ruins the human ether body, going so far that people develop heart disease from typing, for the heart is mainly activated by the ether body. Civilization is, of course, making progress in this area, but this is never balanced out by the knowledge which people should have about what is really involved. It is a fact that people today are increasingly resisting progress. That should not be so, but there is a certain instinct that makes people notice, though they don't know exactly why, that things are getting increasingly more harmful as advances are made into the future. These things go together. It is how things are. Concerning your other question, why such highly dangerous things occur when access is gained to burial chambers, we must note that this applies not only to the ancient burial chambers where mummies lie but for example also where you do not have mummies, as in Egypt, but where the burial places are well secured and are rock tombs. On entering these for the first time one has air coming towards one, if I may put it like this, that is extraordinarily poisonous and harmful. Why should this be so? You may find it strange, gentlemen, that I have to go a long way round to explain the matter, but this will be necessary if you are to understand it. You see, human beings do not only live once on this earth but have repeated lives on earth; they return over and over again. I have briefly spoken of this before. But when they come back they are different from the way they were before. You would probably be utterly amazed if a painter were to come along who knew the science of the spirit so well that he could paint a picture of the whole group of people sitting here the way they were in an earlier life on earth. You would be amazed to see each of you looking very different indeed from the way you look now. It would certainly be interesting! You see, you will return. When your present life is at an end and you have gone through death and the world of the spirit, you will return to earth. The power in us out of which the next body will be created — our bodies come not only from our mothers and fathers but also by the principle that now lives in us and is taken through death into the world of the spirit — continues to act. The principle that was active in earlier bodies on earth is preserved. Now you may well ask if human beings really have the power to transform something that is in them today and is wholly connected with their present bodies in such a way that it will be a completely different body. No one would be able today to transform the spiritual powers in his body to such effect that another body can be created. But you also cannot die and be bom again right away. There has to be an interval of time, quite a long interval of time. This has to exist between lives. And there all the powers are transformed. Under normal conditions, unless one has been a criminal or something similar, the time between death and a new birth is quite long. Now when do we return to earth? We return to earth when the conditions under which we have lived have changed completely. Yes, some people return to previous conditions, and that is very painful. Normally, however, we only return to earth when conditions have changed completely. So we are not born into the same situation again. The question is, what makes conditions change so completely? You see we must never merely fantasize but stick to reality. The powers we have when we are not living on earth but between death and a new birth are such that they also have an influence here on earth. They come to us from all the stars and from everywhere out there. They are in fact our own powers. It is just that we are not on earth during that time. When we are on earth, these powers we have act from the earth; when we are not on earth they act from cosmic space. These are powers of destruction. They destroy the conditions under which we have been living. It is easy to understand this when it comes to external circumstances. But it goes further, gentlemen, right into the natural world that is around us! Think of someone being cremated or buried under present-day conditions. After a time you have an awareness that hardly anything remains of this person. And if you go to the cemeteries 50 or 60 years later and see what you can find in the place where you know one of your forebears was buried in the past, the most you will find are a few bits of bone; but these, too, gradually dissolve. Nothing remains, therefore, of the things that need to be destroyed. Our whole body must have been destroyed by the time we are bom again. Yet although nothing remains to be seen of the body, much is still there, a great deal of us. Someone who is able to perceive more subtle forms of matter will find that something remains for a long time of a person in the place where they were buried, or even if they were cremated. All this must first be destroyed. The ancient Egyptians had a particular purpose when they bound up mummies. Basically they wanted to prevent human beings having to return to earth again. 56 NoteText They did not want this to happen, and if you embalm a body you prevent it coming down again. They wanted the individuals concerned to have the convenience of remaining in the world of the spirit. They therefore not only preserved the mummies but used materials — they had great skill and knowledge in this field — so that the dead bodies retained their physical conformation so well that we can still have them in our museums today. They are an exact copy of what the person has once been. Now, gentlemen, in the first place it is inevitably true that anything that has survived through thousands of years is like poison, for it is destructive. It really belongs to the powers of destruction. A mummy holds tremendous powers of destruction. It is truly the case that if you look at a mummy and dust comes from it, those are powers of destruction coming out. These powers of destruction exist because, as 1 have said, the human being who is beyond this earth really wants to destroy everything that has been, including the form. So there it is, and the individual has sent powers of destruction into it. So it really does have powers of destruction in it. Secondly, the Egyptians used special materials to preserve the mummies. These materials are extremely hostile to destruction. And they will within a short time create a poison atmosphere. You always have a poison atmosphere around a mummy. This arose from the religious views held by the ancient Egyptians. There is something else as well. How did the Egyptians get hold of substances that they themselves were able to work with quite easily but which turned to poison within a relatively short time? You see, today people have no idea of the power of speech. The power of speech was enormous in earlier times, and also in Egyptian times. Imagine you have a fire that produces a lot of smoke. If you blow into it you change the shape of the smoke cloud [drawing]. Blowing lightly you can make it rotate. So you are able to change the shape. Just blowing will not do much. But if you start to whistle a tune, which means continuous blowing, you shape the smoke and flames according to the content of the tune. The ancients knew that matter changes if you speak into it in some way, and especially if you use particular words They had spices with which to embalm their mummies and they did not work with them the way we would today. They would always be saying something as they did their embalming. It was something like: 'Whoever approaches my body shall suffer death.' They would use an intonation and a choice of words that made matter obey, and this power therefore entered into the material of the spices they used in embalming. This lives in there. People cannot believe this today, but it is true. If you have a mummy and come close to its substance, the words 'Whoever approaches my body shall suffer death' are still in it. Another reason is that the material has since absorbed the power of those words. Today only remnants remain of all this. If you go to a Roman Catholic Church the priest no longer has the power to bend embalming spices to his will with words, but he uses a lesser power, which is to create smoke from incense. The whole procedure would be completely harmless if he would first do what is necessary, then light the incense and speak certain prayers or send particular thoughts into the incense. This does not happen, however, but they burn incense and say specific words into the smoke. These are then in the smoke and affect the people who are in the incense atmosphere. The smell of incense is thus an important medium for getting sinners to repent, and this is a last remnant of all the things that were done in the past. Embalming was a religious ceremony in which matter was changed. I know a man who went to Asian tombs — the Egyptian tombs are most characteristic of these things, but Asian tombs have them as well. He found that one cannot approach those tombs beyond a certain point, realizing that if one goes any further one will lose consciousness or die. The poison atmosphere keeps people at a distance and this is because the destructive word that wiU cause harm has been implanted in the materials used to treat the dead bodies. Something else is the following. You see, if a person has been on earth ten centuries, that is a thousand years ago, his powers change. He passes through the period between death and a new birth and returns. He then has the powers to build himself a new body. He only has these powers because he is able, in the spirit, to overcome all powers of destruction. The power acting out of the seed is thus increased. Otherwise people would not be able to shape a human seed into the body they want; it would merely become the body again that existed centuries ago. The power in any seed must also be old; it must come from earlier times. The power we have now does not allow us to influence any kind of seed. For a plant seed to be active and produce a plant the following year it must be withdrawn from the forces that come from outside and be given up to the inner forces of the earth for a whole winter. These forces are destructive for anything that is by nature external. The cereal grains in the tombs of the Egyptian Pharaohs were really buried together with those powers of destruction. Whereas everything that is body at the moment when the human being takes his body towards the powers of destruction is destroyed, the situation is the opposite for the principle that lies in the seed, for its vitality is strengthened. It may happen, therefore — not with all seeds but with many — that the process occurs which normally occurs in winter. The plant seeds come together with the powers of destruction that exist in the dead body and their powers are actually preserved. They will then be as active as fresh grain, even after a very long time. It is particularly when we consider things like these, therefore, that we have to understand that things happen in life that cannot be explained in terms of materialistic science, because spiritual forces are involved. These spiritual forces immediately become actively involved once a certain time has passed in earth evolution. Let us assume the following. I can only tell you this, of course, but it is possible for a person to look back on earlier lives on earth, both for himself and for other people who shared those lives. Those people will have become spirit, however. Nothing remains of what they once were. So if someone has lived in ancient Greece, let us say, is born again and has great wisdom today, and then looks back at the form he had when he walked about in ancient Greece, he sees that form in the spirit, truly in the spirit. If for some reason — I do not know how, let us say through a devil — the form he sees in the spirit were to be transformed into an actual person, so that he would meet himself in the flesh, he would die. You cannot meet the past in the flesh. If you did you would die. Anyone seeing a past incarnation the way it really was would also come face to face with the powers that seek to make the future element die, really make it die. That is how it is. This would of course produce completely unnatural conditions. You see, the people whose bodies lie mummified in Egypt, so that their form still lies there, have long since returned to earth. So they have been living or are still living, and their earlier forms lie over there. These preserved forms act not only on the people who have returned; when such an individual has returned they also have a destructive effect on other people who come close to such a preserved form. Every mummy is thus hostile to human life. It cannot be any other way. Enmity comes from them for human life. People take no note of this. And so it may, of course, also happen that mummies that once belonged to particularly ambitious people who held great power, and into which much has been secretly put, so that they may be preserved for a long time and have a harmful effect, may indeed have such a bad effect on occasion that someone coming close to them will fall ill or perhaps even die. This is why these inexplicable things happen that we hear of. The third point was that we are told it is extraordinarily difficult to reach these tombs today. That is indeed the case. When we hear of the ancient mysteries today — one often hears about them — we may also ask: Where were those mysteries? We would have to dig deep down into rocks and there we would find caves and in them all kinds of signs written which would be most interesting if we could decipher them. Basically all of it lies deep down under rocks that have joined so closely that anyone taking a superficial view will not notice that those rocks did not get there in a natural way but were worked by human hands. The Egyptians wanted the tombs to be protected. They therefore put them deep down in the rocks and put artificial constructions on top. These have gradually changed over thousands of years and now look like natural rock formations. Only one question remains, but this will help you to understand many aspects of history that otherwise cannot be understood. You see, I'd like to know how it would be possible for people today, however great their number, to find the strength that must have been needed to build those things. Even just to destroy them needs a lot of time, as you said. The Pharaohs — that's what Egyptian kings were called — had great spiritual powers that enabled them to influence people. If you are able to influence matter you will certainly also be able to influence people by using the power of the word. Those ancient Pharaohs had enormous powers that enabled them to have enormous influence on people's energies, the energy they needed for work. You also need to consider another phenomenon. You see, normal people can lift things, move them, and so on. But perhaps you have also seen someone who was off his head and the enormous strength such a person would have. It is amazing to see the energy a person gains to lift things which he would not normally be able to lift, to carry things which he would not normally be able to carry. And think of the strength he develops when he fights you! You may have been able to beat him easily when he was not yet off his head; but when he is, he'll have you on your back in no time. People's strength grows enormously when they go mad. The Egyptians were not mad. Yet they also were not as rational as we are today. They lived as in a dream and had the strength of giants. People are quite unable to grasp today how few people it took to move a huge rock, taking it to a place that might be very high up, in ancient Egypt. It is impossible for us to understand that there have been times when five people would take an enormous rock and transport it over a long distance and raise it to a great height. People had tremendous powers in ancient Egypt. The only way of achieving this was to develop such strength in them by practically making them slaves. That was not the only purpose why slavery existed. This became clear when humanity had grown weak and the intellect had woken in them. In the period which followed the Egyptian period, strength grew less as the intellect developed. Slavery was then such that people merely wanted to keep it going and demanded the right to keep it going. It was different before that, for in earlier times the whole of human nature was made to remain dull, dumb and dreamlike, as this would increase people's physical strength. This artificially produced physical strength was used to create such things as the royal tombs where it takes such tremendous effort today just to destroy them. You see, completely wrong ideas are presented about all this today because it is usually the most materialistically inclined people who go there. They cannot understand what these things really are. Someone opens up a royal tomb — and he must die. People are amazed for they do not know that this was really intended by the ancient Egyptians. They had the means to make things happen at a much later time. Think of this. Imagine you are in Basel and have a wireless telegraph. Someone in Berlin records the telegram; he hears what you say by wireless telegraphy. That is a long way away. Why is it possible? Because we overcome distances with our wireless telegraphy and are able to have an effect through space. The telegram is sent, it passes through space, and comes alive in another place. Now imagine you sent a telegram that says 'Whoever hears these words will die!' And perhaps the person in Berlin is an anxious individual, someone who is easily influenced. He hears the message — he'd have to be an extremely anxious individual, of course — and he dies from the shock, especially if the person who sent the message is a madman. The forces that live in the speech of a mad person are much more powerful than those of a sensible individual. So if you have a madman speaking in one place and someone else hearing his words elsewhere, he may die. The Egyptians had the facilities to preserve such things in their tombs, to put such words in there. These act through time rather than space. And if an Englishman sticks his nose in, he does not know that the words put into the embalming spices are still active in the odour that reaches his nose. The anxious individual who hears the madman's wireless message would at least die of shock. The other individual dies without hearing anything, because of an odour. The 'wireless message' has been magicked into it, and in the things done by the ancient Egyptians one is dealing with a kind of time telegraphy. They intended to kill anyone who stuck in his nose. And it actually happens because they had the skill that enabled them to speak words into the spices that would have an effect. You see, if you consider the things that may be known in the spirit you will no longer be amazed at such things. The strange thing is that when people go to all sorts of places today and make their investigations, they sometimes have their noses rubbed in the way the spirit works in a highly unpleasant way. Those who are most affected by the spirit, in that it kills them, would certainly tell the truth if they were able to share their wisdom after death. This is not possible, and so we ourselves must speak out about the decrees made in the world of the spirit.

From Beetroot to Buddhism

How scars develop. The mummy

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSP1999/19240426p02.html

Dornach

26 Apr 1924

GA353-9

Good morning, gentlemen! Has anyone thought of something for today? Mr Erbsmehl: I wanted to ask why it is that people look at the starry heavens the way they do today when the ancient Babylonians looked at it in a very different way. Rudolf Steiner: This question makes it possible to say something about the great change that has come in the way we look at the world. Dr Vreede 57 Dr Elisabeth Vreede (1879–1943), member of the first Council of the General Anthroposophical Society and leader of the Section for Mathematics and Astronomy. is giving a course on astronomy here, and one can see how difficult it really is to cope with all the calculations and the mathematics. To get clear about these things we must first of all realize that the people who lived in earlier times really were much more spiritual still than people are today. For quite a long time people still knew about effects that occur in nature that are really quite unknown today. I'll speak about a few things that go in this direction. It is impossible to understand what the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians sought to achieve with their science of the stars unless we know certain things that really are quite unknown today. Rousseau still told the following story, for instance. 58 This refers to a passage in H.P. Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled : 'Deleuze has collected, in his Bibliothèque du magnetisme animal, a number of remarkable facts taken from Van Helmont, among which we will content ourselves with quoting the following as pendants to the case of the bird-hunter, Jacques Pélissier. He says that "men by looking steadfastly at animals oculis intentis for a quarter of an hour may cause their death; which Rousseau confirms from his own experience in Egypt and the East, as having killed several toads in this manner. But when he at last tried this at Lyons, the toad, finding it could not escape from his eye, turned round, blew itself up, and stared at him so fiercely, without moving its eyes, that a weakness came over him even to fainting, and he was for some time thought to be dead."' (Paris 1817-18, Vol. I, pp. 67-68.) Pélissier, Jean Jaques (1794–1864), Due de Malakoff, French military leader who served in Spain, in the Morea and in Algeria. French ambassador in London 1858-9, later governor of Algeria. The Rousseau referred to was not Jean-Jacques Rousseau He said that in Egypt, which does of course have a warmer climate, and we have heard strange things about it at our last meeting, he was able to make toads be immobile by looking at them in a certain way, staring into their eyes, so that they could not move at all. They were paralysed. This is something people have always been able to do in warmer climates such as Egypt. Rousseau was able to paralyse the toads and also kill them. He later wanted to do the same thing in Lyons. A toad was coming towards him. He looked at it, stared at it, and lo and behold! he himself was paralysed. He could no longer move his eye and was paralysed as though dead. People came and called a physician and he was given viper venom, a snake venom which got him out of the seizure, so that he was saved. The tables had been turned. You see, you only have to go from Egypt to Lyons and influences that come from creatures simply turn into their opposite. We are thus able to say that there are influences connected with the human will, for what we had there was the activation of the human will. There are such influences, and these powers exist. For you see, something that existed a century ago still exists today and will continue to exist for as long as the earth continues. People no longer want to know about these things, however, and take no interest in them. But you see, gentlemen, this also relates to other things. To understand certain things we must take account of the place where they are done. It means we must consider the geography, in a sense. This is not the ordinary geography of today, for that only refers to ordinary things and not to influences going to and fro between toads and human beings. Let me give you another example that goes in this direction. You see, van Helmont, a scientist living in the seventeenth century, 59 Helmont, Jan Baptiste van (1577–1644), Flemish physician, chemist and physicist. still knew many of the things people used to know in the past. That earlier knowledge really only came to be lost completely in the nineteenth century. In the seventeenth century it was still quite strong, with the decline starting in the eighteenth century. Nineteenth-century people thought they were the first to be really clever! Van Helmont was wondering how one might get to know more than is possible with the ordinary human intellect. Nowadays people do not give any thought to how one might know more than is possible with the ordinary human intellect, for they believe the human intellect can know everything. But van Helmont, who was a physician, did not think much of this human intellect. He wanted spiritual knowledge. At the time, however, it was not yet possible to gain spiritual knowledge by developing mind and spirit the way we now try to do in anthroposophy. Humanity had not yet got that far. Van Helmont therefore used even earlier methods, and he did the following, though I would not advise anyone to copy him. You can't. And it would no longer have the effect it had in those times. Van Helmont did still do it, however. You see he took a plant, a poisonous, medicinal plant. 60 Monkshood, Aconitum napellus . See van Helmont's Demens Idea § 12. It is prescribed for certain diseases. He took it. Being a physician, he knew that this plant cannot be eaten, for it would kill one. But he took a quick lick at the root tip, the lower part of the root. He described the state he got into as follows. He said he felt as if his head had been completely cut out, as if he'd grown headless. He had completely lost his head. Of course, his head did not fall off, but he could no longer feel it being there. He was then no longer able to have the knowledge that came through the head. But his belly region began to function as if it were a head. And lo and behold, he received great enlightenment in the form of images, something we call imaginations in anthroposophy today, taking the form of images coming from the world of the spirit. This suddenly changed the whole of his life, a terrific change, for now he knew: It is possible not just to say things about the world of the spirit out of the intellect but really and truly to see the world of the spirit. It was not that he was not thinking by means of the nervous system which is present in the human limbs and metabolism; no, he saw, truly saw, the world of the spirit. He thus received imaginations of the world of the spirit. This lasted for two hours. After those two hours he felt a little dizzy. Then he was well again. As you can imagine, this changed his life significantly; from this time onwards he knew that it is possible to see the world of the spirit. He also knew something else. He knew that the head with its thinking is an obstacle to seeing the world of the spirit. We don't do what van Helmont did, which is to take a lick at a plant root — though there are some people who think we do, which, of course, is nonsense — but mental exercises are used to turn off the head way of thinking. The head is there only to receive what is perceived, seen, with the rest of the human organism. The same process is therefore brought about by using one's mind which van Helmont brought about by very ancient methods. Now I won't tell you everything that would be required to tell you once again about training in the science of the spirit. That can be done on another occasion. But I am telling you this because of the question Mr Erbsmehl has asked. The two things I have told you about are connected with the influence of the stars. Today people completely refuse to believe that the stars have any influence, and no attention is therefore paid to these things. Van Helmont found his life completely changed. He had enjoyed the experience and therefore wanted to repeat it, and he took several more licks at the tip of this plant root. But he did not achieve the same result. What does it mean, that he did not succeed again? You see, it means that on the later occasions van Helmont did something or other that was not quite the same as before. Van Helmont himself could not explain it. Now I cannot, of course, tell you — read van Helmont yourselves and you'll find what I am going to tell you now — when it was that van Helmont took that first lick at the plant root, for he did not give the date. But in the light of what we know, through the science of the spirit, it is possible to say the following. You see, the first time van Helmont took a lick at that root tip there must have been a full moon. And he did not take note of this. Later he did not take his licks at full moon, and then it did not succeed. Something stayed with him from that first time; he was again and again able to get a glimpse of the world of the spirit. But he never again experienced that enormous sudden change. Being a seventeenth-century person, he no longer knew that this depends on the moon. He thought it was entirely due to the plant root. But in earlier times people knew this very well. And because of this people of earlier times were very much aware that the stars have a definite influence on the lives of people, animals and plants. To investigate how such things happen we would have to say to ourselves: We may not eat poisonous plants, but we do eat plants, and also the roots of plants. And whereas poisonous plants can only be used medicinally, the other plants, which are not poisonous, are used for food. You see, gentlemen, it is like this. When you eat the root of a plant, this is under the influence of the moon just as much as a poisonous root is. The moon influences the growth of plant roots. This is also why certain plant roots are very important for people with a particular constitution. As you know, there are creatures living in the intestines, in the digestive organs; these are worms, a serious nuisance. Beetroot is a good food for people who easily get worms. When the beetroot gets to the intestine the worms get upset; they are paralysed and are then eliminated in the stools. You can see, therefore, that the root definitely has an influence on the life of these lower animals, the worms. Beetroot does not poison us but it poisons the worms. And again the situation is, and you can find this out, that plant roots eaten at full moon have greater power to drive out worms. This is certainly something that should be taken into account. Now you see, we might say: When we study the root of a plant, the situation is that the plants give us something that has a powerful effect on the system of metabolism and limbs. People who have certain illnesses may even be helped a great deal by giving them a root diet, arranging things in such a way that the diet is taken at the time of the full moon and not at the time of the new moon. Now you see, everything we are thus able to observe in plants also has importance for human beings, for human reproduction and growth. Children who have a tendency to stay small could also be brought on a bit with such a root diet, so that they'd grow better; only it needs to be done when they are young enough, between birth and the seventh year of life. Moon forces have a powerful influence on everything in the plant world and on anything connected with reproduction and growth in the animal world and the human world. But we need to study the moon not just by looking at it through a telescope but by studying what it brings about here on earth. People of learning among the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians — they were called initiates then — knew exactly: this plant is under the influence of the moon in such a way, this one in another way, and so on. They would not speak of the moon as a mere spherical body of ice up there in cosmic space. They saw the moon's influence everywhere. And the moon's influence is mainly apparent on the earth's surface. It does not go deeper. It goes just far enough to stimulate the roots of plants. It is not down in the earth itself. You can find proof that the moon forces do not go down into the earth if you talk to people who go for a swim in the moonlight, for instance. They'll soon come out of the water again, for they feel as if they are sinking. The water is pitch black. The moonlight does not enter into the water, it does not go in more deeply anywhere, it does not connect with the earth. And so you see that the situation is such that animals and plants are under an influence of the moonlight that does not act from the earth but only from its outermost surface and as far as the roots of plants. This gives you your first information about the starry heavens. Let us now move on to the example I gave of Rousseau who was able to paralyse and indeed kill toads in a hot climate but was himself paralysed in the temperate region, in Lyons. What was behind this? Well, gentlemen, you only have to consider this. When the sun shines on the earth, which is a sphere, or almost a sphere, the sun's rays are almost vertical in the hot region. Their effect is different there from the way it is in the temperate region where they come in at an angle, a very different angle. And just as growth and reproduction in plants and humans are under the influence of the moon, so are man's inner animal forces, which come to expression in the look of the eyes, under the influence of the sun. These animal forces, which are actions, depend on the sun. The sun's powers thus make it possible that people can easily fascinate, paralyse and indeed kill toads in Egypt, whilst they have to submit to the influence of the toads in the temperate regions. This therefore depends on the powers of the sun. And you will also know that it is sometimes harder to think, that the whole inner life gets harder at times, and sometimes it gets easier. That is due to Saturn, depending on its position at the time. The stars thus influence everything that happens in human, animal and plant life. Only minerals are the result of earth activities. A science that limits itself to the earth therefore cannot give real understanding of the human being. Nor can we know what the stars do if we do not look at their activities. Just imagine — it is no longer so bad today, but it could happen in the past — that someone is a great statesman, if you like. One might have asked the people living in the same house, people who cooked his meals, like the cook, for instance, what the man did. The cook, who had no interest in the skills of statesmanship might well have said: 'He eats breakfast, eats his midday meal and his evening meal; otherwise he does nothing at all; he goes away the rest of the time, and apart from that he does not do anything.' She simply would not have known what else the man did. Modem scientists also speak only of things they can calculate with regard to the stars. That is all they know. People of earlier times were interested in what else the stars were doing. And they therefore had such knowledge of the stars. They knew that the moon had a connection with the plant element in man, the sun to the animal part of man, and Saturn to the part of man that is wholly human. And so they would go on. They would say to themselves: The sun therefore has a relationship to the animal in man. When the sun shines down vertically, people are able to have a strong influence on animals in the hot region. Now you see, people in Europe have a strong relationship to horses, for example; but it can never be as close in Europe as it is with the Arabs, that is in the hot region, for you cannot have that relationship between people and animals in Europe. It has to do with the sun's rays coming down vertically, with the sun's actions. Take this further, gentlemen. In Babylonia and Assyria people knew that certain influences, certain effects came from the sun. And they would observe the sun [drawing]. They said to themselves, there is the Lion constellation, and there, let us say, the Scorpion. Now there is a time of the year when the sun is in the Lion, that is, it covers it up, and one sees the Lion behind the sun. At another time the sun covers up the Scorpion, or the Archer, or some other group of stars. The Babylonians and Assyrians knew that the effects people have on animals are strongest when the sun is in front of the Lion; they grow weaker as the sun moves on and is in the Virgin or the Scorpion. So they knew not only that the planets relate to what human beings do, but also that there was a relationship to the position of the sun — in front of the Lion or the Scorpion — for then these things would change. What do people do today? They simply calculate: The sun is in the Ram within the zodiac, in the Bull, in the Twins, in the Crab, the Lion, the Virgin, the Scales, the Fishes and so on. They calculate the length of time when it is in that sign of the zodiac, and so on. They know that the sun is in the Fishes on 21 March but they do not know any more than that. The ancient Babylonians and Assyrians still knew, for example, that the human head is most free when Saturn is in a constellation called the Pleiades. They knew all this. They could easily judge it, for they lived in a hotter region than we do and developed a science through which they understood the whole human being in terms of the heavens. So if we are able to say that this science was of that kind, that related to the human being — well, that science has gradually been forgotten. They would look at the planetary system, and also the fixed stars. They knew that depending on whether a star was in this or that position this would mean one thing or another for human life. They knew that when the sun was in the Lion it would have the strongest influence on the human heart. The thing is like this. People then tried to see how it was with the minerals. They said to themselves: Only the earth acts on the minerals. But the minerals in the earth have not simply come into existence now; they have developed much earlier, and in earlier times they, too, were plants. You know that coal has come from plants. But not only coal but all other minerals have once been plants. Then the moon had an influence on them, and in even earlier times also the sun, and before that also Saturn. And when they wanted to know which mineral had in earlier times been under the influence of the sun they would test the effect minerals had on people. They found, for instance, that when the sun is in the Lion and has that powerful effect on the heart, you get the same heart action as if you give someone gold to take. They concluded from this that the sun once had a great influence on gold. Or when Saturn was in the constellation of the Pleiades, the biggest influence was on the human head. It came free. And they then tried to find out which mineral once, when it was still animal — for minerals were animals before they were plants — was most under the influence of Saturn. They found that this was lead. And so they discovered that lead also has the effect of making the human head more free. So if someone gets dull in the head, and this is because certain digestive processes that really should no longer happen in the head are done with the head, because of an illness, one must give him lead. And so you have a metal for every planet. And the Babylonians and Assyrians would use this sign for the sun: ☉. And they also used this sign for gold. They knew, therefore, that now that we have the earth, the stars no longer influence the minerals, but they did do so in the past. They wrote the sun and gold like this: ☉. They would not write 'lead' either, but use the sign: ♄, which means both Saturn and lead. No one would have dreamt of writing 'Saturn' or 'lead' in ordinary letters in those old times. If they wanted to write it, they would put this sign: ☽. To write 'silver' they would put this sign: ☽. It meant both moon and silver. Thus the earth, in so far as it is metallic, was also seen in relation to the stars. Well you see, gentlemen, that we really do not know very much about the human being and his relationship to the universe unless we are able to consider such things. Let us move on. These things were generally known in antiquity. The thing is like this. When Christianity first spread, that knowledge existed also in the more southern parts of Europe. A book about the natural world still exists that comes from the early Christian centuries. It says many of these things. Today we have to know it properly again, otherwise we cannot sort out the confusing statements, for it is already fairly confused. But there is still much of the old wisdom. Then came the time when Christianity became a matter for the intellect only, giving up all else in favour of dogma. It was the time when all the old knowledge was eradicated in Europe. Between the fifth and the eleventh or twelfth centuries, everything was done to eradicate the old knowledge. And that has been largely successful. For, you see, it was like this. People who worked with the old knowledge in ancient Greece, Rome, Spain, that is, in southern regions, were already quite ruined in soul and body. The history of Rome at that time is really quite terrible. People's morals had completely deteriorated. They still had the old knowledge, but were no longer able to remain human beings, and we have the figures of absolute rulers like Nero or Commodus. 61 Lucius Domitius Nero, Roman emperor 54–68. Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus (161–192), Roman emperor 180-192. Commodus was a Roman emperor of whom I can tell you the following. Like all Roman emperors he was an initiate. The question is, what does 'initiate' mean in this case? It was like a title given to someone today. Every Roman emperor was automatically considered to be an initiate, because he was an emperor. This does show that knowledge was highly esteemed in those days. Only, except for Augustus, 62 See note 20. the Roman emperors did not actually have that knowledge. But they did enter into the mysteries; they were even able to initiate others. At a certain level of initiation, the person to be initiated had to be struck on the head. This was a symbolic act. Emperor Commodus struck someone so hard that the individual fell down dead. This could not be punished, since it had been the emperor Commodus who did it. And the way they were as 'initiates', so they were also as human beings. Further to the north lived peoples who were still completely uncivilized at the time, though later they developed the central European culture. But the ancient Germans later conquered Italy, Greece and Spain. Only those who worked with pure logic, using only the intellect, were able to keep their end up. That alone was to be dogma. The rest was to be disregarded. Thinking was limited to the most superficial level. And so it happened that the old knowledge was eradicated in schools and monasteries everywhere. And we can see how something of that Babylonian knowledge only reached Europe surreptitiously, as contraband, as it were. But it did not get far. In Babylonia that knowledge was still retained for a relatively long time. Greek imperialism continued right into the Middle Ages in Constantinople. And you see, gentlemen, strange figures would often appear there. We sometimes see Polish Jews here with their caftans and ancient scrolls. They are not always well regarded but are profoundly learned in Judaism. Such figures would also arrive in Constantinople at the time when all knowledge was being eradicated. They would bring mightily large parchment scrolls on which many things were written. Now you see those parchment scrolls were taken from them in Constantinople and opened up. And so everything that came from Babylonia and Assyria was stored in Constantinople. No one paid any heed to it. And in Europe everything was eradicated. It was only when the empire perished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and later in medieval times that the parchments became available again, and all kinds of people would pinch them. They would then move around Europe. This is the source of everything people deciphered in those scrolls — not scholars at that time, but people of no great learning. And so a little bit of knowledge spread abroad again in the Middle Ages. This little bit of knowledge served as a stimulus for others, and there could not have been a van Helmont, a Paracelsus, 63 Paracelsus, Philippus Aureolus (1493?–1541), Swiss physician and naturalist, originally named Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim and known as 'the father of medicine'. and so on, if those people had not pinched the parchment scrolls, brought them to Europe and sold them for large sums of money. In this way, some things did reach Europe again. And quite a few secret societies still live on these things today. There are all kinds of orders — Freemasons, Odd Fellows, and so on. They would not have any knowledge if some had not come to Europe with the parchment scrolls which were sold for large sums of money at that time. But people did not think much of that knowledge. A learned canon such as Copernicus 64 See note 29. would not go to the people who had those scrolls. That was not done. You would have lost respect. And because of this the old knowledge also lost all respect. People like Copernicus then established the body of knowledge that is our modern science. But something very odd happened then, gentlemen. The cream of the jest is that Copernicus established a particular science of astronomy, and it was a fact that he no longer knew the things people had known before, just as people do not know them today, but the people of later times were unable to understand even what he had said. Two of his theses were understood, the third was no longer understood. If one understands the two theses of Copernicus, one believes the sun to be at the centre, with Venus, Mercury, the earth and so on moving around it. That is taught in every school today. But if you understand the whole of Copernicus it is not like that at all, for Copernicus himself pointed out that there you have the sun [drawing], behind it Mercury, Venus, here the earth, and so on. In reality all of this moves through the universe in this kind of spiral movement. You can read about this in the works of Copernicus if you wish. So we have the strange situation that whilst Copernicus showed contempt for the old knowledge, people of more recent times did not understand him either. Some are now beginning to understand Copernicus, that is, they realize that he had three and not two theses. The third was difficult for people to understand. And so astronomy has gradually become what it is today — mere sums and calculations. Now as you can imagine, the knowledge that remains from the past was not gained the way we want to gain knowledge today. We have to gain it in full clarity of soul today. The ancients had more instinctive ways. And it is really no longer clear what the ancients meant by knowledge. An interesting example happened a few years ago. A Swedish scientist 65 Svedberg, Theodor (1884–1971), Swedish chemist, wrote a book on matter in 1912; 1926 Nobel Prize winner. was reading an old book on alchemy. It said all kinds of things about lead, about silver — if you put together lead and silver, this happens, if you add gold, this happens, and so on. What did the scientist do? He said: 'This is what it says. Let's try it.' And he repeated these things in his laboratory, taking lead the way it is today, silver the way it is today, processing them with fire, as the book said — and nothing came of it! Nothing could come of it, for what he read were those symbols. He thought: "The symbol ☉ means gold; so I'll take some gold and process it chemically. This sign ♄ means lead; so I'll take some lead and process it chemically.' Now the terrible thing was that the man, the alchemist whose book the Swedish scientist was reading, did not mean the metals in this case but the planets. He thought if one mixed sun forces with Saturn forces and moon forces — he was referring to the human embryo at this point — if sun and moon forces acted on the child in the womb, particular things would happen. The Swedish scientist was therefore trying to do in a retort with the physical metals something which in the work of the old alchemist referred to the developing embryo in the womb. And that could not work out, of course, for he should have been considering development in the womb. Then he might have discovered what it was about. So you see how little the true nature of that old knowledge is understood today. All this will show you how Mr Erbsmehl's question needs to be answered. The way of answering is really that we realize that whilst everything in modern science is good and right and proper, so that one can exactly calculate the position of a star and its distance from another star, one can look through a spectroscope, see the colours in the rays of light and draw conclusions as to the chemical composition of the stars, we have to study again how the stars influence life on earth. And it would be wrong to do it the way many people do today, simply taking the old books. It would of course be easy just to take those old books and find out from them what people no longer know today. But it does not serve, not even in the case of Paracelsus, for people do not understand him any longer if they read his works with present-day eyes. Instead we must learn to discover again how the stars influence human beings. And this is only possible through the science of the spirit, anthroposophical science of the spirit. There one comes to study again not only the position of the moon but how the moon relates to the whole human being. You come to see that in 10 lunar months, 10 times 4 weeks, the child in the womb experiences the influence of the moon, experiencing it in such a way that the full moon is experienced 8 or 9 times during this period. The child is floating in the waters, and is therefore quite a different kind of creature before it is born, protected from the forces of the earth. This is the most important thing, that it is protected from the earth's forces and is above all under the influence of the moon. It is of course also under the influence of the other stars. You see, that is what should happen, that at our universities and schools, even at primary schools in so far as it is possible, things are studied in a very different way, that above all the human being is studied, the human heart, human head, and in conjunction with this the stars. And at the universities one should first of all give a description of how the very tiny human seed develops into an embryo in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th week and so on. This we have, this description exists, but not the other description, of what the moon is doing during this time. We can only have a science of physical human development if on the one hand we describe what happens in the womb and on the other hand describe the doings of the moon. And again, we can only properly understand the changing of the teeth, for example, in around the 7th year, if we not only describe how there is a milk tooth, with the other tooth growing beneath it, pushing up behind it, but have a sun science again; for this depends on the sun's forces. Again, today people only refer to purely physical processes as human beings gain sexual maturity. But those processes depend on Saturn; we need a Saturn science. And so it is not possible today to describe each thing by itself the way it is done today. Then you get what happened in a hospital in a large European city. Someone came to this university hospital thinking he had a disease of the spleen. So he asked: 'Which department should I go to with a disease of the spleen?' He was told to go to some department or other. Unfortunately he also mentioned in passing that he had a liver disease, and he was told: 'You can't have that here, you need to go to another hospital, which is for people with liver diseases; we only have patients with diseases of the spleen.' He thus found himself between the two piles of hay, like the ass in the well-known story. The two piles were the same size, looking exactly the same. This is a famous picture logicians have produced for freedom of will. They said: What does an ass do when it finds itself between two piles of hay that are the same size and have the same scent? About to decide for the one on the left he thinks: the one on the right tastes just as good. About to decide for the one on the right he thinks: the one on the left tastes just as good. And so he goes to and fro and finally dies of hunger! That was the situation of the man with two illnesses. He did not know where to go and might well have died in trying to decide whether he belonged to the department for liver diseases or the department for diseases of the spleen. I am just mentioning this in order to show that today everyone knows only about a very small piece of the world. But that means one cannot really know things today. If you want to know something about the moon you have to go to an observatory and ask the people there. But they know nothing about embryonic development. There you have to ask a gynaecologist, an expert in women's diseases. Yet he'll know nothing of the stars. The two things go together, however. This is the great misery with modem knowledge, that each knows a piece of the world and no one knows the whole. This is also why science is so terribly boring when it is presented in public lectures. It has to be boring, of course, gentlemen, if people tell you only a little bit about something. Let us assume you want to know what a chair looks like that is not here where you are, and someone tells you about the wood; but you want to know how the chair is made. You'll get bored when someone just tells you about the wood. And it is boring when you study anthropology today, which is the science of the physical human being, because nothing is said about what really matters. And if it ever is mentioned, it does not relate at all. The science of the stars will only be as it should be when we combine it with knowledge of the human being. And that is the crux of the matter. This is the way in which I can answer your question properly today. It really is true that one needs to understand such important things as those I have told you about Rousseau and van Helmont, things that exist and cannot be at all understood in earthly terms. People have become materialistic even in the use of words. What did people call it when they spoke of someone being able to paralyse animals by looking at them? They called it magnetism. Yes, but later the word magnetism was only applied to iron, to the magnet. And when people speak as scientists today they say one should limit the word 'magnetism' to iron, and not abuse it. Charlatans will still speak of magnetizing people; but they have no real idea of what they are talking about. You need a science of the spirit to be able to see through such things.

From Beetroot to Buddhism

Creating an astronomy based on the science of the spirit

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSP1999/19240505p02.html

Dornach

5 May 1924

GA353-10

Dr. Steiner : Have you any questions to-day? Questioner : What was the cause of the darkening of the sun for three hours at the time of Christ's death? Dr. Steiner : That, of course, is a most significant question and one which, as you may imagine, has occupied me very deeply. I can well believe that the questioner too considers it important, because it indicates that such things are really no longer credible to the modern mind. That is why the nineteenth century solved it simply by asserting: It is not true, it is only imagery and no great importance need be attached to it. — That, however, is wrong. Careful study of the knowledge yielded by Spiritual Science leads to the discovery that at the time of Christ's death there was an eclipse of the sun, or at all events the sun was obscured to such an extent that when the death took place, darkness fell over the district. Such things should not be brushed aside and simply denied; quite obviously they call for explanation. Let me here remind you of something I have often mentioned in your presence. In ancient records you will everywhere find evidence that importance was attached to the time of the day, the time of the year, and so forth. No notice is taken of this to-day. In the New Testament a great deal is said about the miracles of healing performed by Christ, about the way in which He healed the sick. Emphasis is laid upon the fact that He adopted a definite practice in His acts of healing. In those days it was much easier to effect cures than it is to-day and this is a fact that is entirely ignored. Owing to the way in which humanity has developed — particularly in Europe — healing must start to-day from the body. But it was not always so. At the time when Christ lived on the earth, and above all in earlier epochs, it was still possible for healing to start from the soul. In a modern man the soul no longer has a very strong influence because as a result of upbringing and education his thoughts are entirely abstract. Thoughts of the kind that are universal to-day were absolutely unknown in those olden times. The human being was deeply and inwardly moved by what he thought. There was no such thing as “abstract, logical thinking.” Man's life of soul was quite different. To-day you may tell a human being something of supreme importance ... but it has no effect whatever upon his body because his soul is detached from the body. It is believed that the men of old were instinctively clairvoyant because they were not so closely bound up with their bodies, but this is simply not true; they were more deeply rooted in the body, they felt everything in the body itself and for this reason influences from the soul could work directly upon the body. When a particular name was uttered, a picture arose simultaneously before the soul. To-day ... well, a word may be uttered but no picture arises. In olden times a picture, definite and complete, arose before men and this picture would give them goose-flesh, cause a burst of laughter, or some other physical symptom; an immediate effect was produced in the body. Now this was made much use of in healing. But to be effective, the forces in the environment of a man must be used in the right way. That is why, when the Gospels are referring to Christ's acts of healing, we find the words: When the sun had set He gathered the sick and the suffering around Him. … “When the sun had set” — not, therefore, when the sun was shining in its full strength. If that had been the case, the words (which were addressed to the soul) would have been without effect. It was only when men came to Him in the evening twilight that the words could serve their purpose. Such things are ignored to-day but they are connected, nevertheless, with the life of man. Whether the sun is shining at the full, whether it is twilight, whether the season is spring, or autumn — all these factors have a mighty influence, And so it is, too, with other manifestations of nature. We see the life of Christ Jesus unfolding from the birth to the baptism in the Jordan and then through the three years until His death: everything drew to a climax. And the contributory factors were not the decree of the High Council alone, not the, revolution among the people alone, but also what was happening in the heavens and in the whole of nature! The Moon forces have an influence upon the human being during embryonic life which culminates in birth. Later on, the forces of the Sun and of other heavenly bodies have an influence upon him. 1 See the previous lecture. He is influenced by all the happenings of external nature. The attitude of people to-day to happenings in nature is really remarkable and is due to the fact that they never get away from their abstract thinking. It is known, for example, that after about eleven to twelve years, sunspots reappear in considerable numbers. But although it is known that a period of sunspots invariably coincides with unrest in some form on the earth, people cannot accustom themselves to take real account of the influence which plays down upon the earth from the super-earthly world and comes to expression in the sunspots. Nevertheless the influence is a reality! When it rains, human beings consciously abandon certain activities. When it is raining cats and dogs you cannot go on with gardening or work of that kind. There, you see, nature has an influence upon the conscious life of man. But upon his unconscious life, the whole surrounding universe of stars has a very great influence. Obviously, therefore, the effect of the sunlight upon man is by no means the same when the Sun is partly obscured. It cannot be said that in this way man's freedom is affected. But wherever deeper, spiritual laws come into consideration one must build on these in freedom, just as securely as a man, when he is on the first floor of a house, assumes that the floor will not develop a hole and precipitate him down to the ground floor. The laws of nature must be taken into account, also the great laws which rule outside in the universe. The deep sorrow caused in the hearts of certain men by what came to pass in Palestine at that time was accompanied by anguish in the world of nature. The anguish in human hearts and the anguish in nature were simultaneous. Just as the blood flows in the body and man's health is dependent on this blood, so do the living forces contained in the sunlight flow into the blood. Think of this. — A man dies on some particular day. Examination of his blood some two months or so before death would reveal to careful scrutiny that it is already on the way to becoming lifeless. Just as before the death of a human being the blood is gradually becoming lifeless, so — even at the time of Christ's birth — what lives in the light was already on the way to that condition of darkness which set in when the death actually took place. There was a close and intimate connection between happenings in nature and the life of Christ. And it may be said that just as Christ consciously chose twilight as the time for healing the sick, so His unconscious depths of soul chose the darkening of the Sun as the time of death. That is how one must picture these things in order to interpret them truly; their meaning can only be suggested in a delicate and intimate way for they do not lend themselves to crude explanation. Question : Have the Jews, as a people, fulfilled their mission in the evolution of humanity? Dr. Steiner : Discussion on this subject is unfortunately all too apt to lead to propagandism. But what must be said quite objectively on the subject has nothing whatever to do with propaganda in any shape or form. The way in which the development of the Jewish people proceeded in olden times was a most important preparation for the subsequent rise of Christianity. Before Christianity came into the world, the Jews had a deeply spiritual religion but, as I have told you, it was a religion which took account only of the spiritual law of nature. — If a Jew were asked: Upon what does the coming of spring depend? — he said: Upon the will of Jehovah! — Why is so-and-so an unrighteous man? — Because Jehovah wills it so! — Why does famine break out in a country? — Because Jehovah wills it! — Everything was referred to this one God. And that was why the ancient Jews did not live at peace with the peoples around them, whom they did not understand and who did not understand them. The neighbouring peoples did not worship this one and only God in the same way but recognised spiritual beings in all the phenomena of nature — a multiplicity of spiritual beings. These many spiritual beings are actually present in nature and anyone who denies their existence denies reality. To deny that there are spiritual beings in nature is just as if I were to say now that there is not a single person in this room! — If I brought in a blind man and you were not laughing loudly enough for him to hear, he might believe me. Deception in these things occurs very readily. — Friedrich Nietzsche's sight was very poor and when he was a professor in Basle only a few dilatory students came to listen to his lectures although they were extremely interesting. Nietzsche was always deeply sunk in thought as he went to the desk and proceeded to deliver his lectures. He lectured on one occasion when not a single person was present but because his sight was so bad he only noticed this when he was going out of the lecture-hall! In the same way a blind man could be made to think that a room is empty. — People disbelieve in spiritual forces and influences because they have been blinded by their education and all that happens in modern life. It is important for man to realise that he has a great deal to do with these myriad nature-spirits; but there is a power within him that is mightier than anything wrought by these nature-spirits. This is the basis of the conception of the ONE God, the Moon-God. The Jews came first to the recognition of this one God and repudiated all other spiritual beings in the phenomena of nature. They acknowledged the one God, Jahve or Jehovah. Jahve means, simply: I AM. Now this has been a very important factor in world-history. Think of it: veneration of the one and only Godhead is accompanied by the disavowal of all other spiritual beings ... Suppose two peoples are at war in spite of the fact that each of them recognises the one God; only one of the two peoples can be victorious. The victors say: Our God has given us the victory. — If the other side had gained the victory, the same would have been said. But if the same God has allowed the one people to be victorious and the other to be defeated, then this God has Himself been defeated. If Turks and Christians have the one God and both pray to this one God to bring them victory, they are asking the same God to defeat Himself. The real point is that one cannot, with truth, speak of a single Divine-Spiritual Being. In daily life, too, it is the same: somebody wants it to rain and prays for rain ... somebody else wants the sun to shine and prays for this on the selfsame day. Well ... it just doesn't make sense! If people noticed this there would be greater clarity about such matters — but they do not notice it. In the great things of life human beings often lapse into a thoughtlessness which they would not entertain in small things. Nobody, presumably, will put salt and sugar into his coffee at the same time; he will put in the one or the other, not both. Generally speaking, men are very lax about clarity of thought — and this lies at the root of the many disorders and confusions in life ... The Jews introduced what is known as Monotheism, the belief that there is but the one God. I once said to you very briefly that Christianity thinks of three Divinities: God the Father, living in all the phenomena of nature; God the Son, working in man's free spiritual activity; and God the Holy Spirit, who awakens in man the consciousness of having within him a spirituality that is independent of the body. Three distinct spheres are pictured. If there were not three spheres it would have to be assumed that by the same resolve this one God allows the human being to die and then wakens him to life again. If there are Three Divine Persons, death belongs to the sphere of one Godhead, passage through death and beyond to another, and the awakening in spirit to yet another. Christianity could not do otherwise than picture the spiritual Godhead in three Persons. (In three Persons: this is not understood to-day but the original meaning was that of threefoldness , the Divine manifesting in three forms.) Now because Judaism conceived only of this one God, it could make no image of the Godhead but could only grasp the Divine with the innermost forces of the soul, with the intellect. It is easy to understand that this led to an intensification of human egoism; for man becomes remote from what is around him if he sees the Spiritual only in and through his own person. This has produced a certain folk-egoism in the Jewish world — there is no denying that it is so; but for this very reason the Jews are by nature adapted to assimilate what is not pictorial; they have less talent for the pictorial. If a Jew becomes a sculptor, he will not achieve anything very great, because this is not where his talent lies; he does not possess the gift of pictorial representation, nor does he readily develop it. But if a Jew becomes a musician he will generally be a very fine one, because music is not a pictorial art; it does not take visual form. And so you will find great musicians among the Jews but — at the time when the arts were at their prime — hardly ever great sculptors or painters. The style in which the Jews paint is quite different from that of Christian or oriental artists. The actual colour in a picture painted by a Jew has no very great significance; what it is that is being expressed, what the painter wishes to say by means of the picture — that is the essential. Judaism is concerned above all with the non-pictorial, with bringing into the world that which transpires within the human “I.” But to maintain this adherence to the one God is not as easy as it seems, for if such adherence is not strongly forced upon them, men readily become pagans. It is among the Jews that this tendency has been least of all in evidence. Christianity, on the other hand, tends easily in the direction of paganism. If you observe closely you will find many indications of this. Think, for example, of how ceremonies are revered in Christianity. I have told you that the Monstrance actually depicts the Sun and the Moon. The meaning of this is no longer known but men unenlightened in this respect actually pray to the Monstrance, they pray to something external. Men are easily inclined to pray to something external. And so in the course of the centuries Christianity has developed many pagan characteristics, whereas in Judaism the opposite has been the case. This is most obvious of all in one particular field. Fundamentally speaking, Christians of the West — those who came from Greece, Rome and Central Germany — were almost incapable of continuing the principle of ancient medicine because they were no longer able to perceive the spiritual forces contained in the remedial herbs. But Jews who came from the East, from Persia and so forth, saw the Spiritual — that is to say their One Jehovah — everywhere. The Jews played a tremendously important part in the development of medicine in the Middle Ages; the Arabians were occupied more with developing the other sciences. And whatever medical knowledge came through the Arabians had been elaborated with the help of the Jews. That is why medicine has become what it is to-day. Medicine has, it is true, retained a certain abstract spirituality but it has assumed, so to speak, a “monotheistic” character. And if you observe medicine to-day you will find that with few, very few exceptions, all kinds of properties are ascribed to every sort of medicament! The exact effect which a particular medicament will produce is no longer known with certainty any more than Judaism knew how the myriad nature-spirits work. The abstract, Jehovah-influence has made its way into medicine and remains there to this day. Now it would be natural if the number of Jewish doctors in the different countries of Europe were proportional to the population. I am not for one moment saying — I beg you not to misunderstand me — that this should be adjusted by law. It would never occur to me to say such a thing. But in the natural course one would expect to find Jewish doctors in proportion to the number of Jews. This is certainly not the case. In most countries a relatively far greater number of Jews become doctors. This is a survival from the Middle Ages. The Jews still feel very drawn to medicine because it is in keeping with their abstract thinking. This abstract, Jehovistic medicine fits in with their whole mode of thinking. Anthroposophy alone, in that it takes account of the diverse nature-spirits, can recognise the forces of nature in the different herbs and mineral substances and so again establish this knowledge on sure foundations. 2 See: Spiritual Science and Medicine . Twenty lectures given by Rudolf Steiner to doctors and medical students. Dornach, 21st March to 9th April, 1920. Rudolf Steiner Publishing Company . The Jews worshipped the one God Jehovah and men were thereby saved from wholly losing their way in polytheism. A natural consequence has been that the Jews have always kept themselves distinct from other men and so too — as always happens in such a case — have in many respects evoked dislike and antipathy. The right attitude to take to-day is that in the times to come it will not be necessary to segregate any particular culture in order to prevent its dissipation — as the Jews have been doing for centuries — but that this practice must be superseded by spiritual knowledge . The relation between the single Godhead and the multiplicity of spiritual beings will then be intelligible to men and no one people need be under the sway of subconscious impulses. That is why from the very outset I was apprehensive when the Jews, not knowing which way to turn, founded the Zionist movement. The attempt to set up a Jewish State denotes a decidedly reactionary drift, a retrogression that leads nowhere and runs counter to progress. A very distinguished Zionist with whom I was on friendly terms once told me about his ideal in life, which was to go to Palestine and found a Jewish kingdom there. He was, and still is, taking a very active part in the attempt to bring this about and he holds an important position in Palestine. I said to him: Such a cause is not in keeping with the times; what the times demand is something with which every human being can be allied without distinction of race, nation, class and so forth — that is the only kind of cause one can whole-heartedly support to-day. Nobody can expect me to join the Zionist movement, for there again one portion of humanity is being separated off from the rest. For this quite simple, natural reason, such a movement to-day cannot prosper in the real sense of the word — it is essentially retrogressive ... The advocates of such movements often use a remarkable argument. They say: But the course of history has shown that men do not really want the “ human-universal ”; they desire everything to develop on the basis of race. The conversation of which I have just told you took place before the Great War of 1914–18. And a factor leading up to that War was men's refusal to accept the great principle of the human-universal. The fact that men set their faces against this principle and wanted to separate from one another, to develop racial forces and interests, ultimately led to the outbreak of that War. Thus the greatest disaster of this twentieth century was due to an urge that is also present in the Jews. — And so one can say: Since everything that the Jews have achieved could now be achieved consciously by all human beings, the Jews would serve their own interests best if they let themselves be absorbed into the rest of mankind, be merged in the rest of mankind, so that Judaism, as a race or people, would come to an end. That would be in the nature of an ideal — but many Jewish habits and customs, and above all the hatred meted out to them, still militate against it. These are the kind of impulses that must be overcome and they will not be overcome if everything remains the same as it has been in the past. If the Jews feel hurt when they are told, for example: you have little talent for sculpture ... they can say to themselves: It is not necessary for every race of people to be sculptors; with their own particular faculties they can achieve something in a different domain! The Jews are not naturally gifted for sculpture. One of the Ten Commandments decrees: “Thou shalt make no graven image of thy God ...” it is because the Jewish people are averse to making any picture or image of the Supersensible. Now this is bound to lead back to the personal element. It is quite easy to understand this. — If I make an image or a picture, even if it is only in the form of a description as often happens in Spiritual Science, another person may impress it on his memory, learn from it, see truth in it, think what he likes about it. But if I make no image, my own personal activity must be in operation; the thought does not separate itself from me. For this reason it has a personal character. So it is in Judaism. Men must learn to perceive the Spiritual in their fellow-men. The Jewish world is still dominated by the racial impulse. The Jews marry among themselves, among their own people; their attention is still focused upon the racial, not upon the spiritual. Therefore to the question: “Have the Jewish people fulfilled their mission in the evolution of human knowledge?” the answer is: They have fulfilled their mission, for in earlier times the existence of a people who brought a certain form of monotheism into being was a necessity. To-day, however, what is required is spiritual knowledge . The mission of the Jewish people has been fulfilled. Hence this particular mission is no longer a necessity in evolution; the only right course is for the Jews to intermix with the other peoples. Question : Why was it that the Jewish people were destined to live in exile? Dr. Steiner : It is important to bear in mind the whole character of this “exile.” The Jewish people among whom Christ died were living at that time among people of quite a different kind, namely, the Romans. And now, suppose that the Roman conquest of Palestine had been complete; suppose they had killed everybody they wanted to get rid of and turned out the rest. Suppose that already at that time the Jews had intended or felt the urge to intermix with the other peoples ... what would have happened? Well ... the Romans would have captured Palestine and a number of Jews would have been put to death; others — as one says to-day in every country — would have been expelled and would have been able to continue their existence somewhere or other outside Palestine. But the Jews had neither the intention nor the urge to intermix with the other peoples; on the contrary, wherever they were, even when there were only a few of them, they always lived among themselves. They scattered far and wide; and only because they lived exclusively among themselves, intermarried among themselves, has it been noticed that, as Jews, they constitute a foreign element. The idea of an exile would otherwise not have arisen. It was this natural urge in the Jews that gave rise to the idea of their exile. It is all part of the intrinsic character of Judaism. And posterity is now astonished that the Jews were dispersed, were obliged to live as strangers. This has happened nearly everywhere. Other peoples intermixed and so were unnoticeable. By its very nature, Judaism has held tenaciously together. In this particular connection one is obliged to say that because human beings have held together, attention has been called to things that would not, otherwise, have been noticed. It is grievous and heartbreaking to read how in the Middle Ages the Jews lived in the ghettoes, in quarters of the towns where alone they were permitted to dwell. They were not allowed to go into the other parts of the towns; the gates of the ghettoes were locked, and so forth. But these things are talked about because it was noticed that the Jews in the ghettoes clung tenaciously together, lived entirely among themselves. Other men, too, have had equally terrible things to endure, although in a different way. The Jews stayed in their ghettoes, clung together there and people knew that they were not allowed to come out of their quarters. But just think of it. — Other men who were forced to work every day from early morning until late evening could not come into the towns either, although there were no gates to keep them out. Their sufferings, too, have been great. It must be admitted, therefore, that such things are often based solely upon their outer appearance ... they are based, as are many things in world history, upon outer appearance. The time has come when these things must be penetrated by the light of reality. And here we are led to the conception that when a destiny is fulfilled it is — to use an Eastern expression — karma , it is inner destiny. The characteristics of the Jews themselves has helped to give the story of exile the form it has assumed; the Jews are a tenacious people, they have held their own in foreign lands; and that is why in later times this has been so noticeable and is talked about to this day. On the other side, the natural result of all this is that the Jews are differentiated from other peoples and they are accused of all sorts of things of which the causes are not known. Does it not happen that if, in some district where people are superstitious, a man is murdered by an unknown hand and an unpopular Jew happens to live there, the whisper goes round that at Easter-time the Jews need human blood for their rites — therefore it is they who have killed the man ... The reason why such things are said is because the Jews are differentiated from the others; but the Jews themselves have done a great deal to cause this state of affairs. In considering these matters to-day it is essential to lay stress upon the human-universal , in contrast to the racial principle. Question : What was the significance in world-history of the seventy souls of the original family of Israelites? Dr. Steiner : Peoples of diverse character have lived on the Earth since ancient times. From the present age onwards, this diversity ceases to have real meaning, for as I have said, the human-universal must become the essential principle. Nevertheless if we study the earlier phases of the evolution of mankind we find the population of the Earth divided into all kinds of different peoples. The Spiritual is a living reality in the phenomena of nature; the Spiritual is also a living reality in the peoples of the Earth. In every people there is a guiding Folk-Spirit. As I have said in my book, Theosophy , “Folk-Spirit” is not merely an abstract term. When one speaks today of the French people and the rest, what does this suggest to the materialistic thinking of to-day? It suggests an accumulation of some 42 millions of human beings in the West of Europe — a pure abstraction; the traits and qualities of the people in question are a very secondary consideration. But it really is not so! Just as the seed lives in the plant, so something seed-like exists, which lives in the spirit of a people and then unfolds. A Spirit, a real Being, lives and works in the whole people. I have told you that the mission of the Jews in human history was to spread the belief in the One Godhead, and it will be clear to you that it was necessary for them, as a people, to be prepared for this. Therefore it came about that when the Jewish people originally came into existence, the several Folk-Spirits, each of whom worked individually in a particular people, all concerned themselves with the Jewish people. Thinking of the different peoples, we say: Indians — Indian Folk-Spirit; Egyptians — Egyptian Folk-Spirit; then Greek Folk-Spirit, Roman Folk-Spirit, and so on. Each Folk-Spirit had to do with a particular people. ( Drawing on blackboard .) But if we take the Jewish people, then, in that corner of the Earth called Syria where the Jews had their home, the influences and will of all the Folk-Spirits operated in this one people. Let me try to make this clear by a simple analogy. — Imagine that each of you is in your own family circle, attending to its affairs. Each of you has a particular sphere of activity. So it was in the case of these Folk-Spirits. — But now, suppose you want to support, let us say, the cause and interests of the workers as a body: if that is so you will not remain in your own circle but you will hold a meeting and discuss among yourselves what proposal shall be put forward by you all, acting as a whole. And so we may say: In the peoples other than the Jews, each of these Folk-Spirits worked as it were in his own sphere; but what the Folk-Spirits achieved through the Jewish people was the outcome of a spiritual assembly . This influence worked with varying strength upon the members of the Jewish people. The Bible gives an indication of this when it speaks of seventy Folk-Souls entering into the people of Israel. All the Folk-Souls were in operation. This strong and potent influence has in a certain respect made the Jews into a cosmopolitan people and accounts for the tenacity that has remained characteristic of them. No matter where they might be, they were always able to gather together and preserve Judaism, simply because they had everything within them. It is very remarkable how Judaism has everything within it. In Orders or Societies of Freemasons, Oddfellows and the like, in which there is no new spiritual knowledge but an antiquated kind of knowledge they themselves no longer understand, you will find in the very words of the rites, elements deriving from all kinds of different peoples: Egyptian rites and words, Assyrian and Babylonian words and signs — but especially elements from the Jewish Kabbala and so forth. In this respect Judaism is truly cosmopolitan; it adapts itself to everything but also preserves its original impulse which is still alive within it. The same is true of the Hebrew language in which there is great richness of content, both spiritual and physical. Every Hebrew word is always full of meaning. It was a peculiarity with the Jews to write only the consonants; later on, the vowels were indicated by means of signs. The vowels themselves were not written; everybody might pronounce them in his own way, so that one man said: J-e-h-o-v-a ... another said: J-e-h-e-v-a ... a third said: J-e-h-a-v-e ... a fourth, J-o-h-a-v-e. — The vowel sounds were pronounced as they were felt. And that is why such a designation as the name “Jehova” which had been instituted by the priests in this particular form, was called the “unutterable Name” ... because it was not permissible to make arbitrary use of the vowels. The very tenacity which characterised Judaism was an indication of the way in which the several Folk-Souls worked upon this one people. When you see the Jews in different countries you will need very keen perception to be able to recognise those Jews who have really mingled with the other peoples. You know, of course, that the most important statesman of the nineteenth century was a Jew. Jews who have really merged into the other peoples are no longer distinguishable from them. In a sentence spoken by a Jew, an experienced person will at once recognise the typical Jewish style — if, that is to say, there is no imitation which is a very common practice to-day. But the Jews seldom imitate. It is noticeable that a Jew invariably takes his start from something that is inwardly fixed or registered in a concept. This is very characteristic and it is connected with that assembly of the Folk-Souls and their co-operation. To this day, when a Jew makes a statement, he believes that it must be unconditionally valid. He proceeds on the basis of individual decision. It is really very interesting! Suppose a number of people — three, four, five — are together; one is a Jew, the other four are not. The men are representatives of a community of one kind or another. (I am not telling you about an imaginary situation but one which I have actually experienced) ... In this community, people have diverse views. Now these five men, of whom only the fifth is a Jew, begin to speak. The first says: It is very difficult to bring all these people into any harmony; the only thing to do is to bring persuasion to bear upon the minority and then upon the majority so that a compromise is reached. (That, after all, is how compromises are made — by people talking among themselves.) The second man says: Yes, but I have lived among the people, who compose the minority and I know how difficult it is to persuade them! The third, a representative of the minority, says: We don't want to have anything to do with it; it just won't work! The fourth man says: After all, one has to take one side or the other. When these four have spoken the Jew begins: All this is futile! Concept of compromise: compromise consists in balance being reached among different opinions and in certain people giving way. — You see, he comes out with an abstraction: “Concept of compromise”; he does not start from any particular point, but leaving out the article, begins: Concept of compromise ... thereby demonstrating his inborn tenacity. When somebody says: What, exactly, is this concept of compromise? ... he already has a mental picture of some kind. But the Jew does not begin in this way; he says: Concept of compromise! — This is an example of the Jehovistic conception: Jehovah says ... No thought is given to how it works out in a particular instance, but what has been registered and fixed in a concept is simply laid down as a principle. That is why the Jew always thinks he can develop everything out of the concept. As long as the Jews keep tenaciously among themselves, things will naturally remain as they are; once the Jews have merged into other peoples they will lose the habit of saying: “Concept of compromise!” ... and they will have to be in line with the others. All this is connected with the way in which the Folk-Souls have worked upon them.

Star Wisdom, Moon Religion, Sun Religion

Characteristics of Judaism

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSPC1950/19240508p01.html

Dornach

8 May 1924

GA353-11

Mr Dollinger: What does the Sephiroth Tree mean to the Jewish people? Rudolf Steiner: The Jews of ancient times really put all their most sublime wisdom into this Sephiroth Tree. 66 The origins and arrangement of the Sephiroth Tree are presented somewhat differently in Cabbalistic literature than here by Rudolf Steiner. It would be fair to say that they have put into it their knowledge of man's relationship to the world. We have often said quite clearly that man is not only the part we see with our eyes but also has other, supersensible aspects. We have called these the ether body, the astral body, the I or the I-organization. People knew this instinctively in earlier times, not the way we know it today. This ancient knowledge has been lost, and today people think that something like the Jewish Tree of Life, the Sephiroth Tree, is simply fantasy. But it is not. Today we'll consider what the ancient Jews really meant with their Sephiroth Tree. You see, they saw it like this. The human being is here in this world, and the forces of the world influence him from all directions. If we look at the human being as he is here in this world [Fig. 4], we may imagine it to be like this, shown in schematic form. Let us consider the material human being in this world like this. The ancient Jews saw the forces of the world influencing him from all around. I put an arrow here that enters into the heart — the forces of the world acting on the human being; down here is the force of the earth [Fig. 5]. The ancient Jews said: In the first place, three forces act on the human head — I have shown this by the three arrows 1,2 and 3 in the drawing — three forces on the human middle, on the chest, mainly on man's breathing and the circulation of the blood [arrows 4,5 and 6]. Three more forces act on the human limbs [7,8 and 9], and a tenth acts from the earth [10, from below]. Ten forces, the ancient Hebrews thought, influence the human being from outside. Let us first of all consider the three forces that may be said to come from the most faraway parts, the most distant parts of the universe and act on the human head, really making the human head round, an image of the whole spherical universe. These three forces, 1, 2 and 3, are the most noble; using a later term, a Greek term, for example, they come from the highest heavens. They shape the human head, making it a spherical image of the whole spherical universe. Fig. 5 Now we must right away develop an idea that might upset you if I were simply to tell you what it is. For, you see, the first of these ten concepts, the one the Jews made the first and foremost in their wisdom, was later most dreadfully misused. At a later time people who managed to gain power by force drew the signs of this power and the words for this power down into the external realm of power. And individuals who gained power over nations and passed this on to their descendants laid claim to what we call a crown. In earlier times 'crown' was the word for the highest spirituality that can be given to man. And only someone who had become an initiate in the way I have told you, and had therefore gained the most sublime wisdom, was entitled to wear the crown. It was a sign of sublime wisdom. I have explained to you that medals and orders originally all had special meaning and were later worn for vanity and no longer had meaning. Above all, however, we must pay regard to this when we use the word 'crown'. To the ancients, 'crown' was the quintessence of everything that is greater than human and must come down into human beings from the world of the spirit. No wonder then that kings had themselves crowned. As you know, they were not always wise and did not always combine in them the most sublime gifts of heaven, but they wore the sign on their heads. And when such terms are used according to ancient custom we must not confuse this with the misuse that has developed. The most sublime, the greatest gifts of the universe and of the spirit that can come down to man, which he is able to unite with his head if he has great knowledge, were called kether, the crown, by the ancient Hebrews. And this human head also needed two other powers. These two other powers came to him from the right and from the left. The ancients thought that the highest came from above, with the other two forces, two cosmic forces that are present throughout the universe, coming from the right and the left. The one that came in through the right ear, as it were, was called chokmah , wisdom. If we wanted to translate the word today we would say 'wisdom'. And on the other side binah came in from the universe. We would call this intelligence today (2 and 3 in Fig. 5). The ancient Jews distinguished between wisdom and intelligence. Today any intelligent person is also thought to be wise. But that is not the case. You can be intelligent and think the most foolish things. The most foolish things are thought out in the most intelligent ways today. Thus if we look at many things in modern science we have to say that it is really intelligent in every respect, but it is definitely not wise. The ancient Jews distinguished between chokmah and binah , the wisdom and intelligence of old. The human head, and really everything that belongs to the system of the senses in us, including the nerves that spread in the sphere of the senses, was referred to by the three terms kether , chokmah and binah — crown, wisdom, intelligence. This is how the ancient Jews saw the human head being developed out of the universe. They thus were very much aware — otherwise they would not have taught this — that man is part of the whole universe. We might consider the human body, for instance, and ask what the situation is with the liver. Well, the liver has its blood vessels from the blood circulation; it has its energies from the human environment. In the same way the ancient Jews would say: Man receives the powers from the surrounding universe which then — initially in the womb and also later — bring about the development of his head. Three other powers [4, 5 and 6 in Fig. 5] act more on the middle human being, on the human being where the heart and the lungs are. They act on the middle human being, coming less from above but living more in the environment. They live in the sunlight that moves around on earth, they live in wind and weather. These three powers were called chesed , geburah and tiphereth by the ancient Jews. In present-day terms we would speak of freedom, energy and beauty. Let us above all consider the middle power, geburah . I told you I would draw the arrow so that it entered the heart. The power human beings have, the heart quality that is both power of soul and physical strength, is indicated by the human heart. The Jews saw it like this. When the breath enters into the human being, when the breath goes into the heart, it is not only physical forces coming into him from outside but also the spiritual power of geburah which is connected with the breath. So to put it more accurately we would speak of the power of life, the power which also enables him to do things = geburah . But to one side of geburah we have the power they called chesed , human freedom. And on the other side tiphereth , beauty. The human form is indeed the most beautiful thing on earth! The ancient Jews would say: Hearing the heartbeat I perceive the power of life as it enters into the human being. Putting out my right hand I perceive that I am an independent human being; as the muscles extend, the power of freedom enters. The left hand, moving more gently, able to take hold more gently, brings the element which man creates in beauty. These three powers — chesed = freedom, geburah = power of life, tiphereth = beauty — thus relate to everything connected with the breath and the blood circulation in man, everything that is in motion and always repeats itself. This also includes the movement of sleep, alternating between day and night. This, too, is an element of movement; man also relates to this. Man is however also a creature able to change his position in space, able to walk about, who does not have to stay in one place like a plant. Animals are of course also able to walk about. This is something humans have in common with animals. Animals do not have chokmah , nor tiphereth , nor as yet chesed , but they do have geburah — power of life. And human beings only have the three I have just shown in common with the animals because they have those others. The ancient Hebrews called this aspect — that we are able to walk about, that we are not tied to a place — netsah , indicating that the fixed state of the earth is overcome and we move [arrow No. 7 in Fig. 5]. Netsah is 'overcoming'. And the principle that acts more on the middle of the human being, where his centre of gravity is — it is really interesting, you know — that is a point which is about here; it is a little higher up when we are awake and moves down during sleep, which also confirms that something is outside us when we sleep — the principle that is active in the middle of the body, that is also responsible for human reproduction and therefore connected with sexuality — this the ancient Jews called hod. Today we would use a term such as 'sympathy' for this. You see, the terms are getting more human. Netsah thus means movement in the outside world — we go out into space — and hod means inner feeling, inner movement, inner sympathy with the outside world. All this is hod [arrow No. 8]. Then, under 9: jesod . This is the foundation, the basis on which the human being actually stands. There man feels himself connected with the earth. The fact that he is able to stand on the earth is the basis, is jesod . Man has such a foundation also because those powers come to him from outside. And then the forces of the earth itself act on him [arrow No. 10]. Not only forces from the outer environment act on him, but also the forces of the earth. This was called malkuth . Today we would call it the field in which the human being is active, the earthly environment. Malkuth — the field. It is difficult to find a suitable term for this malkuth . We may say realm, field. But all things have really been misused and present-day terms no longer express what the ancient Hebrew would feel: that this was where the earth actually influenced him. We only have to visualize that this would be the middle of the human being. There is a thigh bone, on both sides of the human being, and this goes down to the knee, so this would be the kneecaps [drawing]. All these forces also act on this bone; but that it is hollowed out like this, a hollow long bone, is due to the fact that the earth forces enter into it. And everything where the earth forces enter would be called malkuth , the field, by the ancient Jews. So you see we have to consider the human being if we want to speak of this Sephiroth Tree. All ten together — kether , chokmah , binah , chesed , geburah , tiphereth , netsah , hod , jesod , malkuth — were called the ten sephiroth by the ancient Hebrews. These ten forces are the actual connection between man and the higher, spiritual world, though the tenth force, malkuth , is placed within the earth. Basically, therefore, we have here the physical human being (pointing to the drawing) and around him is the spiritual human being, down below first of all as the earth forces, and then as forces that come closer to the earth but act out of the environment — netsah , hod , jesod . Spiritually the way these forces influence him is part of the human being. Then the forces that act on his blood circulation and breathing — chesed , geburah , tiphereth . And then the noblest powers to influence the human being, acting on his head system — kether , chokmah , binah . So that the Jews really saw the human being connected with the world in every direction, as I have shown here in colour [Fig. 4]. Man really is made in such a way that he also has supersensible aspects. And they saw these supersensible aspects in this way. We may now ask: What else did the Hebrews want to achieve with their ten sephiroth, apart from insight into man's relationship to the world. Every student of Judaism had to learn the ten sephiroth, not just to list them. You would be quite wrong to think that the instructions given in the ancient Jewish establishments were such that the essential aspect was the diagram I have drawn for you. Simply to answer the question as to what the Sephiroth Tree was would have taken no time at all; you could have learned that in an instant. Today people are satisfied if you ask: What is the Sephiroth Tree? 'There is this and that written in it, as I have just shown you.' But that does not relate to the human being! One simply gives ten words and all kinds of fantastic explanations of them. But in relationship to the human being it is correct the way I have told you. That was not the end of it in those schools, however, for the Jewish student who was to gain knowledge, as it was then seen, had to learn a great deal more about it. Imagine, gentlemen, you had merely been taught what the alphabet is, and if someone asked you what \(A\), \(B\), \(C\), \(D\) and so on was, you would know the letters \(A\), \(B\), \(C\), \(D\) and so on. You would have learned to give the 22 or 23 letters one after the other. One could not do much with this! If someone was only able to recite the 23 letters, he would not be able to do much with them, would he? And that is how an ancient Hebrew would have been regarded who would only have been able to say: kether , chokmah , binah , chesed , geburah , tiphereth , netsah , hod , jesod , malkuth , that is, been able to recite the ten sephiroth . Someone giving that as an answer would have seemed to the ancient Hebrews like someone able to say \(A\), \(B\), \(C\), \(D\), \(E\), \(F\), \(G\), \(H\) and so on. You have to learn more than just the alphabet, don't you? You have to learn to use the alphabet to be able to read, using the letters to read. Now just think, gentlemen, how few letters there are and how much you have read in your lives! Just think on this. Take any book, let us say Karl Marx's Capital, for instance, and look at it. There is nothing in those pages but the 22 letters; nothing else. Only the letters are written in the book. But it says a great deal in there, and this is all brought about by jumbling up the 22 letters. \(A\) sometimes comes before \(B\), then before \(M\), then \(M\) before \(A\), \(L\) before \(I\), and so on, and this creates the whole complicated content of the book. Someone who only knows the alphabet will pick up the book and perhaps say: 'It is perfectly clear to me what this book contains. It says \(A\), \(B\), \(C\), only in different order; I know everything it says in the book.' But he is unable to read the real inner content and get the meaning of the book; he does not know this. You see, you have to learn to read, using the letters such as they are. You must really be able to jumble up the letters in your head and mind in such a way that they gain meaning. And the ancient Hebrews had to learn the ten sephiroth in this way. They were their letters. You'll say: Ah, but they are words. But in earlier times letters were referred to by using words. Humanity only lost this when the letters came to Europe; it was lost in Greece. You see, something highly significant happened when Greek gave way to Roman civilization. The Greeks did not call their \(A\) 'A', but 'alpha'. Alpha really means the spiritual human being. And they did not call their \(B\) 'B' but 'beta', which is something like 'house'. Every letter thus had a name. And a Greek could not have imagined a letter to be anything else but something to which you give a name. When the transition was made from Greek to Roman civilization people no longer said alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and so on, with each name indicating what the letter meant, but they said \(A\), \(B\), \(C\), \(D\) and so on, and the whole thing became abstract. At the time when Greek civilization went into decline, becoming Roman civilization, a great cultural diarrhoea developed in Europe. The spirit was lost in a massive diarrhoea on the road from Greek to Roman civilization. And you see this is where Judaism showed particular greatness. When they wrote down their aleph, their first letter, they meant the human being. That is aleph. They knew that wherever they put this letter to be perceived in the world of the senses, whatever they brought to expression in this letter must be in accord with the nature of man. And so every letter used to give expression of the world of the senses had a name. And these names here — kether , chokmah , binah , chesed , geburah , tiphereth , netsah , hod , jesod , malkut — were the names for the letters of the spirit, for things that needed to be learned to be able to read in the world of the spirit. And so the Jews had an alphabet — aleph , beth , gimel and so on — for the outer, physical world, and they also had the other alphabet, with just ten letters, ten sephiroth , for the world of the spirit. You see, gentlemen, if I give you the names like this: kether , choktnah , binah , chesed and so on, that is like \(A\), \(B\), \(C\), \(D\) and so on. But just as we jumble up our letters, so an ancient Hebrew would have known to say: kether , chesed , binah . And if he had said kether , chesed , binah , jumbling up the sephiroth in this way, he would have said: In the world of the spirit the most sublime spiritual power uses freedom to bring about intelligence. He would have been referring to the higher spirits that do not have a physical body and among whom the most sublime power of heaven uses freedom to bring about intelligence. Or he would have said: choktnah , geburah , malkuth . That would have meant: Out of wisdom the gods create the power of life through which they have an influence on earth. He knew how to jumble up all these things just as we do letters. The students of ancient Judaism understood the science of the spirit in their own way with these ten letters of the spirit. This Sephiroth Tree was to them what the Alphabet Tree is to us with its 23 letters. Developments took a strange turn in this area, you see. In the first two centuries after the coming of Christianity people knew of all this. But when the Jews scattered over the whole world, this way of knowing things with the ten sephiroth was lost. Individual students of Judaism — you may know they were called chachamim when they became pupils of a rabbi — still learned these things; but even then people really no longer knew exactly how to read by means of these ten sephiroth. In the twelfth century, for example, a major dispute arose over two sentences. The first was ' hod , chesed , binah '. It was posited by Maimonides. 67 Maimonides, Moses (1135–1204), originally Moses Ben Maimon, Jewish philosopher bom in Spain. His opponent would maintain: chesed , kether , binah . So they did have disputes over those sentences. You have to know that they come from the Sephiroth Tree; one person would read it one way, someone else another way. But towards the Middle Ages this reading skill had really been lost. And the interesting thing is that later on, in the middle of the Middle Ages, a man appeared — Raymond Lully, a most interesting person, this Raymond Lully! 68 Lully (or Lull), Raymond (1235?–1316), Catalan philosopher. You see, gentlemen, to get to know such a person is really extraordinarily interesting. Let us imagine there is someone among you who is extremely curious. This individual would say to himself: 'I have heard Raymond Lully mentioned. I'll go and look him up!' So you first of all take an encyclopaedia, and then some books where it says something about Lully. Well, if you read what it says about Raymond Lully in books today you can split your sides laughing, for that would have been the most ridiculous person you can think of! People say: Raymond Lully wrote ten words on bits of paper and then he took the kind of thing you have for playing hazard, a kind of roulette, which you turn, jumbling things up, and he would write down what came out of this, and that was his universal wisdom. Well, if you read something like this, that words were simply written on ten bits of paper and jumbled up, and that the man wanted to discover something special in this way, you'll split your sides laughing, for that would indeed be a ridiculous person. But of course that was not the way it was with Raymond Lully. What he really said was this. You may search and study far and wide with the knowledge given by your earthly alphabet, but you'll not find the truth. And he then said: Your ordinary heads are not able to find the truth. This ordinary head is like a game of roulette where you turn and there is nothing inside, and so nothing can be selected from it that will make you win. Lully told people in his day that they had really all got hollow heads, with nothing inside them any more. And he said they would need to put ideas like the ten sephiroth into their heads; then they must learn to turn their heads from one sephira to the next until you learn to use the letters. This is what Raymond Lully told them. It is also written in his books. He merely used a picture, and the philosophers took the picture literally and thought he really meant a kind of roulette, which you turn to jumble things up, yet his roulette was meant to be supersensible perception in the head. This Tree of Life, the Sephiroth Tree, is therefore the spiritual alphabet. People who were more to the west, in Greece, had a spiritual alphabet in ancient times. And when Alexander the Great 69 Alexander the Great (356–323 BC). lived, and Aristotle, 70 Aristotle (384–322 bc). ten concepts would be given in the Greek way. You still find them in all schools of logic today: existence, quality, relationship, and so on — again ten terms, except that they were different, being more suited to the West. But in the West people understood those ten Greek letters of the spiritual alphabet just as little as those we have been speaking of. But you see, it is really an interesting development in human history. Over there in Asia, people who still had some knowledge learned to read in the world of the spirit using the Sephiroth Tree. And in the early Christian centuries people who still knew something of the world of the spirit learned to read using the Aristotelian tree of life — over in Greece, in Rome, and so on. Bit by bit, however, all of them — those of the Sephiroth Tree and those of the Aristotle tree — forgot what these things really were for, and were only able to list the ten terms. And we now simply have to use these things to learn to read in the world of the spirit, otherwise we shall gradually cease to know anything whatsoever about the human being. You see, a most interesting statement is the following. If such a Jewish sage wrote or said: geburah , netsah , hod , we would today have to translate it into the words: 'The power of life hatches out the dreams in the kidneys'. But if we were to say 'The power of life hatches out the dreams in the kidneys' today we would speak of physical forces, physical effects. Yet the Hebrew of old, saying geburah , netsah , hod , would have meant: 'The principle which is the spiritual human being in the human being is bringing about something that appears in dreams.' It always was a spiritual statement given expression by jumbling those letters. It really is true that today we can only gain insight into these things through the science of the spirit. For no one will tell you today that those ten sephiroth were such letters for the world of the spirit. You'll not hear this said anywhere else, and no one really knows this today. So that we may say that the situation is such that modern science no longer knows most of the things that people did know in the past. They have to be regained. Take just this letter here [drawing]: aleph x. What does this aleph mean in the world of the senses? Well, there stands man. Thus he stands, sending out his power. That is this line. He raises his right hand — this line — and he extends the other hand downwards — this line. So that this first letter aleph represents the human being. And every letter represented something, in Greek, too, just as this first letter represents 'man'. You see, gentlemen, people simply have no feeling any longer for the way these things hang together. The ancient Hebrews called the first letter, representing man, aleph, the Greeks called it alpha, and they meant it for the spirit that moves in man, the spiritual principle behind the human being. Now we have an old German word that is used primarily when people have particular dreams. When a spiritual human being oppresses them, this is called the Alp . People say something comes and possesses a person. Later Alp became Elp , and then elf — those spirits the elves. Man is merely a condensed elf. This word elf, deriving from Alp , may still remind you of the Greek alpha. You only need to leave off the a at the end and you have Alph, ph is the same as our f, something spiritual. Because the f has been put, one says: the aleph in man, the Alp in man. If you leave off the vowels, as is customary in Hebrew, you actually get alph — elf — for the first letter. Human beings say elf to speak of this spiritual entity. We talk about elves. Of course, people will now say that these were invented by the ancients, a product of their imagination, and that we no longer believe in them today. But the ancients would say: 'You only have to look at the human being and you have the alph, only that the alph is inside the body and is not a subtle etheric entity in man but a dense, physical one.' But people have long since forgotten how to consider the human being. You come across the funniest things, gentlemen. Just think, the following became fashionable in the second half of the nineteenth century — I am not going to say anything against it, such things may happen. There would be a table, with people sitting around it, let us say eight people. They put their hands on the table in such a way that they would touch on their outer edges, and then the table would begin to dance. They would count the number of dance steps the table took, and make words out of them, words out of letters. Those were spiritualist seances. What were these people thinking? They thought: 'Well, if we sit and think, no real insight will come; true insight must somehow come to us.' Now the truth is that people who say this might well say this of themselves, for they are usually rather thoughtless. They do not want to sit and think; they would prefer the truth to come to them from somewhere without any effort on their part. So eight of them would sit around a table, and they would let the table rap — one rap A, two raps B, then C, and so on, and make words out of this, and those would be spiritual revelations. So you see, wisdom came to them of its own accord; they did not struggle to gain it. But you see, what should one really say to such people? They wanted to gain insight into the world of the spirit; it was their honest intention to gain insight into the world of the spirit. The spirits cannot be looked at; we do not see or hear them, for they do not have bodies. Those people therefore thought they might use the table as a body, and this would make it possible to communicate in some way. By the way, the results tended to be rather general; they could be interpreted in one way or another. But we would certainly have to say to these people: 'There you sit, eight people, around the table; you want a spirit to come and make itself heard. But surely you are spirits yourselves, you who sit there! Look at yourselves and look for the spirit that is in you. Then you will be able to find a spirit that is much greater. You would not suppose that you can only be seen if you make a table rap, but by using your limbs, your voices and above all your powers of thought in a proper human way!' And it is indeed the case, we need not doubt it, that if eight people sit down around a table, the table will begin to dance, for unconscious powers act on the table. It is indeed the case, but it does not lead to anything that would not emerge in a much higher sense if people were to make an effort with their own alpha or aleph that is in them. But when Greek civilization gave way to Roman civilization humanity forgot its aleph. The first letter is A today. Well, to think that the first letter is merely A is to stand and gape. Just like that, you'll get nowhere. A wife once got tired of her husband always giving lectures based on science. He had learned a great deal and was always holding forth. This went very much against the grain with her. And one day she said to him: 'You always want to hold forth. If you want to hold something, just hold your tongue!' Yes, the content has really been lost completely. The Greeks did not think A, or alpha, without thinking of the human being. They would immediately be reminded of the human being. And they did not have a beta without thinking of a house in which the human being lives. Alpha is always the human being. They thought of something like the human being. And with beta they thought of something around the human being. So the Jewish beth and the Greek beta became the form enveloping the alpha, which is still inside as a spiritual entity. And so the body, too, would be beth, beta, and alpha would be the spirit in it. And today we speak of the 'alphabet', which to the Greeks meant 'man in his house', or also 'man in his body', in something that envelops him. Well, gentlemen, it is really very amusing. If you take an encyclopaedia today, you read the whole wisdom of humanity in the alphabet. If someone were to start with A and end with Z — you won't do that — he would have the whole wisdom. But how should this wisdom be arranged in the human being? According to the alphabet, according to what can be known about man. It is most interesting. Human beings have managed to spread all wisdom because they no longer knew that it really points to what comes from the alphabet. If we translate 'alphabet', we get, putting it a bit differently: 'human wisdom, human knowledge'. Using a Greek word this would be 'anthroposophy, wisdom of man'. And this is what every encyclopaedia says. Anthroposophy should be written in every lexicon, for it is only arranged according to the alphabet, according to human wisdom, 'man in his body'. It is very amusing. Every encyclopaedia is really a bony skeleton, where the ancient wisdom has vanished in the alphabetically arranged knowledge. All flesh and blood has gone, all muscles and nerves have dropped away. Today you consult an encyclopaedia, and in it you find only the dead skeleton of the ancient knowledge. We need a new science now that is not just a skeleton, like the encyclopaedia, but really has everything in it again of the human being — flesh and blood and so on. And that is anthroposophy! So one would really like to say all those encyclopaedias can go to the devil — although we do need them today — because they are the dead skeleton of an ancient knowledge. New science must be created. You see, gentlemen, that is something we can learn, especially also from the Sephiroth Tree if we understand it rightly. It has been very useful that Mr Dollinger asked this question, for it has taken us a bit deeper again into anthroposophy. The next time, then, at 9 o'clock on Wednesday.

From Beetroot to Buddhism

The Sephiroth Tree

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSP1999/19240510p02.html

Dornach

10 May 1924

GA353-12

Mr Burle: We've had the (200th) anniversary of Kant's birthday. 71 Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804), German idealist philosopher. 1 May I ask Dr Steiner to tell us something about Kant's teaching, what would be its opposites, and if it might today be an anthroposophical teaching? Rudolf Steiner: Well, gentlemen, if I am to answer this question you'll have to follow me a little bit into a region that is hard to understand. Mr Burle, who also asked about the theory of relativity, always asks such difficult questions! And so you may have to accept that things won't be as easy to understand today as the things I usually discuss. But you see, it is not possible to speak of Kant in a way that is easy to understand because the man himself is not easy to understand. The situation is that all the world talks about Kant today as of something that is of tremendous importance for the world, though people are not really interested in such things; they merely pretend to be. And you know that a whole number of articles have been written on this 200th anniversary, to show the world the tremendous importance Immanuel Kant had for the whole intellectual life. You see, even as a boy I would often hear my history teacher 72 Joseph Mayer, who taught German literature at the secondary school specializing in the sciences in Vienna-Neustadt. at school say: Immanuel Kant was the emperor of literary Germany! I once said king of literary Germany by mistake and he immediately corrected me, saying: the emperor of literary Germany! Well, I have studied Kant extensively and — I have described this in the story of my life 73 Steiner, R., Rudolf Steiner, an Autobiography (GA 28), tr. R. Stebbing, New York: Rudolf Steiner Publications 1977. — for a time we had a history teacher who really never did anything but read aloud from other people's books. I thought I might as well read that for myself at home. And once when he'd left the room I had a look to see what he was reading to us and got hold of a copy myself. That was much better. I had also got myself a copy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason from Reclam's Universal Library; 74 Reclam's Universalbibliothek, publishing venture of Philipp Reclam Jun., Stuttgart, producing the classics in reasonably priced paperback editions. Still exists today. Translator. this I had divided up and put between the pages of the school-book I had before me during the lessons. And so I would read Kant whilst the teacher was teaching history. I therefore also felt perfectly confident to speak about Kant, of whom people really always say when something to do with mind and spirit comes up: 'Yes, but Kant said...' Just as theologians will always say: 'Yes, but it says in the Bible...' And many of the enlightened will say: 'Yes, but Kant said...' It is now 24 years ago that I gave some lectures at which I got to know a man who always sat in the hall and slept, always heard the lectures sleeping. Sometimes, when I raised my voice a little, he would wake up, and especially also at the end. I also said something about mind and spirit at the time. Then he would wake up, jump up like a jack-in-the-box and shout: 'But Kant said!' And so it is true that people go on a great deal about Kant. Now let us consider how this man Kant really saw the world. He said, with some justification, that everything we see, we touch, in short, perceive through the senses, that is, the whole world of nature outside us, is not real but only seems to exist as phenomena. But how does it come into existence? Well, it comes into existence — this is where it gets difficult, you'll need to pay careful attention — because something he called the 'thing in itself', something unknown of which we know nothing, makes an impression on us; and it is this impression we perceive, not the thing in itself. So you see, gentlemen, if I draw this for you it is like this [drawing]. This is the human being — one could just as well do it with hearing or touch, but let us do it with seeing — and somewhere out there is the thing in itself. But we do not know anything about it; it is quite unknown. But this thing in itself makes an impression on the eye. One still knows nothing about it, but an impression is made on the eye. And in there, in the human being, a phenomenon arises, and we puff this up and make the whole world out of it [pointing to the drawing]. We know nothing of the red thing, only of the phenomenon we now have — I'll draw this in violet. And so the whole world is really, according to Kant, made by man. You see a tree. You do not know anything about the tree in itself; the tree merely makes an impression on you. This means something unknown makes an impression on you and you make it into a tree, putting the tree there in your sensory perceptions. Consider therefore, gentlemen. Here is a chair, a seat — a thing in itself. We do not know what it really is; but this thing which is there makes an impression on me. And I actually put the chair there. So if I sit down on a chair I do not know what kind of thing I am sitting on. The thing in itself, the item I sit on, is something I myself have put there. You see, Kant speaks of the limits of human knowledge in such a way that one can never know what the thing in itself is, for everything is really only a man-made world. It is extremely difficult to make this clear in any real way. And when people ask one about Kant it is indeed true that to really describe him, characterize him, one has to say very strange things. For looking at the true Kant it is really difficult to believe someone who says it is like that. But the thing is that Kant insists, on the basis of theory, of his thoughts: No one knows about the thing in itself, and the whole world is merely made of the impression we have of things. I once said that if we do not know what the thing is in itself, it may be all kinds of things; it could for instance be made of pinheads. And that is how it is with Kant. It is fair to say that according to him, the thing in itself may be made of anything. But now there is something else. If we stop at this theory, then all of you here, as I see you, are merely something that presents itself to me; I have put you all on these chairs, and I do not know what lies behind each of you as a thing in itself. And again, as I stand here, you, too, do not know what kind of thing in itself that is, but see a phenomenon which you put there yourselves. And anything I say is something you yourselves create by hearing it. So none of you know what I am really doing here — the thing in itself, what it really does. But this thing makes an impression on you. You project the impression to this point; and basically you are listening to something you produce yourselves. Now if we take this particular example, then, speaking in Kantian terms, we might say something like this: You are sitting out there for your morning break and say: 'Right, let's go into the hall and hear one thing or another for an hour. We cannot know what this thing in itself is that we hear; but we'll use our eyes to put that man Steiner there so that — at least for an hour — we have this phenomenon, and then we'll put the things we want to hear there so that they may be heard.' This, in the first place, is what Kant says when he insists that one can never know the thing in itself. You see, one of Kant's successors, Schopenhauer, 75 Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860), German philosopher. found this so clear that he said: 'You simply cannot doubt it!' He said it was quite definite that if he saw blue, it was not that something out there was blue but that the blue was created by him when a thing in itself made an impression on him. And when he heard someone complaining of pain out there, the pain and the complaining did not come from him but from Schopenhauer himself! This, he said, was really perfectly clear. And when people close their eyes and go to sleep, the whole world is dark and silent; then there is nothing there for them. Now, gentlemen, according to this theory it will be the simplest thing to create the world and put it aside again. You go to sleep, the world has gone; you wake up again and you have once again made the whole world — at least the world you see. Apart from this there is only the thing in itself, of which you know nothing. Yes, Schopenhauer found this perfectly clear. But he did feel a bit funny. He was not quite comfortable with the thesis. He therefore said: 'There is at least something out there — blue and red, and all the cold and heat are not out there; if I feel cold I produce the cold myself. But what is out there is the will. Will lives in everything. And the will is a completely independent demonic power. But it lives in all things.' So he put a little something into 'the thing in itself. Everything we see before our mind's eye was to him also mere phenomenon, something we produce ourselves. But he did at least furnish the thing in itself with the will. There have been many people, and there are many people to this day, who do not really consider the consequences of Kant's theories. I once knew a person who was really full of Kant's teaching — which is what one should be if one has a dogma. This man said to himself: T have actually made everything myself — mountains, clouds, stars, everything altogether, and I have also created humanity; I have made everything there is in the world. But now I don't like it. I want to get rid of it.' And he then said he started to kill a few people — he was demented; he said he started to kill a few people in order to manage this, to get rid of something he himself had created. I told him he should think about the difference which exists. He had a pair of boots; according to Kant's teaching he had made them, too. But he should consider what the shoemaker had done, apart from what he himself created as a phenomenon relating to his boots. You see, that's how it is. The greatest nonsense may be found in things that are most highly regarded in the world. And people will cling to the worst kind of nonsense with the greatest possible stubbornness. And oddly enough it is exactly the most enlightened who cling to it. These things which I have put to you in a few words, difficult enough to understand as it is, have to be found by reading many books if one reads Kant. For he teased it apart in long, long theories. He started his book Critique of Pure Reason , as he called it, for example, by first of all proving that space is not out there in the world; I make it myself, I spin it for myself. In the first place, therefore, space is a phenomenon. Secondly, time is also a phenomenon. For he said: There was a man called Aristotle once, but I myself have put him into time, for I create the whole of time myself. He wrote this major work called Critique of Pure Reason . It does make quite an impression. So if a real philistine, a smug middle-class person, comes along and picks up a big volume called Critique of Pure Reason , he'll lick his chops, for this is something terribly clever, Critique of Pure Reason; if you read something like this you'll yourself be a kind of Lord God here on earth! The introduction is followed by Part 1: Transcendental aesthetics. Well, now, that's what it says: Transcendental aesthetics. If someone opens my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity the chapter heading might be no more than 'Man and world'. 76 Steiner, R., The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. A Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4), tr. R. Stebbing, London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1989. Oh, man and world, that is so common, one does not bother to read it. But transcendental aesthetics! When a philistine opens such a book, then this is something that must be really tremendous. As to what transcendental aesthetics may be, this is something he does not usually consider; but that suits him fine. It is a word he really has to get his tongue round. So that is the main title. Now comes the subtitle. Section one. Transcendental deduction of space. You can't think of anything better for a philistine but to have such a chapter. And it then starts in such a way that he does not really understand any of it. But everyone has been calling Kant a great man for more than a hundred years, and reading the book our philistine gets a little bit of something, and a little bit of a delusion of grandeur. Now comes the second section: Transcendental deduction of time. Having battled through the transcendental deduction of space and of time one comes to the second major part: transcendental analysis. And transcendental analysis mainly offers proof that man has transcendental apperception. Well, gentlemen, the question has been asked, and so I must tell you these things, this business of transcendental apperception. You have to read hundreds of pages to take in the learned statements concocted in this chapter on transcendental apperception. Transcendental apperception means that a person develops ideas and that these ideas have a certain coherence. So if everything is merely idea, the whole world, then it must be that the whole world is a tissue created out of the nothingness of one's own nature by means of transcendental apperception. Yes, that is more or less the way this is put in those books. We now realize that in his chapter on transcendental apperception Kant creates the whole world, with all its trees, clouds, stars, and so on, out of himself. But in reality he is creating a tissue that one keeps battling with in the whole of this vast chapter which in reality offers the same ideas, only translated into the thinking of a later age, as I wrote into the Sephiroth Tree for you the other day, though only as a mere alphabet, not in a way that enables one to read, to know something. What is more, it was something very real in the past. But Kant makes a tissue where he says: 'The world thus is 1) quantity, 2) quality, 3) relation, 4) modality.' Each of these concepts has three subsumptions; quantity for example has unity, multiplicity, totality. Quality has reality, negation, limitation, and so on. Those were twelve subsumptions, 3 times 4 being 12, and you can create the whole world with them. Good old Kant did not in fact create the world with them; he only thought up twelve terms with his transcendental apperception. He thus only created twelve concepts and not the world. Now if there were anything in this, we should get somewhere with it. But the philistines do not notice that nothing comes of it, only twelve concepts. They go about with full stomachs and Kantian philosophy and say: Nothing can be understood! Well, we can understand this in the case of philistines who like being told that the lack of understanding is not theirs but is due to the whole world. You are right to think you know nothing; but this is not because you are incapable but because the whole world is unable to know anything. And so you get these twelve concepts. That is transcendental analysis. Now we come to the really difficult chapters. First a big chapter with the title: About transcendental paralogisms. And that is how it goes on. You get title after title in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason . He wrote that some people say space is infinite. He proves it the way people prove things who are able to see that space is infinite. But there are others who say that space is finite. This is also proved, the way people do prove it. You therefore find the following in the Critique of Pure Reason — in the later chapters it always presents two opposite aspects. On the one hand it is shown that space is infinite, on the other that it is finite. Then you get proof that time is infinite, is eternity, followed by proof that time had a beginning and will have an end. And that is the way Kant did it, gentlemen. Then he gave proof that man is free, and again that he is unfree. What did Kant want to say by giving proof of two opposite statements? He wanted to say that we actually cannot prove anything! We may just as well say space is infinite or finite; time goes on for ever or time will come to an end. In the same way we may say man is free or he is unfree. It all goes to show that in modern times we have to say: Think about things whichever way you want; you'll not find the truth, for it is all the same for you human beings. One is also shown how to think in this way, taught transcendental methodology. And so one can first of all go through one of Kant's books. We may ask ourselves why Kant went to all that trouble. And we then discover what he really intended. You see, until Kant came, people who were philosophers may not have known much, but they did at least say that some things can be known about the world. On the other hand there was the thinking that had come from medieval times — I have shown you how ancient knowledge was lost in the Middle Ages — that one can only know something of things perceived by the senses and nothing of the things of the spirit. This was something that had to be believed. And so the idea came up through the Middle Ages and up to Kant's time that you cannot know anything about the spirit; things of the spirit can only be believed. The Churches do of course do very well out of this dogma that one cannot know anything of the spirit, for this makes it possible for them to dictate what people should believe about things of the spirit. Now, as I said, there were philosophers — Leibniz, 77 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646–1716), German philosopher and mathematician. Wolff, 78 Wolff, Christian (1679–1754), German mathematician and philosopher who made the work of Leibniz popular. and so on — who said, until Kant came, that it is possible to know something, from mere common sense or reason, about the spiritual aspects of the world. Kant said it was nonsense to believe that it was possible to know anything about the spirit, and that things of the spirit were a matter of belief. For the spiritual aspect lies in the 'thing in itself'. And you cannot know anything of the 'thing in itself'. One therefore has to believe when it comes to matters of the spirit. Kant actually betrayed himself when he wrote the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason . This second edition contains a curious statement: 'I had to let knowledge go to make room for faith.' That is indeed a confession, gentlemen. It is the thing which led to the unknown thing in itself. It is because of this that Kant called his book Critique of Pure Reason . Reason itself was to be criticized for not knowing anything. And in this statement 'I had to let knowledge go to make room for faith' lies the truth of Kant's philosophy. And that leaves the door open to all faith and belief. And Kant might indeed have referred to all positive religion. But people who do not want to know anything may also refer to Kant, saying: 'Why do we not know anything? Because one cannot know anything.' So you see, Kant's teaching has really come to support belief. It was quite natural in the light of this that I myself had to reject Kant's teaching from the very beginning. I may have read the whole of Kant as a schoolboy, but I always had to reject his teaching, for the simple reason that one would then have had to stick with the belief people had concerning the world of the spirit, and there could never have been any real knowledge of the spirit. Kant was therefore the man who excluded knowledge of the spirit more than anyone, only accepting some degree of belief. Kant thus wrote this first book called Critique of Pure Reason . It was shown in this book that one knows nothing of the thing in itself; one can only have belief in what the 'thing in itself' is. He then wrote a second book called Critique of Practical Reason , and a third called Critique of Judgement , but that was less important. Critique of Practical Reason , then, was his second book. There he evolved his own belief. So he wrote firstly a book of knowledge: Critique of Pure Reason , where he showed that one cannot know anything. The philistine can now put it aside, for he has been given proof that one cannot know anything. Then Kant wrote his Critique of Practical Reason , in which he developed his faith. How did he develop his faith? He said: Looking at himself in the world, man is an imperfect creature; but it is not really human to be so imperfect. So there must be a greater perfection of human nature somewhere. We do not know anything about it, but let us believe that greater perfection exists somewhere in this world; let us believe in immortality. Well, you see, gentlemen, this is a big difference from what I tell you about the aspect of man that continues after death, based on knowledge. Kant did not want such knowledge; he simply wanted to prove that humanity should believe in immortality because of man's imperfection. He then proved in the same way that one should only believe, being unable to know anything about freedom, that man is free; for if he were not free, he would not be responsible for his actions. One therefore believes him to be free in order that he may be responsible for his actions. Kant's teaching about freedom has often reminded me of the statement with which a professor of law always started his lectures. He would say: 'Gentlemen, there are people who say man is not free. But, gentlemen, if man were not free, he would not be responsible for his actions, and then there could also be no punishment. If there is no punishment, you also cannot have penology, which is in fact the subject on which I speak, and then you also would not have me. But I am here, and therefore penology exists, hence also a penal system, hence also freedom. I have thus proved to you that freedom exists.' The things Kant said about freedom remind me very much of those words spoken by the professor. And Kant would also speak of God in this way. He would say: We cannot know anything of any power as such. But I am unable to make an elephant. I believe therefore that someone else can make it who is better able to do so than I am. I thus believe in a God. In his second book, Critique of Practical Reason , Kant said that as human beings we should believe in God, freedom and immortality. We cannot know anything about these but we should believe in them. Now just think how inhuman this really is. First, proof is given that knowledge is really nothing, and secondly it is said that one should believe in God, of whom one can know nothing, in freedom and immortality. Essentially, therefore, Kant was the greatest reactionary. People create apt terms. They have called him 'the crusher'. Yes, he crushed all knowledge, but only the way one crushes a plaything. For the world was still there! And with this he really gave quite considerable support to faith and belief. This continued for the whole of the nineteenth century and right into the present century, and today people everywhere are referring to the 200th anniversary of Kant. In reality Kant is the perfect example of how little people really think. For what I have just told you has been Kant's teaching in its pure form. But the things people say — that Kant was the greatest of all philosophers, that he cannot be refuted, and so on — well, you see, if we take this example we really see that it is indeed Kant to whom the opponents of spiritual science can always refer. Simply because they are then able to say to themselves: Yes, we do not base ourselves on religion but on the most enlightened of all philosophers. But it is indeed true that the most dogmatic of religion teachers may base himself on Kant just as much as some enlightened individual. Kant also wrote other works, in one of which he more or less considered how metaphysics may be a science in the future. 79 Kant, I., Prolegomena , tr. by P.G. Lucas in 1953. Here he was really proving once again that it is impossible, and so on. We really have to say that the whole of nineteenth-century science sickened because of Kant; basically Kant was a sickness of science. So the right way to take Kant is as an example of the nonsense sometimes produced by human minds. But you will then also say to yourselves: One really has to watch out when it comes to gaining insight, for the world is terribly keen to produce the greatest possible nonsense exactly when it comes to gaining insight. And you can imagine the difficult position one is in as a representative of spiritual science. Not only does one have the representatives of the religions against one but also those other people, all the philosophers and people who have caught their ideas, and so on. Every philistine comes along and says: You say this about the world of the spirit; Kant has proved — so they say — that one cannot know anything about it. That is really the best general objection anyone can raise. A person can say: I don't want to hear anything of what that man Steiner says, for Kant has proved that one cannot know anything about these things. Does this satisfy you? Mr Burle said he had mainly wanted to hear what Kant had said. As Dr Steiner said, you hear a lot about Kant but nothing positive. It did, however, take quite some effort to understand it. Rudolf Steiner: There were consequences. In 1869 someone who had taken up Kant's ideas published The Philosophy of the Unconscious, a book that caused a sensation. And Eduard von Hartmann 80 von Hartmann, Karl Robert Eduard (1842–1906). His Philosophic des Unbewussten (1869) was translated into English by Coupland, with a new edition in 1931. was a very intelligent man. If he had lived before Kant, if Kant had not had such an influence on him, he would probably have done much better. But he could not overcome this enormous prejudice, which came from Kant. Like Schopenhauer before him, Eduard von Hartmann realized that one does not know anything of the world except for one's own ideas of it, something one puts out there oneself. But he also took up Schopenhauer's idea that the thing in itself must be furnished with will. So now we have the will everywhere inside it. I once wrote an article on Eduard von Hartmann in which I also mentioned Schopenhauer. 81 'Eduard von Hartmann, his teaching and significance' first published (in German) in the monthly Deutsche Worte (Vienna), vol. XI, No. 1 (Jan. 1891) and reprinted in GA 30. Schopenhauer said that one knows nothing of the thing in itself; one only has ideas of it. Ideas are clever, the will is dumb. So that really all one knows by oneself is no more than dumb will. In the article in which I mentioned Schopenhauer I wrote: 'According to Schopenhauer everything that is intelligent in the world is the work of man; for man brings everything into the world; and behind it lies the dumb will. The world is thus the dumbness of the Godhead.' But this was impounded at the time. It was to have been published in Austria. The thing is like this. Eduard von Hartmann had assumed that the thing in itself had to be furnished with the will; but the will is really dumb, and this is why things are so bad in the world. He therefore became a pessimist, as one says. He held the view that the world was not good, but essentially bad, very bad. And not only what people did but everything there was in the world was bad. He said: 'You can work it out that the world is bad. Just put on one side of the balance sheet, the debit side, everything one has in life by way of good fortune, pleasure and so on, and on the other side everything you have by way of suffering and so on. It is always more on the other side and the balance is always in the negative. Therefore the whole world is bad.' This is why Hartmann became a pessimist. But you see in the first place Eduard von Hartmann was an intelligent man and secondly he was someone who also drew the consequences. He said: 'Why do people go on living? Why don't they rather kill themselves? If everything is bad, it would be much wiser to fix a day when the whole of humanity commits suicide. Then everything that is created there would be gone.' But Eduard von Hartmann also said: 'No, one will never be able to do this, to fix a day for general human suicide. And even if we did — humans have evolved from animals; the animals would never kill themselves; and then human beings would again evolve from animals! So we'll not be able to do it this way.' He then thought of something else. He said to himself: 'If one really wants to eradicate everything that exists as earthly world, one cannot do it by means of human suicide but has to thoroughly eradicate the whole earth. We do not yet have the machines for this today; but people have invented all kinds of machines so far; all wisdom must therefore be directed towards inventing a machine that enables one to drill deep enough into the earth and which will then blow the earth up, using dynamite or the like, so that the fragments fly out into the world and turn to dust. Then the right goal will have been achieved.' This is no joke, gentlemen! It is a fact that Eduard von Hartmann said a machine should be invented to blow up the whole earth, reducing it to dust and rubble. 82 In the work referred to in note 93, vol. 2: Metaphysics of the unconscious, chapter 14: The goal of the world process and the significance of the conscious mind (numerous editions!). Comment: In America they want to build cannon to shoot down the moon! Rudolf Steiner: But what I have told you was genuine philosophical teaching in the nineteenth century. Now you'll say: There was such an intelligent man — but how can this be? He must have been dumb, stupid, the man who said this. No, indeed, Eduard von Hartmann was not stupid but more intelligent than anyone else. I'll prove this to you in a minute. But it was exactly because he was more intelligent than the teaching that originated with Kant that this stupid notion of the machine arose which might be used to throw the world into nothingness. This was seriously put forward by a highly intelligent man who had been thoroughly thrown off course by Kant. So he wrote this Philosophy of the Unconscious . In it he said: 'Yes, it is true that human beings have evolved from animals, but spiritual powers played a role in this. These spiritual powers are powers of will, which means they are not intelligent but dumb.' And he put this very intelligently, and in this way contradicted Darwinism. So at that time — in the 1860s — there was this intelligent work by Hartmann, Philosophy of the Unconscious , and there was Darwinism, supported by Haeckel, 83 Haeckel, Ernst (1834–1919), German philosopher and naturalist. Oscar Schmidt 84 Schmidt, Oscar (1823–86), German zoologist, student of Haeckel. and others, which was the cleverest thing there was in the eyes of other people. The Philosophy of the Unconscious contradicted it, however. So all those stubborn Darwinists came and said: 'This Eduard von Hartmann needs to be thoroughly refuted; he does not know anything about science.' And what did Hartmann do? What he did at that time is evident from the following. When the others had done shouting — on paper, in print, of course — a book appeared that had the title 'The Unconscious from the Point of View of Darwinism'. 85 Das Unbewusste vom Standpunkte der Physiologic und Deszendenztheorie. Eine kritische Beleuchtung des naturphilosophischen Teils der Philosophic des Unbewussten aus naturwissenschaftlichen Gesichtspunkten , Berlin 1872. It was not known who had written it, however. Well, gentlemen, this pleased the scientists no end, for it said things that thoroughly refuted Eduard von Hartmann. Even Haeckel said: 'The individual who has written this book against Hartmann should make himself known to us, and we consider him to be one of us, a naturalist of the first order!' And indeed, the book sold out quickly and a second edition appeared. 86 Das Unbewusste vom Standpunkte der Physiologic und Deszendenztheorie , 2. verm. Aufl. der 1872 anonym erschienenen Schrift nebst einem Anhang: 'Oscar Schmidts Kritik der naturwissenschaftlichen Grundlagen der Philosophic des Unbewussten', Berlin 1877. This time the author gave his name — it was Eduard von Hartmann himself! He had written against himself. Then they stopped praising him. The matter did not become widely known. He thus proved that he was cleverer than all the rest. But you see, the news given to people never says anything about these things. It is, however, a piece of academic history that should be told. You can see that Eduard von Hartmann was someone who had been led astray by Kant but was highly intelligent. Now when I tell you he wanted to blow up the world with a huge machine that was to be invented — you may well say that this man Eduard von Hartmann may have been terribly intelligent, but to us, who have not yet studied Kant, it nevertheless seems a dumb thing. And you may well think that however intelligent I told you von Hartmann was, he was nevertheless stupid. You may easily think so. But then you must also tell this last bit, and see that the others were even more stupid. I'll leave it at that, if you like. But it is perfectly possible to provide historical evidence that the others were even more stupid than the person who proved that the earth should be blown apart. It is important to know such things; for today we still have this strange adulation of anything that appears in print. And since Kant has been published by Reclam — it was only because of this that I was able to read him then, otherwise I could not have afforded it at the time; but it was cheap, even though they were thick volumes — since then the fat is in the fire worse than ever where Kant is concerned, for everyone is reading him. I mean, they read the first page, but they do not understand any of it. They then hear that Kant is 'the emperor of literary Germany' and think: Wow, we know something of his work, and so we are clever people, too! And most of them are prepared to admit: 'I clearly must say I understand Kant, or other people will say I am stupid if I don't understand Kant.' In reality people do not understand any of it, but they won't admit it; they say: 'I have to understand Kant, for he is very clever. So when I say I understand Kant I am saying I understand something very clever and people will be impressed.' In truth, gentlemen, it has been difficult to present this matter in a more popular form, but I am glad the question was asked, for we can see from it what goes on in academic life, as it is called, and how careful one really has to be when such things influence one, even going so far that now there is a lot of brouhaha in the papers about the 200th anniversary of Kant's birth. I am not saying that Kant should not be celebrated — others are also celebrated — but the truth of the matter is the way I have shown you. We'll continue at 9 o'clock next Saturday.

From Beetroot to Buddhism

Kant, Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSP1999/19240514p02.html

Dornach

14 May 1924

GA353-13

Mr Erbsmehl: What do the comets mean that appear from time to time? And how is the zodiac different from other stars? Rudolf Steiner: This question can help us to gain some understanding of astronomy. You are attending lectures on astronomy, and it may be quite a good thing to discuss this particular issue from a particular point of view. Looking at the starry heavens [drawing], we see the moon as the largest star, which is also closest to us. The moon's influence on human beings on earth is therefore also most easily apparent. And you'll no doubt have heard people say how the moon stimulates people's imagination. This is something everyone knows. But I have told you of other influences the moon has, on reproduction, too, and so on. Then we see other heavenly bodies that behave in a similar way to the moon. The moon moves — you can see it move — and other stars, which are similar to it, also move. These stars, which also move, we call wandering stars or planets. Now the sun also appears to move. And it does indeed move. But relative to our earth it does not move. It is always at about the same distance and it does not orbit the earth. The sun is therefore called a fixed star. And all other stars, except for those that clearly change their position, are also fixed stars. Looking at the starry heavens we see more or less what we see when we look at them every night — especially on moonlit nights. But there are changes in the heavens. During certain weeks in summer in particular you can see one star after the other — seemingly — moving swiftly across the sky and disappearing: falling stars. They also appear in the sky on other occasions, but are particularly visible in some weeks during the summer when swarms of such small stars light up, pass rapidly across the sky and vanish. Apart from them there are the stars to which Mr Erbsmehl referred in his question — the comets. These comets appear less often; they also differ from other stars in their form. Their shape is something like this [drawing]. They have a kind of nucleus and then a tail which follows behind. Sometimes they also appear to have two such tails behind them. If we look at the other stars that move we find their movements to be fairly regular, and we always know that they appear at certain times and at other times are beneath the earth and do not appear. But with these stars, the comets, one sees them coming and going without really ever knowing where they are going. Their movements are therefore irregular, as it were, among the other stars. Now these comets have always been regarded as something different from other stars by people, and they have played a big role above all among superstitious people. These superstitious people thought that the appearance of a comet signalled disaster. This should not surprise us, for anything that is irregular causes amazement and surprise. We need not take it too seriously, for people will also consider it to mean something special when objects that normally behave in one way behave differently. If you drop a knife, for example, it will not normally stick in the ground but fall flat. This does not signify anything, for we are used to it. But if the knife sticks in the ground, superstitious people will think this means something. When the moon appears it is something people are used to and it does not mean anything special. But when such a star appears, and what is more, has a special shape, well, then it does mean something special! So there's no need to get excited when superstitious people think things mean something. We have to consider the matter in a scientific way. And above all the following is true. In times not that long ago, people went by what they saw in the heavens, and said the earth was the centre of the world — I am merely telling you how people saw it — and that the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun and so on moved around the earth, and that the whole of the starry heavens — as one also can see now, every star rises and sets 87 Except for circumpolar stars. — was moving. So you see the starry heavens in motion. If you stay outside long enough you'd see the so-called fixed stars move across the sky. People took it the way they saw it in earlier times. Now, as you know, Copernicus came along in the fifteenth, sixteenth century and said: 'No such thing! The earth is not the centre. The sun is the centre, and Mercury, Venus, earth and so on move around the sun.' [drawing] So the earth itself became a planet. A completely different system, a new way of looking at space, came up. And like the sun, so the other fixed stars were now said to be stationary. Their movements would thus only be apparent movements. You see, gentlemen, the matter is like this. I spoke of this before, when Mr Burle asked about the theory of relativity, wanting to know if those theories were correct and also some other things that were said. Another theory was established by a man called Tycho Brahe, 88 Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), Danish astronomer. for instance. He said: 'Yes, the sun is standing still, but the earth is also standing still,' and so on. So there were also other systems. But we'll look at these two, the old one, mainly based on Ptolemy, 89 Ptolemy or Claudius Ptolemaeus (c. ad 87-165), Egyptian geographer, mathematician and astronomer. the Ptolemaic system, and then the Copernican system, which goes back to Copernicus. So there we have two systems of the universe. Each is right in some way. Above all we cannot tell, if we go into these things in detail, if the one is right or the other. The thing is this, gentlemen. I told you before that some people cannot say, when I drive a car from the Villa Hansi up to the Goetheanum, if the car is moving or the Goetheanum is coming to meet it. Well, it is certainly something you cannot tell by just looking, but only by the fact that the car gets worn, the car uses up petrol, and the Goetheanum does not. You can tell the difference by things that are internal. In the same way you can tell, if you walk to Basel, if Basel is coming towards you or you are going there because you get tired. So it is internal things that tell the difference. This is only to show you that really every system of the universe is such that in one respect it may be correct and in another it may be wrong. You cannot tell with absolute certainty. That is how it is. You really cannot say which system of the universe is completely right and which is completely wrong. Ah, you'll say, these things are worked out by calculations! Well, you see, those calculations are made, but the calculations that are made are never entirely correct. If you calculate the rate at which a star moves, for example, you'll know that after a certain time it must be in a particular position in the heavens. So you work out where a star should be at a given time, and you turn your telescope in that direction — now it should appear in the telescope. Often it does not, and then the formula has to be corrected; and so one finds that one's calculations are never quite right. The thing with the universe is that none of our calculations are ever exactly right. Why is that? Imagine you know someone quite well. You'll say to yourself that if he promises something you can definitely rely on it. Let us assume you know someone pretty well. He has promised to be in a particular place at 5 in the afternoon on the 20th of May. You will also be there. You'll be quite sure he'll be there, because you know him. But it may happen after all that he does not turn up. And that is how it is with the system of the universe. Looking at minor things one may say: You can rely on it that things will happen the way you know they will. So if I make a fire in a stove, it will, according to the laws of nature, bring warmth to the room. It is not very probable that a fire will not make a room warm. But this is no longer so, gentlemen, when we get to large-scale events in the universe. The matter then becomes as certain as it is with an individual person, and it also becomes as uncertain as it is with an individual person. So that everything one calculates always has a flaw in it somewhere. And where does this flaw come from? The flaw is not only because these solar systems do not exist on their own. Let us assume the person saw something he really liked as he was on his way to meet you. He was held up. If these planetary systems were such that nothing could happen with them but what sun, moon and stars are doing, we would also be able to calculate them. We would know exactly where a star will be at a particular time, to the thousandth of a second, for calculations can be extremely accurate. But, as I said, there is a flaw. This is simply due to the fact that these systems are not permitted to be entirely free and easy amongst themselves in the universe, for the comets come in, passing right through. And with these comets coming in from the universe, the universe is giving the planetary system something that is rather like what we are given when we eat. The comet is a kind of food for the planetary systems! And it is like this. When such a comet comes in, small changes occur in the movements, and so one never gets an entirely regular movement. So that is the situation, gentlemen. The comets bring irregularity into the state of motion or of rest in our whole planetary system. Now as to the comets themselves. You see, people will say: 'Yes, such a comet, it comes from so far away that you do not see it at first; you begin to see it when it comes closer to the solar system [drawing]. So there you see it. Now it moves on; you still see it, then you see it a little, and then it vanishes.' So what are people saying? They are saying: 'Well that is above the earth, and one can see it. But then the comet moves over there, becomes invisible, and comes back again there after a number of years.' That is what they say. If I draw the solar system for you, we have here the sun; here the planets. People imagine that the comet comes from far away, from beyond the solar system, and enters the sphere of the sun; and there you no longer see it, when it is down below. There it comes back again. So they imagine the planets move in short ellipses, and the comet in a tremendously long ellipse. And when it comes and we have it above us, so that one can look up, it is visible; otherwise it is invisible and then comes back again. Halley's comet, called after the man who discovered it, 90 Halley, Edmund (1656–1742), English astronomer. appears every 76 years. Now, gentlemen, this is something where the science of the spirit cannot agree, because of observations made in it For it is not true that the comet moves like this. The real truth is that the comet only comes into existence here, and it sunders matter together 91 This is the phrase Rudolf Steiner used. Translator. from the universe; matter from the universe gathers. There it comes into existence [pointing to the drawing], moves on like this, and here it vanishes again, dissolving. This line [ellipse] here, actually does not exist. So we are dealing with a structure that develops some distance away and passes out of existence again at some distance. So what is really going on here? Now one gets to the point where one says: It is not true that the sun is standing still. It is standing still in relation to the earth, but it moves at tremendous speed in relation to space. The whole planetary system is rushing through cosmic space, moving forward. The sun is moving towards the constellation of Hercules. Now you may ask how people know that the sun is moving towards Hercules. You know that if you go down an avenue and stand at one end, the trees near you seem further apart, and then they come closer and closer. You know, if you look down an avenue, the trees seem to be closer and closer together; but when you walk in this direction it seems as if they move apart. The distance you see between trees keeps growing. Now imagine this here is Hercules [Drawing], the stars in that constellation are at some distance from one another. If our solar system were standing still, those distances would always be the same. But if the sun were moving towards it, the stars in Hercules would grow bigger and bigger and would appear to move apart. And this is what they actually do! It has been observed through the centuries that the distances in Hercules are getting bigger and bigger. This shows that the sun is truly moving in the direction of Hercules. And just as it is possible to calculate things here, using ranging instruments, how close we are when walking past and how fast we are walking — when someone walks faster, the distance increases faster than it does for someone else — so it is possible to calculate how the sun moves. The calculations are always very accurately done. Our whole planetary system is thus rushing towards the constellation of Hercules. This rushing pace affects the planetary system just as work does you. Working, you lose some of your substance and need to replace it. And as the planetary system rushes through cosmic space it is also all the time losing some of its substance. This needs to be replaced. So you have the comets moving around. They gather the substance, and it is captured again as the comet passes through the planetary system. Comets thus replace substance for which the planetary system no longer has any use and which it has eliminated. But the comets also cause irregularities as they enter into the planetary system, so that it is in fact not possible to calculate the movements. This also shows that if you go far enough, things come alive for you in cosmic space. Such a planetary system is really a form of life; it needs to eat. And the comets are eaten! What do these comets essentially consist of? The most important substance they contain is carbon and nitrogen, which is indeed something needed in the planetary system and has to come from the heavens. We need nitrogen in the air, and it has to be renewed all the time; we need carbon because all plants need it. And so the earth does truly get its substances from the universe. They are always replaced. But there's more to this. You know that when you have a meal you eat things that are still quite large when they are on your plate. You reduce them in size by biting. First of all you cut them up. And you have to do this, for if it were possible for you to swallow a goose whole, this would not be good for you! You need to cut it up. You also can't swallow a whole calf's head; only snakes can do that, people cannot. It needs to be cut up. The planetary system also does this with its food. Comets may sometimes — not every one of them, but some can sometimes be swallowed whole, snake-fashion. But other comets are broken up when they enter the system. The comet then breaks up, just as a shower of meteors has broken up into lots of small stars. These meteors are tiny parts of comets that rush down. And so you see not only how cosmic food enters into the solar system but also how this cosmic food is consumed by the earth. We are thus able to get a clear idea of the role that comets, which appear at irregular intervals, play for the earth. Now you see, the thing is like this — we must leave aside all superstition. The comet coming from beyond the earth has an influence on everything that happens on the earth, and this is something we can see. It is certainly a strange thing. As you know, there are good and bad years for wine. But the good years really come because the earth has got hungry. It then leaves its fertility more to the sun, and the sun gives the wine its quality. Now when the earth has had a good wine year, you can be pretty certain that a comet will appear soon after, for the earth has been hungry and needs food again for the other things. You then get poor wine years. If there's another good wine year, a comet will follow. The earth's state concerning its substance is definitely connected with the way in which comets appear or do not appear. The other question was how the zodiac differs from other fixed stars. You know, if we simply look out into the distant universe we see countless stars. They seem to be irregularly placed. But one can always distinguish groups of them, and these are called constellations. Now the stars we see are further away from the moon or closer to it. Looking at the stars we see the moon pass through the starry heavens like this [drawing], don't we? But whilst some constellations are positioned in such a way that the moon always passes through them, it does not pass through others. So if you consider Hercules, for instance, the moon does not pass through. But if you look at the Lion, then the moon always passes through the Lion at given intervals. Twelve constellations have the special characteristic that they form the path, as it were, taken by the moon and also by the sun. We may say, therefore, that the twelve constellations Ram, Bull, Twins, Crab, Lion, Virgin, Scales, Scorpion, Archer, Goat, Water Carrier and Fishes mark the path of the moon. It always passes through them and not through the other constellations. We are thus always able to say that at any particular time the moon, if it is in the sky, is in one constellation or another, but only a constellation that is part of the zodiac. Now I want you to consider, gentlemen, that everything there is by way of stars in the sky has a definite influence on the earth as a whole and specifically also on man. Man truly depends not only on what exists here on earth but also on the stars that are there in the heavens. Think of some star or constellation up there. It rises in the evening, as we say, and sets in the morning. It is there all the time, and always influences the human being. But think of another constellation, the Twins, let us say, or the Lion. The moon passes that way. The moment it passes that way it covers up the Twins or the Lion. I see only the moon and not the Twins. At that moment they cannot influence the earth, because their influence is blocked. And so we have stars everywhere in the sky that are never blocked out, neither by the sun nor by the moon, and always have an influence on the earth. And we have stars which the moon passes, and the sun seemingly also passes them. These are covered up from time to time and their influence then stops. We are therefore able to say that the Lion is a constellation in the zodiac and has a particular influence on man. It does not have this influence if the moon is in front of it. At that time the human being is free of the Lion influence, the Lion's influence does not affect him. Now just imagine you are terribly lazy and won't walk but someone gives you a push from behind, and you have to walk. He drives you on, and that is his influence. But imagine I do not permit him to influence you; he cannot give you a push. Then you are not subject to the influence; and if you want to walk you have to do it yourself. Human beings need these influences. And how does this go, gentlemen? Let us hold fast to this: The Lion constellation has a particular influence on man. It has this influence for as long as it is not covered up by the moon or the sun. But let us take this further. Again consider an analogy from life. Let us say you want to know something. Imagine you have a governess or a private tutor — he usually knows everything. When you are a little boy you don't want to think for yourself, you ask your tutor and he'll tell you. He'll also do your homework for you. But if the tutor has gone out, so that you do not have your tutor available at the moment and have to do your homework, then you have to find the power in yourself. You have to recall things for yourself. The Lion continually influences human beings except when it is covered by the moon. Then the influence is not there. When the moon blocks the Lion's influence, man must develop using his own resources. Someone able to develop his own strong Lion influence when the moon covers the constellation may thus be called a Lion person. Someone able to develop particularly the influence in the constellation of the Crab when this is covered up is a Crab person. People develop the one or the other more strongly depending on their inner constitution. You see, therefore, that the constellations of the zodiac are special, for with them, the influence is sometimes there and sometimes not. The moon, passing through the constellations at four-week intervals, brings it about that there is always a time in a four-week period when some constellation of the zodiac does not have an influence. With other constellations the influence is always the same. In earlier times people took these influences that came from the heavens very seriously. The zodiac was therefore more important to them than other constellations. The others have a continuous influence which does not change. But with the zodiac we may say that the influence changes depending on whether one of its constellations is covered over or not. Because of this, the influence of the zodiac on the earth has always been the subject of special study. And so you see why the zodiac is more important when we study the starry heavens than other stars are. You will see from all this that mere calculations cannot really give us all the knowledge we want of the heavens, as I told you before. We certainly have to consider things like those I have been speaking of. Talking about such things one is still thought to be a dreamer today, something of a fool, for people say: 'If you want to know something about the stars you should go to the astronomers at the observatory. They know everything!' As you know, there is a saying — because conditions like gout also depend on all kinds of external influences, some people will tell someone with gout to go to the observatory and have the matter sorted there. But when you want to speak of these things out of the spirit today, people think you are something of a fool. But the following kind of thing happens. Having gained knowledge through the science of the spirit, I was able to say the following in a series of lectures I gave in Paris in 1906. 92 Steiner, R., Kosmogonie (GA 94). Lectures given in Paris, 25 May-14 June 1906. The summaries by E. Schure in this volume do not include Steiner's statements concerning the comet atmosphere. If everything is like this with the comets, if they really exist to perform this function, then they must contain a compound of carbon and nitrogen. This was something people did not know before. Carbon and nitrogen combine to form cyanide, prussic acid. Carbon and nitrogen would thus have to be found also in comets. I said this in Paris in 1906. People who did not acknowledge the science of the spirit did not need to believe it at the time. But a short time after this I was on a lecture tour in Sweden and all the papers brought the surprising news that spectroscopic analysis had shown comets to contain cyanide. You see, people are always saying that if anthroposophists know something they should say so, so that it may later be confirmed. There have been many such instances. Honestly, I predicted the discovery of cyanide in comets in 1906! It was made soon after. You can see, therefore, that these things are correct, for the truth will be confirmed in due course, if one sets about it in the right way. But of course, when this kind of thing happens again people do not mention it, they hush it up because it does not suit them. But it is true nevertheless. Spiritual perception thus enables us to say things about the comets, including their chemical composition, and this will be confirmed in due course. This is one such example. So I am not afraid to say things that may seem utterly foolish to people: that the comets come into existence here and pass out of existence again there, gather matter here and vanish again here as they leave the planetary system. Spiritual observation shows this, and in due course physical observation will confirm it. Today one is only able to state it on the basis of spiritual observation. Many things said in materialistic science today are utterly fantastic. People imagine the sun to be a kind of gaseous sphere, for instance. It is not a gaseous sphere, but really something quite different. You see, gentlemen, if you have a bottle of carbonated water you get those small beads in there. So one might think: Right, that is carbonated water, and in it are small beads — things that float in it. But that is not how it really is, for there you have your carbonated water, and there it is hollow [drawing]. You have less in there than in the rest of the water. It is of course carbon dioxide gas, with water all around it, but the gas is thinner than the water. With reference to the water, you have a hollow space in there, and compared to water you merely have the subtle nature of the gas. The sun, too, is a hollow space in the universe; but this is thinner than any gas; it is extremely thin in the place where the sun is. And what is more, gentlemen, when you move around in this world you are in space. But space is also hollow where the sun is. What does it mean: 'space is hollow'? You can see from the following what it means when we say space is hollow. If you create a vacuum with a vacuum pump, removing all the air [drawing], and then make an opening here, the air rushes in with a tremendous hissing sound. The situation with the sun is that what you have there is definitely above all a hollow space; empty not only of air but also of heat. It is above all a hollow space. The nature of this hollow space is such that it is spiritually closed off all around, and something can rush in only at intervals through the sun spots. Astronomers would get a big surprise if they were to go there in a space car or space ship — it could not be an airship, of course, for the air does not go as far as that. The astronomers would expect that when they got up there and arrived at the sun they would enter such a nebula, for the sun, they think, is red-hot gas. And they would expect this red-hot gas to bum them up, that they would perish in flames, for they believe they would find a temperature of many thousands of degrees. But you do not get the opportunity to burst into flames, for the sun is hollow also as far as heat is concerned. There is no heat either! One would be able to tolerate all this. One would also be able to tolerate the temperature if one went to the sun in a giant space ship. But something else could not be tolerated. The situation would be similar to the air rushing in with a hiss — rushing in, not out — and you would immediately be drawn into the sun and would instantly turn to dust, for the sun is a hollow space that sucks in everything. You would be completely absorbed. It would be the most certain way of disappearing. The sun is thus seen entirely in the wrong light by materialistic scientists. It is a hollow space with regard to anything else; and this really makes it the lightest person among all the stars nearest to us out there in space, lightest of all. The moon is relatively heavy, for it once came away from the earth, taking with it the heavy substances for which the earth had no use. It would be lighter than the earth, of course, if we were to weigh it, being much smaller, but relatively speaking, in terms of what we call the specific gravity, it is heavier. It follows that spirituality comes from the sun, for it is the lightest body in cosmic space. This is why I was able to say, when Mr Dollinger asked about the Christ, that the greatest spirituality comes from the sun when we are born, for the sun is the most spiritual entity. The moon is the most material entity. And if the moon is the most material body, its influence on human beings goes beyond the ordinary in material terms. You see, all the other stars apart from the moon also have an influence, of course. They have an influence on material processes. But if you imagine you're eating a piece of bread, the bread is gradually transformed into blood; something is transformed into something else. Part of the human being is created, blood is created, when you transform bread in the metabolic process. If you put salt in your bread, the salt goes into the bones; it is transformed. It is always a part that is produced, for these materials relate only to parts of the human being. All things on earth can only create part of the human being; and whatever is produced must remain in the human being. The moon itself has a powerful material influence on reproduction, but in that case it is not part of the human being that is produced but a whole human being. The sun influences the most spiritual part, the moon, being material itself, the material aspect. Man thus creates himself, or an image of himself, under the influence of the moon. That is the difference. Sun actions may be said to recreate our thoughts, our powers of will all the time. The moon's influence is that it recreates the material forces, reproducing the material human being. And between the sun and the moon we have the other stars which bring about parts of the other things that happen in man. We can understand all this. But you must include the human being whenever you consider astronomy. You see, an astronomer will say: 'What I see with my naked eye does not impress me; I have to use a telescope. I rely on my telescope; it is my instrument.' The spiritual scientist will say: 'Why bother with telescopes! Of course you'll see a great deal, and we acknowledge this. But the best instrument you can use to gain insight into the universe is man himself.' You perceive everything through the human being. Man is the best instrument, for everything becomes apparent in him. What happens up there in the Lion is apparent in the circulation of the blood. And when the moon is in front of the Ram, our hair grows more slowly, and so on. It is always possible to see in man what happens in the universe. When someone gets jaundice, for instance, we must of course primarily consider the cause in the body in medicine. But why, in the final instance, does a person get jaundice? Because he has a special disposition to develop the powers of the Goat from his own resources when the moon covers up the constellation of the Goat. We can thus always see that man is the instrument by which all may be perceived. When a person is no longer open, for instance, to the Water Carrier influence, that is if the Water Carrier is covered up by the moon and the individual is unable to develop his own Water Carrier powers, he'll get corns. And so we can always use the human being as an instrument to see what is happening in the universe. We have to do it scientifically, however, and not from superstition. And so, in this way, it is a proper scientific method used in the science of the spirit. Of course, it is vague the way many people think it, and then one cannot see anything from what they are thinking. This is where the old maxim applies: When the cock on the midden crows, the weather will change or stay as it was. It is indeed exactly the way many people think about the world: When the cock on the midden crows, the weather will change or stay as it was. But when we really go into the matter, that is no longer the case. Through the human being, the most perfect instrument you can have, you perceive things more perfectly than through anything else in the universe. So it is not a matter of simply inventing things, but you study what goes on in the human being. You need to know, of course, how it is with corns, how they develop out of the skin, and so on, and only then can you see what happens when the Water Carrier is covered up. Studying the matter through the human being, we can study the whole universe through the human being. Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, then.

From Beetroot to Buddhism

Comets and the solar system, the zodiac and the rest of the fixed stars

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSP1999/19240517p02.html

Dornach

17 May 1924

GA353-14

Good morning, gentlemen. Maybe one of you has thought of something for today's session? Question: What should one think about the miracles told in connection with Moses in the Bible-the sea standing still? Rudolf Steiner: Now you see, this was less a matter of there being a sudden miracle than of Moses 93 Moses (thirteenth century bc). having a great deal of knowledge. He was not just the person presented in the Bible but had in fact studied at the Egyptian universities, which were the mysteries. At those schools students were taught not only about the world of the spirit but from a certain point of view also about the natural world. Now in the oceans we have ebb and flood, with the waters rising and falling again, and the point was that Moses knew how to arrange the passage across the Red Sea in such a way that he took the people across at a time when the sea had receded, exposing a sandbank that could be used. The miracle therefore was not that Moses held back the Red Sea and fought it, but that he really did know more than others and was able to choose the right moment. The others did not know this. Moses had worked it all out so that he got there at the right time. He knew how long it would take, or rather that they had to be quick, so that the sea would not take them by surprise. All this did, of course, seem like a miracle to the others. With such things we must always realize that they are based on knowledge, not some other kind of thing, but knowledge. That is how it is with most things we are told of earlier times. The people were amazed because they did not understand the matter; they did not know. But if one knows that in those early times, too, there were some very clever people, one can find the explanation. Otherwise there is not much to explain here. Maybe someone else has another question? Question: Can the culture that streams from Tibet into the rest of Asia still be adequate for those people, or is it getting completely decadent? Rudolf Steiner: Now you see, the culture of Tibet is very ancient; it really still comes from ancient Atlantean times. You just have to realize that there was a time once when Europe was largely submerged, with the water only getting less towards Asia. On the other hand you had land where the Atlantic Ocean is today. There was land then where today we take a boat from Europe to America. That was an early age, when land and water were distributed very differently from the way they are today. In those days, five, six, seven millennia ago, the culture in Asia was the same as it was on this Atlantean continent which is today under the sea between Europe and America. Over there in Asia they had a culture that has survived in the clefts and underground caves of Tibet. When the sea came to the area between Europe and America and Europe began to rise, the Atlantean culture of that area was of course lost. But it survived over there in Tibet. However, this culture was really only appropriate to those ancient times when people lived under very different conditions than they do today. You have to realize that the air was not the way it is today, that humans were not as heavy as they are today but had much less weight, and the air was much denser. A dense mist really penetrated everything at that time, and because of this it was possible to live in a very different way. People did not read or write in those days but they had signs. These would not be put on paper. They did not have paper then. Nor did they write them on parchment but they would scratch them into rock surfaces. Those rocks had been hollowed out by the people, and on the inside they would scratch their secret signs, as they called them. We really need to understand the signs they produced if we are to understand how they thought. Now you may ask how it has been possible for these people to keep it so well hidden. Well, you know, the earliest form of architecture had nothing to do with building above ground but people would originally dig into the rocks, making their homes in the rocks. That was the earliest form of architecture. So we need not be surprised that this was also the earliest form of architecture in Tibet. But such skills gradually grew decadent, falling into decline. And the things that developed later in Tibet are such that they cannot really be used any more today, Tibetan culture being older than Indian culture. Ancient Indian civilization developed only after the earth had reached its present form. Tibetan culture was therefore very early. And in this Tibetan culture something has been preserved in a bad form that originally had a relatively good form. Above all the ruler principle has taken a not very acceptable form. The individual who is to rule Tibet is actually venerated as divine; and this veneration is prepared in advance. I would say the choice is made in a supersensible way, really. The Dalai Lama was chosen to be ruler in the following way. Long before, when the old Dalai Lama was still there and people realized that he might soon die, a family was identified somewhere and it was said: The new Dalai Lama must come from this family. That is how it was in Tibet in earlier times. These were not hereditary rulers, but priests — who were the real rulers — identified a new family from which a Dalai Lama was to come. If a child was born in such a family it would be held available until the old Dalai Lama died. You can imagine that the worst kind of abuse was rife. If the old Dalai Lama was no longer wanted they would simply look for a child and say: The soul of the old Dalai Lama has to enter into the soul of this child. First he had to die, however. And the priests made sure that this happened at the right time. The people then believed that the soul of the old Dalai Lama had entered into the soul of the child. It was thus arranged that the whole of the populace really believed that the soul of any Dalai Lama had previously also been in the Dalai Lama who ruled thousands of years earlier. They thought it was always the same soul, and to them it was always the same Dalai Lama; he merely changed his outer body. It was not like this in the original culture, but extraordinary mischief has developed out of it. You can see from this that the priests had gradually found ways of managing affairs in such a way that their supremacy was ensured. This does not mean, however, that one does not discover great scientific secrets which people knew in the early days. These are engraved in the rocks, but Europeans have only been granted access on the rarest of occasions. It is true, however, that one can discover the great scientific secrets people knew in the early days, and all it needs is to develop this knowledge in a new form. The situation is like this. The knowledge that once existed, coming to people in misty dreams, is to be made available again today through the science of the spirit. This cannot happen in the East, however. You see, new knowledge, new insights will never be gained in the same way in the East as here in Europe, because oriental bodies are not made for this. The attempts one has to make to gain insights like those I have presented to you can only be done in the West and not in the East. Orientals are also much more conservative than Europeans; they do not want anything new, and the things we do here in Europe therefore do not impress them. But if you are able to say to them: Significant truths are to be found in those ancient crypts — which is the name for those rock caves — and they are ancient, this will make a tremendous impression on them. Europeans also have some of this. Just look at the Freemason's lodges of the higher order, if you are able to get into them. As to anthroposophy — it interests them a little, for they, too, are concerned with supersensible things; but they do not take a serious interest. But if you say to them: 'This is something that has been found; it is ancient Egyptian wisdom or ancient Hebrew wisdom,' then they'll be pleased. They'll immediately take it up, for that is the way people are. New discoveries do not impress them much; but something really ancient, even if they do not understand it, makes a considerable impression on them. We may therefore assume that ancient knowledge if found in Tibet would provide fresh impetus. For much has been lost also to the people of Asia, with the most important Asian civilization, Indian civilization, only arising at a later stage. So it would be possible for many of the things other people do not know about in Asia to be found in Tibet. The people who live there do not have much opportunity to make these things properly known, for the old Tibetan priest rulers did nothing to make them known; they wanted to keep the ancient rulership for themselves. Knowledge is power if it is kept secret. Europeans who went to Tibet did not understand the things they found. So there is not much prospect of the genuine Tibetan truths being made known; they live on in ancient traditions. For much has come down to posterity, and one can certainly get an idea of what lies behind it all. But it is difficult to imagine that it will really become widely known. It has grown decadent, as you said in your question; but if you go back to the signs in the crypts and not to what the priests say, you would certainly be able to discover extraordinary things. It will however be extra220 ordinarily difficult to decipher them. It will be difficult to get at it without the science of the spirit. It can be deciphered using the science of the spirit, but there one discovers things for oneself, so the old things are not needed. Question: Would it be possible for people in Europe to do something to help that downward-moving time stream in Asia to move upwards again? Rudolf Steiner: That is a very nice question! For you see, if the people in Europe do nothing, the world will have to go into decline there. Over there in Asia — this will be obvious from what I have been saying — people hold on to the past. They do not know progress. You see that in China. China is at the same level as it was thousands of years ago. Long ago the Chinese had many things that were only discovered much later in Europe — paper, printing, and so on. But they do not accept progress but retain the old form. The Europeans on the other hand, what do they do when they go to Asia? You know, the English gave the Chinese opium and such things in the first half of the nineteenth century. But until now the Europeans have not done anything to bring a real life of the mind and spirit to Asia. And it is difficult, of course, for these people simply do not accept it. You see, the situation is interesting. As you know, European missionaries go there with European religion, European theology, and want to take European culture to Asia. This makes no impression whatsoever on the people of Asia. The missionaries speak to them of Christ Jesus as they see him. And the Asian person says: 'Well, if I look at my Buddha, he has much more excellent qualities.' So they are not impressed. They would only be impressed if one presented Jesus Christ to them the way he was presented here in these lectures some time ago, again in response to your questions. That would make an impression. But again one has to remember that Asians are conservative, reactionary, and initially suspicious. It is a strange thing, gentlemen. You see, there are some who have studied the ancient wisdom. Over in Asia they have learnt something from Tibetan scholars, wise men, Tibetan initiates. The initiates themselves do not bother with the Europeans. But their students have done so. And this can really surprise one at times. I have told you a few things that will have surprised you, concerning the influence the universe has on human beings. It takes a great deal of time to investigate this fully. I can truthfully say that some of the things I am now able to tell you took 40 years until I was able to speak of them. These are things you do not find overnight, you have to look for them for years. And one then finds such things. One finds for instance that the moon has a population which is connected with the earth's population to such effect that reproduction is regulated by this, as I have told you. Truly, gentlemen, you do not find this along the avenues taken by present-day scientists, nor do you find it from one day to the next; you find it in the course of many years. That is the way it is. And then you have it. But then, when you have it, a strange light is suddenly cast on the things said by the students of oriental initiates. Before, you could not understand it at all. These people talk of moon spirits, for example, and the influence they have on the earth. European scholars will say it is all nonsense what they say. But when one finds these things for oneself one will no longer say it is nonsense. One is merely surprised how much those ancients knew thousands of years ago, things that have since been lost to humanity. It is a tremendous impression one may gain in this way. You investigate these things with tremendous effort and you then find that they were known in the past, though this was in a way people cannot understand today, not even those who speak of these things sometimes. So you gain respect, tremendous respect, for something that did exist in the past. Now it would be necessary for Europeans who wanted to do something over there in Asia to study anthroposophy before they do it. For otherwise they'll find they cannot do anything there. Today's European science and technology does not impress the people of Asia, for they consider modem European science to be childish, something that is entirely superficial, and as to European technology — they have no need of it. They say: 'Why should we stand at machines? That is inhuman!' It does not impress them in the least, and they consider it an encroachment on their rights when people build railways and machines over there. Europeans do this. But the people there really hate it. So again that is not the way to do it. We must also learn something about earlier days. And in those earlier days people did have some feeling as to how one should proceed. You see, why should it not be possible for today's European culture to do something over there in Asia? Someone did manage to do something with Greek culture over there in Asia. That was in the fourth century before Christianity was founded. Alexander the Great was the man. He did take a great deal of Greek culture to Asia. And it is there now. It even came back again to Europe by a roundabout route through Spain with the Arabs and the Jews. But how did Alexander manage to take those things to Asia? Only by not proceeding the way modern Europeans do. Europeans consider themselves to be the clever ones, people who are altogether clever. When they go somewhere else they say: 'They're all stupid. We have to take our wisdom to them.' But the others do not know what to do with it. Alexander did not do that. He first of all went wholly into what the people had themselves. And very slowly, little by little, he let something flow into the things those people had. He respected and valued the things the others had. And that is altogether the secret of how to bring something to some place. There is much to be said against the British, and it is an infamous story in British history that they took opium to China, from sheer egotism. But one nevertheless has to say that not so much perhaps in the sphere of mind and spirit, though actually even there, the British always respect the customs and traditions of the nations they go to, especially in the economic sphere. They simply know how to respect it. The Germans are probably least able to do so. Because of this the Germans do not do well as colonizers, for they never consider what it feels like for the people where they want to have their colonies. They are expected to accept instantly what the Germans themselves have in central Europe. And that will not do, of course. As a result things have gone in such a way that the British are happily maintaining their colonies, even if the people rise at times, and all kinds of things, but economically the British still have the upper hand. The British do at least know how to consider the nature and character of foreign nations. The British also go to war in a very different way from the Germans. How does a German think of waging war against some nation? I don't want to speak against war at this point, but merely tell you how the Germans see it. They think one just has to set out and conquer. The English do not do this. They first of all observe, and perhaps even stir up another nation and let them fight among themselves. They'll look on for as long as possible, that is, they let people sort themselves out among themselves. That is how it has always been. And that is how the British Empire was established. The others, you see, never quite know what is going on. The British have a certain instinct to respect the particular nature of foreign nations. And this has made it possible for them to gain such a colossal economic advantage. I am sure no one in England would have got the idea to do what people are now doing in Germany, which is to introduce the rentenmark currency. There is of course a major money problem in Germany at the moment. No one has any money. But when the rentenmark was introduced — as a stable currency — people thought it was something terribly clever. It was, of course, the silliest thing one could do. For as long as all the paper money in Britain has gold coverage, the rentenmark must immediately lose value. If the thing is done artificially, as is not the case with a stable currency, it just means that the price of goods will rise. You see, people have the rentenmark in Germany, and it is always worth one mark. But, gentlemen, you can only buy as much for it now as you used to get for 0.15 mark, and so it is in reality worth no more than 0.15 mark. It is a deception to say it will not go down and be stable. And that is how it is. People think in Germany, but they have no feeling for reality. A nice little anecdote tells us how different nations study the natural history of a kangaroo, let us say, or some other animal, perhaps in Africa. The Englishman goes to Africa — like Darwin did, who travelled around the world for his nature studies 94 Darwin, Charles (1809–82). — and observes the animal in its natural habitat. He can see how it lives there and what natural conditions are. The Frenchman immediately removes the animal from the desert and puts it in a zoo. He studies the animal in the zoo, not in its natural environment but in a zoo. And what does the German do? He does not bother to look at the animal at all. He sits down in his study and begins to think. The thing in itself does not interest him — according to Kant's philosophy, as I told you — only the ideas in his head. He spends some time thinking things out. And having thought for a sufficiently long time he says something. But it is not in accord with reality. But the thing is also only relative where the British are concerned. No one in modern Europe knows the ways used in the past to influence human beings — for instance the way Alexander the Great apparently left things exactly as they were but little by little, slowly, introduced things that came from Greece in Asia. No one in Europe knows how to do this today. The first thing Europeans would have to learn, therefore, would be not simply to take things to Asia which are there already, but above all to go to some trouble to find out what the people of Asia know. They would then learn about Tibetan wisdom, for example. And they would then not speak of it to people in the old way but present it in a new way. But they would be using Tibetan wisdom. Thus respecting the local culture they would achieve something. This is something which Europeans in particular have to learn. Europe is really a vast edifice of theories. Europeans produce theories, and basically have no practical approach. That is the way it is. Europeans also do business in a theoretical way, simply by thinking things up. This will work for a time. It never works in the long run. But Europeans above all fail in spreading their culture of mind and spirit because they do not know how to enter into the reality of other people. Here, too, the science of the spirit must bring a change. But how does this go, even today? You see, gentlemen, it is important that in anthroposophy we make it a way of life, absolutely practical. One has to start somewhere, of course. What did I do myself, gentlemen? I once wrote about Nietzsche, 95 Steiner, R., Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom , tr. M. Ingram deRis, Englewood, NJ, 1960. and people thought I had become a follower of Nietzsche. If I had written the way people would have wanted me to write, the way many people thought I would write, I would have written: Nietzsche is an absolute fool; Nietzsche has put forward foolish notions; Nietzsche must be fought to the death, and so on. I would thus have written in opposition to Nietzsche. It would have meant that I could be thoroughly abusive, almost as abusive as Nietzsche himself, but there would have been no point to it, it would have been useless. I gave careful consideration to Nietzsche's teaching; I presented the things Nietzsche himself had said, and only let anthroposophical views flow into it. Today people come and say: 'He used to be a follower of Nietzsche; now he is an anthroposophist.' But it was exactly because I am an anthroposophist that I wrote about Nietzsche the way I did. I wrote about Haeckel 96 Steiner, R., 'Haeckel and his Opponents' (in GA 30). using the same approach. I could of course have written that he was an out-and-out materialist, knowing nothing of the spirit, and so on. Well, gentlemen, again there would have been no point to it. Instead I took Haeckel as he was, and this is what I have always done. I have not denied the truth but taken things as they were. And this was at least a first step, through anthroposophy, in doing what should be done if our culture is to be taken to Asia. Going to India, one would need to know above all: 'That is what the ancient Brahmin said, and this is what the Buddhists say.' You have to tell people of Buddhism and Brahmanism, but also bring in the things you believe are needed. This is what the followers of Buddha themselves have done, for instance. Shortly before Christianity came into existence, the followers of Buddha spread Buddhism in the Euphrates and Tigris region, but they did it the way I have shown you, talking to people in a way they could understand. In antiquity people were not concerned with getting their own theories accepted in a completely selfish way. Asians have no understanding for European self-willedness. The relationship between Brahmins and Buddhists is not the same, for example, as that between Roman Catholics and Protestants. Roman Catholics and Protestants are highly theoretical in their teaching today, with one believing one thing, the other another. Probably the only difference between Brahmins and Buddhists is that Brahmins do not venerate the Buddha, whilst Buddhists do. And so they really deal with each other in a very different way from the way Protestants and Roman Catholics deal with one another in Europe. You see, one must have a sense of reality if one wishes to disseminate culture. It really makes one want to cry to see how Europeans are going on in Asia today. Everything Asia has of its own also goes to perdition in the process, and nothing is gained at all. The big problem is, of course, that Europe is also in decline now, and cannot really get out of the damage caused by civilization unless people decide to accept a genuine culture of mind and spirit. Many do not yet believe this today. And so the situation is that all the people who have come to Europe from Asia, for example, have found the Europeans to be utterly barbaric. You have probably also heard that all kinds of Asians, cultivated, clever Asians, are going about in Europe; but they all believe the Europeans to be barbarians. Because people in Asia still have much of the old knowledge of the spirit, ancient perception of the spirit, anything Europeans know seems childish to them. Everything which is so much admired in Europe seems incredibly childish to the people in Asia. You see, the Europeans developed in such a way that their great technological advances are really all very recent. The following is interesting, for instance. If you go to some museums where they have things of early European times, you will sometimes be greatly surprised. You'll be amazed, let us say, in Etruscan museums, where they have things coming from Etruscan civilization, a civilization that once existed in Europe, and you'll find they had great skill in treating teeth, for example. They treated teeth very skilfully, putting in fillings made of stone. All this was lost in Europe, and barbarism truly came to Europe. At the time when the great migrations took place, in the third to seventh centuries ad, everything had really fallen into barbarism in Europe. And it was only after this that things were regained. Today we are, of course, amazed at all the advances made. But those things did exist before. Where did they come from in those early times? They came more or less from Asia. The Asians then also lost the technology they used to have, though some of it still exists in China. But in the cultural sphere Asians truly are ahead of Europeans even today. And if we can find nothing in Europe which is better than the culture which exists in Asia, why should one have missions and that kind of stuff over there in Asia? That is totally unnecessary. The sharing of culture will only be meaningful when Europeans themselves have a science of the spirit. If Europeans are able to give the Asians a science of the spirit, then the Asians will perhaps also accept European technology. But you see, for the moment they only see that apart from their technology Europeans know nothing at all. Educated, scholarly Asians are particularly impressed if they come to Germany, for instance, and you tell them about Goethe and Schiller. Then they prick up their ears. Such a scholar will say: 'Goethe and Schiller may not have been as clever and as wise as the ancient people of Asia, but they certainly had good minds.' In the nineteenth century all this declined and disappeared rapidly. Today a Chinese scholar will see a German merely as a horrible barbarian. He'll say that German culture perished with Goethe and Schiller. The fact that the railways were invented in the nineteenth century will not impress him. Goethe's Faust will impress him to some extent, but he'd still say the great people of Asia were much wiser. This is something Europeans should begin to realize. They need to realize that Asians do not care for the kind of thinking we have in Europe. They want images, like the images you see in the monasteries of Tibet. Asians want images. The abstract notions Europeans have are of no interest to them, they make their heads hurt, and they do not want them. A symbol such as the swastika [drawing], the ancient sun cross, was widely known in Asia, and the old Asians still remember it. Some Bolshevik government people had the clever idea of making the ancient swastika their symbol, just like the nationalists in Germany. This makes much more of an impression on the Asians than anything by way of Marxism. Marxism is a set of ideas that have to be thought, and this does not impress them. But such a sign, that does impress them. And if people do not know how to approach these people and come to them with things that are completely alien, nothing will be achieved at all. Again we see that what matters above all in Europe is to have real insight again, a science of the spirit. You may also have heard that a gentleman called Spengler — he even gave a lecture in Basle once, I have heard — has published a work called The Decline of the West , that is, the decline of Europe and America. 97 Spengler, Oswald (1880-1936), German philosopher, considered that civilizations and cultures to be subject to growth and decay just as human beings are. The Decline of the West (1918–1922). In it he speaks of everything that exists as European culture having to perish. Well, gentlemen, the superficial culture we have today must indeed perish. Something new has to come from inside, out of the spirit. But the outer, superficial culture must go. And because of this the book speaks of the decline of the West. One cannot really say anything against what Spengler says about the decline of the West, about what will be necessary with regard to external things. But he then speaks of the things he sees as positive, as something new. And what does he speak of, gentlemen? The Prussian spirit. He says Europe should take up the Prussian spirit. In his view, that should be the future civilization of Europe. Now I do not know how he spoke in Basle, for I cannot imagine that he would have made a good impression on the Swiss by showing them that the Prussian spirit should rise from the decline. But you can see how an important man, a clever man like Spengler is able to see quite clearly that the existing civilization must perish. But, he says, brute force should rule in future. He is quite open about this: in future there can only be the conqueror, brutal and powerful. If that is the most widely read book today, for Oswald Spengler is most widely read in Germany today, and an Oriental, an Asian compares what it says with his own culture, he will have to say to himself: 'That is one of the cleverest people in Europe,' and if he also has his own knowledge of the spirit — dreamlike, in the ancient way — he has to say: Well, what kind of people are these most clever Europeans? They have nothing to give us! Gentlemen, that is the crux of the matter. And when the question is asked as to what Europeans can do to counter the downward-moving time stream in Asia, we simply have to say: The situation in Europe is such that Europeans must first of all find themselves, gain their own culture of mind and spirit, having lost it at the time of the great migrations. A true culture of mind and spirit was lost in those early Christian centuries. What came to Europe was not the deeper Christianity but words, really and truly words. You can see it particularly from the way Luther then translated the Bible. What did he make of the Bible? An incomprehensible book! For if you are honest you cannot understand Luther's Bible. You can have faith in it; but it cannot really be understood because that was already a time in Europe when people no longer knew of the spirit. There is spirit in the Bible. But it must be translated spiritually. But the things you find in the German Luther Bible, for example, are incomprehensible if one is honest about it. And it is really the same in all areas, except for wholly superficial insight into nature, but this does not really take us into the reality of the world. And if Europeans want to do something in Asia, my answer to the question must be: They will be able to do something once they have really found themselves in the spirit. I have to go to Paris now, gentlemen. I'll tell you when we'll be able to continue.

From Beetroot to Buddhism

Moses. Decadent Atlantean civilization in Tibet. Dalai Lama.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSP1999/19240520p02.html

Dornach

20 May 1924

GA353-15

Have you thought of something you'd like to ask, gentlemen? Question: How do the sun's rays come about? Is that a substance? And how does it happen that they come to earth in a curve? Rudolf Steiner: Am I right in thinking that you see the sun's rays as something real? And perhaps you can go a bit further and explain why you think they come to earth in a curve. The questioner said he'd heard that they did not come to earth in a straight line but in a curve. Rudolf Steiner: It's like this. The sun's rays, as we see them, are not actually a reality; but if we consider the sun the way it is, it is not really physical matter, it is in fact spiritual, a hollowed-out form created in space. Now, you must get a real mental image of what such an empty space means. If you have a bottle of fizzy water — I have used this comparison before — the bottle is filled with water and one really hardly sees the water; we know there is water in there, but what we do see clearly are the beads in the water [drawing]. But you know that when you pour the water from the bottle those beads evaporate; they are in fact air. Being air, they are thinner than water. One is not seeing something denser than water, but one clearly sees the thinner element of air in there. That is how it is with the sun up there. Everything around the sun is really denser than the sun, and the sun is thinner than anything around it; and that is why you see the sun. It is an illusion to think that the sun is 'something' in space. In reality there is nothing there in space; you have a big hole there, just as with fizzy water you always have air, a hole, wherever there is a bead. This immediately tells you that there can be no question of rays coming from that hole. The rays develop in a completely different way. You can understand this if you consider the following. Let us assume you have a street lamp, and there is a light in this street lamp. If you go out into the street and look at this lamp and the night is bright and clear, you'll see the lamp in steady, beautiful radiance. But imagine it is a foggy night, with mist and fog all around — then it will seem to you that rays come from the lamp, from the light! You then see those rays in there. But in fact you do not see rays of the light, for then you would also see them on a really good night. They do rather come from around the lamp; and the more mist and fog there is, the more do you see those rays. And so the sun's rays, too, are not something real, but something where you look through a mist at something that is less dense, an empty space. Can you understand this? Now to go on. Looking into the distance through a mist, the object one looks at always appears in a different place from where it really is. If we are down here on the earth and look through the air at the sun, which is really empty, then, as we look, the sun actually appears lower down than it really is — it will be lower down in the emptiness of space. As a result, something which is not real anyway appears to be going in a curve [drawing]. So it is only that way because we look through the mist. That is the reality in this case. One can only be amazed, over and over again, that physicists today present the matter in such a way as if there was a sun there and rays were going along there, when in fact neither the sun nor the rays are outer, physical reality. And in that space, which is empty inside, there you do indeed then have something spiritual. And this is something one must always take into account. This is what I am able to say on this question. Perhaps one of you may be able to think of something else? Question: Might we hear something about Freemasonry and its purpose? Rudolf Steiner: Well, you see, gentlemen, modern Freemasonry is really, one might say, only a shadow of its former self. I have talked to you about this on several occasions, saying that in very early times in human evolution they did not have schools like we have today, nor churches or centres for the arts of this kind, for it was all one then. 98 See the lectures in Steiner, R., The Temple Legend (GA 93), 20 lectures, Berlin 23 May 1904-2 January 1906, tr. J. Wood, London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1985, and Steiner, R., Zur Geschichte und aus den Inhalten der erkenniskultischen Abteilung der Esoterischen Schule von 1904 bis 1914 (GA 265), Domach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag 1987. In the ancient mysteries, as they were called, you had school, art centre and religion all in one. They only became separate later. We could actually say that in our central European regions this happened only in the eleventh or twelfth centuries. Monasteries used to be memorials of times gone by, I would say. But in very early times the situation was that school, church and art centre were one. But everything that was done in those mysteries was taken much more seriously than things are taken in our schools today, for example, and also in our churches. The situation was in those times that one had to go through a long period of preparation before one was allowed to learn. Today, the question as to whether one can learn something or not is really determined by a principle that has nothing to do with learning as such. I think you'll agree that today the decision is really entirely made on the basis of whether the money can be found for the person who is to learn, or if it cannot be found! That is of course something which has nothing to do with the abilities of the person concerned. And the situation was very different in earlier times, when people were chosen from among the whole of humanity — they had more of an eye for it in those days than people have today — who were perhaps the most able. The whole thing went into a decline almost everywhere later on, because it simply is the case that people are egotistical. But the principle used to be that people were chosen who had abilities. And only they would be entitled to learn in a spiritual way — not simply by drills and dressage, and the kind of elements used in teaching today, but they were able to learn in a spiritual way. This learning in a spiritual way depended on people learning to develop quite specific abilities in the course of preparation. You merely have to consider that when we touch something in ordinary life we have a rough and ready sensation of it. The most people are able to achieve today is that they can sometimes tell materials apart by the way they feel, that they touch objects and are able to tell there is some difference. But people's sentience — I am speaking of purely physical sensation — is relatively crude today. They distinguish between hot and cold. At most it may be that people who really depend on this develop more subtle sensation. Blind people are an example. There are blind people who learn to move across paper and feel the form of the letters. Every letter is a little bit engraved in the paper. With subtle sensation developed in the fingers it is possible to get something of a feel of the letters. These are the only people today who learn to have more subtle sensations. As a rule sensation is not developed, though one learns a tremendous amount if one develops sensation to be very subtle in one's fingertips and fingers. Today people tell the difference between hot and cold not just by feeling it. And they are able to do this today because they are able to read a thermometer. There the subtle differences in temperature are made visible. But the thermometer has only been developed in the course of time. Before that, people only had their sensations. And in the preparation for the mysteries, sensation was specially developed, above all in the fingers and fingertips. And people were then able to sense things in a very subtle way. So who was it who would initially be prepared to develop very fine sensation in the mysteries? Well, other people were not able to have such subtle senses. Let us assume now that there was a mystery site somewhere, in some place. People travelled a great deal in antiquity; they travelled almost as much as we do, and it is sometimes surprising how fast they travelled. They did not have railways. But they travelled because they were more nimble, able to walk faster, not getting tired so easily, also walking a bit better, and so on. And so they would meet on the way, these people. Well, when two such people, who were able to have subtle sensations, shook hands they would notice this in each other, and people would say: They recognize one another because of their fine sensation. This is what is known as the handshake, the handshake when you took hold of the other person in earlier times and realized that he had more subtle sensation. Now to move on, gentlemen. Consider this second aspect. When it was realized that someone had subtle sensation, one would go further, for people learned even more than this. In the early days people did not write as much as they do today; they would really only write very rarely and then it would be something that was most sacred to them. There was a kind of correspondence in antiquity, but it was a correspondence in all kinds of signs. Many signs were developed for all kinds of things. And it was also the case that people who did not belong to the mysteries and therefore were not 'wise' people, as it was called, would only travel lesser distances; they would not go very far. But the scholars, the wise people, travelled a great deal. They would therefore have needed to know not only all languages but also all dialects. It is of course difficult for someone from the north of Germany to understand the Swiss German dialect. But those people in the mysteries had not only the language they spoke but all kinds of signs for things that interested them. They would make signs. For instance, the usual gesture, for which one already had a feeling, would be developed further: 'I understand'; or 'That is nothing, what you are telling me'; or 'We really understand one another'. They would sign a cross. A fully developed sign language thus existed especially among the wise people of old, and they would put everything they knew into those signs. You can see, therefore, that all the people who were in the universities of that time, which were the mysteries, had particular signs for everything. Let us say, for example, they wanted to record these signs at some point in time. It was only then that they would draw them. And this is how they came to put signs on things. It is certainly interesting that there are still some scripts today where one can clearly see that they have developed from signs. An example is the script of the ancient Indians, Sanskrit. Here one can see everywhere that it has developed from a curved and a straight line [drawing]. Curved lines: dissatisfaction with something, antipathy; straight lines: sympathy. Just think of someone who knows that straight lines mean sympathy, curved lines antipathy. Now I want to tell him something. I have a sign for this, too. He wants to tell me something. This may be all right to start with, but then things may go wrong. You see, there it still works fine. Later he will draw a wriggly line — then it may be something bad. And so they had particular signs for everything. These signs provided a means of communication for those who were in the mysteries. So you had the handshake and the sign. People also saw something very special in words in those times. You see, when people say words today, they really no longer have an idea of what there is to those words. But one can still have a feeling for what lies in the speech sounds. You will easily be able to tell when someone is in a particular life situation and starts to say: Ah. That has something to do with amazement, with awe. A — the letter A [pronounced like the 'a' in father] is amazement. Now add the letter R — this is something rolling along, radiating. R = radiance. A = amazement, awe, R = rolling, radiance. Now we know what we have just said about the sun's rays. But even if they are only seemingly there, and are not real, it looks as if they were streaming forth. Now imagine someone wants to say: 'Up there is something that tosses something to me here on earth, and when it appears in the morning it causes me to feel awe.' He would express his awe as A, but the fact that it comes from above with the sound R; so he would express it as RA. Yes, that is what the ancient Egyptians called the sun god — Ra. In each of these letters you have an inner feeling, and we have put the sounds together to make words. So there was feeling in there, feeling spread out. This has long since been forgotten. Take the sound I*, for instance. That is something like quiet pleasure, one comes to terms with something one comes across, something one perceives: I. And the laugh is also a hee-hee. That is quiet pleasure. And so every letter has a particular character. And there is a knowledge that enables one actually to create the words if one has an understanding of the sounds that make up the words. Now you'll say one thing, gentlemen: 'Well, if that were the case, then there could be only one language.' Originally humanity did have just one language; when people still had a feeling for these speech sounds, these letters, there was just one language. Later different languages developed, when people went apart. But originally they had such feeling for it, and in the mysteries it was actually taught how speech sounds, letters, may be felt and made into words. They therefore had their own language in the mysteries. This was the language they would all speak among themselves. They would not use their dialects but this language, which all of them understood. When one of them said Ra, the other would know that this meant the sun. When one would say E [more or less like the 'a' in 'gate'] — just feel it: I shrink back a little. That does not suit me; E — I am a little afraid, something like fear! Take the L now. That is as if something is fading away, something is flowing, and EL, well, that is something that flows and from which we shrink back a little, which causes us to be afraid. That was El in Babylon, meaning 'god'. And everything was given its name on this principle. Take the Bible. If you say O — that is amazement, being taken aback by it. With the A you have a feeling you like, an amazement and awe you like. O and you want to step back; H, Ch [like the h in human] is the breath. So we may say: O = amazement, being taken aback; H = breath; I = one points to it, one takes quiet pleasure in it = I. And M, that is wanting to enter into it yourself. You feel, when you say M: M — the breath goes out, and you feel you are literally running after your breath; M thus is to go away. Now let us put this together. El, as we have seen is the spirit that comes in the wind, El; 0 is amazement that makes you step back, H is the breath; this is the more subtle spirit that acts as breath; I is quiet pleasure; M is to go towards it. There you have Elohim, and the Bible begins with this. You have these speech sounds in it. So that we are able to say: What are the Elohim? The Elohim are spirits in the wind of whom we are a little afraid, shrinking back a little, but with the breath they have pleasure in human beings, pleasure in going to the human beings — Elohim. And so one had to study the words originally for their speech sounds, their letters, to see what they really mean. Today people no longer have a feeling for how this really is. What is the plural of Wagen here in Switzerland? Do you also say Wagen here, or is it Wägen ? [Answer: die Wagen ** The answer was wrong. It is Wäge in Swiss German, as Rudolf Steiner thought it might be. ]. So it is still die Wagen . Then it has become blurred; originally it would have been der Wagen , die Wägen . With the plural we have this in all kinds of different ways. For instance we have der Bruder , die Brüder . Or, let us say, das Holz , die Hölzer . I expect here, too, one does not say die Holzer . Das Holz , die Hölzer . You see, gentlemen, when the plural is formed, the umlaut is used — a to ä, u to ü, o to ö. 99 The umlaut (meaning sound-changer) is not an accent but actually the letter 'e'. It used to be written on top of the a, o or u originally, and gradually became reduced to two short vertical lines or two dots. If you look at the pronunciation table given in this book and try and pronounce the words Rudolf Steiner gave here as indicated, you'll feel that the original sound is made to go more in the direction of the German 'e', which is like 'ay', but without going up into an 'i' sound at the end. Why is this done? You see, the umlaut indicates that the thing becomes blurred. When I see one brother, he is distinct, a single individual; when I see several brothers, it becomes blurred, and I have to differentiate between them, and if I cannot do this it becomes blurred. One has to look at them one by one. The umlaut always indicates things getting blurred. So when you have the umlaut in a word, something is blurred. So there is something in language that allows us to see the whole human being; there you have the whole human being. And people would also bring to expression how there was a certain meaning even in the letters they wrote, in these signs. 'A' always was amazement, awe. When an ancient Hebrew had written the letter aleph like this: א [drawing], he would say to himself: Who is amazed in the earth world? Animals are not really amazed, only man is. And so he altogether referred to man as 'amazement'. When he wrote his aleph, the א, the Hebrew 'A', it therefore also referred to the human being. And so it was that every letter also signified a particular thing or being. And the people who were in the mysteries knew all this. So when one of them was meeting another on his travels and they had that common knowledge, they would recognize one another by the word. So that we are able to say that in the early days the situation was that people who had learned things, who knew a great deal, recognized one another by handshake, sign and word. But you see, gentlemen, then there was something in it! You immediately had their whole scholarship in this sign, handshake and word. For people learned to distinguish between things by touching them. Having the signs, they had a way of imitating everything there is by way of nature's secrets. And in the word they got to know the inner human being. So we are able to say that in the handshake they had sensory perception; in the sign they had the world of nature, and in the word they had the human being, his inner amazement or shrinking back, his pleasure and so on. So they had nature and man and echoed them in sign, handshake and word. In the course of human evolution a separation occurred into university and later schools on the one hand and the Church and the arts on the other. In all three of these, people no longer understood what had originally existed; and handshake, sign and word were lost completely. It was understood only by people who had then discovered: Wow! Those wise ancient people had some degree of power because they knew this. A person is justified in having this power because he knows something and it is for the benefit of others. If no one had known how to build a railway engine, humanity would never have had a railway engine. And it therefore benefits humanity if someone knows something; that is justifiable power. But later on people simply acquired the power by copying the external signs. Just as this or that sign used to mean something in the past and people later no longer knew this meaning, so did all this lose its meaning. And mere aping, I would say, of the ancient mysteries then led to all kinds of things where you only have the superficial aspect. What did those people do? They no longer had the subtle sensation, but they agreed on a sign by which they would recognize one another. They shake hands in a particular way and one then knows: 'He belongs to the brotherhood.' They recognize one another by the handshake. Then they also make a sign in some other way. The sign and the handshake differ depending on whether someone has reached the first, second or third degree. People then recognize one another. But there is no more to this than a sign of recognition. And they also have special words for each degree, words they may say in certain Masonic associations. Thus if one wants to know the word for the first degree, for example, they may have the code word Jachin. One knows he has learned the word in the Freemason's lodge, otherwise he would not be a member of the first degree. It is merely a code word now. And he will then also make the sign, and so on. Now this kind of Freemasonry has really only developed at a time when everything else about the mysteries had been forgotten. And some of the old things were imitated though they were no longer understood. So that the rites Freemasons have taken from the past are on the whole no longer understood by present-day Masons, for they do not know all the things that matter here. Thus they do not know that when they say the word for the second degree, Boas, that B is really a house, O means stepping back in amazement; A is pleasant amazement; S is the sign of the serpent. So it means: 'We recognize the world to be a great house built by the great world builder, and one has to be amazed at it both with slight fear and with pleasure, and evil, the serpent is also present in it.' Yes, people knew this in the past; they would look at nature in the light of this, look at the human being in the light of this. Today people who have reached the second degree in some Masonic associations utter the word 'Boas' without having a clue. And the same also in the third degree. You see, when people put their finger on the pulse in the past it really was recognition that the individual concerned had subtle sensation. This would be apparent from the way in which the finger lay on the pulse. Later this became the handshake for the third degree. Today, people only know that if someone comes along and takes one's hand in this particular way he is a Mason. So there really is something ancient, venerable, great in these things, something that contained the whole scholarship of earlier times. It has now become a mere formula, a nothing. Today the Freemasons have these things; they also have ceremonies, a ritual. This comes from the times when everything would also be presented in ritual form, in ceremonies, so that it would touch people more deeply. The Freemasons still do this today. And in this inner respect Freemasonry really no longer has significance today. But it became terribly boring for people to join in with these things when the associations had been established. For it had really degenerated into a kind of tomfoolery. So something was needed, had to be poured into it, into Freemasonry. And the result was the Freemasons went more or less political, or they would spread more or less religious forms of enlightenment. The teaching that came from Rome was without enlightenment. The teaching that was in opposition to Rome was then spread by the Masons. Because of this, Rome, the people using the Roman rites, and Freemasons are completely at loggerheads. This no longer has anything to do with ritual, sign, handshake and word among Freemasons; it is something added on. In France the brotherhood was no longer called a brotherhood but Orient de France, for it had all come from the East. Grand Orient de France — that is the great French Freemasons' association. The rest — sign, handshake and word — exists only to keep people together; it is something by which they recognize each other. The communal rite is used when they gather on particularly solemn occasions. Just as others gather in church, so these Freemasons gather to hold ceremonies that originated in the ancient mysteries. This brings people together. It was very much the custom when secret societies became established in the past, especially in Italy, to recognize one another by certain ceremonial elements — sign and handshake — and to have gatherings. Political associations and societies have always picked up on this ancient mystery element. And it is really quite strange that when you go to some parts of Poland or Austria today you see posters; those posters show strange signs and strange letters which then combine to form words. Initially one does not know what the poster means. But such a poster, put up everywhere in areas of Poland and Austria, is the outward sign of a society established among young people by certain nationalist elements. They use the same things. This is really very widespread, and people know very well that the sign also has a particular power. Some associations, the German popular front, for instance, use an ancient Indian sign of two serpents intertwined, or, if you will, a wheel, which then became transformed into the present-day swastika [drawing]. They wear it on their lapels today. And you'll often hear that the swastika has been adopted by certain chauvinist nationalist groups. This is because tradition says that the ancients brought their power to expression in such signs. And it has always been like this on a large scale among Freemasons. Freemasonry really exists in order to keep certain people together, and this is done by ceremonial, sign, handshake and word. And hidden goals are pursued by keeping certain secrets among all the people who are connected by these ceremonies, by sign, handshake and word. Hidden goals can of course only be pursued if they are not known to everyone. And the situation with the Freemasons is that they often have political, cultural or similar goals. Now there is something else you may say, gentlemen. You see, we cannot take exception to people coming together in Masonic bodies just because they do this, for they sometimes have the best and noblest intentions. It is only that they think people will not be interested in such aims in any other way but by having such organizations. And many Masonic bodies also do extensive charitable work. It is good to practise charity and humanity to a major degree. And these organizations do so on a major scale. No wonder, then, that Masons are always able to say that Masonic organizations have founded and established an enormous amount of humanitarian and charitable work. Yet we have to say to ourselves that such things are really no longer right for the present age. For, you see, what is it that we cannot accept today in this respect? We cannot accept segregation. This soon leads to a cultural aristocracy which should not exist. And the democratic principle, which must increasingly come to the fore, really goes against both the Freemasons and the clerical bodies. We are thus able to say that it really is true that someone who is still able to understand what lies in many Masonic ceremonies of the first, second and third degree, which Freemasons themselves often do not understand, knows that they often go back to very ancient wisdom, but this is not really what counts. What really counts is that many Masonic associations have wide-ranging political or also social and charitable aims. The Roman Catholic Church and the Freemasons are fighting each other to the death, but this, too, is something that has only come in the course of time. It is, of course, easy to get the wrong idea here. And that has also happened. Masons wear special garments for their ceremonies; they have a sheepskin apron, for instance. Some people came and said that Freemasonry is nothing but playacting, pretending to be Masons, for stonemasons wear a sheepskin apron. But that is not true. The purpose of the apron — originally it was always a sheepskin one — is to show that someone who is a member of such an organization is not supposed to be rabid in his passions; the genitals are meant to be covered by the apron, and this is the sign. So it was something that reflected human character in signs. And that is how it is with very many signs which are also garments. They also have higher degrees, when a priestlike robe is worn; everything has its meaning there. I have told you, for example, that apart from his physical body man also has an ether body. And just as the priest has a white linen garment, like a shift, to reflect the ether body, so certain high ranks among the Freemasons have such a garment. For the astral body — it is coloured — they have a toga, an over-garment. So it gives expression to all these things. And the cloak, which was then connected with the helmet, reflected the power of the I. All these things take us back to ancient customs that had real meaning and significance but have now lost significance. Anyone who likes Freemasonry should not take the things I have said to be derogatory. I merely wanted to show how things are. There can, of course, be a Masonic order whose members are extraordinarily good people, and so on. And at the present time such a thing can become particularly important. The things people generally learn when they become physicians or lawyers — well, these do not touch their hearts. And many members of the legal and medical professions still become Masons because then they have at least the solemn ceremonials of old, and something which does no longer hold much meaning for them but is still something — sign, handshake and word, and what this does is to show that man does not live in outer, material things alone. This is what I wanted to say to you. Is there anything else you'd like to ask? Question: In America they have something called the Ku Klux Klan. What is this about? Could we hear from Dr Steiner what it signifies? One is always reading about it. Rudolf Steiner: Well, you see, the Ku Klux Klan is one of the most recent inventions in this field, an invention that should certainly be taken more seriously than people generally do. As you know, gentlemen, some decades ago people were enthusiastic about a certain cosmopolitan way of thinking. It still exists today, of course, among the workers, among social democrats — these are an international element — but in middle class circles and in other circles nationalism is getting terribly out of hand, and nationalist tendencies are indeed getting very strong. And you will also remember that the people who supported Woodrow Wilson 100 Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), US Democratic politician, president 1913-21. Presented his Fourteen Points as a peace programme in January 1918. — he himself was only a kind of figurehead — really counted on this nationalism, wanted to have nationalist states everywhere, incite nationalism everywhere, and so on. Well, one can have one's own ideas about this. But people are developing a tendency to take nationalism to extremes everywhere today. And in this drive to take nationalism to extremes the association known as the Ku Klux Klan has appeared in America. They are very much working with such things as special signs, in the sense in which I have spoken of this. When one considers associations of this kind one needs to know that signs have a certain power to hypnotize. As you know, if you have a chicken [drawing], and let this chicken touch the ground with its beak, and you draw a line from there with chalk, the chicken will follow the chalked line. It is hypnotized, running after the chalked line. You just have to push its beak down on to it at the beginning and it'll follow the line, being hypnotized by it. And in this way every sign — not only the straight line for the chicken — has meaning, a particular hypnotic significance if you intend it to be that way. Some secret societies make use of this, choosing signs that will turn people's heads, putting them to sleep, so that they do not use their own powers of judgement. Such means are above all used by secret societies. The Ku Klux Klan in America is one of them. And the Ku Klux Klan is dangerous because such societies do not concentrate on only one nation but want to see the nationalist principle everywhere. No one can say: 'The Ku Klux Klan can simply remain an American institution, for it aims to further American nationalism.' The members of the Ku Klux Klan do not say this. They say: 'One should promote nationalism everywhere — in Hungary, in Germany, in France.' All very well! What matters to them is not Americanism, they are not patriots, but they realize that the combined effect of people's insistence on nationalism in different nations will give them exactly what they want to achieve, and that is to throw everything into chaos. Sheer destructive frenzy lies in this. And you can't say it is an American element if it ever wants to spread here in Switzerland, for in that case it will be a Swiss national institution. And basically that also held true for Masonic associations; they were international, but for individual countries always nationalistic. They would not rate this very highly, for they would do it more in response to the outside world, joining in whatever was going on outside. And we are able to say: 'People like that must surely be mad, wanting to encourage something like an absolutely nationalistic principle and wanting to destroy everything.' But people say: 'Everything has gone to rack and ruin today' — the leaders say this to themselves with reference to the others who follow them — and the others do not care in the least, so there is no point in looking after the things that exist today. 'One must first treat humanity as a confused mass. Then people will find themselves again and learn something decent.' So these people have an idea, and the Ku Klux Klan in particular has its ideas on the subject. You think not? Questioner: Oh yes, I do, But it is funny! Rudolf Steiner: You see, many things in cultural life are funny, and we have talked about things that look funny. But funny things are sometimes rather dangerous. It seems funny to one, but it is extraordinarily dangerous. Now, gentlemen, tomorrow sometime I have to be on my travels again, to Breslau. 101 Breslau, formerly capital of Lower Silesia. Now in Poland, called Wroclaw. Rudolf Steiner was going there to give the Agriculture Course. Translator. I'll let you know when we can have our next session.

From Beetroot to Buddhism

Nature of the sun. Origins of Freemasonry.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSP1999/19240604p02.html

Dornach

4 Jun 1924

GA353-16

Good morning, gentlemen. Perhaps you have been able to think of something during this slightly longer interval — a special question? Question concerning the nature of the different hierarchies and their influence on humanity. Rudolf Steiner: This, I think, will be a bit difficult for those of you who are here for the first time; not easy to understand because you need to know some of the things I have been discussing in earlier lectures. But I'll consider the subject, nevertheless, and try and make it as easy as possible. You see, when you consider the human being, as he stands and walks on this earth, the human being really has all the realms of nature in him. In the first place man has the animal world in him; in a sense he also has an animal organization. You can see this immediately from the fact that human beings have upper arm and thigh bones, with similar bones also found in higher animals. But if one is able to gain good knowledge of them, one also finds related or similar elements in lower animals. Right down to the fishes you can more or less see elements corresponding to human bone. And what we can thus say about the skeletal system may also be said about the muscular system and also the internal organs. We find that humans have a stomach. Correspondingly we also find a stomach in animals. In short, die things that exist in the animal world can also be found in the human body. Because of this, the materialistic view of the human being came to be that he was simply an animal, too, though more highly developed. But he is not. Human beings develop three things which animals cannot develop out of their organism. The first is that humans learn to walk upright. Just look at animals that learn to walk more or less half-way upright, and you'll see the marked difference between them and human beings. In animals that are a bit upright, kangaroos, for instance, you'll see that the forelimbs, on which they do not walk, are stunted. The kangaroo's forelimbs are not made to be used freely. And with the apes we certainly cannot say that they are like humans in this respect; for when they go up trees, they do not walk, they climb. They really have four hands, not two feet and two hands. The feet are shaped similar to hands; they climb. An upright walk is thus the first thing to distinguish humans from animals. The second thing that distinguishes humans from animals is the ability to talk. And the ability to talk is connected with the ability to walk upright. You will therefore find that where animals have something similar to the ability to talk — dogs, being highly intelligent, relatively speaking, do not have it, but parrots, for instance, do have it, being a little bit upright — you will find that the animal is upright in that case. Speech is entirely connected with this uprightness. And the third thing is free will. Animals cannot achieve this, being dependent on their internal processes. These are the things that make up the whole internal organization of the human being, making it human. But man nevertheless has animal nature in him. He does have this animal world in him. The second thing man has in him is the plant world. What are people able to do because they have the animal world in them? You see, animals are sentient — humans, too; plants are not sentient. A strange science which has now come up does include the view — I have mentioned this here before 102 Lecture of 21 April 1923, in GA 349. Tr. by M. Cotterell entitled 'The Nature of Christianity7 in MS R59, Rudolf Steiner House Library, London. — that plants are also able to feel, because there is a plant, such as the venus fly-trap, for instance, and if an insect comes near and lands on it the venus fly-trap folds up its leaves and swallows the insect. That is a highly interesting phenomenon. But if someone says: 'This plant, the venus fly-trap, must feel the insect, that is, have sensory perception of it, when it comes near it/ this is just as nonsensical as if someone were to say: 'Such a tiny little thing which I set to snap shut when a mouse comes near — a mousetrap — is also able to sense that the mouse is entering into it.' Such scientific opinions are no great shakes, they are simply nonsense. Plants do not feel. Nor are plants able to move freely. Sentience and mobility are therefore things man has in common with animals; there he has animal nature in him. It is only when he is able to think sensibly — which an animal cannot do —which makes him human. Man also has the plant world, the whole plant world in him. Plants do not move from place to place but they grow. Humans also grow and take nourishment. The plant world in them does this. This plant power is something humans also have in them. They have it in them even when they sleep. They let their animal nature go when they sleep, for they have no sentience of things, nor do they move around — unless of course they are sleepwalking, which is an abnormal development; in that case they do not let go of the ability to move around, and then they are sick. But in their normal condition people do not walk around when they are asleep, and they have no sentient awareness of things. When they need to have this, they wake up. In sleep, they cannot be sentient. Plant nature is something humans have in them also in their sleep. And mineral nature, gentlemen, is also in us; it is present in our bones, for instance. They are a little bit alive, but they contain the lifeless element of calcium carbonate. We carry the mineral world in us. We even have brain sand in our brains. That is mineral. We have the mineral world in us. And so we have the animal world, the plant world and the mineral world in us. But that is not all. If human beings only had mineral, plant and animal in them, they would be like an animal, they would walk about like an animal, for the animal, too, has mineral, plant and animal in it. Human beings, of course, are connected not only with those three realms of nature, which are visible, but also with other realms. Let me draw a diagram for you. Imagine this to be the human being [Fig. 6]. He is now related to the mineral world, the plant world, the animal world. But he is a human being. You might say: 'Well, all right, animals can be tamed.' That is quite right. But have you ever seen an ox tamed by an ox? Or a horse by a horse? Animals, even if tamed, which gives them certain abilities that show distant similarity with human abilities, have to be tamed by humans! You'll agree there is no such thing as a school for dogs where dogs teach each other and make tame dogs out of wild dogs. Human beings have to intervene. And even if one were to think one might concede everything the materialists want, one would only have to take their own lines of thought further — you can concede everything, and if you like someone might say: 'The human being, as he is now, was originally an animal and has been tamed.' But the animal he would have been in that case cannot have tamed him! It simply is not possible. Otherwise a dog might also tame a dog. So there must have been someone originally who took humanity to its present level, and this someone, these entities — who may no longer be there now — cannot be from the three realms of nature. For if you imagine that you could ever have been tamed by a giraffe and made into a human being whilst still a little creature in your infancy — just as this would not have been possible, so it would not have been possible for you to have been tamed by an oak. You'd have to be a member of the German national front to believe that, people who may perhaps assume that the oak, a holy tree, has tamed humankind. And, you see, minerals even less so. A rock crystal is beautiful, but it certainly cannot tame the human being. Other entities must have existed, other realms. You see, in human beings everything is truly called to higher things. Animals are able to form ideas, but they do not think. Ideas develop in animals. But they have no thinking activity. Human beings have thinking activity. And so they may have their blood circulation from the animal world, for example, but their thinking organ cannot come from the animal world. We are thus able to say: Man thinks, he feels, he wills. All this is freely done. And everything is different because man is a being who walks upright and who talks. Just think how different your will intent would have to be, all your will impulses would be different if you always had to crawl around on all fours the way you do in the first year of your life. All human will impulses would be different in that case. And you would never get to the point of being able to think. And just as the things we have in our physical bodies connect us with the three realms of nature, so do thinking, feeling and will connect us with three other realms, with supersensible, invisible realms. We have to have a name for everything. Just as we call minerals, plants and animals the realms of nature, so we call the realms that bring about thinking, feeling and will in such a way that they may be free — the hierarchies. Thus we have here the realms of nature [Fig. 6], and with this, man extends into the natural world. And here we have the hierarchies. You see, man extends into three realms of nature on the one hand and into three hierarchies on the other. With his thinking he extends into the hierarchy — now you see, we do not yet have a name for it. We do not have a name for it because materialism takes no account of it; so we have to use the old names: angeloi, angels. People will immediately brand one as superstitious if one says this. It is true, of course, that we no longer have a real possibility of finding names for things, for humanity has lost the feeling for speech sounds. Languages were only able to evolve for as long as people still had a feeling for speech sounds. Today everyone uses words like 'ball' or 'fall'. 103 As vowel sounds differ greatly between German and English, which reflects the spirit of each nation and its language, I have only taken the first two of the three words given by Rudolf Steiner ( Ball, Fall, Kraft ), as it is possible to make his point more or less well in English with these two. I have used 'oh' instead of 'ah', as it matches the English sounds and (fortunately) we know from previous lectures in this volume that both vowels express amazement. Concerning the third, Kraft , he went on to say, after discussing Fall, that the 'f' also has special significance, using an energy to propel oneself. Translator. Each has the vowel 'a' in it. But what is that 'a' sound? It expresses a feeling! Imagine what would happen if you were to see someone opening that window from the outside and looking in. It would not be the right moment for such a thing, and so you would be surprised and amazed. Quite of few of you would probably react to this with an 'Oh!' — unless you felt this was not the place for expressing one's reactions. That sound always expresses surprise, being taken aback a little. And this is how every letter brings something to expression. When I say 'ball', I use that vowel sound because I am surprised at the strange way it behaves when I throw it, or if it is a ball where people dance, I am surprised to see all those lively gyrations. Only the way things have developed, people have got so used to it all that they are no longer surprised, you might just as well call it 'bull', or 'bill' but certainly no longer 'ball'. Let us take 'fall'. When someone takes a fall somewhere, we may also say 'Oh'. And the other important aspect lies in the 'f' — using an energy that lies in him. 'Oh' — whenever you are surprised, you also have that particular vowel sound. And consider this. You believe that thinking takes place in the head. But if you were suddenly able to perceive that your thinking involves spiritual entities, just as there have to be animals on this earth so that you may be able to have sensation and feeling, this would come as another surprise to you. And to express this surprise you'd have to have a word that has that 'a' [as in father] sound in it. You would therefore also be able to give these thinking entities, known as angeloi, a name which has that 'a', and you would use the letter which indicates that you have the power of thinking, expressing power in a certain way: T; and for the power that is taking effect you might perhaps use a 'b'. The word Alb, 104 The German Alb means sprite, goblin, and also nightmare, incubus. The change from plural to singular occurs in the original. Translator. used for something spiritual before, could indeed serve as a sign for these spirits who are connected with thinking, and not only for nightmares, which are the pathological side of it. The hierarchies are realms into which the human being extends, and which he has in him just as he has the realms of nature in him. And the spirits who were called Alb or angel are those connected with our thinking. The feelings human beings have are connected with animal nature. What, animals? Well, you see, if one pays a little bit of heed and does not immediately go mad when something is mentioned that has to do with the spirit, but if people accept that one may be speaking of things of the spirit, quite a few things can be found out, even if one is not yet able to use a science of the spirit such as anthroposophy. Just consider — if you want to feel you need to have a certain warmth in you. A frog is much less alive in his feelings than a human being is, because it does not have warm blood. You really need to have warmth inside you when you feel. But the warmth we have in us comes from the sun. And so we are able to say that our feeling is also connected with the sun, but in a spiritual way. Physical warmth is connected with the physical sun; feeling, which is connected with physical warmth, is connected with the spiritual sun. This Second Hierarchy, which has to do with feeling, thus resides in the sun. You will definitely discover — providing you are not wholly brain-fixed, which many people are today, especially the scientists — you will discover that the Second Hierarchy are sun spirits. And because the sun only reveals itself on the outside in light and heat — no one knows the inside of the sun, for if physicists were to discover the sun as it really is they would be absolutely amazed to find that it does not at all look the way they think it does. They believe the sun to be a body of hot gases. That is far from the truth. It really consists of nothing but powers of suction; it is hollow, not even empty, but sucking. We can say that it reveals itself as light and heat on the outside; the spirits which are in there were known as 'spirits of revelation' in ancient Greek. When people still knew things — for the old instinctive knowledge was much wiser than the knowledge we have today — the spirits that revealed themselves from the sun were called Exusiai; we may just as well say 'sun spirits'. We just have to know that when we speak of feeling we enter into the realm of the sun spirits. Just as I say: Man has powers of growth and nutrition in him, and therefore the plant world, so I have to say: Man has in him powers of feeling, which are powers of the spiritual sun realm, the Second Hierarchy. And the third thing is the First Hierarchy, which has to do with the human will. This is where human beings grow most energetic, not only moving but also bringing their actions to bear. This is in connection with spirits who are out there in the whole world and are altogether the highest spiritual entities we can get to know. Again we use a Greek or Hebrew name, for we do not yet have German ones, or altogether do not yet have the terms in our language — Thrones, Cherubs, Seraphs. That is the highest realm. So there are three realms in the spirit just as there are three realms in nature. Man has to do with the three realms of nature and also with the three realms of the spirit. Now you'll say: 'Well, I can believe that or not, for those three realms are not visible, they cannot be perceived by the senses.' Yes, but gentlemen, I have known people where one was asked to explain to them that there is such a thing as air. He would not believe that there was any air. When I tell him 'That's a blackboard', he'll believe it, for if he goes up to it he'll bump into it, or when he uses his eyes he can see the blackboard. But he does not bump into the air. He may look and will say: 'There's nothing there.' In spite of this everyone admits today that air exists. It is simply there. And one day people will also admit that the spirit is there. Today they still say: 'Well, it is not there, the spirit.' Which is what country people said about the air in the old days. In the place where I grew up, the country people would still say: 'The air simply is not there; that is just something the big-heads in the city say, wanting to be so clever. You can walk through there and there is nothing there where you are able to walk through.' But that was a long time ago. Today even the cleverest people still do not know that spirits are present everywhere! But they will admit it in due course, for certain things cannot be explained in any other way, and they need to be explained. If someone says today: 'There is no spirit in everything that exists by way of nature; everything scientists know about nature is in there, but nothing else.' Well, gentlemen, if anyone says such a tiling that is just as if there is someone who has died, and the corpse lies there, and I come and say: 'You lazy fellow! Why don't you get up and move on!' I try hard to make him understand that he should not be so lazy and that he should get up. Well, I lack understanding in that case, believing that there is a living human being in there. And that is how it is. Everything a scientist is able to find in there he does not find in the living person, he finds it in the dead body. Out there in the world of nature he also finds only dead things; he does not find that which lives. He does not find the spiritual in this way, but this does not mean it does not exist. This is what I wanted to say on this question concerning the hierarchies. Mr Burle: In earlier lectures you spoke about the ancient peoples having knowledge of the science of the spirit. This has been lost to humanity today. Would you be able to explain to us how that happened? If it was all due to materialism? Rudolf Steiner: Why the old knowledge was lost? Well, you see, gentlemen, that is a very strange thing. The people who lived in very early times did not have knowledge the way we have it today but they had it in an artistic, poetic form. They had great knowledge, and that knowledge has been lost to humanity, as Mr Burle said, quite rightly. Now we may ask what caused this knowledge to be lost. We certainly cannot say that it was all due to materialism; for if all people still had the old knowledge materialism could never have arisen. It was exactly because the old knowledge had been lost and people had been mentally crippled that they invented materialism. Materialism thus comes from the decline of the old knowledge, and we cannot say that the old knowledge went into decline because materialism was spreading. So the question is, what did actually cause the old knowledge to decline? Well, gentlemen, it happened because humanity is in a process of evolution. Now you can of course dissect a person who exists today; if he dies you can dissect him. You can gain knowledge about the way in which the human being is made in our present time. The most we have from earlier times are, well, the mummies in Egypt, which we talked about recently, only they are so thoroughly embalmed that one really cannot dissect them properly any more. Scientists therefore cannot get an idea of what human beings looked like in earlier times, especially at the time when they were of a more subtle build. Ordinary science cannot help here, and one has to penetrate it with the science of the spirit. And then one will find that people were not at all the way they are today in those earlier times. There was a time on earth when people did not have such hard bones as we have them today. People had bones like the bones children with rickets have today, so that they grow bow-legged or knock-kneed and are altogether weak. You can see that it is possible to have such soft bones, for one still finds them in cartilaginous fish today. Those bones are as soft as cartilage. Human beings once had such bones, for the human skeleton was soft at one time. Now you'll say: 'That must mean that everyone went around bowlegged or knock-kneed, and everything must have been crooked because the bones were soft.' That would have been the case if the air had always been the same on earth as it is today. But it wasn't. The air was much thicker in earlier times. It has got much thinner. And the air contained much more water in those old times than it does today. The air also contained a lot more carbon dioxide. The whole air was denser. Now you begin to see that people were able to live with those soft bones in the past. We only have to have the bones we have today because the air is no longer supporting us. A denser air would support human beings. Walking was much more like swimming in those times than it is today. Today we walk in a terribly mechanized way; we put down one foot, and the leg has to be like a column; then we put down the other foot. People did not walk like that in the earliest times; they were aware of the watery air just as one can let the water carry one today. So it was possible for them to have softer bones. But when the air grew thinner — and even ordinary science can tell us that the air got thinner — hard bones began to make sense. Hard bones only developed then. Of course, in those times the carbon dioxide was outside; the air contained it. Today we have calcium carbonate inside us; and with this the bones have grown hard. That is how things go together. But when the bones grow hard, others things, too, grow hard in the human being. The people who had softer bones also had a much softer brain mass. And the skull, the head of human beings was a very different shape in those times. You see, it was more like the heads of people with water on the brain. That was beautiful then; today it is no longer so beautiful. And they kept their heads the way very young children today still have it in the womb, for they had a soft brain mass, and the soft brain deposited itself in the front part of the skull [drawing]. Everything was softer then. Now, gentlemen, when the human being was softer, his mental faculties would also have been different. Your thinking is much more spiritual with a soft brain than with a hard brain. The ancients still felt this; they would call someone who was only able to think the same thing over and over again and therefore insists on sticking to just this one idea a thick-head. This means that they had a feeling that one is really able to think better, to have better ideas, if one has a soft brain. The early people had such a soft brain. And then there was something else they had. We are certainly able to say that when a child is born, its skull with its soft brain, and even the soft bones, are still very similar to the way they were in the early people. But you just sit or lay a small infant down — it cannot go anywhere, it cannot feed itself and the like; it cannot do anything! Higher spirits had to take care of this when people still had those soft brains. And the result was that people did not have freedom then, they did not have free will. But free will gradually developed in the course of human evolution. It means that the bones and the brain had to harden. But this hardening also meant that the old knowledge went into decline. We would not have become independent human beings if we had not become thick-headed, hard-headed, with hard brains. But we owe our freedom to this. And the decline of the old knowledge really went hand in hand with our freedom. That is it. Can you understand this? [Answer: Yes.] It comes with our freedom. But now, having on the one hand gained freedom and independence, human beings have lost the old knowledge and fallen into materialism. But materialism is not the truth. We must therefore gain spiritual insight again, in spite of the fact that we have a denser brain today than people did originally. We can only do this through the anthroposophical science of the spirit. This gives insights that are independent of the body and are perceived with the soul only. Early humanity had their knowledge because their brains were softer and therefore more soul-like. We have our materialism because our brain has grown hard, no longer able to take in the soul. We therefore have to gain spiritual insights with the soul only, a soul not taken up by the brain. This is the way of the science of the spirit. We regain spiritual insights. But we live in an age now when humanity has bought freedom, the price being materialism. So we cannot say that materialism is something bad, even if it is untruth. Materialism, if not taken to extremes, is not something bad, for through materialism humanity has learned many things that were not known before. That is how it is. Now there is another question that was put in writing before: I have read the following statement in your Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: 105 Steiner, R., The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. A Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4), tr. R. Stebbing, London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1989. We must make the content of the world the content of our thought; only then shall we find the wholeness again from which we have separated.' So the gentlemen has been reading something of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. His question is: What belongs to this world content, since everything we see exists only in so far as we think it? And he goes on to say: Kant says the mind is unable to grasp the world of phenomena that comes before the world we perceive. Now you see, gentlemen, it is like this. When we are bom, when we are little children, we have eyes, we have ears, we see and we hear; that is, we perceive the things that are around us. The chair which is there is not thought by a child, but it is perceived. It looks the same to a child as it does to a grown-up, only the child does not yet think the chair. Let us assume some artificial means could be found so that a child who does not yet have thoughts would be able to talk. In that case — and we are used to this today, for the very people who do not think are those who are most critical — the child would be inclined to criticize everything. I am actually convinced that if very young infants who are not yet able to think were able to chatter away they would be the greatest critics. You see, in ancient India, you had to be 60 before you were allowed to be critical; the others were not allowed to voice an opinion, for people would say: 'They have no experience of the world yet.' Now I won't defend this nor will I criticize it, I merely want to tell you how it was. Today anyone who has reached the age of 20 would laugh at you if you were to say he had to wait until he was 60 before he could give an opinion. Young people would not do that today. They do not wait at all, and as soon as they are able to hold a pen they start to write for the papers, to have opinions on everything. We've gone a long way in this direction today. But I am convinced that if very young infants were able to talk — oh, they would be severe critics! A 6-month-old infant, wow, he'd be criticizing everything we do if we could get him to talk. Gentlemen, you see, we only start to think at a later stage. How did speech develop? Well, imagine a child of 6 months, not yet able to have the idea of the chair but able to see it just as we do. He would discuss the chair. Now you would say: 'I, too, have the idea of the chair; in the chair here is gravity, and so it stands on the floor. Some carving las been done on it, and so it has form. The chair has a certain inner consistency, and I am therefore able to sit on it without falling off, and so on. I have the idea of the chair. I think of something when I see the chair.' The child of 6 months who does not yet have the idea will say: 'Silly, you've grown stupid having grown so old. We know at 6 months what a chair is; later you have all kinds of fantasies about it.' Yes, that is how it would be if a 6-month-old child could talk. And something we are only able to do as we get older — being also able to think as we say things — with all this the situation is that the ideas do, after all, go with the chair; I merely do not know them beforehand. I only have the ideas when I have reached the level of maturity needed. But the solidity of the chair is not in me. I do not sit down on my own solidity when I sit down on the chair, otherwise I might as well sit myself down on myself again. The chair does not get heavy when I sit down on it; it is heavy in its own right. Everything I develop by way of ideas is already in the chair. I therefore perceive the reality of the chair when in the course of life I connect with it many times in my thoughts. Initially I only see the colours, and so on, hear when a chair rattles, and also feel if it is cold or warm; I can perceive this with my senses. But one only knows what is in that chair when one has grown older and is able to think. Then one connects with it again, creating a retroactive effect. Kant — I spoke of him recently — made the biggest of mistakes in thinking that something a child does not yet perceive, something we only perceive later, i.e. the thought content, is something people put into objects themselves. So he was really saying: 'If that is a chair there — the chair has colour, it rattles. But when I say the chair is heavy, this is not a property of the chair, it is something I give to it by thinking it to be heavy. The chair is solid, but this is not inherent in it; I add it by thinking the chair to be solid.' Well, gentlemen, Kant's teachings are considered to be a great science, and I spoke about this a while ago. The truth is, however, that it is the greatest nonsense. Because of the particular way in which humanity has developed, great nonsense is sometimes considered to be great science, the most sublime philosophy, and Kant is of course also known as the man who ground everything to dust, who shattered everything. All I was able to see in him — I studied Kant from early boyhood, again and again — is a shatterer; but I have not generally found that someone who shatters soup plates creates the most sublime things, nor indeed that he was greater than the person who made the plates. It always seemed to me that the maker was the greater man. Kant has in truth always shattered everything. Kant's objections should not concern us. But the thing is that when we are born we are disunited, having no connection with things. We only grow into them again as we develop concepts. The question that has been asked there266 fore has to be answered like this. What belongs to the world content? In my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I wrote: 'We must make the content of the world the content of our thought; only then shall we find the whole again from which we separated in infancy.' In infancy we do not have the world content, we only have the sensual part of the world content. But the thought content is truly inside the world content. In infancy we thus have only half the world content, and it is only later, when we have developed and have thoughts, that we have the thought content not only in us, but we know that it is in the things, and we also treat our thoughts in such a way that we know they are in the things, and we then re-establish our connection with the things. You see, in the 1880s — when everything had become Kantian and everyone kept saying that Kant's philosophy was the most sublime, and no one dared as yet to say anything against it — it was very hard when I stood up in those days and stated that Kantian philosophy was really a nonsense. But this is something I had to declare from the very beginning. For of course, if someone like Kant thinks that we actually add the thought content to things, he can no longer arrive at the plain and simple content, for he then has inner thoughts about things around him, and this is materialism indeed. Kant is in many respects responsible for the fact that humanity has not found its way out of materialism. Kant is altogether responsible for a great many things. I told you this on that earlier occasion when someone else had asked about Kant. The others, being unable to think anything else, created materialism. But Kant said: 'We cannot know anything about the world of the spirit, only believe.' What he was really saying was: 'You can only know something about the world perceived by the senses because you can drag thoughts only into this world perceived by the senses.' And people who wanted to be materialistic felt even more justified in this by referring to Kant. But this is another prejudice humanity must get out of the habit of using - meaning the part of humanity who at least know something of Kant — they have to get out of the habit of always referring to Kant when they want to say that one really cannot know anything about the world of the spirit. And so world content is sensory content and content of mind and spirit. But mind and spirit only gain that content in the course of life, as we develop ideas. We then re-establish the connection between nature and spirit. In the beginning, in infancy, we only had nature before us, and mind and spirit evolved gradually out of our own nature. Would anyone have a very little question? Mr Burle asked about human hair, saying: 'Many girls now have their hair cut short. Could Dr Steiner tell us if that is good for the health? My little daughter would also like to cut her hair, but I have not permitted it. I'd like to know if it is harmful or not.' Rudolf Steiner: Well now, the matter is like this. The hair that grows is so little connected with the organism as a whole that it does not really matter very much if one lets one's hair grow or cuts it short. The harm is not enough to be apparent. But there is a difference between men and women in this respect. You know, for a time it was the case — it's no longer the case now — that one would see anthroposophists walking about, gentlemen and ladies — the gentleman would not cut his hair, wearing long tresses, and the ladies would have their hair cut short. People would of course say: 'Anthroposophy turns the world upside down; among the anthroposophists the ladies cut their hair short and the gentlemen let theirs grow.' Now it is no longer like this, at least not noticeably so. But we might of course also ask how it is with the difference between the sexes when it comes to cutting one's hair. Generally speaking the situation is that a great head of hair is rather superfluous in men. For women it is a necessity. Hair always contains sulphur, iron, silica and some other substances. These are needed by the organism. Men need much silica, for as they assumed the male sex in the womb they lost the ability to produce their own silica. They absorb the silica that is in the air whenever they have just had their hair cut, absorbing it through the hair. It is of course too bad when the hair has gone, for then nothing can be absorbed. Going bald at an early age, which has a little bit to do with people's lifestyles, is not exactly the best thing for a person. With women, cutting the hair short is not exactly good, and that is because women have the ability to produce silica more in the organism, and so they should not cut the hair really short too often; for then the hair absorbs silica — which the woman already has in her — from the air and forces it back into the organism. This makes the woman inwardly hairy, prickly; she then has 'hairs on her teeth' [German saying, meaning a tough woman]. This is then something that is not so apparent; one has to have a certain sensitivity to notice it, but a little bit of it is there. Their whole manner is rather prickly then; they become inwardly hairy and prickly; and cutting one's hair off does then have an influence, especially in young people. Now you see, it can also be the other way round, gentlemen. It may be that modern youngsters come into an environment — children are all quite different today from the way we were in our young days — where their inner silica is no longer enough, for they want to be a bit prickly, scratchy. They then develop the instinct to cut their hair. This becomes fashionable, with one copying the other, and then we have the story the other way round, with children wanting to be prickly and having their hair cut. But if one managed to organize things so that they went a bit against such a fashion, this would not be such a bad thing if the fashion has gone a bit to extremes. In the final instance it all has to do with this, does it not — one person likes a gentle woman, another a prickly one. Tastes do change a little. But it cannot have a very great influence. Though of course if someone has a daughter who wants to or is supposed to choose a husband who likes a prickly woman, then she should get her hair cut. She then won't get a husband who likes a gentle woman. So that may indeed happen. So the business has more of an effect on things that are marginal in life.

From Beetroot to Buddhism

Man and the hierarchies. Ancient wisdom lost. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSP1999/19240625p02.html

Dornach

25 Jun 1924

GA353-17

Rudolf Steiner : Good morning, gentlemen! Has anyone thought of a question? Herr Dollinger : I would like to ask if Dr. Steiner would speak again about the creation of the world and man. There are many newcomers here who have not yet heard it. Dr. Steiner : It is asked if I could speak again about the creation of the world and of humanity, since many new workers are here. I will do this by first describing the original conditions on the earth, which have led on the one hand to all that we see around us and on the other hand to man. Now man is really a very, very complicated being. If people think they will be able to understand him by dissecting a human corpse, they are mistaken, for naturally they will not arrive at a real understanding. Just as little can they understand the world around us if all they do is collect stones and plants and look at the individual items. We must be able to realize that what we examine does not show at first sight what it actually is. You see, if we look at a corpse, perhaps soon after the man has died — he still has the same form, if perhaps a little paler — we can see that death has seized him, but he still has the same form that he had when alive. But now think: how does this corpse look eventually if we do not cremate it but let it decay? It is destroyed; there is no longer anything at work in it that could build it up again; it is definitely destroyed. The beginning of the Bible is very much smiled at, and indeed justifiably, when it is understood to say that once upon a time some god formed a man out of a clod of earth. People regard that as impossible and naturally they are right. No god can come along and make a human being out of a lump of earth; it would be no more a man than a statue is, however similar the form might be — no more than the mannequin children make can actually walk. So people smile rightly when some divinity is supposed to have made man out of a lump of earth. That corpse that we were looking at is, in fact, after a certain time just such a clod of earth as it becomes in the grave somewhat decomposed, dissolved. So to believe that a human being can be made out of what we then have before us is really just as great a folly. You see, on the one hand it is asserted today that it is incorrect to suppose that man could be formed from a lump of earth; on the other hand one is allowed to suppose that he consists of earth alone. If one wants to be logical, then the one is no better than the other. One must be clear that while the man lived there was something in him that gave him his shape and form, and when it is no longer in him he can no longer keep his form. Nature forces do not give him this form; nature forces merely break it apart, they do not make it grow. So we must go back to the soul and spirit of the man, which were really in control as long as he was living. Now when we look at the lifeless stone outside, if we imagine that it has always been the same as it is today, that is just as if we would say of the corpse that it had always been like that even while the man was living. The stones that we see today in the world outside, the rocks, the mountains, are just the same as a corpse; in fact, they are a corpse! They were not always as they are today. Just as a human corpse was not always what it is now that the soul and spirit have gone, so what we see outside has not always been in its present condition. The fact that plants grow on the lifeless corpse, that is, on the rocks, need not surprise us; for when a human corpse decays, all sorts of tiny plants and tiny animals grow out of it. Of course, what is outside in nature seems beautiful, and what we see on a corpse when all sorts of parasitic plants are growing out of it does not seem beautiful. But that is only because the one is gigantic in size and the other is small. If we were not human beings but were tiny beetles crawling about on a decaying corpse and could think like human beings, we would regard the bones of the corpse as rocks. We would consider what was decayed as rubble and stones; we would-since we were tiny beetles-see great forests in what was growing on the corpse; we would have a whole world to admire and not think it revolting as we do now. Just as we must go back to what the man was before he died, so, in the case of the earth and our surroundings, we must go back to what once lived in all that today is lifeless, before indeed the earth as a whole died. Unless the earth as a whole had died there could be no human being. Human beings are parasites, as it were, on the present earth. The whole earth was once alive; it could think as you and I now think. But only when it became a corpse could it produce the human race. This is something really everyone can realize if he will just think. But people today do not want to think. Yet one must think if one would come to the truth. We have, therefore, to imagine that what is today solid rock with plants growing, and so on, was originally entirely different. Originally there was a living, thinking, cosmic body-a living, thinking, cosmic body! I have often said here: What do people today imagine? They imagine that originally there was a gigantic mist, that this primeval mist came into rotation, that the planets then split off, that the sun became the center. This is taught to children quite early, and a little experiment is made to show that everything really did start in that way. A few drops of oil are put in a glass of water; one lets the oil swim on the water. A piece of cardboard has a pin stuck through it; then with the pin one makes the cardboard revolve; little oil-drops split off, go on revolving, and a tiny planetary system actually forms with the sun in the center. 1 “The little Plateau experiment,” worked out by the physicist J.A.E Plateau, 1801 – 1883. Compare the description by Vincent Knauer in his lectures, “The Main Problem of Philosophy,” Vienna and Leipzig 1892: “One of the nicest experiments is the Plateau experiment. A mixture of water and alcohol is prepared, having the exact weight of pure olive oil. Into this is poured a rather large drop of oil. This does not float on top of the liquid but sinks to the middle of it, in the form of a ball. A small disc of cardboard is then perforated in the center by a long needle and lowered carefully into the middle of the ball of oil, so that the edge of the cardboard becomes the ‘equator’ of the ball. The disc is now set into motion, at first slowly, then faster and faster. Naturally the movement is imparted to the ball of oil, and as a result of the strength of the movement, parts of the oil drop away and continue the movement separately for some time, first in circles, then revolving as tiny balls. In this way there arises something surprisingly similar to our planetary system: in the center the largest globe, like our sun, and moving around it smaller balls and rings, like our planets with their moons.” Well now, it is usually quite a virtue if one can forget oneself, but in this case the teacher should not! When he makes the experiment, he ought then to say to the children: Out there in the universe is a giant schoolteacher who did the rotating! What it amounts to is thoughtlessness — not because the facts oblige one to be thoughtless, but because one wants to be. But in that way one doesn't arrive at the truth. We must therefore imagine not that a gigantic schoolteacher was there who rotated the world mist, but that there was something in the world mist itself that was able to move and so on. But there we come back to the living. If we want to rotate, we don't need a pin stuck through us with which a teacher rotates us. That's not for us; we can rotate ourselves. This schoolroom variety of primeval mist would have to be rotated by a schoolteacher. But if it is living and can feel and think, then it needs no cosmic schoolteacher; it can cause the rotation itself. So we must picture that what today is lifeless around us was once alive, was sensitive, was a cosmic being. If we look further, there was even a great number of cosmic beings animating the whole. The original conditions of the world are therefore due to the fact that there was Spirit within the substance. Now what is it that underlies everything material? Imagine that I have a lump of lead in my hand, that is, solid matter, thoroughly solid matter. Now if I put this lead on red-hot iron or on anything red-hot, on fire, it turns to fluid. If I work on it still further with fire, the whole lead vanishes; it evaporates, and I see nothing more of it. It is the same with all substances. On what does it depend then that a substance is solid? It depends upon what warmth is in it. The appearance of a substance depends only upon how much warmth is in it. You know, today one can make the air liquid, then one has liquid air. The air we have in our surroundings is only airy, gaseous, as long as it contains a definite amount of warmth. And water — water is fluid, but it can also become ice and therefore solid. If there were a certain cold temperature on our earth there would be no water, but only ice. Now let us go into our mountains: there we find the solid granite or other solid rock. But if it were immensely hot there, there would be no solid granite; it would be fluid and flow away like the water in our brooks. What then is actually the original element that makes things solid or fluid or gaseous? It is heat! And unless heat is there in the first place, nothing at all can be solid or fluid. So we can say that heat or fire is what is underlying everything in the beginning. That is also shown by the research of spiritual science or anthroposophy. Spiritual science shows that originally there was not a primeval mist, a lifeless mist, but that living warmth was there at the beginning, simple living warmth . Thus I will assume an original cosmic body that was living warmth. [See drawing – red.] In my Occult Science I have called this original warmth condition the “Saturn condition”; it has been called this from ancient times, and though one must have a name, it is not the name that matters. It has, in fact, something to do with the cosmic body Saturn, but we will not go into that now. In this original condition there were as yet no solid bodies and no air, only warmth; but the warmth was living. When you freeze today, it's your ego that freezes; when you sweat today, it's your ego that sweats, that becomes thoroughly hot. You are always in warmth, sometimes heat, sometimes cold, but always in some kind of warmth. In fact, we can still see today that man lives in warmth. The human being lives absolutely in warmth. When modern science says that originally there was great heat, in a certain sense it is right; but when it thinks that this great heat was dead, then it is wrong. There was a living cosmic being, a thoroughly living cosmic being. Now the first thing to come about in connection with this warmth-being was a cooling down. Things cool down continually. And what happens when what has been nothing but warmth now cools down? Air arises, air, the gaseous state. For when we go on heating a solid object, gas is formed in the warmth; but when something not yet substance cools down from above downwards, air is formed at first. So we can say that the second condition to come about was gaseous, definitely airy. [See drawing-green.] In what has been formed, in a certain sense, as a second cosmic body everything is air. There is as yet no water, nothing solid within it; it consists entirely of air. So now we have the second condition that formed itself in the course of time. You see, in this second condition something else developed along with what was already there. I have called this second condition “Sun” in my Occult Science; it was not the present sun, but a kind of Sun condition, a warm air-mist. The present sun, as I have told you, is not that, nor is it what was originally this second cosmic body. Thus we get a second cosmic body formed out of the first; the first was pure warmth, the second was of an air-nature. Now man can live in warmth as soul. Warmth gives the soul sensitive feeling and does not destroy it. It destroys the body, however; if I were thrown into the fire my body would be destroyed but not my soul. (We will speak of this more exactly later, for naturally the question needs to be considered in detail.) For this reason the human being could already live as soul during the first, the Saturn, condition. But although man could live then, the animal could not, for in the case of the animal when the body is destroyed the soul element is injured too. Fire has an influence on the soul element of the animal. In the first condition, therefore, we have man already present but not the animal. When the transformation had taken place to the Sun condition [see drawing], both human being and animal were there. That is the important fact. It is not true that the animals were there originally and that man developed out of them. Man was there originally and afterwards the animals evolved out of what could not become man. Naturally the human being was not going about on two feet when there was only warmth — obviously not. He lived in the warmth and was a floating being; he had only a condition of warmth. Then as that was metamorphosed into an air-warmth-body, the animals were formed and appeared beside man. Thus the animals are indeed related to man, but they developed only later in the course of world evolution. Now what more happened? The warmth decreased, and as it gradually decreased, not only was air formed but also water. Thus we have a third cosmic body. [See drawing — yellow.] I have called it “Moon” because it was slightly similar to our present moon, although it was not our present moon. It was a watery, a thoroughly watery body. Air and warmth naturally remained, but now water appeared which had not been present in the second condition. After the appearance of water there could be man, who was already there, animals, and, pushing up out of the water, plants. Plants originally grew in water, not in earth. So we have man, animal, plant. You see, plants seem to grow out of the earth, but if the earth contained no water, no plants would grow; they need water for their growth. There are also as you know, aquatic plants, and you can think of the original plants as being similar to these; the original plants swam in the water. The animals too you must picture as swimming animals and in the former, second condition, even as flying animals. Something still actually remains of all that was there originally. During the Sun condition, when only man and animal were in existence, everything had to fly, and since the air has remained and still exists, those flying creatures have their descendants. Our present birds are the descendants of the original animals that developed during the Sun condition. However, at that time they were not as they are today. Those animal creatures consisted purely of air; they were airy clouds. Here, later [Moon condition], they had water in them. Today — let us look at a bird. Usually a bird is observed very thoughtlessly. If we are to picture the animals as they existed during the Sun condition, we must say that they consisted only of air; they were hovering air-clouds. When we look at a bird today, we should realize that it has hollow bones filled with air. It is very interesting to see that in the present bird. There is air everywhere in this bird, in the bones, everywhere! Think away whatever is not air and you get an air-being — the bird. If it did not have this air, it could not fly at all. It has hollow bones; within, it is an air-bird, reminding us of former conditions. The rest of the body was built around it in later times. The birds are really the descendants of the Sun condition. Look at modern man: He can live in the air, but he can't fly; he is too heavy to fly. He has not formed hollow bones for himself like the bird, or else he too could fly. Then he would not just have shoulder blades, but his shoulder blades would stretch out into wings. The human being still has the rudiments of wings up there in his shoulder blades; if these were to grow out, he would be able to fly. Thus man lives in the air surrounding him. But this air must contain vapor. Man cannot live in purely dry air; he needs fluids. There is a condition, however, in which the human being cannot live in the air: that is the very earliest human state, the embryo. One must look at these things rightly. During the embryonic time the human germ or embryo obtains air and all that it needs from the body of the mother. It must be in something living. You see, it is like this: If the human embryo is removed by operation from the body of the mother, it cannot yet live in the air. During the embryonic condition the human being needs to have live surroundings. At the time when man, animal, and plant existed, but as yet no stones or minerals as we have them today, everything was alive and man lived surrounded by what was alive just as now he lives as embryo in the mother's body. Naturally he grew bigger. Think of this: If we did not have to be born and live in the air and breathe on our own, then our span of life would end with our birth. As embryo we could all live only ten moon-months. As a matter of fact, there are such creatures that live only ten months; these do not come to the outer air but get air from within a living environment. So it was with man a long time ago. He certainly grew older, but he never came out of the living element. He lived in that state all the time. He did not advance to birth; he lived as embryo. At that time there were as yet no minerals, no rocks. If the body of a human being is dissected today, the same carbonate of lime will be found in his bones as you find here in the Jura Mountains. There is now a mineral substance inside the body that was not present in the earlier condition. In the embryo too, particularly in the first months, there is no deposit of mineral; everything is still fluid, only slightly thickened. And so it was during this earlier condition; man was not yet bony, having, at most, cartilage. Of such a human being we are reminded today only by the human embryo. Why cannot the human embryo come immediately out of the mother's body? Because the world today is a different world. As long as the Old Moon lasted — I will now call it the Old Moon, as it is not the present moon but the former state of the earth — as long as the Old Moon period lasted, the whole earth was a womb, inwardly alive, a real womb. There was nothing yet of stone or mineral. It was all a gigantic womb, and we can say that our present earth came forth from this gigantic womb. Earlier this immense womb did not exist at all. What was it then? Well, in fact, earlier there was something else in existence. Let us just consider what came before. You see, if a human being is to develop in the mother's body, if he is to be an embryo, he must first be conceived. The conception takes place. But does nothing precede conception? What precedes conception is the monthly period in the woman; that is what precedes. A very special process takes place in the female organism that is connected with the expulsion of blood. But that is not the only thing; that is only the physical aspect. Every time the blood is expelled something of a spiritual-soul nature is born at the same time, and this remains. It does not become physical, because no conception has taken place. The spiritual-soul element remains without becoming a physical human body. What for a human being must be there before conception was also there during the cosmic Sun condition! The whole Sun was a cosmic being that from time to time expelled something spiritual. So man and animal lived in the air-like condition, thrust out, expelled by this whole body. Between one condition (Sun) and the other (Moon), it came about that the human being became a physical being in water. Formerly he was a physical being only in air. During this Moon condition we have something similar to conception, but not yet anything similar to birth. What was the nature of this conception during the ancient Moon condition? The Moon was there, an entirely female being, and confronting it was not a male being, but all that was still outside its cosmic body at that time. Outside it were many other cosmic bodies that exerted an influence. Now comes the drawing which I have already made here. So this cosmic body was there and around it the other cosmic bodies, exerting their influence in the most varied ways. Seeds came in from outside and fructified the whole Moon-Earth. And if you could have lived at that time and set foot on this primeval cosmic body, you would not have said when you saw all sorts of drops coming in “It is raining,” as one says today. At that time you would have said, “Earth is being fructified.” There were seasons when the fructifying seeds came in from all directions, and other seasons when they matured and no more came in. Thus at that time there was a cosmic fructification. But the human being was not born, only fructified; he was only called forth by conception. The human being came out of the entire Earth-body, or Moon-body, as it was then. In the same way fructification came from the whole cosmic surroundings for animal and plant. Now later through further cooling there came about a hardening of all that lived then as man, animal, and plant. There, in the Moon condition we still have to do with water, at most, a hardening through the cooling. Here on the earth the solid, the mineral appears. So now we have a fourth condition [see drawing]: this is our earth as we have it today, and it contains man, animal, plant, mineral. Let us just look at what the bird, for instance, has become on the earth. During this time (Sun condition) the bird was still a sort of air-sack, it consisted of nothing but air, a mass of air floating along. Then during this time (Moon condition) it became watery, a thickened watery thing, and it hovered as a kind of cloud — only not like our clouds but already containing a form. What for us are only formless water structures were at that time forms. There was a skeleton form, but it was fluid. But now came the mineral element, and this was incorporated into what was only water structure. Carbonate of lime, phosphatic lime and so on went the length of the skeleton, forming solid bones. So at first we have the air-bird, then the water-bird, and at last the solid earth-bird. This could not be the same in the case of man. Man could not simply incorporate into himself what only arose as mineral during his embryonic period. The bird could do this — and why? You see, the bird acquired its air form here (Sun condition); it then lived through the water condition. It is essential for it not to let the mineral come too close to it during its germinal state. If the mineral came to it too soon, then it would just become a mineral and harden. The bird while it is developing is still somewhat watery and fluid; the mineral, however, wants to approach. What does the bird do? Well, it pushes it off, it makes something around itself, it makes the eggshell around itself! That is the mineral element. The eggshell remains as long as the bird must protect itself inwardly from the mineral; that is, as long as it must stay fluid. The reason for this is that the bird originated only during the second condition of the earth. If it had been there during the first condition, it would now be much more sensitive to warmth than it actually is. Since it was not there at that time, it can now form the hard eggshell around itself. Man was already present during the first condition of the earth, the warmth condition, and therefore he cannot now hold off the mineral while he is in the embryonic stage. He can't build an eggshell; he must be organized differently. He must take up the mineral element from the womb, and so we have mineral formation already in the embryo at the end of its development. Man must absorb some mineral from the womb; therefore, the womb must first possess the mineral that is to be absorbed. So in the case of man the mineral element is incorporated quite differently. The bird has air-filled bones; we human beings have marrow-filled bones, very different from the bones of the bird. Through the fact of our having this marrow a human mother is able to provide mineral substance to the embryo within her. But once the mineral element is provided, the human being is no longer able to live in the womb environment and must gradually be born. He must first have acquired mineral constituents. With the bird it is not a matter of being born, but of creeping out of the eggshell; man is born without an eggshell. Why? Because man originated earlier and therefore everything can be done through warmth and not through air. From this you can understand the differences that still exist and that can be observed today. The difference between an “egg-animal” and such a being as man, and also the higher mammals, lies in the fact that man is far older than, for instance, the bird species, far older than the minerals. Therefore, when he is quite young, during the embryonic stage in the womb, he must be protected from the mineral nature and may only be given the prepared mineral that comes from the mother. In fact, the mineral element prepared in the mother's body must even for a certain time after birth still be given to him in the mother's milk! While the bird can be fed at once with external substances, man and the higher animals can only be nourished by what the mother's body provides. What the human being has today in our present Earth condition from the mother's body he had during the previous cosmic condition from the air, from the environment. What he had around him during his whole life was of a milk nature. Our air today contains oxygen and nitrogen but relatively little carbon and hydrogen and particularly very, very little sulphur. They have gone. During the Moon condition it was different; in the surrounding air there were not only oxygen and nitrogen but also hydrogen, carbon, sulphur. That made a sort of milky pap around the Moon, a quite thin milk-pap in which life existed. Today man still lives in a thin milk-pap before he is born! For it is only after his birth that the milk goes into the breast; before birth it is in those parts of the female body where the human embryo is lying. That is an amazing thing, that processes in the mother's organism that belong to the uterus before birth afterwards go to the breast. And so the Moon condition is still preserved in man before he is born, and the actual Earth condition only comes at the moment of birth with the Moon-nature still present in the breast milk. This is how things connected with the origin of the earth and mankind must be explained. If people do not press forward to a spiritual science, they simply cannot solve the mystery of why a bird slips out of an egg and can at once be nourished with external substances, while a human being cannot slip out of an egg and must come out of the womb to be nourished by mother's milk. Why is it? It is because the bird originated later and is thus an external being. Man originated earlier, and when he was undergoing the Moon-condition, he was not yet as hardened as the bird. Hence today too he is not yet so hardened; he must still be more protected, for he has within him much more of the original conditions. Since people today on the whole can no longer think properly, they misunderstand what exists on earth as plant, animal, and man. Thus materialistic Darwinism arose, which believed that the animals were there first and that man simply developed out of the animals. It is true that in his external form man is related to the animals, but he existed earlier, and the animals really developed later after the world had gone through a transformation. And so we can say that the animals we see now present a later stage of an earlier condition when they were indeed more closely related to man. But we must never allow ourselves to imagine that out of the present animals a human being could arise. That is a thoroughly false idea. Now let us look not at the bird species but at the fishes. The bird species developed for the air, the fish species for the water. Not until what we call the Moon condition were certain earlier air-like bird-beings transformed in such a way as to become fishlike — because of the water. To the bird-like beings were added the fish. One could say that the fish are birds that have become watery, birds received by the water. You can gather from this that the fish appeared later than the birds; they appeared when the watery element was there, that is, during the Old Moon period. And now you will no longer be astonished that everything swimming about in a watery state during the Old Moon time looked fish-like. The birds looked fish-like in spite of flying in the air and being lighter. Everything was fish-like. Now this is interesting: if we look today at a human embryo on about the 21st or 22nd day after conception, what is its appearance? There it swims in a fluid element in the mother's body, and it looks really like a tiny fish! The human being actually had this form during the ancient Moon period and he has it still in the third week of pregnancy; he has preserved it. You can say, then, that man worked himself out of this Old Moon form, and we can still see by the fish form he has in the embryo how he has worked himself out. When we observe the present world, everywhere we can see how formerly it all had life, just as we know of a corpse that it had life earlier. So today I have described to you the earlier condition of what we now have on earth as mineral. We look at a corpse and say that he can no longer move his legs, his hands, no longer open his mouth or his eyes — everything has become immobile; yet that leads us back to a human state when everything could be moved — legs, arms, hands — when the eyes could be opened. In just the same way we look around us at the corpse of the earth, the remains of a living body, in which man and animal still wander about, and we look back to the time when the entire earth was once alive. But there is something more. I said that with conception the potentiality of the physical human being is there, and gradually the embryo develops. I also described what happens earlier, the processes in the female organism, what is pushed out in the monthly periods, and how a spiritual element is pushed out too. Now in this process there is always something of the nature of fever, even in a perfectly normal, healthy woman. This is because there is a warmth condition; it is the warmth condition that has been preserved from the ancient first condition that I have in the drawing called Saturn. This fever condition still endures. One can say that the whole of our evolution proceeded from a kind of fever condition of our earth, which the cooling down finally brought to an end. Most people today are no longer feverish but thoroughly dry and matter-of-fact. Yet even now, when there is something not caused by outside warmth but appearing inwardly as warmth, giving us something of an inward life, now too we have a condition of fever. So it is, gentlemen: One sees everywhere in the conditions of present mankind how they can be traced back to conditions of the past. Today I have told you how man, animal, plant, and mineral gradually evolved as the entire cosmic body with which all are connected grew more and more solid. We will speak further of all this — today is Monday — on Wednesday at nine o'clock. 2 This lecture was postponed to Thursday, July 3rd.

The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars

Creation of the world and of man. Saturn-, Sun-, and Moon-condition in the earth's evolution

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA354/English/RSP1987/19240630a01.html

Dornach

30 Jun 1924

GA354-1

Rudolf Steiner : Good morning, gentlemen! Today I would like to speak further about the creation of the earth and the origin of man. It has surely become clear from what I have already said that the earth was originally not what it is today, but was a kind of living being. I described the condition that existed before our actual Earth condition by saying that warmth, air, and water were there but as yet no really solid mineral structures. Now you must not imagine that the water existing at that time looked like the present water. Our present water has become what it is by the separation of certain substances which were formerly dissolved in it. If you take a glass of ordinary water and put some salt in it, the salt dissolves in the water and you get a fluid-a salt solution, as one calls it-which is denser than the original water. If you put your fingers in it, it feels much denser than water. Now dissolved salt is relatively thin; with certain other substances one gets quite a thickish liquid. The fluid condition, the water condition which existed in earlier ages of our earth was therefore not that of today's water. That did not exist, for substances were dissolved in the water everywhere. All the substances that you have today-the Jura limestone mountains, for instance-were dissolved; harder rocks that you can't scratch with a knife (limestone can always be scratched) were also dissolved in the water. During this Old Moon stage, therefore, one has to do with a thickish fluid that contained in solution all the substances which today are solid. The thin water of today, which consists essentially of hydrogen and oxygen, was separated off later; it has developed only during the earth period itself. Thus we have as an original condition of the earth a densified fluid, and round about it a kind of air. But this was not the air of today; just as the water was not like our present water, so the air was not the same as our present air. Our present air contains essentially oxygen and nitrogen; the other substances which it still contains are present to a very slight degree. There are even metals still present in the air, but in exceedingly small quantities. For instance, there is one metal, sodium, that is everywhere in the air. Just think what that means — that sodium is everywhere, that a substance which is in the salt on your table is present everywhere in tiny quantities. There are two substances — one is the sodium which I have just mentioned, which is present in small quantities in the air; then there is a substance of a gaseous nature which plays a great role when you bleach your laundry: chlorine. It causes the bleaching. Now the salt on your table is composed of sodium and chlorine, a combination of the two. Such things come about in nature. You can ask how one knows that sodium is everywhere. It is possible today to tell from a flame what sort of substance is being burnt in it. For instance, you can get sodium in a metallic form and pulverize it and hold it in a flame. You can then find with an instrument called a spectroscope that there is a yellow line in it. There is another metal, for example, called lithium; if you hold that in the flame, you get a red line; the yellow is now not there, but there is a red line. One can prove with the spectroscope what substance is present. But you get the yellow sodium line in almost every flame whenever you light one, without having put the sodium in yourself. Thus sodium is still in the air today. In earlier times immense quantities of metals and even of sulphur were present in the air. The air was quite saturated with sulphur. So there was a thickish water — if one had not been especially heavy one could have gone for a walk on it; it was like running tar — and there was a dense air, so dense that one could not have breathed in it with our present lungs. These were only formed later. The mode of life of the creatures that existed at that time was utterly different. Now you must picture to yourselves that the earth once looked like this. (See drawing.) Had you found yourself there with your present eyes, you would not have discovered the stars and sun and moon out there, for you would have looked out into a vague ocean of air which reached an end eventually. If one could have lived then with the present sense organs, one would have seemed to be inside a world-egg beyond which one could see nothing. And you can imagine how different the earth looked at that time, like a kind of giant egg yolk, a thick fluid, and a thick air environment corresponding to the white of the present-day egg. If you picture concretely what I have described, you will have to say: Well, beings such as we have today could not have lived at that time. Naturally, creatures like the elephant, and even human beings in their present form, would have sunk — nor could they have breathed. And because they could not have breathed, there were also no lungs as we know them now. Organs are formed entirely according to the function they are needed for. It is very interesting that an organ is simply not there if it is not needed. And so lungs only developed when the air was no longer so full of sulphur and metals as it had been in those ancient times. Now to get an idea of what sort of creatures lived at that time, we must first look for those that lived in the thickish water. Creatures lived in that dense water that no longer exist today. Our present fish have their form because the water is thin. Even sea-water is comparatively thin; it contains much salt in solution, yet it is comparatively thin. But in that early time every possible substance was dissolved in the dense fluid, the dense ocean, of which, in fact, the whole earth, the Moon-sack consisted. The creatures that were in it could not swim in our sense, because the water was too thick; nor could they walk, for one needs firm ground for walking. You can imagine that these creatures had a bodily structure somewhere between what one needs for swimming-fins — and what one needs for walking — feet. You know, of course, what a fin looks like — it has quite fine, spiky bones and the flesh in between is dried-up. So that we have a fin with practically no flesh on it and prickly bones transformed to spikes: that is a fin. Limbs that are suitable for moving forward on firm ground, that is, for walking or crawling, have their bones set into the interior and the outer bulk of flesh covers them. We can conceive of such limbs that have the flesh outside and the bones inside; there the bulk of flesh is the main thing. That belongs to walking, or swimming. But at that time there was neither walking nor swimming, but something in between. These creatures therefore had limbs in which there was something of a thorn-like, nature, but also something like joints. They were really quite ingenious joints, and in between, the flesh mass was stretched out like an umbrella. You still see many swimming creatures today with a “swim skin” — a web — between the bones, and they are the last relics of what once existed in vast numbers. Creatures existed which stretched out their limbs so that the spreading flesh mass was supported by the dense fluid. And they had joints in their limbs — the fishes today have none — and with these they could direct their half-swimming, half-walking. So we are made aware of animals which particularly needed such limbs. Today the limbs would look immensely coarse and clumsy; they were not fins, not feet, not hands, but clumsy appendages on the body, thoroughly appropriate for living in that thick fluid. This was one kind of animal. If we want to describe them further, we must say: They were especially organized in the parts of the body where these immense limbs could arise. All the rest of them was poorly developed. If you look at the toads and similar creatures existing today which sort of swim in the thick fluid of boggy marshes, then you have a feeble, shrunken reminder of the gigantic animals which lived once upon a time, which were heavy and clumsy but had diminutive heads like turtles. Other creatures lived in the dense air. Our present birds have had to acquire what they need to live in our thin air; they have had to develop something of a lung nature. But the creatures that lived at that time in the air had no lungs; in that dense sulphurous air it would not have been possible to breathe with lungs. They absorbed the air as a kind of food. They could not have eaten in the present way, for it would all have remained lying in the stomach. Nor was there anything solid there to eat. All that they took in as food they took in out of the densified air. Into what did they take it? Well, they took it into what developed in them especially. Now the flesh masses that existed in those so to say, gliding creatures (for they were not really walking and not really swimming), could not be used by the air-creatures, for these had to support themselves in the air, not swim in the dense fluid. It came about then that the flesh masses which had developed in the gliding, half-swimming creatures became adapted to the sulphurous condition of the air. The sulphur dried up these flesh masses and made them into what you see today as the birds' feathers. With this flesh mass or dried-up tissue the creatures could form the limbs they needed. They were not wings in the present sense, but they supported them in the air, and were something similar to the wings of today. They were very, very different in one respect: there is only one thing remaining from these wing-like structures, and that is moulting, when our present birds lose their feathers. These former creatures supported themselves in the dense air with the structures that were not yet feathers but rather dried-up tissue. Moreover, these structures were actually half for breathing and half for taking in nourishment. What existed in the air environment was absorbed. These organs were not used for flying; these rudimentary “wings” were for absorbing the air and pushing it away. Today only moulting is left of this process. At that time, these structures served for taking in nourishment, that is, the bird puffed up its tissue with what it absorbed from the air and then gave out again what it did not need. So such a bird had a very remarkable structure indeed! And so at that time there lived those terribly clumsy creatures below in the water-element — our present turtles are indeed fine princes by comparison! And above were these remarkable creatures. And whereas our present birds sometimes behave in the air unmannerly (which we take very much amiss), these bird-like creatures in the air of that time excreted continuously. What came from them rained down, and rained down especially at certain times. The creatures below did not yet have the attitude which we have. We are indignant if sometimes a bird behaves in an unseemly way. But those creatures below in the fluid element were not displeased; they sucked up into their own bodies what fell down from above. That was the fructifying process at that time. That was the only way in which these creatures which had originated there could continue to live. In those ages there was no definite coming forth of one animal from another, as we have now. One might say that actually these creatures lived a long time; they kept renewing themselves. One could call it a sort of world-moulting; the animals down below kept rejuvenating themselves again and again. On the other hand, to the creatures above came what was developed by those below and this again was a fructification. Reproduction was at that time of a very different nature; it went on in the whole earth-body. The upper world fructified the lower, the lower world fructified the upper. The whole earth-body was alive. One could say that the creatures below and the creatures above were like maggots in a body-where the whole body is alive and the maggots in it are alive too. It was one life, and the various beings lived in a completely living body. But later something occurred of very special importance. The condition I have described could have gone on for a long time; all could have remained as it was without becoming our present earth. The heavy, clumsy creatures could have continued to inhabit the living earth together with the creatures able to live in the air. But one day something happened. It happened that one day from this living earth, let me say, a young one, an offspring, was formed and went out into cosmic space. It came about in this way: a small protuberance developed, which wore away (see drawing) and at last split off. And a body was now out in the universe which had, instead of the earlier conditions, the surrounding air inside and the thick fluid outside. Thus an inverted body was separated off. Whereas the Moon-earth remained with thick fluid for its inner nucleus and thickish air outside, a body split off which now had the thicker substance outside and the thinner inside. And if one investigates the matter without prejudice, in honest research, one can recognize in this body the present moon. Today just as one can find sodium in the air, one can also learn the exact constituents of the moon, and so one can know that the moon was once in the earth. What circles round us out there was formerly within the earth, then separated off and went out into the cosmos. With this a complete change took place, not only in what separated itself off but also in the earth itself. Above all, the earth lost certain substances, and for the first time the mineral element could be formed in the earth. If the moon-substances had remained in the earth, minerals could never have been formed, and there would always have been a state of moving fluid. The departure of the moon brought death for the first time to the earth and with it the dead mineral kingdom. But with this came also the possibility for the present plants, present animals and man in his present form to develop. We can say, therefore, that out of the Old Moon arose the present earth together with the mineral kingdom. And now all forms had to alter. For with the departure of the moon the air became less sulphurous, approaching nearer to the present condition, and what had been dissolved in the fluid was now thrown out, forming mountain-like masses. The water grew more and more like our present water. On the other hand the moon, which has around it what we have in the interior of the earth, produced a thickish, horny mass on the outside. This is what we see when we look up. It is not like our mineral kingdom, but it is as if our mineral kingdom had become horn-like and turned into glass. It is extraordinarily hard, harder than anything horn-like that we have on earth, but it is not quite mineral. Hence the peculiar shape of the moon mountains; they actually all look like horns that have been fastened on. They are formed in such a way that one can even perceive what had been organic in them, what had once been a part of life. Beginning with the separation of the moon, our present minerals were gradually deposited from the former dense fluid. Particularly active was a substance that in those ancient times existed in great amounts and consisted of silica and oxygen — we call it silicic acid. One has the idea that an acid must be fluid, because that is the form in which it is used today. But the acid which I mean here and which is a genuine acid is extremely hard and firm. It is, in fact, quartz! The quartz which you find in the high mountains is silicic acid. And when it is whitish and like glass it is pure silicic acid. If it contains other substances you get the quartz — or flint — that looks violet, and so on. That comes from the substances contained in it. But the quartz which is so hard today that you can't scratch it with a knife, and if you hit your head on it, it would make a real hole in your head — this same quartz was dissolved in those ancient times, either in the thick fluid or in the finer surroundings of dense air. In addition to the sulphur there was an immense amount of dissolved quartz in the thick air around the earth. You can get an idea of the strong influence this dissolved silicic acid had at that time if you reflect on the composition of the earth today just here where we live. Of course you can say: There must be a great deal of oxygen, because we need it for breathing. Yes, there is a good deal of oxygen: 28 to 29% of the whole mass of the earth. But you must count everything. Oxygen is in the air and in many solid substances on the earth too; it is in the plants and animals. And if you put all this together it is 28% of the whole. But silica, which when united with oxygen in the quartz gives silicic acid, is 48 to 49%! Think what that means: half of all that surrounds us and that we need, almost half of that is silica! When everything was fluid, when the air was almost fluid before it thickened — yes, then this silica played an enormous role, it was very important in that original condition. Nowadays these things are not understood rightly because concerning man's finer organization, people no longer have the right idea. They think today in a casual, crude way: Well, we're humans and we have to breathe. We breathe oxygen in and we breathe carbon dioxide out. We can't live if we don't breathe like this. But silica is still always contained in the air we inhale, genuine silica, tiny quantities of silica. Plenty is available, for 48 to 49% of our surroundings are made up of silica. When we breathe, the oxygen goes down to the metabolism and unites with carbon, but at the same time it also goes up to the senses and the brain, to the nervous system: it goes everywhere. There it unites with the silica and forms silicic acid in us. If we look at a human being we see he has lungs and is inhaling air, that means, he is taking in oxygen. Below, the oxygen unites with carbon and forms carbon dioxide which he then exhales. But above, the silica is united in us with the oxygen and goes up into our head, as silicic acid — however, it does not become as solid up there as quartz. That, of course, would be a bad business if pure quartz crystals showed up inside your head — then instead of hair you would have quartz crystals, which perhaps would be quite beautiful and amusing! Still, that is not entirely fantasy — for there is a good deal of silicic acid in our hair, only it is still fluid, not crystallized. In fact, not only hair but practically everything in the nerves and senses contains silicic acid. One discovers this when one first gets to know the beneficial, healing effects of silicic acid; it is tremendously helpful as a remedy. You must realize that the food received through the mouth into the stomach must pass through all manner of intermediate things before it comes up into the head, the eye, the ear, and so forth. That is a long way for the nourishment to go, and it needs helping forces to enable it to come up at all. It might be — in fact, it happens often — that a person has not enough helping forces and the foods do not work up properly into the head; then one must prescribe silicic acid which assists the nourishment to rise to the head and the senses. As soon as one sees that a patient is normal as regards stomach and intestines, but that the digestion does not go all the way to the sense organs, the head, or the skin, one must administer a silicic acid preparation as remedy. There one sees, in fact, what a very great role silicic acid still plays today in the human organism. In that ancient condition of the earth, the silicic acid was not yet inhaled but was absorbed. The bird-like creatures in particular took it in. They absorbed it as they absorbed the sulphur, with the consequence that they became almost entirely sense organs. Just as we have silicic acid to thank for our sense organs, so at that time the earth as a whole owed its bird-like species to the working of the silicic acid that was present everywhere. Since, however, this did not come in the same way to those other creatures with the clumsy limbs, since the silicic acid reached those creatures less as they glided along in the dense fluid, they became in the main stomach- and digestion-creatures. There above in those days were terribly nervous creatures, aware of everything with a fine nervous sensitivity. On the other hand, those below in the thick fluid were of immense sagacity, but also of immense phlegmatism. They felt nothing of it; they were mere feeding-creatures, were really only an abdomen with clumsy limbs. The birds above were finely organized, were almost entirely sense organs. And indeed they were sense organs for the earth itself, so that it was not only filled with life but it perceived everything through these sense organs that were in the air, the fore-runners of our birds. I tell you all this so that you may see how different everything once looked on the earth. All that was dissolved at that time became deposits later in the solid mineral mountains, the rock masses, and formed a kind of bony scaffolding. Only then was it possible for man and animal to form solid bones. For when externally the bony framework of the earth was formed, then bones began to form also inside the higher animals and man. What I have spoken of before was not yet firm, hard bone as we have today, but flexible, horn-like cartilage as it has still remained in the fish. All these things have in a certain way remained behind and atrophied, for in the earlier ages which I have described the life-conditions for them were there, but today the necessary life-conditions are no longer present. We can say, therefore: In our modern birds we have the successors of the bird-like species which existed above in the dense air full of sulphur and silicic acid but now transformed and adapted to the present air. And in the amphibians of today, the crawling creatures, in the frogs and toads, but also in the chameleon, the snake, and so forth, we have the successors of the creatures that were swimming at that time in the dense fluid. The higher mammals and man in his present form came later. Now this makes an apparent contradiction: I said to you last time that man was there first. But he lived in the warmth purely as soul and spirit; he was indeed already present in all that I have described, but not as a physical being. He was there in a very fine body in which he could support himself equally in the air and in the dense fluid. And neither he nor the higher mammals were visible as yet; only the heavy creatures and the bird-like air-creatures were visible. That is what must be distinguished when one says that man was already there. He was first of all, before even the air was there, but he was invisible, and he was still in an invisible state when the earth looked as I have now described. The moon had first to separate from the earth, then man could deposit mineral elements in himself, could form a mineral bony system, could develop such substances as protein, and so forth, in his muscles. At that time such substances did not as yet exist. Nevertheless, man has completely preserved in his present corporeal nature the legacy of those earlier times. For the human being cannot now come into existence without the moon influence, coming now only from outside. Reproduction is connected with the moon, though no longer directly. It can therefore be seen that what is connected with reproduction — the woman's monthly periods — take their course in the same rhythmical periods as the phases of the moon, only they no longer coincide; they have freed themselves. But the moon influence has remained active in human reproduction. We have found reproduction accomplished between the beings of the dense air and those of the dense fluid, between the bird-like race and the ancient giant amphibians. They mutually fructified one another because the moon was still within the earth. As soon as the moon was outside, fructification had to come from outside, because the fructifying principle lies in the moon. We will continue from this point on Saturday 3 This lecture was postponed to Monday, July 7th at nine o'clock — if we can have that hour. The question put by Herr Dollinger is one that must be answered in detail, and if you have patience you will see how present-day life emerges from all the gradual preparatory conditions. The whole subject is indeed difficult to understand. But I believe one can understand if one looks at things in the way we have been looking.

The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars

Creation of the earth. Origin of man

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA354/English/RSP1987/19240703a01.html

Dornach

3 Jul 1924

GA354-2

Rudolf Steiner : Good morning, gentlemen! You will have realized from all we've said that our earth in its present form is only the last remains of what was once essentially different. If we want to compare its earlier condition with anything, we can only compare it really — as you have seen — with what one has in an egg cell. Our earth today has a solid kernel of all sorts of minerals and metals. And we have the air around us, and in the air two substances which especially affect us-we could not live without them: oxygen and nitrogen. We can say therefore that in the earth we have a hard kernel of all kinds of substances, seventy to eighty of them, and around us the air-envelope containing mainly nitrogen and oxygen. Nitrogen and oxygen, however, are only the main constituents. The air always contains other substances, though in very small quantities, such as carbon, hydrogen, sulphur, among others. But these are also the substances contained in the white of an egg, in the white of a hen's egg. Oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon and sulphur! The difference is merely that in the egg white the sulphur, hydrogen and carbon are closely combined with the oxygen and nitrogen, while in the outer air they are present in a much looser way. So the same substances are in the air that are in the hen's egg. The same substances are present in a much smaller amount in the yolk, and we can therefore say that when it hardens, densifies, it becomes what the earth is. One must observe such things if one wants to know what the earth once looked like. Today, however, things are done in quite a different way, and in order that your judgment of what I am telling you here may not be confused by what is commonly accepted, I would like to give you a small view of this general knowledge. It agrees perfectly with what I say if only one considers it in the right way. People today do not think about things as we have done here in the last two lectures. They say: Here is the earth; it is made of mineral substance. This mineral earth is convenient to investigate, so let us examine first what lies on top, what we walk on. Then if we make quarries, if we make railway cuttings and open up the ground, we find there are certain layers or strata of earth. The uppermost layer is the one on which we walk. If we go somewhere or other into the depths, we find deeper-lying strata. But these strata are not always lying so nicely above one another that we can say: the one is always above the other. When you really examine the earth, here you have one stratum [See drawing-red], it is curved over, not level; another stratum below is also curved [green]. And above them comes the stratum on which we walk [white]. Now, as long as we remain on foot on this side of a hill we find an upper layer that could become good arable land if we would use the right manuring methods and so on. But if we are building a railway we may have to remove certain strata and by making these cuttings we come into the depths of the earth. That has led to the discovery that strata are superimposed on one another, not level, but they have been jumbled up in all sorts of ways. But these strata are sometimes very remarkable. People have asked how one can determine the age of the strata — which layer is older. Of course the most obvious answer is this: When the strata lie above one another, then the lowest is the oldest, the next above, younger, and the one at the very top the youngest of all. But, you see, that is not always the case. In some places it is so, but not everywhere. And one can show in the following way why it is not the case everywhere. We are accustomed, as you know, in our civilized lands to bury our domestic animals when they die, so that they may not be injurious to people. But if the human race were not so far evolved, what would happen with the animals then? Wherever the animal died, there it would lie. Now at first it remains on the surface. But, as you know, when it rains the soil gets washed up and after a time part of the decaying creature is mingled with the soil thrown up by the rain. There it will remain, and after some time the whole animal is penetrated with earth by the rain or by water that flows down over a slope and then the rest of the earth goes over the animal. Now someone can come along and say: Heavens! The earth looks so uneven there, I must dig and have a look! He need not dig very far, just a little, and then he finds what is left of the skeleton, let us say, of a wild horse. Then he says: Well, now I'm walking on a stratum that only appeared later, the one below was formed when there were wild horses like that. And one can know that that is the next stratum, that the age in which this man lives was preceded by an age in which these horses lived. You see, what that man does is what the geologists have been doing with all the strata of the earth, ever since the time when they could be reached by quarries, railway cuttings, excavations, and so on. One learns in geology to investigate quarries everywhere, with a hammer or some other instrument, in order to record what is exposed in the mountains through landslides or something similar. One goes hammering everywhere, makes various statements and then one finds in some stratum the so-called fossils. Then one can say: There are strata beneath the ground that contain animals quite different from those of today. Then one discovers in excavating the earth's strata what the animals were like that existed in other ages. This is nothing so very special, for people often underestimate the time it takes for something like this to happen. People find today in southern regions churches or other buildings just standing there. The people come along, do some digging for some reason or other, and Heavens! there's something under this church that is hard; that's not earth. They dig down and find a pagan temple underneath! What had happened? A relatively short time ago this surface layer on which the church or building stands was not there at all. It was pushed up by man, perhaps with the help of nature-forces, and underneath there is the pagan temple. What was once above, is now below. Layer upon layer has in fact been piled up in the earth. And one must find out, not from the way the strata lie, but from the nature of the fossils, how these animals and the various plants have come into the strata. Then, however, the following comes about: You find one layer of the earth [See drawing below, yellow], you find another [green]; you are able for some reason or other to excavate [arrow], and if you look merely at the stratification, then it seems as if what I have marked green were the lower layer and what I have marked yellow were the upper layer. You cannot get in here at all, you cannot excavate, there is no railway, no tunnel nor anything else by which one can get in. You make a note that the yellow is the upper stratum, the green the lower. But you must not decide immediately, you must first look for fossils. Now one very frequently finds fossils in the upper stratum which are earlier, of fish, for example, strange fish-skeletons which are earlier. And perhaps below, one finds interesting mammal skeletons which are more recent. Now the fossils contradict the strata, up above appear the older, the earlier; below, the more recent, the younger. One must realize how that has happened. You see, it is because some sort of earthquake, some inner movement has flung what was below up above the top layer. It is the same as if I were to lay a chair on the table and the original position would be: here the chair-back and here the table-top, and then through an earthquake the table would be turned over the chair. One can perceive in the most varied instances that there has been an inversion, a turning upside down. And one can come to the following conclusions as to when the inversion took place: It must have happened later than when all the animals were alive, it must have happened after the fossils were formed, otherwise they would lie differently. One comes in this way not to judge the strata simply as they lie one above the other, but one must be able to see how they have changed their positions. The Alps, this mighty chain of mountains stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the region of the Danube, this main mountain range in Switzerland, is not to be understood at all unless one can go into such things. For all the strata that were built up in the Alps have later been thoroughly jumbled up. There what was lowest often lies at the top, and what was at the top is lowest of all. One must first find out how all these shifts have taken place. It is only when all this is taken into account that one can tell which are the oldest strata and which are the newest. Modern natural science, only going by the externals of research, then naturally says: Those strata are the oldest in which the remains of the very simplest animals and plants are found. Later on, animals and plants grew more complicated, and so we find the most complicated remains in the latest strata. In the oldest strata one finds fossils because the calcium or quartz structure of the animal has been preserved, while everything else has been dissolved. When one comes to the later strata the skeleton has been preserved. Now there is another remarkable way in which fossils are formed. Sometimes this is very interesting. Picture that there once existed some simple type of ancient creature; it had a body, perhaps with tentacles in front. I am drawing it rather large; in the strata known to geology it will as a rule be smaller. Now this creature perishes lying on this piece of ground, and this particular soil does not penetrate and permeate the creature; it avoids, so to say, the acids in the body. Then something very remarkable occurs: the earth in which the animal lies approaches it from all sides and envelops it, and a hollow space is made in the shape of the animal. That has happened very frequently; such hollow spaces are formed, earth is shaped around the animal. But there is nothing inside; the soil has not been absorbed by the body, but round about, because the animal was scaly, a hollow space is formed. Later, the scales are dissolved and still later a brook winds through. This then fills the hollow space with stony gravel, [green] and there within, a cast of the animal is finely modeled, by a quite different material. Such casts are particularly interesting, for there we don't have the animals themselves, but their casts. However, you must not imagine that things are always so easy. Of present man, for instance, with his organism of soft substance, there is extraordinarily little left — nor of the higher animals. There are animals of which only the casts of their teeth have remained. One finds casts of the teeth of a kind of primeval shark which were formed in this way. One comes to realize that every animal has its own form of teeth and man has a different form. The dental formation is always in keeping with the whole structure of the creature. One must have the talent to imagine the appearance of the whole animal from the form of its teeth. So things are by no means simple. But as one studies these strata one finds out how things really developed. And then it simply becomes clear that there was a time when such animals as we have now did not exist, when there were much, much simpler creatures, somewhat like our snails, mussels, and so on. But one has to know how much has remained of them. Let us imagine that the following could happen. Just suppose that a small boy who did not like to eat crab sneaked a crab from his parents' dinner-table and played with it. He is not caught and buries it in the garden. Now there is earth over it and the whole business is forgotten. Later the garden belongs to new owners; they dig about and in one place they see some funny little things looking like lime-shells. (You know about the so-called crab's eyes which are not eyes, but little lime-shells in the body of the crab.) Those are the only traces left. Now one cannot say that those are fossils of some kind of animal; they are fossils of only part of the creature. Similarly in older strata, especially in the Alps, one finds some sort of fossil having that shell-like appearance. That is how they look; they no longer exist today but are found in the earlier strata. One must not suppose, however, that this had been the whole creature. One must assume that there was something around it that dissolved, and only a small piece of the animal is left. Modern science goes into this very little. Why? Well, it simply says that in this mighty Alpine mass the layers have been mixed with one another, the lowest flung to the top, the uppermost to the lowest — that the strata show it. But can you imagine, gentlemen, that with the present earth-forces such massive mountains could be flung up in that way? The little that happens now on earth is by comparison a dancing through, one fleck lightly tossed on another — today that is all, a sort of dancing through! If a man lived 720 years instead of seventy-two, he would experience in his old age that he was walking on ground a little higher than before. But we live too short a life. Just think if a fly that only lives from morning till evening were to relate what it experiences! Since it lives only in the summer, it would tell us of nothing but flowers, that there were always flowers. It would have no idea of what goes on in the winter; it would believe that each summer joined on to the one before. We human beings are certainly a little longer-lived than a one-day fly, but still we have a little of the fly nature with our seventy to seventy-two years! We see indeed little of what goes on. Even with the scanty forces prevailing today, there is no doubt that more happens than man usually sees. Yet, comparatively speaking, all that happens is that rivers flow along to the sea and leave alluvial soil behind. So a little soil is deposited, and this then reaches beyond the shores and the fields get a new stratum. That is comparatively little. When one considers how something like this great mountain mass of the Alps has been jolted and shaken through and through, it is obvious that the forces which are active today were active in quite a different way in earlier times. But now we must try to picture how such a thing can happen. Take, for instance, an egg cell from some mammal. It looks at first quite simple, a nucleus in the center with an albuminous mass all around. Now suppose that the egg is fructified. When it is fructified, the nucleus changes into all sorts of little forms; it develops very strangely into a number of spirals that go up like tails. And then the moment these little coils arise, star-formed structures develop out of the mass. The whole mass comes into formation because there is life in it. What goes on there is very different from what goes on in our earth today. The upheavals and over-turnings that are taking place in the egg cell are the same as what once took place in the massive Alps! What then is more natural than to say: Well, then the earth must once have been alive, or these convulsions of inverting and overthrusting could not possibly have occurred! The present form of the earth does in fact show us that in past ages when neither man nor higher animal existed, the earth itself was alive. This obliges us to say that the present dead earth has come forth from a living earth. Yet animals can only live on this present dead earth! Just think if the oxygen and nitrogen in the air had not separated off and had not condemned hydrogen, carbon and sulphur to an almost complete passivity: we would then have to breathe in something like egg white — for that was what surrounded the earth. Now we could imagine — for anything can happen in this world! — that instead of our lungs, we had developed organs able to draw in an albuminous atmosphere like that. Today, of course, we can take it in as food through the mouth. Why could not a sort of lung-organ have evolved, up nearer to the mouth? Anything can originate in this world; any possible thing might come about — even though we would never guess at such changes from observing man's present body. But think, gentlemen — we look today into lifeless air. It has died. Formerly the albumen was living. The air has died because the sulphur, hydrogen and carbon have gone and the nitrogen and oxygen have therefore also perished. We gaze into light-filled air that has died, but this has allowed our eyes to be physical, as they are indeed physical. If everything in our surroundings were living, then our eyes would have to be living too. But if they were living, we would be unable to see with them, and we would always be in a state of unconsciousness: just as a person becomes unconscious when there begins to be too much life in his head, when instead of the regularly developed organs he has all sorts of growths. He is then unconscious intermittently, and later it becomes so severe that he lies there as if he were dead. Likewise in our original condition on the earth, as it was then, we could not have lived consciously. The human being could only awake to consciousness as the earth gradually died. And so mankind evolves on an earth that is dead. So it is, gentlemen! And this is true not only of nature but also of civilization. If you think back to what I said just now — that below the earth there could be pagan temples and above Christian churches — you will see that the Christian churches are related to the pagan temples just as the upper strata to the lower, only that in one case we have to do with nature, in the other with culture. But one will not understand how the Christian element evolved if one does not observe that it evolved out of paganism as its foundation. In culture too we have to consider these strata. Now I have said that the human being has actually been there all the time, but as a spiritual being, not a physical being. And that again leads us to look for the real reason why man did not evolve as a physical being earlier. We have said that in the air today there are nitrogen and oxygen, with carbon, hydrogen and sulphur to a lesser degree. In our breathing we ourselves unite the carbon that is in us with the oxygen we inhale and exhale the two together as carbon dioxide. In our human existence we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide; our life consists of that. We would long, long ago have filled the earth and the air of the earth with carbon dioxide had there not been something else on the earth: the plants. They have the same hunger for carbon that we have for oxygen. They take up the carbon dioxide eagerly, hold on to the carbon and give out the oxygen again. You see, gentlemen, how wonderfully these things complement each other! We human beings need the oxygen out of the air, we inhale it, unite it with the carbon we have within us and exhale carbon and oxygen together as carbon dioxide. The plants breathe this in and breathe the oxygen out again, and so there is always oxygen in the air. Well, this is true today but in human evolution on the earth it was not always like that. When we find the fossilized creatures that lived long ago, we realize that they could not have been like our modern animals and plants, particularly not like our present plants. All the primeval plants must have been much more like our sponges, mushrooms, algae. There is a difference between our mushrooms and our other present plants. The latter take in the carbon and form their body from it. When they sink into the ground, their body remains as coal. The coal we mine today is the remains of plants. All the research we are able to pursue into the kinds of plants that originally existed tells us the following: Our present plants, including the plants which are now providing us with coal, are built up from carbon. But much earlier plants were formed not from carbon but from nitrogen. That was possible because just as carbon dioxide is exhaled today by animal and man, in ancient times a combination of carbon and nitrogen was exhaled. That is prussic acid, the terribly poisonous hydrocyanic acid fatal to all life today. This poisonous prussic acid was once exhaled, and nothing that exists today could then have arisen. The early mushroom-like plants took in the nitrogen and formed their body from it. The creatures about which I spoke last time, the bird-like beings and the heavy, coarse animal-beings, breathed out this poisonous acid, and the plants around them took the nitrogen to form their plant-body. Here, too, we can see that substances still existing today were used in quite a different way in ancient times. I spoke of this once before to those of you who have been here for some time. I related how in 1906 I had to give some lectures in Paris 4 Paris, May 25-June 16, 1906: L'Esotérisme chrétien / Esquisse d'une cosmogonie psychologique , Paris 1957. on the evolution of the earth, the origin of man, and so forth. The subject led me to say: Can anything in this world show that carbon and oxygen have not always had the role they play today, that nitrogen once had that role, and that once the atmosphere consisted of prussic acid, of hydrocyanic acid? Now you know that there are old people and young children. Well, if a man of seventy stands here and a child of two next to him, they are both human beings; they stand beside each other, and the one who is now seventy was like the two-year-old sixty-eight years ago. Things of different ages stand side by side. And it is the same in the universe; there, too, the older and the younger are side by side. Our earth, from what I have just now described and what you can still see today, our earth is a greybeard, an ancient fellow, almost dead already-if one does not count the life newly sprung up, one can call it almost dead. But at its side in the universe there are again younger forms which will only later become what our present life is. For instance, we must regard the comets as one of these. We can know, therefore, that since the comets are younger, they must still have conditions that belong to a younger age. The comets are to the earth what the child is to the old man. And if the earth once had prussic acid, the comets must now have it, they must have hydrocyanic acid! If with today's body one were to touch a comet, one would instantly die. It is diluted prussic acid that is in them. I said in Paris in 1906 that this follows from the premises of spiritual science. Those who acknowledge spiritual science accepted my statement even though it astonished them. Then later, a fairly long time afterward, a comet made its appearance. By that time people had got the necessary instruments and it was then found by ordinary scientific methods that comets do have cyanide, prussic acid, as I had said in Paris in 1906. So it was confirmed. Naturally, when people hear of this, they call it a coincidence: Oh sure, Steiner made that statement in Paris, and then there was the discovery — just a coincidence. They say this because they know nothing else. But I have now told you why one must take it for granted that there is prussic acid in the comets. It was no accident, it was genuine science by which one first reached this knowledge. Physical research only confirmed it later. People realize now that this is true for all that anthroposophy sets forth; for everything is confirmed later. Quite a number of things will be discovered today outside the Anthroposophical Movement that were already given out many years ago by anthroposophy in a rather different way. Yes, there are many other things that could be carefully investigated today by science. I am always saying that if people could really travel to a star, they would be amazed to find it different from the modern ideas about it determined by their life on earth. They imagine that it contains a glowing gas. But that is not at all what is found out there. Actually, where the star is, there is empty space, empty space that would immediately suck one up. Suction forces are there. They would suck you up instantly, split you to pieces. If people would work with the same consistent research and the same unprejudiced thinking as we do here, they would also come to see with intricate spectroscopes that there are not gases out there, but negative suctional space. Some time ago I gave certain individuals the task of investigating the sun and stars with the spectroscope, simply in order to prove by external methods that the stars are hollow spaces, not glowing gases. That can be proved. The persons to whom I gave this task were tremendously enthusiastic when they started: “Oh! then we shall get somewhere!” But sometimes enthusiasm fades away; they delayed too long. And then a year-and-a-half ago news came from America that people were starting to investigate the stars and were gradually finding out that they were not glowing gases but hollowed-out space! It is no disaster, of course, for such a thing to happen. But naturally, it would have been more useful to us – externally — if we had done it. But it doesn't matter, as long as truth comes to light. On the other hand, however, it can be seen through just such things that anthroposophy really wants to work in collaboration with ordinary science. So it would also like to work with ordinary science on the strata of the earth. One thoroughly accepts what science has to say about the upheavals and overturnings in the Alps. But one cannot go along with the scientists when they assume that these upheavals were caused by forces that are still existing today. The fact is that there were life-forces there then; only life-forces could have flung and tossed these strata of living substance through one another. Anthroposophy already incorporates ordinary science and extends far beyond it, but science always wants to stop whenever it is too lazy to approach things more closely. So — we will continue on Wednesday at nine o'clock.

The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars

What natural science and anthroposophy have to say about earth strata and fossils

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA354/English/RSP1987/19240707a01.html

Dornach

7 Jul 1924

GA354-3

Rudolf Steiner : Good morning, gentlemen! Perhaps today we can finish what we began last time. I explained to you that we must form a mental picture of how the earth has gradually evolved and how man was always present spiritually. Physically — that is, in a body — man first appeared, as we have seen, when the earth had become dead, when the earth itself had lost its life. As I told you last time, it was only a short while ago that people thought of the earth in such a way that they looked for the fossils in it in order to determine the age of its strata. Conceptions such as are now held by science have been formed only comparatively recently, and we have seen to what an extent these conceptions are really false and cannot stand up in face of the facts. Now you must realize that when people dig and burrow into the earth as I described to you, when they examine something like the Alpine range with its jumbled strata, they then find quite distinct fossilized plants and animals in every single layer. And the plants and animals that fill the earth today, have appeared only recently. Earlier plant and animal forms were different from the plants and animals of the present day. That the earth has not evolved simply and gradually, with one stratum slowly piling up over another until the earth was finally formed, can be seen not only from the fact that the Alps are jumbled together but also from the following: There were once animals similar to our elephants but larger. Our elephant is certainly large enough, but these animals were still more powerful, with still thicker skins. Still heavier pachyderms once lived. This is acknowledged because they have been found in northern Siberia where Russia stretches over into Asia. All these remarkable animals, these mammoths, have been found as complete animals with their flesh in perfect condition. You see, one can keep animals with their flesh still well-preserved if one puts them into ice. And these animals were actually in ice! Near the Arctic Ocean where Siberia approaches the North Pole, there were these animals; they are still there today, as fresh as if they had been caught yesterday by giants and put in ice to be preserved! Yet we must say, such animals do not live today, these are primeval animals. Also they cannot possibly have perished slowly; today they are still there as complete animals. The only explanation can be that when they were alive, suddenly a mighty water catastrophe occurred, and the water froze in the region of the North Pole and immediately overwhelmed them. We see from this that in earlier times there were quite extraordinary happenings on the earth which cannot be compared to present-day situations. And if we look at the Alps, we have to think that these happenings cannot have gone on through millions of years but must have taken place in a comparatively short time-that everything in the earth must have bubbled up and been alive as it is in one's stomach after one has eaten and begins to digest. But that can only take place in something living. The earth must have been living. And the forces that were in the earth have been left behind. There were then large, heavy animals. Our slighter, more supple animals were formed after the earth itself had died and was itself no longer a living being. These large elephants, these mammoths, were, so to speak, like lice on the old body of the earth and were destroyed by a single wave that turned to ice. You can understand how well this agrees with what I have said about our present earth being a kind of world-corpse. And man could develop only when the latest conditions came about on the earth. I would now like to speak of something that will show you how the earth has altered — and altered comparatively recently. If we think of the earth, on the one hand we have America; on the other hand we have Europe: Norway, Scotland, England, Ireland, and also France and Spain, and Italy and Germany up to the Baltic Sea. Now if we travel today, let us say, from Liverpool to America, first we pass over a stretch of land, then we travel over the Atlantic Ocean. Now I want to tell you something. Over there (Africa is here below) certain plants and certain animals are everywhere (and, of course, we must include small animal life); here are also plants and animals. If today we look at the plants and animals living on the western coasts of Europe and Africa, and then look at the other side, the eastern coast of America, we discover that these plants and animals are in some way related to one another. They are different, but they are related. Why? They are related because ... well, today it is like this: down below is the floor of the ocean, above is the water of the Atlantic, then here is Africa. How the plants and animals came to be here and how they came to be there can only be explained if once there was land here everywhere, high land, where the animals could cross over and the plants scatter their seeds, not over an ocean, but over land. Thus where today there is an immense sea, an immense ocean, between Europe and America, there was once land. The ground has sunk. Everywhere where ground sinks, water appears immediately. If you dig down to a certain depth anywhere in the earth, water immediately appears. So we must assume that the land there has sunk. For instance, this is interesting: here is Italy, here is Ravenna — now if one walks from the city of Ravenna to the sea it takes more than an hour, but while walking from Ravenna to the sea one finds everywhere mussels and sea shells on the ground. That is proof that the sea was once there. And Ravenna, now an hour from the sea, was once right on it! — the sea was its border. But there the land rose, was raised up, and the water flowed away from it. If land is raised especially high, it becomes desolate; then it becomes cold, as happens in the mountains. One such region that has become cold is the region of Siberia. Siberia shows through all its plant growth and so forth that at one time its land was much lower, that it has risen tremendously. And so you can see the land continually rises and sinks in certain parts of the earth: it rises ... sinks ... and we see that land and water on the earth are distributed at different times in the most varied ways. If one looks at the rocks of the British Isles, of England, Scotland and Ireland, looking at the layers themselves one finds that England has risen and sunk four times in the course of its existence! When it was above, certain plants grew until it sank. Naturally when it rose again, it was barren waste. It covered itself with quite different plants and animals, and today one can still see that it has risen and sunk four times. Thus the earth is in continual movement. In very ancient times it was much greater, much more powerful movement. If today everything were in movement as it was in those times, it would be really sinister for mankind. The last accounts of mighty earth movements are those of the Flood, and those have come down to humanity only in legendary form. But the Flood was only a small matter compared with the gigantic upheavals that once took place on the earth. Therefore, gentlemen, the question surely arises: How then did human beings ever arrive on this earth at all? How did man ever appear? And as to that, there have been the most diverse ideas. The most convenient opinion people have formed is this, that there were once ape-like animals which gradually perfected themselves and became human beings. That is the view science held in the nineteenth century. It no longer holds that view; but the general public, who always straggle along after science, still, of course, believe it. Now the matter is like this: How could anyone imagine that man, physical man as he now is on the physical earth, could have fashioned himself? There was, so to speak, a great fuss and tremendous enthusiasm when at the end of the nineteenth century a learned traveler, Dubois, 5 Eugen Dubois, 1858–1940, Dutch military doctor and geologist. Discovered remains of Java man, a creature intermediate between ape and man. See his publication Pithecanthropus erectus, eine menschenähnliche Übergangsform auf Java , Batavia, 1894. discovered parts of a skeleton in East Asia, in strata of the earth where up to that time it had been thought that man could not have lived. There were parts of a skeleton believed to be a human skeleton: the upper part of a thigh, a few teeth and pieces of the upper part of a skull. That is what Dubois found over there in Asia. Such a thing must, of course, have a suitable name, so he called these remains Pithecanthropus erectus . People had the idea that this creature was representative of an ape-like species from which mankind then gradually evolved. And then people developed various ideas of how man did evolve in this way. Some say that an ape-like race had come into such conditions that it had been forced to work, and so the feet, the ape-like climbing feet, were transformed into straight feet, and the climbing forefeet into human hands ... and so it became completely changed. On the other hand, some people say: No, that cannot be, for if this ape-man had come into such unfavorable conditions, he would simply have died, then he could not have transformed himself. Rather this ape-man must have lived in a kind of paradise where he was able to maintain himself and develop quite freely, where he was protected. You see how far apart the views are! But none of this holds good when we undertake a real examination of the facts of which we have spoken. Let us go back to them again. There was once a large expanse of land where today there is the Atlantic Ocean over which one travels when going from Europe to America-large areas of land. But you see, if we investigate the fossils found here under the earth, and from them deduce what the earlier forms and species were-of both plants and animals-we discover: There it cannot have been like this! The earth between our present Europe and America must have been much softer, not solid mineral as it is today, and the air must have been much denser, always misty, containing much water and other substances. Thus there was much softer ground and much denser air. In such a region, if today there could be one on earth, we could not live for a week, we would die at once. But as it cannot have been so very long ago, 10,000 to 15,000 years, human beings must, of course, have lived at that time. So they cannot have been like today's human beings. Present-day man has his solid bone structure only because there are hard minerals outside. To our calcareous bones belong also the calcareous mountains with which we continually exchange lime; we drink it in our water, and so forth. In that earlier time there was not yet such a solid bony skeleton. Human beings could have had only soft cartilage, like sharks. Also they could not have breathed through lungs as we do today. At that time they had to have a kind of swimming bladder and a kind of gills, so that the human being who lived then was in his external form half man and half fish. We cannot escape the fact that man then looked quite different-half man and half fish. And if we go back to still earlier times we find that man was much, much softer. If we go still further back he was watery, quite fluid. So naturally no fossils were formed then; man was just absorbed into the rest of the earth's fluids. So that is the way we have grown into what we are today. When we are still in our mother's womb, we are a little bag of fluid. But that is something very small. In those times we were huge, great fluid or jelly-like beings. And the further we go back in earth evolution, the more liquid man becomes and the more he is really a soft jelly-like mass — not formed out of present-day water, for out of that, naturally, no man could be made — but out of a substance somewhat like albumen. Out of such a substance it was possible for man to be formed. So we go back to an age when there was neither the present human form, nor the present elephants, nor rhinoceroses, nor lions, nor cows, nor oxen, nor bulls, nor kangaroos — none of these were yet there. On the other hand we can say there were fish-like creatures-not like present-day fish, but already man-like — beings half man, half fish, that one could — after all — call man. There were all these. But there were still none of the animal forms of today. Then the earth gradually changed into the form it has today. The floor of the Atlantic Ocean sank ever more and more; the boggy, slimy, albumen-like condition gradually changed into the present water and gradually brought about a change in these fish-men. But the most diverse forms arose. The more imperfect of these fish-men became kangaroos, those a little more advanced became deer and cattle, and the most perfect became apes or men. You see from this that man did not descend from apes: man was there, and all the mammals really descended from him, from these human forms in which man remained imperfect. So we must say that the ape descended from man, not that man descended from the ape. That is so, and we must be quite clear about it. You see, you could make it clear to yourselves through the following: Imagine a really clever man who has a small son. This son suffers from hydrocephalus and is very stupid. Let us say that the clever man is about forty-five and the small son seven or eight. The boy turns out to be stupid. Now could anyone say, that because the boy is a small, imperfect human being the mature man, the clever, perfect person is descended from the small, imperfect person? It would be nonsense! The fact is that the small, imperfect being is descended from the clever one; the other assertion would be a mistake. This mistake was made when it was thought that apes, the man-like beings who were left behind, are man's ancestors. They are the men left behind, so to speak, the imperfect specimens of mankind left behind. We might say that in this matter science pursued a path that led it deeply into error, and simple men could not accept it. We need only remember the story of the small schoolboy. The teacher, caught in modern science, announced: “Men are descended from monkeys.” The boy came home with this piece of wisdom. The father said: “You silly! Perhaps you did, but I didn't!” You see, there was the naive man versus Darwinism. Science is often not as clever as a naive man. We must admit that. And so we may say: All that lives out in the world as animal is descended from the primeval being that was neither animal nor man but something between. The one remained imperfect, the other became more perfect, became man. Of course now people come along and say: Yes, but earlier human beings were far less perfect than they are today; in earlier times they had a skull with a lower forehead, a nose like this — the Neanderthal man, or the humans found in Yugoslavia. (They are seldom found and we must not think that such skeletons lie around everywhere; only a few have been found.) Contemporary man usually has a lofty forehead and looks different. Now people say: Those primitive men with the low foreheads were naturally stupid, for the forehead is the seat of the intellect, and only men who attain to high foreheads have proper intelligence — therefore primitive men were without intelligence, and of course those who came later with prominent foreheads had a proper mind. You see, if we had looked at the men of Atlantis, those men who lived before the floor of the Atlantic Ocean sank and the sea rose, we would have found that they had quite a thin skin, a little soft cartilage — like a net — as covering for the head, and all the rest of them was water. If you look today at someone with hydrocephalus, he does not have a backward sloping forehead, but a high, prominent one, so the Atlantean head was much more like the hydrocephalic head. Imagine that the Atlantean had this head, but watery, such as we see today in an embryo. Think of the earth and of how the ground sank where the Atlantic Ocean is now, and thus the Atlantic Ocean came into being. Europe and Asia rose more and more; there everything rose. In America the earth rose also, while in between it sank. The earth changed. Men acquired harder bones. So when we go back into earlier times when the area of the Atlantic Ocean was still solid land, men had soft bones, just cartilage; there was still water in them. And man could also think with the water. Now you will say: For heaven's sake! now he expects us to believe that people of that time did their thinking not with a solid brain, but a watery one! But indeed, gentlemen, none of you think with your solid brain! You all think with the water in which your brain floats; it is superstitious to imagine that you think with your solid brain. Not even the obstinate thickheads who can grasp nothing but their own ideas — ideas which they accepted in early youth — not even they think with their solid brain; they also think with the brain water, although with the denser parts of it! But then came the time when this kind of water, this slimy, albuminous water, disappeared. Men could no longer think with it; the bones were stunted, and that low skull appeared. It was only later — in Europe and over in America — that this grew out again to a high forehead. So we must say, the old Atlanteans had very high foreheads in their watery heads. Then, as I said, when the water disappeared, low foreheads appeared at first, and then they gradually grew out again into high foreheads. It was just in a transitional age that men looked like the Neanderthal man, or like the remains found in the south of France or in Sicily. They belonged to a transitional human being who lived in the coast areas where the ground gradually sank. The humans we dig up today in the south of France are not the primitive men but the later men. They are ancestors but of a later period. And it is interesting that, belonging to the same period in which these men with a flat, low forehead must have lived, we find caves where there are things from which we can assume that the men of that time did not live in houses, but in places in the earth where they dug themselves in. But for that the earth must first have become hard. So at the time when the earth was not yet quite so hard as it is today, or at least somewhat less hard, people burrowed into the earth to make their dwelling-places, and these we still find today. And the most remarkable things we find in them are paintings and drawings, which are comparatively simple but which reproduce quite skillfully animals living at that time. Today people are really astonished that those men with flat foreheads, with undeveloped heads, could have made those drawings. The drawings are clever in one respect and crude in another. How can we explain this? It is because men had once lived with high, still fluid foreheads and had already had art; perhaps they were able to do much more than we can; this art then atrophied. And what we find in the caves are just the last remnants of what men were still able to do. So we can see that once men did not live merely as animals, gradually perfecting themselves to their present condition, but that before the present human race was here on earth with its solid bones, there was another human race with more cartilage, a race that already possessed a high culture and civilization. I have told you that birds were also different in ancient times from what they are now. Birds once consisted entirely of air; later, they built a body around this. Hence their bones are filled with air. The birds were once creatures consisting only of air, but of dense air. And the present birds formed their feathers and so on when our kind of air originated. Just think: if our birds had schools and a culture (they do not, of course, have them, but we can use our imagination), these would have to look different from ours! Take, for instance, the houses we build. These constitute a large part of our civilization. But birds can't build houses — they would fall down; neither can birds become sculptors. They can't even sew — that also belongs to civilization — for if they let go of the needle, it would fall right down. If birds had a civilization and a culture, what would it be like? It would have to be above in the air. But it could not include anything solid; they couldn't have a writing desk, or anything else. At most, they could make signs that would be gone the moment they made them. But if the others understood the signs — well, that would be a culture. Now imagine an eagle that was a very clever creature, an eagle able to make a statue of an owl — yet he would have to make it in the air only; nothing of it would be there if one looked for it. Now supposing the owl came — a particularly vain owl — and ordered the eagle to make an owl-statue of itself. He would make it very beautifully, very beautifully. Perhaps he would make it just when there was a little cloud, so that he had some denser air — even so, it would disappear at once. Other birds could fly to see it, other owls also, and admire it. Birds can't do that today! You may be quite certain that the eagle will not be making a statue of an owl! But the beings who were once men with a soft structure, soft bodies, had a culture and civilization like that. When, for instance, there was land where the Atlantic Ocean is now, then things could be more or less firm, although the land always sank again, but it was already denser. This was preceded by a thinner condition when there was only a culture and civilization that men made in signs that disappeared at once. So we must imagine that these men shaped everything once upon a time, but nothing lasted; it was there in very delicate matter. And when later they began to shape things that were more coarse, these were clumsy. Even today it is easier to shape something in soft wax than in harder clay. And when men had their whole culture and civilization in only a sort of dense air, they had joy in making something even if it vanished at once. But now, gentlemen, you can see that we have gone very far back and have found human beings who really consisted only of dense air. Imagine it like this: there is a man of dense air, who has the appearance of a cloud, only not so irregularly formed, for he has what definitely looks like a face, a head, and limbs. But it is something very spiritual; it is almost a ghost! If you met something like it today, you would take it for a ghost, and indeed a very peculiar ghost. It would look somewhat like a fish — and then again somewhat like a man. We were once like that. So now we have already arrived at a stage when man was really quite spiritual. And the farther we go back, the more we find that man as spirit dominates matter. We present human beings can do this only with the softest elements of matter. If we take a piece of bread into our mouth, we can bite it and make it liquid — for all food has to become liquid if it is to pass into the human body. Just think! You make bread liquid; it goes into the esophagus, into the stomach, spreads out into the blood. What really becomes of that piece of bread? Now that is a remarkable story. Suppose you have a man before you, the human form, with stomach and esophagus, reaching up to the mouth. Now the man eats a piece of bread. He takes it into his mouth; there it gradually becomes liquid; here in the stomach it is made still more liquid, now it spreads out into the blood, it goes everywhere, becomes thin, thinner, and is dispersed. And so I have a piece of bread in my hand. I eat it; after a while what does it look like? After three hours when it has spread out into the blood, into the whole body, it is like this: That piece of bread has itself become a man. Thus everything you eat as food is transformed into man, only you do not notice it. You do not notice that really everything you take into yourself continually becomes yourself. You could not be a human being if you did not continually make yourself anew. For what you eat today, the ninth of July, becomes an extremely rarefied human being; something of it remains, the rest passes away. And so it is the next day, and the next; in this way your body is renewed. Every seven years it is completely renewed. Gentlemen, today we need this solid body so that we can continually make this new man. But earlier men did not have this solid body. They could do this out of their souls; what they took in they could so shape that it looked like the man of that time. You have to imagine that they had no need of muscles and bones, but by means of the soul they could so transform their food that it became man-like. So it was, truly. Man through his spirit governed matter, substance, and shaped his own form, although it was much more delicate. But there he was: a man-like hovering cloud. This form is still in us today, but we have a frame for it: bones and muscles. They must be there as the frame. And in reality when we take food, we still today make this human form. Once upon a time man was as tenuous, as rarefied as the form we create in ourselves today when we eat. We also breathe air. First it is outside; then it is in us. And the air too spreads out everywhere through our blood. A man of air is formed today throughout the entire human being. The man of air comes into being. So if I tell you that man was once aeriform before he became densified and crystallized through his bones, I am not telling you something that does not still occur today. Every time you take a breath you still form this man of air. In earlier times he alone existed; only later were his solid, thick, earthly parts built in. So we come back to the fact that what we see today as firm, solid matter was once spiritual through and through. Therefore it is nonsense to say that once the earth consisted only of gas, and that this gas through its own forces formed itself into the human beings and animals of today. Instead we can see that men and animals and everything existing now were themselves once gaseous and aeriform and have undergone a metamorphosis. So we find a condition of our earth that must once have been like this: You see, there was this island where water is today. Where we now travel over water there was once land. At that time the land that is now Europe was deeply submerged; it rose only later; only in isolated places was it above the surface. Now we come to Europe. There we now have ground that earlier was deeply submerged, the top of which was covered with boggy water. We come to Asia, which was completely covered with swamps. Over in America there were also swamps. Those regions which today are solid earth were then sea, and where there is sea today there was land. The human beings who lived there looked quite different from present-day man; they were thin, delicate. Only when the present lands rose out of the water and the earlier lands sank and became sea — only then did the present human race appear and the present-day animals in the form they now bear. This is connected with the inner life of the earth. Today it all happens more subtly. Today the lands no longer rise and sink so violently, but they still continue slightly to rise and sink. Anyone who at the present time studies maps — even of Switzerland — maps which are only a few centuries old, sees a lake somewhere and today some place may be quite far from that lake, but we know that just as Ravenna was once on the sea, so this place must once have been on the lake. Lakes dry up and become smaller, even today-only the process is slower than it used to be. But because the land surfaces and the sea floors rise and fall, men and animals are continually changing, continually transforming. But this proceeds more slowly than it used to do. That is what I wanted to tell you. You see now how the present human race has developed. Next time we will add something historical, because once the human race was on earth in its present form, history began. Only when they were obliged to be hunters, farmers, shepherds did human beings develop history. That is where we can still add a piece of history to what we have been able to say today about the origin of the world and man. It is good that Herr Dollinger raised the question. We have been able to speak about it in detail and, as I have said, next time we will add a little history.

The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars

Origin of the world and of man. Lemuria and Atlantis

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA354/English/RSP1987/19240709p01.html

Dornach

9 Jul 1924

GA354-4

Rudolf Steiner : Gentlemen! I mentioned our wish to look further into the history that is connected with our present study of the world. You have seen how the human race gradually built itself up out of the rest of mighty Nature. It was only when conditions on the earth were such that men were able to live upon it — when the earth had died, when it no longer had its own life — that human and animal life could develop in the way I have pictured. Now we have also seen that in the beginning, human life was actually quite different from what it is today, and had its field of action where the Atlantic Ocean is now. We have to imagine that where the Atlantic Ocean is today, there was formerly solid ground. Today we have Asia on the one hand; there is the Black Sea, below it is Africa, then there is Russia and also Asia. On the other hand, there is England, Ireland, and over there also America. Formerly all this in between was land, and here very little land; over here in Europe at that time there was actually a really huge sea. These countries were all in the sea, and when we come up to the north, Siberia was sea too; it was still all sea. Below where India is today, the land was appearing a little above the sea. Thus we actually have some land there, and on the other side again land. Where today we find the Asian peoples, the inhabitants of the Near East and those of Europe, there was sea — the land only rising up later. The land, however, went much farther, continuing right on to the Pacific Ocean where today there are so many islands, Java, Sumatra, and so on; they were all part of the continent formerly there — all this archipelago. Thus, where now the Pacific Ocean is, there was a great deal of land with sea between the two land masses. Now the first peoples we are able to investigate have remained in this region, here, where the land has been preserved. When we took around us in Europe we can really say: Ten, twelve or fifteen thousand years ago the earth, the ground, became sufficiently firm for men to dwell upon it. Before that, only marine animals were there which developed out of the sea, and so on. If at that time you had looked for man, he would have been where the Atlantic Ocean is today. But over there in Asia, in eastern Asia, there were also men earlier than ten thousand years ago. These men naturally left descendants, and the descendants are very interesting on account of their culture, the most ancient on earth. Today these are the peoples called the Japanese and Chinese. They are very interesting because they are the last traces, so to say, of the oldest inhabitants of the earth. As you have heard, there was, of course, a much older population on earth that was entirely wiped out. That was the humanity who lived in ancient Atlantis, of whom nothing remains. For even if remains did exist, we would have to dig down into the bed of the Atlantic Ocean to find them. We would have to get down to that bed — a more difficult procedure than people think — and dig there, and in all probability find nothing. For, as I have said, those people had soft bodies. The culture which they created with gestures was something that one cannot dig out of the ground-because there was nothing that endured! Thus, what was there long before the Japanese and Chinese is not accessible to ordinary science; one must have some knowledge of spiritual science if one wants to make such discoveries. However, what has remained of the Chinese and Japanese peoples is very interesting. You see, the Chinese and the older Japanese — not those of today (about whom I am just going to speak) — the Chinese and Japanese had a culture quite different from ours. We would have a much better idea of it if our good Europeans had not in recent centuries extended their domination over those spheres, bringing about a complete change. In the case of Japan this change has been very effective. Although Japan has kept its name, it has been entirely Europeanized. Its people have gradually absorbed everything from the Europeans, and what remains of their ancient culture is merely its outward form. The Chinese have preserved their identity better, but now they can no longer hold out. It is true that the European dominion is not actively established there, but in those regions what the Europeans think is becoming all-prevailing, and what once existed there has disappeared. This is no cause for regret; it is in the nature of human evolution. It must, however, be mentioned. Now if we observe the Chinese — among them, things can be seen in a less adulterated form — we find a culture distinct from all others, for the Chinese in their old culture did not include anything that can be called religion. The Chinese culture was devoid of religion. You must picture to yourselves, gentlemen, what is meant by a “culture without religion”. When you consider the cultures that have religion you find everywhere — in the old Indian culture, for instance — veneration for beings who are invisible but who seem to resemble human beings on earth. It is the peculiar feature of all later religions that they represent their invisible beings as manlike. Anthroposophy does not do this. Anthroposophy does not represent the super-sensible world anthropomorphically but as it actually is. Further, it sees in the stars the expression of the super-sensible. The remarkable thing is that the Chinese have had something of the same kind. The Chinese do not venerate invisible gods. They say: What is here on earth differs according to climate, according to the nature of the soil where one lives. You see, China in the most ancient times was already a large country and is still today larger than Europe; it is a gigantic country, has always been gigantic, and has had a tremendously large, vigorous population. Now, the idea that the population of the earth increases is just superstition on the part of modern science, which always makes its calculations from data to suit itself. The truth is that even in the most ancient times there was a vast population in China, also in South America and North America. There too in those ancient times the land reached out to the Pacific Ocean. If that is taken into account the population of the earth cannot be said to have grown. So, gentlemen, we find a culture there that is quite ancient, and today this culture can still be observed as it actually existed ten thousand, eight thousand years ago. The Chinese said: Above in the north the climate is different, the soil is different, from what they are farther south; everything is different there. The growth of the plants is different and human beings have to live in a different way. But the sun is all-pervading. The sun shines in the north and in the south; it goes on its way and moves from warm regions to cold regions. They said: On earth diversity prevails, but the sun makes everything equal. They saw in the sun a fructifying, leveling force. They went on to say, therefore: If we are to have a ruler, our ruler must be like that; individual men differ, but he must rule over them like the sun. For this reason they gave him the name “Son of the Sun.” His task was to rule on earth as the sun rules in the universe. The individual planets, Venus, Jupiter, and so on, act in their various ways; the sun as ruler over the planets makes everything equal. Thus the Chinese pictured their ruler as a son of the Sun. For they took the word “son” essentially to imply “belonging to something.” Everything was then so arranged that the people said: The Son of the Sun is our most important man. The others are his helpers, just as the planets are the helpers of the sun. They organized everything on the earth in accordance with what appeared above in the stars. All this was done without prayer, for they did not know the meaning of prayer. It was actually all done without their having what later would constitute a cult. What might be called their kingdom was organized so as to be an image of the heavens. It could not yet be called a state. (That is a mischief that modern men perpetrate.) But they arranged their earthly affairs to be an image of what appeared to them in the stars above. Now something came about through this circumstance that was naturally quite different from what happened later: a man became the citizen of a kingdom. He had no creed to profess; he simply felt himself to be a member of a kingdom. Originally the Chinese had no gods of any kind; when later they did have them, they were gods taken over from the Indians. Originally they had no gods, but their connection with the super-sensible worlds was expressed by the essential nature of their kingdom and its institutions. Their institutions had a family quality. The Son of the Sun was at the same time father to all the other Chinese and these served him. Although it was a kingdom, it partook of the nature of a family. All this was only possible for men whose thinking had as yet no resemblance to that of later humanity. The thinking of the Chinese at that time was not at all like that of later men. What we think today would have been quite foreign to the Chinese. We think, for example, “animal”; we think “man”; we think “vase” or “table”. The Chinese did not think in this way, but they knew: there is a lion, there a tiger, a dog, there's a bear — not, there is an animal. They knew: my neighbor has a table with corners; someone else has a table that is rounder. They gave names to single things, but what “a table” is, never entered their head; “table” as such — of that they had no knowledge. They were aware: there stands a man with a bigger head and longer legs, there one with a smaller head, with shorter legs, and so on; there is a smaller man, here a bigger man, but “man” in general was to them an unknown factor. They thought in quite a different way, in a way impossible for man today. They had need, therefore, of other concepts. Now if you think “table,” “man,” “animal,” you can extend this to legal matters, for Jurisprudence consists solely of such concepts. But the Chinese were unable to think out any legal system; with them everything was organized as in a family. Within a family, when a son or daughter wants to do something, there is no thought of such a thing as a legal contract. But today, if someone here in Switzerland wants to do something, he consults liability laws, marriage laws, and so on. There one finds all that is needed, and the laws then have to be applied to individual cases. Inasmuch as human beings still retain something of the Chinese in them — and there always remains a little — they don't really feel comfortable about laws and must always have recourse to a lawyer. They are even at sea sometimes with general concepts. As for the Chinese, they never had a legal code; they had nothing at all of what later took on the nature of a state. All they had was what each individual could judge in his individual situation. So, to continue. The whole Chinese language was influenced by this fact. When we say “table,” we at once picture a flat surface with one, two or three legs, and so on, but it must be something that can stand up like a table. If anyone were to tell me a chair is a table, I would say: A table? You stupid! that's not a table, that's a chair. And if someone else came along and called the blackboard a table, I'd call him something even stronger, for it's not a table at all but a blackboard. With our language we have to call each thing by its own special name. That is not so with Chinese. I will put this to you hypothetically; it will not be a precise picture, but you will get the idea from it. Say, then, that Chinese has the sounds OA, IOA, TAO, for instance. It has then a certain sound for table, but this same sound signifies many other things too. Thus, let us say, such a sound might mean tree, brook, also perhaps pebble. Then it has another sound, let's say, that can mean star, as well as blackboard, and — for instance — bench. (These meanings may not be correct in detail; I mean only to show the way the Chinese language is built up.) And now the Chinese person knows: there are two sounds here, say LAO and BAO, each meaning things that are quite different but also both meaning brook. So he puts them together: BAOLAO. In this way he builds up his language. He does not build it up from names given to single things, but according to the various meanings of the various sounds. A sound may mean tree but it may also mean brook. When, therefore, he combines two sounds, both of which — beside many other things — mean brook, the other man knows that he means brook. But when he utters only one sound, no one knows what he means. In writing there are the same complications. So the Chinese have an extraordinarily complicated language and an extraordinarily complicated script. And indeed, gentlemen, a great deal follows from this. It follows that for them it is not so easy to learn to read and write as it is for us-nor even to speak. With us, reading and writing can really be called simple; indeed, we are unhappy when our children don't learn quickly to read and write — we think it is “mere child's play.” With the Chinese this is not so; in China one grows quite old before one can write or in any way master the language. So you can easily imagine that the ordinary people are not at all able to do it, that only those who can go on learning up to a great age can at last become proficient. In China, therefore, noble rank is conferred as a matter of course from a spiritual basis on those who are cultured, and this spiritually high rank is called into being by the nature of the language and script. Here again it is not the same as in the West, where various degrees of nobility can be conferred and then passed on from one generation to another. In China rank can be attained only through education and scholarship. It is interesting, gentlemen, is it not, that if we judge superficially we would surely say: then we don't want to be Chinese. But please don't assume that I am saying we ought to become Chinese, or even particularly to admire China. That is what some people may easily say about it. Two years ago when we had a Congress in Vienna, 6 The Second International Congress, Vienna, June 1–12, 1922. See The Tension Between East and West . someone spoke of how some things in China were managed even today more wisely than we manage them — and immediately the newspapers reported that we wanted Chinese culture in Europe! That is not what was meant. In describing the Chinese culture, praise must be given in a certain way — but only in a certain way — for what it has of spiritual content. But it is a primitive culture, of a kind that can no longer be adopted by us. So you must not think I am agitating for another China in Europe! I simply wish to describe this most ancient of human cultures as it actually existed. Now — to continue. What I have been saying is related to the whole manner of Chinese thinking and feeling. Indeed, the Chinese (and also the Japanese of more ancient times) occupied themselves a great deal, a very great deal, with art — with their kind of art. They painted, for instance. Now when we paint, it is quite a different affair from the Chinese painting. You see, when we paint (I will make this as simple as possible), when we paint a ball, for example, if the light falls on it, then the ball is bright in one part and dark over in the other, for it is in shadow; the light is falling beyond it. There again, on the light side, the ball is rather bright because there the light is reflected. Then we say: that side is in shadow, for the light is reflected on the other side; and then we have to paint also the shadow the ball throws on the ground. This is one of the characteristics of our painting: we must have light and shade on the objects. When we paint a face, we paint it bright where the light falls, and on the other side we make it dark. When we paint the whole man, if we paint properly, we put shadow in the same way falling on the ground. But beside this we must pay attention to something else in our picture. Suppose I am standing here and want to paint. I see Herr Aisenpreis sitting in front; there behind, I see Herr Meier, and the two gentlemen at the back quite small. Were I to photograph them, in the photograph also they would come out quite small. When I paint, I paint in such a way that the gentlemen sitting in the front row are quite big, the next behind smaller, the next again still smaller and the one sitting right at the back has a really small head, a really small face. You see, when we paint we take perspective into account. We have to do it that way. We have to show light and shade and also perspective. This is inherent in the way we think. Now the Chinese in their painting did not recognize light and shade, nor did they allow for perspective, because they did not see as we see. They took no notice of light and shade and no notice of perspective. This is what they would have said: Aisenpreis is certainly not a giant, any more than Meier is a dwarf. We can't put them together in a picture as if one were a giant and the other a dwarf, for that would be a lie, it is not the truth! That's the way they thought about things, and they painted as they thought. When the Chinese and the Japanese learn painting in their way, they do not look at objects from the outside, they think themselves right into the objects. They paint everything from within outwards as they imagine things for themselves. This, gentlemen, constitutes the very nature of Chinese and Japanese painting. You will realize, therefore, that learning to see came only later to mankind. Human beings in that early China thought only in pictures, they did not form general concepts like “table” and so on, but what they saw they apprehended inwardly. This is not to be wondered at, for the Chinese descended from a culture during which seeing was different. Today we see as we do because there is air between us and the object. This air was simply not there in the regions where the Chinese were first established. In the times from which the Chinese have come down, people did not see in our way. In those ancient times it would have been nonsense to speak of light and shade, for there was not yet any such thing in the density the air then had. And so the Chinese still have no light and shade in their painting, and still no perspective. That came only later. From this you can see the Chinese think in quite a different way; they do not think as men do who came later. However, this did not in the least hinder the Chinese from going very far in outer cleverness. When I was young — it is rather different now — we learned in school that Berthold Schwarz 7 Berthold Schwarz, Franciscan monk, Freiburg, around 1300. invented gunpowder, and this was told us as if there had never been gunpowder before. So Berthold Schwarz, while he was doing alchemistic experiments, produced gunpowder out of sulphur, nitre and carbon. But — the Chinese had made gunpowder thousands of years earlier! Also we learned in school that Gutenberg 8 Johann Gutenberg, 1394–1468. invented the art of printing. We did learn many things that were correct, but in this case it looked to us as if there had formerly been no knowledge of printing. Actually, the Chinese already possessed this knowledge thousands of years earlier. They also had the art of woodcarving; they could cut the most wonderful things out of wood. In such external things the Chinese have had an advanced culture. This was in its turn the last remnant of a former culture still more advanced, for one recognizes that this Chinese art goes back to something even higher. Thus it is characteristic of the Chinese to think not in concepts but in pictures, and to project themselves right into things. They have been able to make all those things which depend upon outer invention (except when it's a matter of steam-engines or something similar). So the present condition of the Chinese, which we may say is degenerate and uncultivated, has actually come about from centuries of ill-treatment at the hands of the Europeans. You see that here is a culture that is really spiritual in a certain sense — and really ancient, that goes back to ten thousand years before our time. Much later, in the millennium preceding Christianity, individuals like Lao Tse 9 Lao Tse, Chinese philosopher, 6th century B.C. and Confucius 10 Confucius, 531–478 BC., Chinese ethical teacher. made the first written record of the knowledge possessed by the Chinese. Those masters simply wrote down what had arisen out of the intercourse among families in this old kingdom. They were not conscious of inventing rules of a moral or ethical nature; they were simply recording their experience of Chinese conduct. Previously, this had been done by word of mouth. Thus everything at that time was basically different. That is what can still be perceived today in the Chinese. In contrast to this, it is hardly possible to see any longer the old culture of the Japanese people, because they have been entirely Europeanized. They follow European culture in everything. That they did not develop this culture out of themselves can be seen from their inability to discover on their own initiative what is purely European. The following, for example, really happened. The Japanese were to have steamships and saw no reason why they should not be able to manage them perfectly well themselves. They watched how to turn the ship, for instance, how to open the screw, and so on. Their instructors, the Europeans, worked with them for a time, and finally one day the Japanese said proudly: Now we can manage by ourselves, and we will appoint our own captain! So the European instructors were put ashore and off steamed the Japanese to the high seas. When they were ready to turn back, they turned the screw, and the ship turned round beautifully — but no one knew how to close the screw, and there was the ship whirling round and round on the sea, just turning and turning! The European instructors watching from the shore had to take a boat and bring the revolving ship to a standstill. Perhaps you remember Goethe's poem, “The Magician's Apprentice” where the apprentice watches the spells of the old master-magician? And then, to save himself the trouble of fetching water, he learns a magic verse by which he will be able to make a broom into a water-carrier. One day when the old magician is out, the apprentice begins to put this magic into practice, and recites the words to start the broom working. The broom gets really down to business, and fetches water, and more water, and always more water. But the apprentice forgets how to stop it. Just imagine if you had your room flooded, and your broom went on fetching more and more water. In his desperation the apprentice chops the broom in two — then there are two water-carriers! When everything is drowned in water, the old master returns and says the right words for the broom to become a broom again. As you know, the poem has been done in eurythmy recently, and the audience enjoyed it immensely. Well, the same kind of thing happened with the Japanese: they didn't know how to turn back the screw, and so the ship continued to go round and round. A regular ship's dance went on out there until the instructors on land could get a boat and come to the rescue. Surely it is clear from all this that the European sort of invention is impossible for either the Chinese or the Japanese. But as to older inventions such as gunpowder, printing and so forth, they had already gone that far in much more ancient times than the Europeans. You see, the Chinese are much more interested in the world at large, in the world of the stars, in the universe as a whole. Another people who point back to ancient days are the Indians. They do not go so far back as the Chinese, but they too have an old culture. Their culture may be said to have arisen from the sea later than the Chinese. The people who were the later Indian people came more from the north, settling down in what is now India as the land became free of water. Now whereas the Chinese were more interested in the world outside, could project themselves into anything, the Indian people brooded more within themselves. The Chinese reflected more about the world — in their own way, but about the world; the Indians reflected chiefly about themselves, about man himself. Hence the culture that arose in India was more spiritualized. In the most remote times Indian culture was still free of religion; only later did religion enter into it. Man was their principal object of study, but their study was of an inward kind. This too I can best make clear by describing the way the Indians used to draw and paint. The Chinese, looking at a man, painted him simply by entering into him with their thinking — without light and shade or perspective. That is really the way they painted him. Thus, if a Chinese had wanted to paint Herr Burle, he would have thought his way into him; he would not have made him dark there and light here, as we would do today, he would not have painted light and shadow, for they did not yet exist for the Chinese. Nor would he have made the hands bigger by comparison because of their being in front. But if the Chinese had painted Herr Burle, then Herr Burle would really have been there in the picture! It was quite different with the Indians. Now just imagine the Indians were going to paint a picture: they would have started by painting a head. They too had no such thing as perspective. But they would at once have had the idea that a head could often be different, so they would make another, then a third again different, and a fourth, a fifth would have occurred to them. In this way they would gradually have had twenty or thirty heads side-by-side! These would all have been suggested to them by the one head. Or if they were painting a plant, they imagined at once that this could be different, and then there arose a number of young plants growing out of the older one. This is how it was in the case of the Indians in those very ancient times. They had tremendous powers of imagination. The Chinese had none at all and drew only the single thing, but made their way into this in thought. The Indians had a powerful imagination. Now you see, gentlemen, those heads are not there. Really, if you look at Herr Burle, you see only one head. If you're drawing him here on the board, you can draw only one head. You are therefore not painting what is outwardly real if you paint twenty or thirty heads; you are painting something thought-out in your mind. The whole Indian culture took on that character; it was an inner culture of the mind, of the spirit. Hence when you see spiritual beings as the Indians thought of them, you see them represented with numbers of heads, numbers of arms, or in such a way that the animal nature of the body is made manifest. You see, the Indians are quite different people from the Chinese. The Chinese lack imagination whereas the Indians have been full of it from the beginning. Hence the Indians were predisposed to turn their culture gradually into a religious one — which up to this day the Chinese have never done: there is no religion in China. Europeans, who are not given to making fine distinctions, speak of a Chinese religion, but the Chinese themselves do not acknowledge such a thing. They say: you people in Europe have a religion, the Indians have a religion, but we have nothing resembling a religion. This predisposition to religion was possible in the Indians only because they had a particular knowledge of something of which the Chinese were ignorant, namely, of the human body. The Chinese knew very well how to put themselves into something external to them. Now when there are vinegar and salt and pepper on our dinner table and we want to know how they taste, we first have to sample them on our tongue. For the Chinese in ancient times this was not necessary. They already tasted things that were still outside them. They could really feel their way into things and were quite familiar with what was external. Hence they had certain expressions showing that they took part in the outside world. We no longer have such expressions, or they signify at most something of a figurative nature. For the Chinese they signified reality. When I am becoming acquainted with someone and say of him: What a sour fellow he is! — I mean it figuratively; we do not imagine him to be really sour as vinegar is sour. But for the Chinese this meant that the man actually evoked in them a sour taste. It was not so with the Indians; they could go much more deeply into their own bodies. If we go deeply into our own bodies, it is only when certain conditions are present — then we feel something there. Whenever we've had a meal and it remains in our stomach without being properly digested, we feel pain in our stomach. If our liver is out of order and cannot secrete sufficient bile, we feel pain on the right side of our body — then we are getting a liver complaint. When our lungs secrete too freely so that they are more full of mucus than they should be, then we feel there is something wrong with our lungs, that they are out of order. Today human beings are conscious of their bodies only in those organs that are sick. Those Indians of ancient times were conscious even of their healthy organs; they knew how the stomach, how the liver felt. When anyone wants to know this today, he has to take a corpse and dissect it; then he can examine the condition of the individual organs inside. No one today knows what a liver looks like unless they dissect it; it is only spiritual science that is able to describe it. The Indians could think of inner man; they would have been able to draw all his organs. With an Indian, however, if you had asked him to feel his liver and draw what he felt, he would have said: Liver? — well, here is one liver, here's another, and here's another, and he would have drawn twenty or thirty livers side-by-side. So, gentlemen, you have there a different story. If I draw a complete man and give him twenty heads, I have a fanciful picture. But if I draw a human liver with twenty or thirty others beside it, I am drawing something not wholly fantastic; it would have been possible for these twenty or thirty livers really to have come into being! Every man has his distinctive form of liver, but there is no absolute necessity for that form; it could very well be different. This possibility of difference, this spiritual aspect of the matter, was far better understood by the Indians than by those who came later. The Indians said: When we draw a single object, it is not the whole truth; we have to conceive the matter spiritually. So the Indians have had a lofty spiritual culture. They have never set great store by the outer world but have had a spiritual conception of everything. Now the Indians took it for granted that learning should be acquired in accordance with this attitude; therefore, to become an educated man was a lengthy affair. For, as you can imagine, with them it was not just a matter of going deeply into oneself and then being capable all at once of knowing everything. When we are responsible for the instruction of young people, we have first to teach them to read and write, imparting to them in this way something from outside. But this was not so in the case of the ancient Indians. When they wanted to teach someone, they showed him how to withdraw into his inner depths; he was to turn his attention away from the world entirely and to focus it upon his inner being. Now if anyone sits and looks outwards, he sees you all sitting there and his attention is directed to the outer world. This would have been the way with the Chinese; they directed their attention outwards. The Indians taught otherwise. They said: You must learn to gaze at the tip of your nose. Then the student had to keep his eyes fixed so that he saw nothing but the tip of his nose, nothing else for hours at a time, without even moving his eyes. Yes indeed, gentlemen, the European will say: How terrible to train people always to be contemplating the tip of their nose! True! for the European there is something terrible in it; it would be impossible for him to do such a thing. But in ancient India that was the custom. In order to learn anything an Indian did not have to write with his fingers, he had to look at the tip of his nose. But this sitting for hours gazing at the tip of his nose led him into his own inner being, led him to know his lungs, his liver, and so forth. For the tip of the nose is the same in the second hour as it is in the first; nothing special is to be seen there. From the tip of his nose, however, the student was able to behold more and more of what was within him; within him everything became brighter and brighter. That is why he had to carry out the exercise. Now, as you know, when we walk about, we are accustomed to do so on our feet and this going about on our feet has an effect upon us. We experience ourselves as upright human beings when we walk on our feet. This was discouraged for those in India who had to learn something. While learning they had to have one leg like this and sit on it, while the other leg was in this position. Thus they sat, gazing fixedly at the tip of their nose, so that they became quite unused to standing; they had the feeling they were not upright men but crumpled up like an embryo in a mother's womb. You can see the Buddha portrayed in this way. It was thus that the Indians had to learn. Gradually they began to look within themselves, learned to know what is within man, came to have knowledge of the human physical body in an entirely spiritual way. When we look within ourselves, we are conscious of our paltry thinking; we are slightly aware of our feeling but almost not at all of our willing. The Indians felt a whole world in the human being. You can imagine what different men they were from those who came later. They developed, as you know, a tremendous fantasy, expressed poetically in their books of wisdom — later in the Vedas and in the Vedantic philosophy, which still fill us with awe. It figured in their legends concerning super-sensible things, which still today amaze us. And look at the contrast! Here were the Indians, there were the Chinese over there, and the Chinese were a prosaic people interested in the outer world, a people who did not live from within. The Indians were a people who looked entirely inward, contemplating within them the spiritual nature of the physical body. So — I have begun to tell you about the most ancient inhabitants of the earth. Next time I will carry it further, so that we will finally arrive at the time we live in now. Please continue to bring your questions. There may be details that you would like me to enlarge upon, and I can always at some following meeting answer the questions they have raised. But I can't tell you when the next session will be, because now I must go to Holland. I will send you word in ten days or so.

The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars

Origin and character of the Chinese and Indian cultures

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA354/English/RSP1987/19240712p01.html

Dornach

12 Jul 1924

GA354-5

Rudolf Steiner : Good morning, gentlemen! Has someone thought of a question during the last weeks? Question : Sir, I would like to ask about various foods — beans and carrots, for instance: what effect they have on the body. You have already spoken about potatoes; perhaps we could hear something about other foodstuffs. Some vegetarians won't eat things that have hung in the air, like beans or peas. And when one looks at a field of grain, one wonders how the various grains differ — for apparently all the peoples of the earth cultivate some grain or other. Dr. Steiner : So — the question is about the relation of various foods to the human body. Well, first of all we should gain a clear idea of nutrition itself. One's immediate thought of nutrition is that when we eat something, it goes through the mouth down into the stomach, then it is deposited farther in the body and finally we get rid of it; then we must eat again, and so on. But the process is not as simple as that. It is much more complicated. And if one wants to understand how the human being is really related to various foods, one must first be clear about the kinds of food one definitely needs. Now the very first thing one needs, the substance one must have without fail, is protein. Let us write all this on the board, so that we have it complete. So, protein, as it is in a hen's egg, for instance — but not just in eggs; protein is in all foods. One needs protein without fail. The second thing one needs is fats. These too are in all foods. Fats are even in plants. The third thing has a name that will be less familiar to you, but one needs to know it: carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are found particularly in potatoes, but they are also found in large quantity in all other plants. The important fact about carbohydrates is that when we eat them, they are slowly turned into starch by the saliva in our mouth and the secretions in our stomach. Starch is something we need without fail, but we don't eat starch; we eat foods that contain carbohydrates, and the carbohydrates are turned into starch inside us. Then they are converted once again, in the further process of digestion, into sugar. And we need sugar. So you see, we get the sugar we need from the carbohydrates. But we still need something else: minerals. We get them partly by adding them to our food, for example in the form of salt, and partly they are already contained in all our foodstuffs. Now when we consider protein, we must realize how greatly it differs in animals and human beings from what it is in plants. Plants contain protein too, but they don't eat it, so where do they get it from? They get it out of the ground and out of the air, from the mineral world; they can take their protein from lifeless, mineral sources. Neither animal nor man can do that. A human being cannot use the protein that is to be got from lifeless elements — he would then only be a plant — he must get his protein as it is already prepared in plants or animals. Actually, to be able to live on this earth the human being needs the plants. But now this is the amazing fact: the plants could not live on the earth either if human beings were not here! So, gentlemen, we reach the interesting fact — and we must grasp it quite clearly: that of all things the two most essential for human life are the green sap in the green leaves and blood. The green in the sap of a plant is called chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is contained in the green leaf. And the one other essential thing is blood. Now this brings us to something very remarkable. Think how you breathe: that is also a way of taking in nourishment. You take oxygen in from the air; you breathe it in. But there is carbon spread through your entire body. If you go down into the earth where there are coal deposits, you've got black coal. When you sharpen a pencil, you've got graphite. Coal and graphite: they're both carbon. Your whole body is made of carbon (as well as other substances). Carbon is formed in the human body. You could say, a man is just a heap of black coal! But you could also say something else. Because — remember the most expensive thing in the world? a diamond — and that's made of carbon; it just has a different form. And so, if you like the sound of it better, you could say you're made of glittering diamonds. The black carbon, that graphite in the pencil, and the diamonds: they are all the same substance. If someday the coal that is dug out of the earth can by some process be made transparent, you'll have diamonds. So we have diamonds hidden in our body. Or we are a coal field! But now when oxygen combines with carbon in the blood, you have carbon dioxide. And you know carbon dioxide quite well: you only have to think of Seltzer water with the bubbles in it: they are the carbon dioxide. It is a gas. So one can have this picture: A human being inhales oxygen from the air, the oxygen spreads all through his blood; in his blood he has carbon, and he exhales carbon dioxide. You breathe oxygen in, you breathe carbon dioxide out. In the course of the earth's evolution, gentlemen, which I have recently been describing to you, everything would long ago have been poisoned by the carbon dioxide coming from the human beings and animals. For this evolution has been going on for a long time. As you can see, since long, long ago there could have been no human kingdom or animal kingdom alive on the earth unless plants had had a very different character from those kingdoms. Plants do not take in oxygen: they take in the carbon dioxide that human beings and animals exhale. Plants are just as greedy for the carbon dioxide as human beings are for oxygen. Now if we look at a plant [see drawing] — root, stem, leaves, blossoms: the plant absorbs carbon dioxide in every part of it. And now the carbon in the carbon dioxide is deposited in the plant, and the oxygen is breathed out by the plant. Human beings and animals get it back again. Man gives carbon dioxide out and kills everything; the plant keeps back the carbon, releases the oxygen and brings everything to life again. And the plant could do nothing with the carbon dioxide if it did not have its green sap, the chlorophyll. This green sap of the plant, gentlemen, is a magician. It holds the carbon back inside the plant and lets the oxygen go free. Our blood combines oxygen with carbon; the green plant-sap separates the carbon again from the carbon dioxide and sets the oxygen free. Think what an excellent arrangement nature has made, that plants and animals and human beings should complement one another in this way! They complement one another perfectly. But we must go on. The human being not only needs the oxygen that the plant gives him, but he needs the entire plant. With the exception of poisonous plants and certain plants which contain very little of these substances, the human being needs all plants not only for his breathing but also for food. And that brings us to another remarkable connection. A plant consists of root, if it is an annual plant (we won't consider the trees at this moment) — of root, leaf and stem, blossom and fruit. Now look at the root for a moment. It is in the earth. It contains many minerals, because minerals are in the earth and the root clings to the earth with its tiny fine rootlets, so it is constantly absorbing those minerals. So the root of the plant has a special relation to the mineral realm of the earth. And now look here, gentlemen! The part of the human being that is related to the whole earth is the head. Not the feet, but actually the head. When the human being starts to be an earth-man in the womb, he has at first almost nothing but a head. He begins with his head. His head takes the shape of the whole cosmos and the shape of the earth. And the head particularly needs minerals. For it is from the head that the forces go out that fill the human body with bones, for instance. Everything that makes a human being solid is the result of the way the head has been formed. While the head itself is still soft, as in the womb, it cannot form bones properly. But as it becomes harder and harder itself, it gives over to the body the forces by which both man and animal are able to form their solid parts, particularly their bones. You can see from this that we need roots. They are related to the earth and contain minerals. We need the minerals for bone-building. Bones consist of calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate; those are minerals. So you can see that the human being needs roots in order to strengthen his head. And so, gentlemen, if — for instances — a child is becoming weak in his head — inattentive, hyperactive — he will usually have a corresponding symptom: worms in his intestines. Worms develop easily in the intestines if the head forces are too weak, because the head does not then work down strongly enough into the rest of the body. Worms find no lodging in a human body if the head forces are working down strongly into the intestines. You can see how magnificently the human body is arranged! — everything is related. And if one's child has worms, one should realize the child has become weak in his head. Also — whoever wants to be a teacher has to know these things — if there are persons who at a later age are weak-minded, one can be sure they have had worms when they were young. And so what must one do if one observes this in the child? The simplest remedy is to give him carrots to eat for a while — with his other food, of course; naturally, one couldn't just feed him on carrots alone. Carrots are the root of the plant. They grow down in the earth and have a large quantity of minerals. They have the forces of the earth in them, and when they are taken into the stomach, they are able to work up through the blood into the head. Only substances rich in minerals are able to reach the head. Substances rich in minerals, root substances, give strength to a human being by way of the head. That is extraordinarily important. It is through carrots that the uppermost parts of the head become strong — which is precisely what the human being needs in order to be inwardly firm and vigorous, not soft. If you look at the carrot plant, you can't help seeing that its strength has gone particularly into the root. It is almost entirely root. The only part of the plant one is interested in is the root. The rest of it, the green part, is of no importance, it just sits there up above. So the carrot is particularly good as a food substance to maintain the human head. And if sometimes you yourselves feel empty-headed, dull, can't think properly, then it's fine if you too will eat carrots for a while! Naturally, they will help children the most. But now if we compare a potato to a carrot — well, first of all it looks quite different. Of course, the potato plant has a green part. And then it has the part we eat, what we call the tubers, deep down in the earth. Now if we would think superficially, we could say those tubers are the roots. But that is not correct; the tubers are not roots. If you look carefully down into the soil, you can see the real roots hanging on the tubers. The real roots are tiny rootlets, root hairs, that hang on the tubers. They fall away easily. When you gather up the potatoes, the hairs have already fallen away. Only in the first moment when you are lifting a potato loose from the soil, the hairs are still all over it. When we eat a potato, we are really eating a piece of swollen, enlarged stem. It only appears to be a root; in reality it is stem. The leaves are metamorphosed. The potato is something down there between the root and the stem. Therefore it does not have as much mineral content as the carrot; it is not as earthy. It grows in the earth, but it is not so strongly related to the earth. And it contains particularly carbohydrates; not so many minerals, but carbohydrates. So now, gentlemen, you can say to yourselves: When I eat carrots, my body can really take it easy, for all it needs is saliva to soften the carrot. All it needs is saliva and stomach secretions, pepsin and so forth for all the important substance of the carrot to reach the head. We need minerals, and minerals are furnished by any kind of root, but in greatest amounts by such a root as the carrot. But now, when we eat potatoes, first they go into the mouth and stomach. There the body has to exert strength to derive starch from them. Then the digestive process goes further in the intestines. In order that something can go into the blood and also reach the head, there must be more exertion still, because sugar has to be derived from the starch. Only then can it go to the head. So one has to use still greater forces. Now think of this, gentlemen: when I exert my strength upon some external thing, I become weak. This is really a secret of human physiology: that if I chop wood, if I use my external bodily strength, I become weak; but if I exert an inner strength, transforming carbohydrates into starch and starch into sugar, I become strong. Precisely through the fact that I permeate myself with sugar by eating potatoes, I become strong. When I use my strength externally, I become weak; if I use it internally, I become strong. So it is not a matter of simply filling oneself up with food, but of the food generating strength in our body. And so one can say: food from roots — and all roots have the same effect as carrots although not to the same degree: they all work particularly on the head — so, food from roots gives the body what it needs for itself. Foods that lean toward the green of the plant and contain carbohydrates provide the body with strength it needs for work, for movement. I have already spoken about the potato. While it requires a terribly large expenditure of strength, it leaves a man weak afterwards, and does not provide him with any continuing strength. But the principle I have just given you holds good even for the potato. Now to the same extent that the potato is a rather poor foodstuff, all the grains — wheat, rye, and so on — are good foodstuffs. The grains also contain carbohydrates, and of such a nature that the human being forms starch and sugar in the healthiest possible way. Actually, the carbohydrates of the grains can make him stronger than he can make himself by any other means. Only think for a moment how strong people are who live on farms, simply through the fact that they eat large quantities of their own homemade bread which contains the grain from their fields! They only need to have healthy bodies to start with, then if they can digest the rather coarse bread, it is really the healthiest food for them. They must first have healthy bodies, but then they become quite especially strong through the process of making starch and sugar. Now a question might be raised. You see, human beings have come in the course of their evolution — shall I say, quite of their own accord — to eating the grains differently from the way animals eat them. A horse eats his oats almost as they grow. Animals eat their kernels of grain raw, just as they come from the plant. The birds would have a hard time getting their seed if they had to depend upon someone cooking it for them first! But human beings have come of themselves to cooking the grains. And now, gentlemen, what happens when we cook the grain? Well, when we cook the grain, we don't eat it cold, we eat it warm. And it's a fact, that to digest our food we need inner warmth. Unless there is warmth we can't transform our carbohydrates into starch and the starch into sugar: that requires inner heat. So if we first apply external heat to the foodstuffs, we help the body: it does not have to provide all the warmth itself. By being cooked first, the foods have already begun the fire process, the warmth process. That's the first result. The second is, that they have been entirely changed. Think what happens to the grain when I make flour into bread. It becomes something quite different. And how has it become different? Well, first I have ground the seeds. What does that mean? I have crushed them into tiny, tiny pieces. And you see, what I do there with the seeds, grinding them, making them fine, I'd otherwise have to do later within my own body! Everything I do externally, I'd otherwise have to do internally, inside my body; so by doing those things, I relieve my body. And the same with the baking itself: all the things I do in cooking, I save my body from doing. I bring the foods to a condition in which my body can more easily digest them. You have only to think of the difference if someone would eat raw potatoes instead of cooked ones. If someone were to eat his potatoes raw, his stomach would have to provide a tremendous amount of warmth to transform those raw potatoes — which are almost starch already. And the extent to which it could transform them would not be sufficient. So then the potatoes would reach the intestines and the intestines would also have to use a great amount of energy. Then the potatoes would just stay put in the intestines, for the subsequent forces would not be able to carry them farther into the body. So if one eats raw potatoes, either one just loads one's stomach with them and the intestines can't even get started on them, or one fills up the intestines; in either case there is no further digestion. But if the potatoes undergo a preparatory stage through cooking or some other means, then the stomach does not have so much to do, or the intestines either, and the potatoes go over properly into the blood and right up into the head. So you see, by cooking our foods, especially those that are counted among the carbohydrates, we are able to help our nutrition. You are certainly acquainted with all the new kinds of foolishness in connection with nutrition — for instance, the raw food faddists, who are not going to cook anything anymore, they're going to eat everything raw. How does this come about? It's because people no longer know what's what from a materialistic science, and they shy away from a spiritual science, so they think a few things out on their own. The whole raw food fad is a fantasy. For a time someone living on raw food can whip the body along — in this situation the body has to be using very strong forces, so it has to be whipped — but then it will collapse all the more completely. But now, gentlemen, let us come to the fats. Plants, almost all of them, contain fats which they derive from the minerals. Now fats do not enter the human body so easily as carbohydrates and minerals. Minerals are not even changed. For example, when you shake salt into your soup, that salt goes almost unchanged up into your head. You get it as salt in your head. But when you eat potatoes, you don't get potatoes in your head, you get sugar. The conversion takes place as I described to you. With the fats, however, whether they're plant fats or animal fats, it's not such a simple matter. When fats are eaten, they are almost entirely eaten up by the saliva, by the gastric secretions, by the intestinal secretions, and they become something quite different that then goes over into the blood. The animal and the human being must form their own fats in their intestines and in their blood, with forces which the fats they eat call forth. You see, that is the difference between fats and sugar or minerals. The human being still takes his salt and his sugar from nature. He has to derive the sugar from the potato and the rye and so on, but there is still something of nature in it. But with the fats that man or animal have in them, there is nothing anymore of nature. They have formed them themselves. The human being would have no strength if he did not eat; his intestines and blood need fats. So we can say: Man himself cannot form minerals. If he did not take in minerals, his body would never be able to build them by itself. If he did not take in carbohydrates, if he did not eat bread or something similar from which he gets carbohydrates, he would never be able to form sugar by himself. And if he could not form sugar, he would be a weakling forever. So be grateful for the sugar, gentlemen! Because you are chock-full of sweetness, you have strength. The moment you would no longer be full to the brim with your own sweetness, you would have no strength, you would collapse. And you know, that holds good even in connection with the various peoples. There are certain peoples who consume very little sugar or foodstuffs that produce sugar. These peoples have weak physical forces. Then there are certain peoples who eat many carbohydrates that form sugar, and they are strong. But the human being doesn't have it so easy with the fats. If someone has fats in him (and this is true also of the animals), that is his own accomplishment, the accomplishment of his body. Fats are entirely his own production. The human being destroys whatever fats he takes in, plant fats or animal fats, and through their destruction he develops strength. With potatoes, rye, wheat, he develops strength by converting the substances. With the fats that he eats, he develops strength by destroying the substances. If I destroy something outside of myself, I become tired and exhausted. And if I have had a big fat beefsteak and destroy that inside myself, I become weak in the same way; but my destruction of the fat beefsteak or of the plant fat gives me strength again, so that I can produce my own fat if my body is predisposed to it. So you see, the consumption of fat works very differently in the human body from the consumption of carbohydrates. The human body, gentlemen, is exceedingly complicated, and what I have been describing to you is tremendous work. Much must take place in the human body for it to be able to destroy those plant fats. But now let us think how it is when someone eats green stuff, the stems and leaves of a plant. When he eats green stuff, he is getting fats from the plants. Why is it that sometimes a stem is so hard? Because it then gives its forces to leaves that are going to be rich in carbohydrates. And if the leaves stay green — the greener they are, the more fats they have in them. So when someone eats bread, for instance, he can't take in many fats from the bread. He takes in more, for example, from watercress — that tiny plant with the very tiny leaves — more fats than when he eats bread. That's how the custom came about of putting butter on our bread, some kind of fat. It wasn't just for the taste. And why country people want bacon with their bread. There again is fat, and that also is eaten for two reasons. When I eat bread, the bread works upon my head because the root elements of a plant work up into the stem. The stem, even though it is stem and grows above the ground in the air, still has root forces in it. The question is not whether something is above in the air, but whether it has any root forces. Now the leaf, the green leaf, does not have root forces. No green leaf ever appears down in the earth. In late summer and autumn, when the sun forces are no longer working so strongly, the stem can mature. But the leaf needs the strongest sun forces for it to unfold; it grows toward the sun. So we can say, the green part of the plant works particularly on heart and lungs, while the root strengthens the head. The potato also is able to work into the head. When we eat greens, they give us particularly plant fats; they strengthen our heart and lungs, the middle man, the chest man. That, I would say, is the secret of human nutrition: that if I want to work upon my head, I have roots or stems for dinner. If I want to work upon my heart or my lungs, I make myself a green salad. And in this case, because these substances are destroyed in the intestines and only their forces proceed to work, cooking is not so necessary. That's why leaves can be eaten raw as salad. Whatever is to work on the head cannot be eaten raw; it must be cooked. Cooked foods work particularly on the head. Lettuce and similar things work particularly on heart and lungs, building them up, nourishing them through the fats. But now, gentlemen, the human being must not only nurture the head and the middle body, the breast region, but he must nurture the digestive organs themselves. He needs a stomach, intestines, kidneys, and a liver, and he must build up these digestive organs himself. Now the interesting fact is this: to build up his digestive organs he needs protein for food, the protein that is in plants, particularly as contained in their blossoms, and most particularly in their fruit. So we can say: the root nourishes the head particularly [see drawing earlier]; the middle of the plant, stem and leaves, nourishes the chest particularly; and fruit nourishes the lower body. When we look out at our grain fields we can say, Good that they are there! for that nourishes our head. When we look down at the lettuce we've planted, all those leaves that we eat without cooking because they are easily digested in the intestines — and it's their forces that we want — there we get everything that maintains our chest organs. But cast an eye up at the plums and apples, at the fruits growing on the trees — ah! those we don't have to bother to cook much, for they've been cooked by the sun itself during the whole summer! There an inner ripening has already been happening, so that they are something quite different from the roots, or from stalks and stems (which are not ripened but actually dried up by the sun). The fruits, as I said, we don't have to cook much — unless we have a weak organism, in which case the intestines cannot destroy the fruits. Then we must cook them; we must have stewed fruit and the like. If someone has intestinal illnesses, he must be careful to take his fruit in some cooked form — sauce, jam, and so forth. If one has a perfectly healthy digestive system, a perfectly healthy intestinal system, then fruits are the right thing to nourish the lower body, through the protein they contain. Protein from any of the fruits nourishes your stomach for you, nourishes all your digestive organs in your lower body. You can see what a good instinct human beings have had for these things! Naturally, they have not known in concepts all that I've been telling you, but they have known it instinctively. They have always prepared a mixed diet of roots, greens and fruit; they have eaten all of them, and even the comparative amounts that one should have of these three different foods have been properly determined by their instinct. But now, as you know, people not only eat plants, they eat animals too, the flesh of animals, animal fat and so on. Certainly it is not for anthroposophy ever to assume a fanatical or a sectarian attitude. Its task is only to tell how things are. One simply cannot say that people should eat only plants, or that they should also eat animals, and so on. One can only say that some people with the forces they have from heredity are simply not strong enough to perform within their bodies all the work necessary to destroy plant fats, to destroy them so completely that then forces will develop in their bodies for producing their own fat. You see, a person who eats only plant fats — well, either he's renounced the idea of becoming an imposing, portly fellow, or else he must have an awfully good digestive system, so healthy that it is easy for him to destroy the plant fats and in this way get forces to build his own fat. Most people are really unable to produce their own fat if they have only plant fats to destroy. When one eats animal fat in meat, that is not entirely destroyed. Plant fats don't go out beyond the intestines, they are destroyed in the intestines. But the fat contained in meat does go beyond, it goes over into the human being. And the person may be weaker than if he were on a diet of just plant fats. Therefore, we must distinguish between two kinds of bodies. First there are the bodies that do not like fat, they don't enjoy eating bacon, they just don't like to eat fatty foods. Those are bodies that destroy plant fats comparatively easily and want in that way to form their own fat. They say: “Whatever fat I carry around, I want to make myself; I want my very own fat.” But if someone heaps his table with fatty foods, then he's not saying, “I want to make my own fat”; he's saying, “The world has to give me my fat.” For animal fat goes over into the body, making the work of nutrition easier. When a child sucks a candy, he's not doing that for nourishment. There is, to be sure, something nutritious in it, but the child doesn't suck it for that; he sucks it for the sweet taste. The sweetness is the object of his consciousness. But if an adult eats beef fat, or pork fat, or the like, well, that goes over into his body. It satisfies his craving just as the candy satisfies the child's craving. But it is not quite the same, for the adult feels this craving inside him. The adult needs this inner craving in order to respond to his inner being. That is why he loves meat. He eats it because his body loves it. But it is no use being fanatic about these things. There are people who simply cannot live if they don't have meat. A person must consider carefully whether he really will be able to get on without it. If he does decide he can do without it and changes over from a meat to a vegetarian diet, he will feel stronger than he was before. That's sometimes a difficulty, obviously: some people can't bear the thought of living without meat. If, however, one does become a vegetarian, he feels stronger — because he is no longer obliged to deposit alien fat in his body; he makes his own fat, and this makes him feel stronger. I know this from my own experience. I could not otherwise have endured the strenuous exertion of these last twenty-four years! I never could have traveled entire nights, for instance, and then given a lecture the next morning. For it is a fact, that if one is a vegetarian one carries out a certain activity within one that is spared the non-vegetarian, who has it done first by an animal. That's the important difference. But now don't get the idea that I would ever agitate for vegetarianism! It must always be first established whether a person is able to become a vegetarian or not; it is an individual matter. You see, this is especially important in connection with protein. One can digest protein if one is able to eat plant protein and break it down in the intestines. And then one gets the forces from it. But the moment the intestines are weak, one must get the protein externally, which means one must eat the right kind of protein, which will be animal protein. Hens that lay eggs are also animals! So protein is something that is really judged quite falsely unless it is considered from an anthroposophical point of view. When I eat roots, their minerals go up into my head. When I eat salad greens, their forces go to my chest, lungs, and heart — not their fats, but the forces from their fats. When I eat fruit, the protein from the fruit stays in the intestines. And the protein from animal substances goes beyond the intestines into the body; animal protein spreads out. One might think, therefore, that if a person eats plenty of protein, he will be a well-nourished individual. This has led to the fact in this materialistic age that people who had studied medicine were recommending excessive amounts of protein for the average diet: they maintained that one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty grams of protein were necessary-which was ridiculous. Today it is known that only a quarter of that amount is necessary. And actually, if a person does eat such enormous and unnecessary amounts of protein — well, then something happens as it once did with a certain professor and his assistant. They had a man suffering from malnutrition and they wanted to build him up with protein. Now it is generally recognized that when someone is consuming large amounts of protein — it is, of course, converted in him — his urine will show that he has had it in his diet. So now it happened with these two that the man's urine showed no sign of the protein being present in his body. It didn't occur to them that it had already passed through the intestines. The professor was in a terrible state. And the assistant was shaking in his boots as he said timidly: “Sir – Professor — perhaps — through the intestines?” Of course! What had happened? They had stuffed the man with protein and it was of no use to him, for it had gone from the stomach into the intestines and then out behind. It had not spread into the body at all. If one gulps down too much protein, it doesn't go over into the body at all, but into the fecal waste matter. Even so, the body does get something from it: before it passes out, it lies there in the intestines and becomes poisonous and poisons the whole body. That's what can happen from too much protein. And from this poisoning comes then very frequently arteriosclerosis-so that many people get arteriosclerosis too early, simply from stuffing themselves with too much protein. It is important, as I have tried to show you, to know these things about nutrition. For most people are thoroughly convinced that the more they eat, the better they are nourished. Of course it is not true. One is often much better nourished if one eats less, because then one does not poison oneself. The point is really that one must know how the various substances work. One must know that minerals work particularly on the head; carbohydrates — just as they are to be found in our most common foods, bread and potatoes, for instance — work more on the lung system and throat system (lungs, throat, palate and so on). Fats work particularly on heart and blood vessels, arteries and veins, and protein particularly on the abdominal organs. The head has no special amount of protein. What protein it does have — naturally, it also has to be nourished with protein, for after all, it consists of living substances — that protein man has to form himself. And if one overeats, it's no use believing that in that way one is getting a healthy brain, for just the opposite is happening: one is getting a poisoned brain. Protein: abdominal organs Fats: heart and blood vessels Carbohydrates: lungs, throat, palate Minerals: head Perhaps we should devote another session to nutrition? That would be good, because these questions are very important. So then, Saturday at nine o'clock.

The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars

The relation of foodstuffs to man. Raw food. Vegetarianism

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA354/English/RSP1987/19240731p02.html

Dornach

31 Jul 1924

GA354-6

Rudolf Steiner : Today I would like to add a little more in answer to Herr Burle's question last Thursday. You remember that I spoke of the four substances necessary to human nutrition: minerals, carbohydrates, which are to be found in potatoes, but especially in our field grains and legumes, then fats, and protein. I pointed out how different our nutrition is with regard to protein as compared, for instance, to salt. A man takes salt into his body and it travels all the way to his head, in such a way that the salt remains salt. It is really not changed except that it is dissolved. It keeps its forces as salt all the way to the human head. In contrast to this, protein — the protein in ordinary hens' eggs, for instance, but also the protein from plants — this protein is at once broken down in the human body, while it is still in the stomach and intestines; it does not remain protein. The human being possesses forces by which he is able to break down this protein. He also has the forces to build something up again, to make his own protein. He would not be able to do this if he had not already broken down other protein. Now think how it is, gentlemen, with this protein. Imagine that you have become an exceptionally clever person, so clever that you are confident you can make a watch. But you've never seen a watch except from the outside, so you cannot right off make a watch. But if you take a chance and you take some watch to pieces, take it all apart and lay out the single pieces in such a way that you observe just how the parts relate to one another, then you know how you are going to put them all together again. That's what the human body does with protein. It must take in protein and take it all apart. Protein consists of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and sulphur. Those are its most important components. And now the protein is completely separated into its parts, so that when it all reaches the intestines, man does not have protein in him, but he has carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and sulphur. You see how it is? — now the man has the protein all laid out in its parts as you had the watch all laid out on the table. So now you will say, Sure! when I took that watch apart, I observed it very carefully, and now I can make watches. Likewise I only need to eat protein once; after that, I can make it myself. But it doesn't happen that way, gentlemen. A human being has his memory as a complete human entity; his body by itself does not have the kind of memory that can take note of something, it uses its “memory” forces just for building itself up. So one must always be eating new protein in order to be able to make a protein. The fact is, the human being is involved in a very, very complicated activity when he manufactures his own protein. First he divides the protein he has eaten into its separate parts and puts the carbon from it into his body everywhere. Now you already know that we inhale oxygen from the air and that this oxygen combines with the carbon we have in us from proteins and other food elements. And we exhale carbon in carbon dioxide, keeping a part of it back. So now we have that carbon and oxygen together in our body. We do not retain and use the oxygen that was in the protein; we use the oxygen we have inhaled to combine with the carbon. Thus we do not make our own protein as the materialists describe it: namely, that we eat a great many eggs which then are deposited throughout our body so that eggs we have eaten are spread over our whole body. That is not true. Actually, we are saved by the organization of our body so that when we eat eggs, we don't all turn into crazy hens! It's a fact. We don't become crazy hens because we break the protein down in our intestines and instead of using the oxygen that was in the protein, we use oxygen coming out of the air. Also, as we breathe oxygen in we breathe nitrogen in too; nitrogen is always in the air. Again, we don't use the nitrogen that comes to us in the hens' eggs; we use the nitrogen we breathe in from the air. And the hydrogen we've eaten in eggs, we don't use that either, not at all. We use the hydrogen we take in through our nose and our ears, through all our senses; that's the hydrogen we use to make our protein. Sulphur too — we receive that continually from the air. Hydrogen and sulphur we get from the air. From the protein we eat, we keep and use only the carbon. The other substances, we take from the air. So you see how it is with protein. There is a similar situation with fat. We make our own protein, using only the carbon from the external protein. And we also make our own fat. For the fats too, we use very little nitrogen from our food. So you see, we produce our own protein and fat. Only what we consume in potatoes, legumes, and grains goes over into our body. In fact, even these things do not go fully into our body, but only to the lower part of our head. The minerals we consume go up into the entire head; from them we have what we need to build up our bones. Therefore you see, gentlemen, we must take care to bring healthy plant protein into our body. Healthy plant protein! That is what our body needs in large quantity. When we take in protein from eggs, our body can be rather lazy; it can easily break the protein down, because that protein is easily broken down. But plant protein, which we get from fruit — it is chiefly in that part of the plant, as I told you on Thursday — that is especially valuable to us. If a person wants to keep himself healthy, it is really necessary to include fruit in his diet. Cooked or raw, but fruit he must have. If he neglects to eat fruit, he will gradually condemn his body to a very sluggish digestion. You can see that it is also a question of giving proper nourishment to the plants themselves. And that means, we must realize that plants are living things; they are not minerals, they are something alive. A plant comes to us out of the seed we put in the ground. The plant cannot flourish unless the soil itself is to some degree alive. And how do we make the soil alive? By manuring it properly. Yes, proper manuring is what will give us really good plant protein. We must remember that for long, long ages men have known that the right manure is what comes out of the horses' stalls, out of the cow barn and so on; the right manure is what comes off the farm itself. In recent times when everything has become materialistic, people have been saying: Look here! we can do it much more easily by finding out what substances are in the manure and then taking them out of the mineral kingdom: mineral fertilizer! And you can see, gentlemen, when one uses mineral fertilizer, it is as if one just put minerals into the ground; then only the root becomes strong. Then we get from the plants the substance that helps to build up our bones. But we don't get a proper protein from the plants. And the plants, our field grains have suffered from the lack of protein for a long time. And the lack will become greater and greater unless people return to proper manuring. There have already been agricultural conferences in which the farmers have said: Yes, the fruit gets worse and worse! And it is true. But naturally the farmers haven't known the reason. Every older person knows that when he was a young fellow, everything that came out of the fields was really better. It's no use thinking that one can make fertilizer simply by combining substances that are present in cow manure. One must see clearly that cow manure does not come out of a chemist's laboratory but out of a laboratory that is far more scientific — it comes from the far, far more scientific laboratory inside the cow. And for this reason cow manure is the stuff that not only makes the roots of plants strong, but that works up powerfully into the fruits and produces good, proper protein in the plants which makes man vigorous. If there is to be nothing but the mineral fertilizer that has now become so popular, or just nitrogen from the air — well, gentlemen, your children, more particularly, your grandchildren will have very pale faces. You will no longer see a difference between their faces and their white hands. Human beings have a lively, healthy color when the farmlands are properly manured. So you see, when one speaks of nutrition one has to consider how the foodstuffs are being obtained. It is tremendously important. You can see from various circumstances that the human body itself craves what it needs. Here's just one example: people who are in jail for years at a stretch, usually get food that contains very little fat, so they develop an enormous craving for fat; and when sometimes a drop of wax falls on the floor from the candle that the guard carries into a cell, the prisoner jumps down at once to lick up the fat. The human body feels the lack so strongly if it is missing some necessary substance. We don't notice this if we eat properly and regularly from day to day; then it never happens that our body is missing some essential element. But if something is lacking in the diet steadily for weeks, then the body becomes exceedingly hungry. That is also something that must be carefully noticed. I have already pointed out that many other things are connected with fertilizing. For instance, our European forefathers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, or still earlier, were different from ourselves in many ways. One doesn't usually pay any attention to that fact. Among other things, they had no potatoes! Potatoes were not introduced until later. The potato diet has exercised a strong influence. When grains are eaten, the heart and lungs become particularly strong. Grains strengthen heart and lungs. A man then develops a healthy chest and he is in fine health. He is not so keen on thinking as on breathing, perhaps; but he can endure very much when he has good breathing. And let me say right here: don't think that someone has strong lungs if he's always opening the window and crying, “Let's get some fresh air in here!” No! a person has strong lungs if he is so conditioned that he can endure any kind of air. The toughened-up person is not the one who can't bear anything but the one who can! In these days there is much talk about being hardy. Think how the children are “hardened”! Nowadays (in wealthy homes, of course, but then other people quickly follow suit) the children are dressed — well, when we were children, we wore long breeches and were well covered — at the most, we went barefoot-now, the clothes only go down to the knee or are still shorter. If parents knew that this is the best preparation for later attacks of appendicitis, they would be more thoughtful. But fashion is a tyrant! — no thought is given to the matter, and the children are dressed so that their little dresses only reach to the knee, or less. Someday they will only reach to the stomach — that will be the fashion! Fashion has a strong influence. But what is really at stake? People pay no attention to it. It is this: A human being is constituted throughout his organism so that he is truly capable of doing inner work on all the food he consumes. And in this connection it is especially important to know that a man becomes strong when he works properly on the foods he eats. Children are not made stronger by the treatment I have just mentioned. They are so “hardened” that later in their life — just watch them! — when they have to cross an empty square with the hot sun beating down on them, they drip with perspiration and they can't make it. Someone has not become toughened up when he is not able to stand anything; the person who can endure all possible hardships is the one who has been toughened up. So, in earlier days people were not toughened up; yet they had healthy lungs, healthy hearts, and so on. And then came the potato diet! The potato takes little care of lung and heart. It reaches the head, but only, as I said, the lower head, not the upper head. It does go into the lower head, where one thinks and exercises critical faculties. Therefore, you can see, in earlier times there were fewer journalists. There was no printing industry yet. Think of the amount of thought expended daily in this world in our time, just to bring the newspapers out! All that thinking, it is much too much, it is not at all necessary-and we have to thank the potato diet for that! Because a person who eats potatoes is constantly stimulated to think. He can't do anything but think. That's why his lungs and his heart become weak. Tuberculosis, lung tuberculosis, did not become widespread until the potato diet was introduced. And the weakest human beings are those living in regions where almost nothing else is grown but potatoes, where the people live on potatoes. It is spiritual science that is able to know these material facts. (I have said this often.) Materialistic science knows nothing about nutrition; it has no idea what is healthy food for humanity. That is precisely the characteristic of materialism, that it thinks and thinks and thinks — and knows nothing. The truth is finally this: that if one really wants to participate in life, above all one has to know something! Those are the things I wanted to say about nutrition. And now perhaps you may still like to ask some individual questions? Question : Dr. Steiner, in your last talk you mentioned arteriosclerosis. It is generally thought that this illness comes from eating a great deal of meat and eggs and the like. I know someone in whom the illness began when he was fifty; he had become quite stiff by the time he was seventy. But now he is eighty-five or eighty-six, and he is much more active than he was in his fifties and sixties. Has the arteriosclerosis receded? Is that possible? Or is there some other reason? Perhaps I should mention that this person has never smoked and has drunk very little alcohol; he has lived a really decent life. But in his earlier years he did eat rather a lot of meat. At seventy he could do very little work, but now at eighty-five he is continually active. Dr. Steiner : So — I understand you to say that this person became afflicted with arteriosclerosis when he was fifty, that he became stiff and could do very little work. You did not say whether his memory deteriorated; perhaps you did not notice. His condition continued into his seventies; then he became active again, and he is still living. Does he still have any symptom of his earlier arteriosclerosis or is he completely mobile and active? Questioner : Today he is completely active and more mobile than when he was sixty-five or seventy. He is my father. Dr. Steiner : Well, first of all we should establish the exact nature of his earlier arteriosclerosis. Usually arteriosclerosis takes hold of a person in such a way that his arteries in general become sclerotic. Now if a man's arteries in general are sclerotic, he naturally becomes unable to control his body with his soul and spirit, and the body becomes rigid. Now it can also happen that someone has arteriosclerosis but not in his whole body; the disease, for instance, could have spared his brain. Then the following is the case. You see, I am somewhat acquainted with your own condition of health. I don't know your father, but perhaps we can discover something about your father's health from your own. For instance, you suffer somewhat, or have suffered (I hope it will be completely cured), from hay fever. That means that you carry in you something that the body can develop only if there is no tendency to arteriosclerosis in the head, but only outside the head. No one who is predisposed to arteriosclerosis in his entire body can possibly suffer an attack of hay fever. For hay fever is the exact opposite of arteriosclerosis. Now you suffer from hay fever. That shows that your hay fever — of course it is not pleasant to have hay fever, it's much better to have it cured: but we are talking of the tendency to have it — your hay fever is a kind of safety valve against arteriosclerosis. But everyone gets arteriosclerosis to a small degree. One can't grow old without having it. If one gets it in the entire body, that's different: then one can't help oneself, one becomes rigid through one's whole body. But if one gets arteriosclerosis in the head and not in the rest of the body, then — well, if one is growing old properly, the etheric body is growing stronger and stronger (I've spoken of this before), and it no longer has such great need of the brain, and so the brain can now become old and stiff. The etheric body can control this slight sclerotic condition — which in earlier years made one old and stiff altogether; now the etheric body can control it very cleverly so that it is no longer so severe. Your father, for example, does not need to have had hay fever himself, he can just have had the tendency to it. And you see, just this tendency to it has been of benefit to him. One can even say — it may seem a little far-fetched, but a person who has a tendency to hay fever can even say, Thank God I have this tendency! The hay fever isn't bothering me now, and it gives me permanently the predisposition to a softening of the vessels. Even if the hay fever doesn't come out, it is protecting him from arteriosclerosis. And if he has a son, the son can have the hay fever externally. A son can suffer externally from some disease that in the father was pushed inward. Indeed, that is one of the secrets of heredity: that many things become diseases in the descendants which in the forefathers were aspects of health. Diseases are classified as arteriosclerosis, tuberculosis, cirrhosis, dyspepsia, and so forth. This can be written up very attractively in a book; one can describe just how these illnesses progress. But one hasn't obtained much from it, for the simple reason that arteriosclerosis, for instance, is different in every single person. No two persons have arteriosclerosis alike; everyone becomes afflicted in a different way. That is really so, gentlemen. And it shouldn't surprise anyone. There were two professors 11 The philosopher Karl Ludwig Michelet, 1801–1893, and the theologian and philosopher Eduard Zeller, 1814–1908. See Rudolf Steiner, Study of Man: General Education Course , Stuttgart, Aug. – Sept. 1919. Anthroposophic Press, New York. See also The Younger Generation: Educational and Spiritual impulses for Life in the Twentieth Century , Stuttgart, October 1922. Anthroposophic Press, New York. at Berlin University. One was seventy years old, the other ninety-two. The younger one was quite well-known; he had written many books. But he was a man who lived with his philosophy entirely within materialism; he only had thoughts that were stuck deep in materialism. Now such thoughts also contribute to arteriosclerosis. And he got arteriosclerosis. When he reached seventy, he was obliged to retire. The colleague who was over ninety was not a materialist; he had stayed a child through most of his life, and was still teaching with tremendous liveliness. He said, “Yes, that colleague of mine, that young boy! I don't understand him. I don't want to retire yet, I still feel so young.” The other one, the “boy,” was disrobed, could no longer teach. Of course the ninety-two-year-old had also become sclerotic with his years, his arteries were completely sclerotic, but because of his mobility of soul he could still do something with those arteries. The other man had no such possibility. And now something more in answer to Herr Burle's question about carrots. Herr Burle said, “The human body craves instinctively what it needs. Children often take a carrot up in their hands. Children, grownups too, are sometimes forced to eat food that is not good for them. I think this is a mistake when someone has a loathing for some food. I have a boy who won't eat potatoes.” Gentlemen, you need only think of this one thing: if animals did not have an instinct for what was good for them, and what was bad for them, they would all long since have perished. For animals in a pasture come upon poisonous plants too — all of them — and if they did not know instinctively that they could not eat poisonous plants, they would certainly eat them. But they always pass them by. But there is something more. Animals choose with care what is good for them. Have you sometimes fattened geese, crammed them with food? Do you think the geese would ever do that themselves? It is only humans who force the geese to eat so much. With pigs it is different; but how thin do you think our pigs might be if we did not encourage them to eat so much? In any case, with pigs it is a little different. They have acquired their characteristics through inheritance; their ancestors had to become accustomed to all the foods that produce fat. These things were taken up in their food in earlier times. But the primeval pigs had to be forced to eat it! No animal ever eats of its own accord what is not right for it. But now, gentlemen, what has materialism brought about? It no longer believes in such an instinct. I had a friend in my youth with whom I ate meals very often. We were fairly sensible about our food and would order what we were in the habit of thinking was good for us. Later, as it happens in life, we lost track of each other, and after some years I came to the city where he was living, and was invited to have dinner with him. And what did I see? Scales beside his plate! I said, “What are you doing with those scales?” I knew, of course, but I wanted to hear what he would say. He said, “I weigh the meat they bring me, to eat the right amount — the salad too.” There he was, weighing everything he should put on his plate, because science told him to. And what had happened to him? He had weaned himself completely from a healthy instinct for what he should eat and finally no longer knew! And you remember? — it used to be in the book: “a person needs from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty grams of protein”; that, he had conscientiously weighed out. Today the proper amount is estimated to be fifty grams, so his amount was incorrect. Of course, gentlemen, when a person has diabetes, that is obviously a different situation. The sugar illness, diabetes, shows that a person has lost his instinct for nutrition. There you have the gist of the matter. If a child has a tendency to worms, even the slightest tendency, he will do everything possible to prevent them. You'll be astonished sometimes to see such a child hunting for a garden where there are carrots growing, and then you'll find him there eating carrots. And if the garden is far off, that doesn't matter, the child trudges off to it anyway and finds the carrots-because a child who has a tendency to worms longs for carrots. And so, gentlemen, the most useful thing you can possibly do is this: observe a child when he is weaned, when he no longer has milk, observe what he begins to like to eat and not like to eat. The moment a child begins to take external nourishment, one can learn from him what one should give him. The moment one begins to urge him to eat what one thinks he should eat, at that moment his instinct is spoilt. One should give him the things for which he shows an instinctive liking. Naturally, if a fondness for something threatens to go too far, one has to dam it up — but then one must carefully observe what it is that one is damming up. For instance, perhaps in your own opinion you are giving a child every nice thing, and yet the moment that child comes to the table he cannot help jumping up on his chair and leaning over the table to sneak a lump of sugar! That's something that must be regarded in the right way. For a child who jumps up on his chair to sneak a lump of sugar obviously has something the matter with his liver. Just the simple fact that he must sneak a bit of sugar, is a sign that his liver is not in order. Only those children sneak sugar who have something wrong with their livers — it is then actually cured by the sugar. The others are not interested in sugar; they ignore it. Naturally, such a performance can't be allowed to become a habit; but one must have understanding for it. And one can understand it in two directions. You see, if a child is watching all the time and thinking, when will Father or Mother not be looking, so that I can take that sugar: then later he will sneak other things. If you satisfy the child, if you give him what he needs, then he doesn't become a thief. It is of great importance from a moral point of view whether one observes such things or not. It is very important, gentlemen. And so the question that was asked just now must be answered in this way: One should observe carefully what a child likes and what he loathes, and not force him to eat what he does not like. If it happens, for instance, as it does with very many children, that he doesn't want to eat meat, then the fact is that the child gets intestinal toxins from meat and wants to avoid them. His instinct is right. Any child who can sit at a table where everyone else is eating meat and can refuse it has certainly the tendency to develop intestinal toxins from meat. These things must be considered. You can see that science must become more refined. Science must become much more refined! Today it is far too crude. With those scales, with everything that is carried on in the laboratories, one can't really pursue pure science. With nutrition, which is the thing particularly interesting us at this moment, it is really so, that one must acquire a proper understanding for the way it relates to the spirit. When people inquire in that direction, I often offer two examples. Think, gentlemen, of a journalist: how he has to think so much — and so much of it isn't even necessary. The man must think a great deal, he must think so many logical thoughts; it is almost impossible for any human being to have so many logical thoughts. And so you find that the journalist — or any other person who writes for a profession — loves coffee, quite instinctively. He sits in the coffee shop and drinks one cup after another, and gnaws at his pen so that something will come out that he can write down. Gnawing at his pen doesn't help him, but the coffee does, so that one thought comes out of another, one thought joins on to another. And then look at the diplomats. If one thought joins on to another, if one thought comes out of another, that's bad for them! When diplomats are logical, they're boring. They must be entertaining. In society people don't like to be wearied by logical reasoning — “in the first place – secondly — thirdly” — and if the first and second were not there, the third and fourth would, of course, not have to be thought of! A Journalist can't deal with anything but finance in a finance article. But if you're a diplomat you can be talking about night clubs at the same time that you're talking about the economy of country X, then you can comment on the cream-puffs of Lady So-and-So, then you can jump to the rich soil of the colonies, after that, where the best horses are being bred, and so on. With a diplomat one thought must leap over into another. So anyone who is obliged to be a charming conversationalist follows his instinct and drinks lots of tea. Tea scatters thoughts; it lets one jump into them. Coffee brings one thought next to another. If you must leap from one thought to another, then you must drink tea. And one even calls them “diplomat teas”! — while there sits the journalist in the coffee shop, drinking one cup of coffee after another. You can see what an influence a particular food or drink can have on our whole thinking process. It is so, of course, not just with those two beverages, coffee and tea; one might say, those are extreme examples. But precisely from those examples I think you can see that one must consider these things seriously. It is very important, gentlemen. So, we'll meet again next Wednesday at nine o'clock.

The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars

Questions of nutrition. Children's nutrition. Making children “hardy.” Manuring the soil

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA354/English/RSP1987/19240802p02.html

Dornach

2 Aug 1924

GA354-7

Rudolf Steiner : Good morning, gentlemen! A number of questions have been handed in, which lead up in quite an interesting way to what we want to discuss today. Someone has asked: “How did man's cultural development come about?” I will consider this in connection with a second question: “Why did primitive man have such a strong belief in the spirit?” It is certainly interesting to investigate how human beings lived in earlier times. As you know, even from a superficial view there are two opposing opinions about this. One is that man was originally at a high level of perfection, from which he has fallen to his present imperfect state. We don't need to take exception to this, or to be concerned with the way different peoples have interpreted this perfection — some talking of paradise, some of other things. But until a short time ago the belief existed that man was originally perfect and gradually degenerated to his present state of imperfection. The other view is the one you've probably come to know as supposedly the only true one, namely, that man was originally imperfect, like some kind of higher animal, and that he gradually evolved to greater and greater perfection. You know how people point to the primitive conditions prevailing among the savage peoples — the so-called savage peoples — in trying to form an idea of what man could have been like when he still resembled an animal. People say: We Europeans and the Americans are highly civilized, while in Africa, Australia, and so on, there still live uncivilized races at their original stage, or at least at a stage very near the original. From these one can study what humanity was like originally. But, gentlemen, this is making far too simple a picture of human evolution. First of all, it is not true that all civilized peoples imagine man to have been a physically perfect being originally. The people of India are certainly not much in agreement with opinions of our modern materialists, and yet, even so, their conception is that the physical man who went about on the earth in primitive times looked like an animal. Indeed, when the Indians, the wise men of India, speak of man in his original state on earth, they speak of the ape-like Hanuman. So you see, it is not true that even people with a spiritual world view picture primeval man similarly to the way we imagine him in paradise. And in fact, it is not so. We must rather have a clear knowledge that man is a being who bears within him body, soul, and spirit, with each of these three parts undergoing its own particular evolution. Naturally, if people have no thought of spirit, they can't speak of the evolution of spirit. But once we acknowledge that a human being consists of body, soul, and spirit, we can go on to ask how the body evolves, how the soul evolves, and how the spirit evolves. When we speak of the human body we will have to say: Man's body has gradually been perfected from lower stages. We must also say that the evidence we have for this provides us with living proof. As I have already pointed out, we find original man in the strata of the earth, exhibiting a very animal-like body — not indeed like any present animal but nevertheless animal-like, and this must have developed gradually to its present state of perfection. There is no question, therefore, of spiritual science as pursued here at the Goetheanum coming to loggerheads with natural science, for it simply accepts the truths of natural science. On the other hand, gentlemen, we must be able to recognize that in the period of time of only three or four thousand years ago, views prevailed from which we can learn a great deal and which we also can't help but admire. When we are guided by genuine knowledge in seriously studying and understanding the writings that appeared in India, Asia, Egypt, and even Greece, we find that the people of those times were far ahead of us. What they knew, however, was acquired in quite a different way from the way we acquire knowledge today. Today there are many things we know very little about. For instance, from what I have told you in connection with nutrition you will have seen how necessary it is for spiritual science to come to people's aid in the simplest nutritional matters. Natural science is unable to do so. But we have only to read what physicians of old had to say, and rightly understand it, to become aware that actually people up to the time of, for instance, Hippocrates 12 Hippocrates of Cos, 460–377 BC. Greek physician, founder of ancient medicine. in Greece knew far more than is known by our modern materialistic physicians. We come to respect, deeply respect, the knowledge once possessed. The only thing is, gentlemen, that knowledge was not then imparted in the same form as it is today. Today we express our knowledge in concepts. This was not so with ancient peoples; they clothed their knowledge in poetical imaginations, so that what remained of it is now just taken figuratively as poetry. It was not poetry to those men of old; that was their way of expressing what they knew. Thus we find when we are able to test and thoroughly study the documents still existing, that there can no longer be any question of original humanity being undeveloped spiritually. They may once have gone about in animal-like bodies, but in spirit they were infinitely wiser than we are! But there is something else to remember. You see, when man went about in primeval times, he acquired great wisdom spiritually. His face was more or less what we would certainly call animal-like, whereas today in man's face his spirit finds expression; now his spirit is, as it were, embodied in the physical substance of his face. This, gentlemen, is a necessity if man is to be free, if he is to be a free being. These clever men of ancient times were very wise; but they possessed wisdom in the way the animal today possesses instinct. They lived in a dazed condition, as if in a cloud. They wrote without guiding their own hand. They spoke with the feeling that it was not they who were speaking but the spirit speaking through them. In those primeval times, therefore, there was no question of man being free. This is something in the history of culture that constitutes a real step forward for the human race: that man acquired consciousness, that he is a free being. He no longer feels the spirit driving him as instinct drives the animal. He feels the spirit actually within him, and this distinguishes him from the man of former times. When from this point of view we consider the savages of today, it must strike us that the men of primeval times — called in the question here primitive men — were not like the modern savages, but that the latter have, of course, descended from the former, from the primeval men. You will get a better idea of this evolution if I tell you the following. In certain regions there are people who have the idea that if they bury some small thing belonging to a sick person — for instance, bury a shirttail of his in the cemetery — that this can have the magical effect of healing him. I have even known such people personally. I knew one person who, at the time the Emperor Frederick 13 Emperor Frederick III, 1831–1888. Suffered from a disease of the larynx. It is not known who wrote the request. was ill (when he was still Crown Prince — you know all about that), wrote to the Empress (as she was later), asking for the shirttails belonging to her husband. He would bury them in the cemetery and the Emperor would then be cured. You can imagine how this request was received. But the man had simply done what he thought would lead to the Emperor's recovery. He himself told me about it, adding that it would have been much less foolish to let him have that shirttail than to send for the English Doctor Mackenzie, and so on; that had been absurd — they should have given him the shirttail. Now when this kind of thing comes to the notice of a materialist he says: That's a superstition which has sprung up somewhere. At some time or other someone got it into his head that burying the shirttails of a sick man in the cemetery and saying a little prayer over it would cure the man. Gentlemen, nothing has ever arisen in that way. No superstition arises by being thought out. It comes about in an entirely different way. There was once a time when people had great reverence for their dead and said to themselves: So long as a man is going about on earth he is a sinful being; beside doing good things he does many bad things. But, they thought, the dead man lives on as soul and spirit, and death makes up for all deficiencies. Thus when they thought of the dead, they thought of what was good, and by thinking of the dead they tried to make themselves better. Now it is characteristic of human beings to forget easily. Just think how quickly those who have left us — the dead — are forgotten today! In earlier times there were persons who would give their fellowman various signs to make them think of the dead and thus to improve them. Someone in a village would think that if a man was ill, the other villagers should look after him. It was certainly not the custom to collect sick pay; that kind of thing is a modern invention. In those days the villagers all helped one another out of kindness; everyone had to think of those who were ill. The leading man in the village might say: People are egoists, so they have no thought of the sick unless they are encouraged to get out of themselves and have thoughts, for instance, of the dead. So he would tell them they should take — well, perhaps the shirttail of the sick man by which to remember him, and they should bury this in the earth, then they would surely remember him. By thinking of the dead they would remember to take care of someone living. This outer deed was contrived simply to help people's memory. Later, people forgot the reason for this and it was put down to magic, superstition. This happens with very much that lives on as superstition; it has arisen from something perfectly reasonable. What is perfect never arises from what is imperfect. The assertion that something perfect can come from what is not perfect appears to anyone with insight as if it were said: You're to make a table, but you must make it as clumsy and unfinished as you can to begin with, so that it may in time become a perfect table. But things don't happen that way. We never get a well-made table from one that is ill-made. The table begins by being a good one and becomes battered in the course of time. And that's the way it happens outside in nature too, anywhere in the world. You first have things in a perfect state, then out of them comes the imperfect. It is the same with the human being: his spirit in the beginning, though lacking freedom, was in a certain state of perfection. But his body — it is true — was imperfect. And yet precisely in this lay the body's perfection: it was soft and therefore capable of being formed by the spirit so that cultural progress could be made. So you see, gentlemen, we are not justified in thinking that human beings were originally like the savages of today. The savages have developed into what they now are — with their superstitions, their magical practices and their unclean appearance-from states originally more perfect. The only superiority we have over them is that, while starting from the same conditions, we did not degenerate as they did. I might therefore say: The evolution of man has taken two paths. It is not true that the savages of today represent the original condition of mankind. Mankind, though to begin with it looked more animal-like, was highly civilized. Now perhaps you will ask: But were those original animal-like men the descendants of apes or of other animals? That is a natural question. You look at the apes as they are today and say: We are descended from those apes. Ah! but when human beings had their animal form, there were no such animals as our present apes! Men have not descended, therefore, from the apes. On the contrary! Just as the present savages have fallen from the level of the human beings of primeval times, so the apes are beings who have fallen still lower. On going back further in the evolution of the earth, we find human beings formed in the way I described here recently, out of a soft element-not out of our present animals. Human beings can never evolve out of the apes of today. On the other hand it could easily be possible that if conditions prevailing on earth today continue, conditions in which everything is based on violence and power, and wisdom counts for nothing — well, it could indeed happen that the men who want to found everything on power would gradually take on animal-like bodies again, and that two races would then appear. One race would be those who stand for peace, for the spirit, and for wisdom, while the other would be those who revert to an animal form. It might indeed be said that those who care nothing today for the progress of mankind, for spiritual realities, may be running the risk of degenerating into an ape species. You see, all manner of strange things are experienced today. Of course, what newspapers report is largely untrue, but sometimes it shows the trend of people's thinking in a remarkable way. During our recent trip to Holland we bought an illustrated paper, and on the last page there was a curious picture: a child, a small child, really a baby — and as its nurse, taking care of it, bringing it up, an ape, an orangutan. There it was, holding the baby quite properly, and it was to be engaged, the paper said, — somewhere in America, of course — as a nursemaid. Now it is possible that this may not yet be actual fact, but it shows what some people are fancying: they would like to use apes today as nursemaids. And if apes become nursemaids, gentlemen, what an outlook for mankind! Once it is discovered that apes can be employed to look after children — it is, of course, possible to train them to do many things; the child will have to suffer for it, but the ape could be so trained: in certain circumstances it could be trained to look after the physical needs of children — well, then people will carry the idea further and the social question will be on a new level. You will see far-reaching proposals for breeding apes and putting them to work in factories. Apes will be found to be cheaper than men, hence this will be looked upon as the solution of the social problem. If people really succeed in having apes look after their children — well, we'll be deluged by pamphlets on how to solve the social question by breeding apes! It is indeed conceivable that this might easily happen. Only think: other animals beside apes can be trained to do many things. Dogs, for instance, are very teachable. But the question is whether this will be for the advance or the decline of civilization. Civilization will most definitely decline. It will deteriorate. The children brought up by ape-nurses will quite certainly become ape-like. Then indeed we shall have perfection changing into imperfection. We must realize clearly that it is indeed possible for certain human beings to have an ape-like nature in the future, but that the human race in the past was never such that mankind evolved from the ape. For when man still had an animal form — quite different indeed from that of the ape — the present apes were not yet in existence. The apes themselves are degenerate beings; they have fallen from a higher stage. When we consider those primitive peoples who may be said to have been rich in spirit but animal-like in body, we find they were still undeveloped in reason, in intelligence — the faculty of which we are so proud. Those men of ancient times were not capable of thinking. Hence, when anyone today who prides himself particularly on his thinking comes across ancient documents, he looks for them to be based on thought — and looks in vain. He says, therefore: This is all very beautiful, but it's simply poetry. But, gentlemen, we can't judge everything by our own standards alone, for then we go astray. That ancient humanity had, above all, great powers of imagination, an imagination that worked like an instinct. When we today use our imagination we often pull ourselves up and think: Imagination has no place in what is real. This is quite right for us today, but the men of primeval times, primitive men, would never have been able to carry on without imagination. Now it will seem strange to you how this lively imagination possessed by primitive men could have been applied to anything real. But here too we have wrong conceptions. In your history books at school you will have read about the tremendous importance for human evolution that is accorded to the invention of paper. The paper we write on — made of rags — has been in existence for only a few centuries. Before that, people had to write on parchment, which has a different origin. Only at the end of the Middle Ages did someone discover the possibility of making paper from the fibers of plants, fibers worn threadbare after having first been used for clothes. Human beings were late in acquiring the intellect that was needed for making this paper. But the same thing (except that it is not as white as we like it for our black ink) was discovered long ago. The same stuff as is used for our present paper was discovered not just two or three thousand years ago but many, many thousands of years before our day. By whom, then? Not by human beings at all, but by wasps! Just look at any wasp's nest you find hanging in a tree. Look at the material it consists of — paper! Not white paper, not the kind you write on, for the wasps are not yet in the habit of writing, otherwise they would have made white paper, but such paper as you might use for a package. We do have a drab-colored paper for packages that is just what the wasps use for making their nests. The wasps found out how to make paper thousands and thousands of years ago, long before human beings arrived at it through their intellect. The difference is that instinct works in animals while in the man of primeval times it was imagination; they would have been incapable of making anything if imagination had not enabled them to do so, for they lacked intelligence. We must therefore conclude that in outward appearance these primeval men were more like animals than are the men of today, but to a certain extent they were possessed by the spirit, the spirit worked in them. It was not they who possessed the spirit through their own powers, they were possessed by it and their souls had great power of imagination. With imagination they made their tools; imagination helped them in all they did, and enabled them to make everything they needed. We, gentlemen, are terribly proud of all our inventions, but we should consider whether we really have cause to be so; for much of what constitutes the greatness of our culture has actually developed from quite simple ideas. Listen to this, for instance: When you read about the Trojan War, do you realize when it took place? — about 1200 years before the founding of Christianity. Now when we hear about wars like that — which didn't take place in Greece, but far away, over there in Asia — well, hearing the outcome the next day in Greece by telegram, as we would now do: that, gentlemen, didn't happen in those days! Today if we receive a telegram, the Post Office dispatches it to us. Naturally this didn't happen at that time in Greece, for the Greeks had no telegraph. What then could they do? Well, now look, the war was over here in one place; then there was the sea and an island, a mountain and again sea; over there another island, a mountain and then sea; and so on, till you came to Greece — here Asia, sea, and here in the midst, Greece. It was agreed that when the war was ended three fires would be kindled on the mountains. Whoever was posted on the nearest mountain was to give the first signal by running up and lighting three fires. The watch on the next mountain, upon seeing the three fires, lit three fires in his turn; the next watchman again three fires; and in this way the message arrived in Greece in quite a short time. This was their method of sending a telegram. It was done like that. It's a simple way of telegraphing. It worked fast — and before the days of the telegram people had to make do with this. And how is it today? When you telephone — not telegraph but telephone — I will show you in the simplest possible way what happens. We have a kind of magnet which, it is true, is produced by electricity; and we have something called an armature. When the circuit is closed, this is pulled close; when the circuit is open, the armature is released, and thus it oscillates back and forth. It is connected by a wire with a plate, which vibrates with it and transmits what is generated by the armature — in just the same way as in those olden times the three fires conveyed messages to men. This is rather more complicated, and, of course, electricity has been used in applying it, but it is still the same idea. When we hear such things we must surely respect what the human beings of those ancient times devised and organized out of their imaginative faculty. And when we read the old documents with this feeling we must surely say: Those men accomplished great things on a purely spiritual level and all out of imagination. To come to a thorough realization of this you need only to consider what people believe today. They believe they know something about the old Germanic gods — Wotan, Loki, for instance. You find pictures of them in human form in books: Wotan with a flowing beard; Loki looking like a devil, with red hair, and so on. It is thought that the men of old, the ancient Germans, had the same ideas about Wotan and Loki. But that is not true. The men of old had rather the following conception: When the wind blows, there is something spiritual in it — which is indeed true — and that is Wotan blowing in the wind. They never imagined that when they went into the woods, they would meet Wotan there in the guise of an ordinary man. To describe a meeting with Wotan they would have spoken of the wind blowing through the woods. This can still be felt in the very word Wotan by anyone who is sensitive to these things. And Loki — they had no image of Loki sitting quietly in a corner staring stupidly; Loki lived in the fire! Indeed, in various ways the people were always talking about Wotan and Loki. Someone would say, for instance: When you go over the mountain, you may meet Wotan. He will make you either strong or weak, whichever you deserve. That is how people felt, how they understood these things. Today one says that's just superstition. But in those times they didn't understand it to be so. They knew: When you go up there to that corner so difficult to reach, you don't meet a man in a body like any ordinary man. But the very shape of the mountain gives rise to a special whirlwind in that place, and a special kind of air is wafted up to that corner from an abyss. If you withstand this and keep to your path, you may become well or you may become ill. In what way you become well or ill, the people were ready to tell; they were in harmony with nature and would speak not in an intellectual way but out of their imagination. Your modern doctor would try to express himself intellectually: If you have a tendency to tuberculosis, go up to a certain height on the mountain and sit there every day. Continue to do this for some time, for it will be most beneficial. That is the intellectual way of talking. But if you speak imaginatively you say: Wotan is always to be found in that high corner; if you visit him at a certain time every day for a couple of weeks, he will help you. This is the way people coped with life out of their imagination. They worked in this way, too. Surely at some time or other you have all been far out in the country where threshing is not done by machine but is still being done by hand. You can hear the people threshing in perfect rhythm. They know that when they have to thresh for days at a time, if they go at their work without any order, just each one on his own, they will very soon be overcome by exhaustion. Threshing can't be done that way. If, however, they work rhythmically, all keeping time together, exhaustion is avoided — because their rhythm is then in harmony with the rhythm of their breathing and circulation. It even makes a difference whether they strike their flail on the out-breathing or the in-breathing or whether they do it as they are changing over from one to the other. Now why is this? You can see that it has nothing to do with intellect, for today this old way of threshing is almost unheard of. Everything of that kind is being wiped out. But in the past, all work was done rhythmically and out of imagination. The beginnings of human culture developed out of rhythm. Now I don't suppose you really think that if you take a chunk of wood and some bits of string and fool about with them in some amateurish fashion, you'll suddenly have a violin. A violin comes about when mind, when spirit, is exerted, when the wood is carefully shaped in a particular way, when the string is put through a special process, and so forth. We have to say then: These primeval people, who were not yet thinking for themselves, could attribute the way machines were originally made only to the spirit that possessed them, that worked in them. Therefore, these people, working not out of the intellect, but out of their imagination, naturally tended to speak of the spirit everywhere. When today someone constructs a machine by the work of his intellect, he does not say that the spirit helped him — and rightly so. But when a man of those early times who knew nothing about thinking, who had no capacity for, thinking, when that man constructed something, he felt immediately: the spirit is helping me. It happened therefore that when the Europeans, those “superior” humans, first arrived in America and also later, in the nineteenth century, when they came to the regions where Indians such as belonged to ancient times were still living, these Indians spoke of (it was possible to find out what they were saying) the “Great Spirit” ruling everywhere. These primitive men have always continued to speak in this way of the Being ruling in everything. It was this “Great Spirit” that was venerated particularly by the human beings living in Atlantean times when there was still land between Europe and America; the Indians retained this veneration, and knew nothing as yet of intellect. They then came gradually to know the “superior” men before being exterminated by them. They came to know the Europeans' printed paper on which there were little signs which they took to be small devils. They abhorred the paper and the little signs, for these were intellectual in origin, and a man whose activities arise out of imagination abominates what comes from the intellect. Now the European with his materialistic civilization knows how to construct a locomotive. The intellectual method by which he constructs his engine could never have been the way the ancient Greeks would have set about it, for the Greeks still lacked intellect. Intellect first came to man in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Greeks would have carried out their construction with the help of their imagination. Since the Greeks ascribed all natural forms to good spirits and all that is not nature, all that is artificially produced, to bad spirits, they would have said: An evil spirit lives in the locomotive. They would certainly have contrived their construction from imagination; nothing else would ever have occurred to them than that they were being aided by the spirit. Therefore, gentlemen, you see that we have actually to ascribe a lofty spirit to the original, primitive human being; for imagination is of a far more spiritual nature in the human soul than the mere intellect that is prized so highly today. Former conditions, however, can never come back. We have to go forward — but not with the idea that what exists today in the animal as pure instinct could ever have developed into spirit. We ought not, therefore, to picture primitive men as having been possessed of mere instinct. They knew that it was the spirit working in them. That is why they had, as we say nowadays, such a strong belief in the spirit. Perhaps this contributes a little to our understanding of how human culture has evolved. Also, we must concede that the people are right who contend that human beings have arisen from animal forms, for so indeed they have — but not from such forms as the present animals, for these forms only came into being later when humanity was already in existence. The early animal-like forms of man which gradually developed in the course of human evolution into his present form, together with the faculties which he already had at that time, came about because man's spiritual entity was originally more perfect than it is today — not in terms of intellect but of imagination. We have to remember always that this original perfection was due to the fact that man was not free; man was, as it were, possessed by the spirit. Only intellect enables man to become free. By means of his intellect man can become free. You see, anyone who works with his intellect can say: now at a certain hour I'm going to think out such and such a thing. This can't be done by a poet, for even today a poet still works out of his imagination. Goethe was a great poet. Sometimes when someone asked him to write a poem or when he himself felt inclined to do so, he sat himself down to write one at a certain time — and, well, the result was pitiful! That people are not aware of this today comes simply from their inability to distinguish good poetry from bad. Among Goethe's poems there are many bad ones. Imaginative work can be done only when the mood for it is there, and when the mood has seized a poet, he must write the poem down at once. And that's how it was in the case of primeval humans. They were never able to do things out of free will. Free will developed gradually-but not wisdom. Wisdom was originally greater than free will and it must now regain its greatness. That means, we have to come back to the spirit by way of the intellect. And that, you see, is the task of anthroposophy. It has no wish to do what would please many people, that is, to bring primitive conditions back to humanity-ancient Indian wisdom, for example. It is nonsense when people harp on that. Anthroposophy, on the other hand, sets value on a return to the spirit, but a return to the spirit precisely in full possession of the intellect, with the intellect fully alive. It is important, gentlemen, and must be borne strictly in mind, that we have nothing at all against the intellect; rather, the point is that we have to go forward with it. Originally human beings had spirit without intellect; then the spirit gradually fell away and the intellect increased. Now, by means of the intellect, we have to regain the spirit. Culture is obliged to take this course. If it does not do so — well, gentlemen, people are always saying that the World War was unlike anything ever experienced before, and it is indeed a fact that men have never before so viciously torn one another to pieces. But if men refuse to take the course of returning to the spirit and bringing their intellect with them, then still greater wars will come upon us, wars that will become more and more savage. Men will really destroy one another as the two rats did that, shut up together in a cage, gnawed at each other till there was nothing left of them but two tails. That is putting it rather brutally, but in fact mankind is on the way to total extermination. It is very important to know this.

The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars

The evolution of human culture

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA354/English/RSP1987/19240806p01.html

Dornach

6 Aug 1924

GA354-8

Rudolf Steiner : Good morning, gentlemen! Perhaps someone has a question? We will not be able to meet again for a little while. Herr Erbsmehl : I have a rather complicated question. I don't quite know how to put it. One knows that plants have different scents. This is also true of the various human races. You have already spoken to us, Dr. Steiner, about the evolution of humanity. A factor in this evolution must have been that each kind of being acquired what would benefit it. Different smells can be associated with the various races. so there must be some spiritual connection. Just as the plants have their scent from the earth, so the different races of human beings must have acquired their smell. How does this relate to human evolution? Dr. Steiner : I will try to put the question in a way that will lead to what you have in mind. You have been thinking, have you not, of different kingdoms of nature: plants, animals, human beings. Also, we must not forget, minerals have different odors. Now smell is only one sense-perception and there are many other kinds. So perhaps we could say, the question is how the different smells belonging to the different beings of nature are related to the origin of these beings. Well, let us first consider what causes smell. What is smell? You must realize first of all that people have varying reactions to a smell coming from an object or from other products of nature. For instance, in a place where people are drinking wine, someone who is a wine-drinker himself hardly notices the smell, while someone who never touches wine finds it extremely unpleasant either to be in a room where others are drinking wine or in a place where wine is stored. It is the same with other things. For instance, there are people, usually women, who can't stay in a room where there is a dog even for a short time without getting a headache. Different beings, therefore, are sensitive to smells in different ways. This makes it difficult at the very outset to get at the truth. But what has been said applies not only to smell; it applies equally to other sense-perceptions. Imagine for a moment that standing where you are, you put your hand into water of, say 79 degrees or 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The water will not seem particularly cold. But if you have previously had your hand for some time in water of 86 degrees and then you plunge it into water of 80 degrees, the water will seem colder than it did before. This can be carried further. Think of a red surface. If the background is white, the red will seem very vivid to you. But if you paint the background blue, the red surface will lose some of its vividness. Everything, therefore, depends very largely upon how the human being himself is related to the things. This has led to the opinion that man does not perceive objects in themselves but only the effect they have upon him. We have spoken of this before. But we must get to the truth behind such things. There is no question that a violet is easily distinguishable from the asafetida by its smell. The violet has a scent that is always pleasant; the asafetida has a smell that is offensive, that we want to avoid. It is also correct that different races have different smells. Someone with, shall I say, a sensitive nose will certainly be able to distinguish a Japanese from a European by their smell. Now we must be clear as to what it is that causes smell. The fact of the matter is that any object with a smell or scent emits something that comes toward our own body in a gaseous or airy form. When nothing of this kind comes toward us, we cannot smell the object. And these gaseous substances must come into contact with our organ of smell, our nose. We can't smell a liquid as liquid, we can only taste it. We can smell a liquid only when it emits air, that is to say, gaseous substance. We don't smell our foodstuffs because they are fluid but because they emit air which then passes into us through our nose. There are people who can't smell at all. The whole world is devoid of smell as far as they are concerned. Only recently I met a man whose incapacity to smell is a severe handicap to him because his work requires that he should be able to distinguish things by their scent. His defect is a grave disadvantage. The cause is, of course, imperfectly developed olfactory nerves. And now let us ask: how is it that bodies or objects emit gas which may have a particular smell? Objects or bodies can be classified. There are solid bodies — they were called earthy bodies in earlier times; there are fluid bodies-they were called watery bodies in earlier times. People used to call water what we no longer classify as water. In earlier times everything fluid was called water, even quicksilver. Then there are gaseous or aeriform bodies. If we think of these three kinds of bodies — solid, fluid, and gaseous — one fact is particularly striking. Water is certainly fluid, but when it freezes to ice, it becomes a solid body. A metal — lead, for instance — is solid, but when you heat the lead sufficiently it becomes fluid, like water. So these different substances — solid, fluid, gaseous substances — can be led over into the other conditions. Even air can be solidified today, or in any case liquefied, and there is every expectation of being able to carry this further. Any object or body can be either solid, fluid or gaseous. Any object that has a smell contains gas imprisoned, as it were, within it. We don't smell a solid body as such or a fluid body as such: we always smell a gas. But now, a violet is certainly not a gaseous body and yet we can smell it. Of what is a violet composed? It is obviously solid, yet it has scent. We must picture to ourselves that it contains solid constituents and between them something that vaporizes as gas. The violet contains gas that can vaporize. In order that this may be possible, the violet must be attracted to certain forces. When you pick a violet, you really only pick the solid part of it and you look at this solid part. But actually the violet does not only consist of the solid part that you pick. What the violet is, is enshrined in this solid part. One can say that the real violet, that which gives forth the fragrance, is actually a gas. It is there within the petals and the other parts of the flower — just as you stand in your shoes or boots. You are not your boots. And what has fragrance in the violet is not its solid part but its gaseous part. When people look out into the universe they think that space is empty and that the stars are in this empty space. In times gone by, peasants believed that there was emptiness all around them as they moved about. Today everyone knows that there is air around us, not emptiness. So, too, we can know that in the universe there is no emptiness anywhere; either matter is there or spirit is there. It can be proved quite exactly that there is no emptiness anywhere in the universe. This is interesting to think about. I will prove it to you by an example. For the moment let us disregard what Copernicus taught, namely, that the earth revolves around the sun; let us take things as they appear. 14 Nicholas Copernicus, 1473–1543. Astronomer. We have the earth with the sun moving around it, rising in the east and setting in the west. The sun is always at a different point. But there is something remarkable here. In certain regions — but everywhere, really; one only has to observe carefully — at sunrise and at sunset, other times too, there is not only twilight but something else that is always a thing of wonder. Around the sun there is a kind of radiating light. Whenever we look at the sun, but especially toward morning and evening, this radiating light is apparent as well as the twilight. Light radiates around the sun. It has a name: the zodiacal light. People rack their brains about this zodiacal light — especially those who think in a materialistic way. They say to themselves: The sun shines in empty space and when it shines, it illumines other celestial bodies, but where does this zodiacal light around the sun come from? Countless theories have been put forward as to its origin. Whether one assumes that the sun moves around through empty space, or — as Copernicus taught — merely stands still, this does not account in any way for the presence of that light. So where does the light come from? This is a very simple matter to explain. You will certainly on a very clear evening have walked through the town and seen the street lamps. On a clear evening the lights have definite outlines. But on a misty, foggy evening there is always a haze of light around them. Why is this? The haze is caused by the mist. At certain times the sun moves over the sky in a haze because heavenly space is not empty but filled with fine mist. The radiance that is present in this fine mist is the zodiacal light. All kinds of explanations have been given: for example, that comets are always flashing through space out there. And so, of course, they are. But the reason why this zodiacal light that accompanies the sun is sometimes strong, sometimes faint, sometimes not visible at all is that the mist in the universe is sometimes dense and sometimes thin. Thus we can say: The whole of cosmic space is filled with something. But as I have already told you, it is not correct to think that there is substance or matter everywhere. I have told you that materialistic physicists would be immensely astonished if they went up into space expecting to find the sun as they describe it in their science. Their descriptions are nonsense. If by some convenient transport the physicists could reach the sun, they would be amazed to find no gas whatsoever. They would find hollow space, a real vacuum. This vacuum radiates light. And what they would find is spirit. We cannot say there is only matter everywhere: we must say there is also spirit everywhere, real spirit. So you see, everything on the earth is worked upon from outer space, not only by matter but also by spirit. And now, gentlemen, let us consider how the spiritual is connected with the physical in man. There is a creature familiar to us all that has a better sense of smell than you or 1, namely the dog. Dogs have a much more delicate sense of smell than human beings. And you know to what use this is put nowadays. Think of the police dogs that through their sense of smell find persons who have run away after committing some crime. The dog picks up a scent at the spot where the crime was committed and follows it until it leads to the criminal. The dog has very delicate olfactory nerves. It is extremely interesting to study this fine sense-perception and to see how these olfactory nerves are connected with the rest of the dog's organism. Behind its nose, in its brain the dog has a very interesting organ of smell. Its nose is only one part. The larger part of a dog's organ of smell is situated behind the nose, in the brain. Now let us compare the dog's organ of smell with that of the human being. The dog has a brain that is clearly made for smelling, a brain that becomes an organ of smell. In the human being the greater part of this “smell-brain” has been transformed into an “intelligence-brain.” We understand things; the dog doesn't understand things, he smells them. We understand them because at the place where the dog has his organ of smell, we have that organ transformed. Our organ of intelligence is a transformed organ of smell. In us there is only a tiny remnant left of this “smell-brain.” That is why our sense of smell is inferior to the dog's. And so you can imagine that when a dog runs over the fields, he finds everything terribly interesting; so many smells come to him that if he were able to describe it, he would say the world is all smell. If among dogs there were a thinker like Schopenhauer, 15 Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788–1860. Philosopher. he would write interesting books! Schopenhauer wrote a book called “The World as Will and Idea” — but he was a man and his organ of smell had become an organ of thinking. The dog could write a book called “The World as Will and Smell.” In the dog's book there would be a great deal beyond the discernment of a human being, because while a human being forms an idea, a mental image of things, a dog smells them. And it is my private opinion that the dog's book — if the dog were a Schopenhauer — would actually be more interesting than the book that Schopenhauer himself wrote! So you see how it is. We live in a world that can be smelled, and other creatures — the dog, for instance — are much more acutely aware of this than we are. Now since the universe is filled with the gaseous substance we perceive in the zodiacal light, this universe would be found to be emitting all kinds of different smells if organs of smell existed which were even more delicate than that of the dog. Imagine some creature sniffing toward the sun, not seeing the beauty of the sun but becoming aware through its sniffing of how the sun smells. Such a creature would not say as the poets do: The lovers went a-roaming in the enchanting moonlit night — but he would say: The lovers went a-roaming in the enchanting moon-scented night, in a world of sweet fragrance — or perhaps, since it's to do with the moon, the scents would not be so very pleasantly fragrant! Again, such a creature might sniff toward the evening star, and its smell would be different from that of the sun. Then it might sniff toward Mercury, toward Venus, toward Saturn. It would have no picture of these stars like that transmitted through the eyes, but it would get the sun smell, the moon smell, the Saturn smell, the Mars smell, the Venus smell. If there were such creatures, they would be guided by what the Spirit inscribed in the smell of the cosmic gas, by what the spirit of Venus, Mercury, Sun, Moon inscribes into world existence. But now, gentlemen, think of fish. Fish don't smell things. But they take on colors according to how the sun shines upon them. They reflect in their own coloring what comes to them from the sun. So you see, a being with a very delicate sense of smell would actually adjust its being to the way it smells the universe. Such beings do exist. There are beings that can actually smell the universe: namely, the plants. The plants smell the universe and adapt themselves accordingly. What does the violet do? The violet is really all nose, a very, very delicate nose. The violet is beautifully aware of what streams from Mercury and forms its scent-body accordingly, while the asafetida has a delicate perception of what streams from Saturn and forms its gas-body accordingly, having thereby an offensive odor. And so it is that every being in the plant world is perceiving the smells that come from the planetary world. But now what about plants that have no fragrance? Why have they no scent? As a matter of fact, to sensitive noses all plants do have a certain scent — at the least, they have what can be called a refreshing aroma — and this has a very strong effect upon them. This refreshing smell comes from the sun. A large number of plants are only receptive to this sun smell. But various plants, like the violet or the asafetida, are receptive to the planetary influences: these are the sweet-smelling or the bad-smelling plants. And so we can say when we smell a violet: This violet is really all nose — but a delicate nose, inhaling the cosmic scent of Mercury. It holds the scent, as I have indicated, between its solid parts and exhales it; then the scent is dense enough for us to be able to smell it. So when Mercury comes toward us through the violet, we smell Mercury. If with our coarse noses we were to sniff toward Saturn, we would smell nothing. But when the asafetida, which has a keen nose for Saturn, sniffs toward that planet, it smells what comes from it, adapts its gas content accordingly, and has a most foul odor. Suppose you are walking through an avenue of horse chestnuts — you know the scent of horse chestnut, or of linden blossoms? They both have such perfume because their flowers are sensitive noses for everything that streams into the universe from Venus. And so in very truth the fragrances of heaven come to us out of the plants. Now let us turn to something else Herr Erbsmehl mentioned in his question, namely the human races. Originally, different races lived in different regions of the earth. One race developed in one region, another race in another. Why was this? It is quite correct to say that one planet has a particularly strong influence upon one part of the earth, another planet upon another part. In Asia, for instance, the land is strongly affected by what streams to the earth from Venus — Venus, the evening star. What streams from Saturn works with particular strength upon the American soil. And Mars works particularly strongly upon Africa. So we find that each of the planets works particularly strongly upon some specific part of the earth. They radiate their light from the various places where they stand in the heavens. The light of Venus, for instance, works quite differently upon the earth from the light of Mercury. This is connected with the different formations of mountains, of rocks. Thus the different races inhabiting different regions of the earth are dependent upon the fact that one part of the earth is particularly receptive to the influences of Venus, another part to the influences of Saturn, and so on. And the plant-nature in man is determined in accordance with this. The human being has the whole of nature within himself: mineral, plant, animal, and man. The plant-nature in the human being adjusts itself to the scents of the planets just as do the plants themselves. Certain minerals which still retain much of the plant-nature, also have an odor. So whether something does or does not have an odor depends upon whether it is perceiving the scents of the universe. It is very important that you should understand these things, for people talk today about plants having perception, having a soul like human beings. That, of course, is nonsense. I spoke about it once. There are plants — like the one called Venus's flytrap 16 Venus's-flytrap: Dionaea muscipula , found in swamps in the warmer part of North America. See Charles Darwin, Insectivorous Plants , 1875. — that are supposed to have feeling. When an insect comes close enough, the “trap” closes and the insect is caught. It would be just as logical to say that a mousetrap has a soul, for the reason that when a mouse comes close enough, the trap shuts and the mouse is caught! Externalities of this kind should be ignored if one wants to acquire real knowledge. If knowledge is our aim, we must get to the root of things. Thus, if we know that with their fragrance the plants are breathing out what they inhale from the universe, then we can say that plants are the delicate organs of smell that belong to the earth. And the human nose, gentlemen — that's really a coarse plant. It grows out of man like a kind of blossom, but it has become coarse. It is a coarse flower that grows out of the human being. It no longer has such delicate perception as the plants. These are pictures, of course, but they are true. And it's the way things are. So we can say: wherever we go in the world of plants, we find the earth covered with noses — the plants. But it never occurs to us that our own strange noses really derive from the plants. As a matter of fact, many blossoms look like a human nose. There are indeed such plants — the snapdragons, also the mints — they look just like a nose. You find them growing everywhere. In this way we attain true knowledge of the world. And we discover how mankind is indeed related to all the rest of the universe. It might well be said, man is a poor creature: he has a nose for smelling, but he can't smell much because his nose has become too coarse, whereas the blossoms of plants can smell the whole universe. The leaves of plants can be compared to the human tongue: they can taste the world. The roots of plants can be compared to the organ in man that looks at things: his eyes, but in man it's a weak organ. Poor human being! He has everything that the beings of outer nature have, but in him it has all become feeble. But now, gentlemen, we sometimes come across strange things. If we were able to smell as keenly as the plants smell and were able to taste as delicately as their leaves taste — well, we wouldn't know where we were, for scents and tastes would come to us from every direction! We wouldn't have to eat anything in order to experience taste because taste would stream toward us from all sides. But this does not happen to us. Man no longer has such perceptions. Instead, he has his intelligence. Think of an animal that has a “smell-brain” strongly developed behind its nose. In the human being this kind of brain is stunted and his nose has become coarse; it is just a shrunken remnant. But instead, he has his reasoning brain. It is the same with his organ of taste. Most animals have a brain highly developed for tasting; they can at once distinguish one kind of food from another. It is impossible for us humans to conceive the intensity with which animals experience taste. Why, we would jump out of our chairs if our food tasted as strongly to us as their food tastes to them! Our feeble taste for sugar can give us no notion of the joy a piece of sugar gives to a dog. This is because most animals have a very highly developed “taste-brain.” Of this too, man has only a tiny remnant left. Instead, he is able to form ideas; the “taste-brain” has been metamorphosed so that he is able to form ideas. Man has become the noblest being on the earth because only a tiny part of his brain is engaged in sense perception-, the rest of it has been transformed into an instrument of thinking and feeling. Thereby man becomes the highest being. So we can say: In the human brain a mighty transformation of the faculties of tasting and smelling has taken place and only tiny vestiges remain of the “taste-brain” and the “smell-brain.” In the animal, this does not exist, but these faculties are very highly developed. The outer structures themselves are evidence of it. If man had a “smell-brain” as highly developed as the dog's, he would have no forehead. The forehead would slope backward because the “smell-brain” would have developed towards the back of the head. Since the “smell-brain” is transformed, the forehead is lofty. The dog's nose stretches forward and its brain lies further back. Someone who trains himself to observe this can tell which kinds of animals have a particularly keen sense of smell. He needs only to observe whether the brain lies toward the back and the nose is highly developed; then he knows that this particular animal has a fine sense of smell. Now let's look at the plants. Their noses continue right down to the root, down into the earth. Here, everything is nose, only — in contrast to man — this nose becomes aware of taste as well, of the world of taste. And you see, this shows us that man's higher development is due to the fact that these very faculties which the animals and plants possess are imperfect in him; they have been metamorphosed. So we can say that man is a being of greater perfection than the other creatures of nature because what is developed to perfection in them exists in him in an imperfect state! You can easily understand this: just think of a chicken. It slips out of the shell and at once it can take care of its own needs; it can right away scratch about for its food. Think of the human being in comparison! The animal can do everything. Why? Because the organs of its brain have not yet been metamorphosed into organs of thinking. When a human being is born, his brain has to acquire mastery over these blunted remains of sense organs. And so a child has to learn, while the animal doesn't need to learn, for it knows everything from the start. Human beings, having one-sidedly developed only their brain, can think with great subtlety but are terribly clumsy fellows. It is important for the human being that not too much of his brain shall be transformed. If too much has been transformed, he may be a good poet but he will certainly not be a good mechanic. He will have no knack for doing things in the outside world. This state of things is connected with what I was talking about the other day, namely, that many people, owing to an excessive consumption of potatoes, have transformed a very large part of their brain. The result is that such people are clever but unskillful. That is so often the case today. They have to struggle to do things that they should really be able to do quite easily. For instance, there are men who are quite unable to sew on a trouser-button. They are able to write a marvelously good book, but they are incapable of sewing on a button! This is because the nerves which are nerves of perception in the more delicate organs have been transformed almost entirely into brain-nerves. Once I knew a man who had a terrible dread of the future. 17 Hermann Rollett, 1819–1904. Austrian writer. See Rudolf Steiner, The Younger Generation (mentioned above), page 150. He argued that in olden times man's senses were more delicate, more keen, just because he had less brain, that in the course of human evolution what had in earlier times belonged to the senses and enhanced their perception was metamorphosed into a clever brain. The man was afraid that this would go further, that more and more of the sensory brain would become thinking brain, so that finally human beings would be utterly incapacitated, going about with defective eyes and so forth. In olden times people went through life with good sight; now they need glasses. Their sense of smell is not nearly as keen as it was once. Their hands are becoming clumsy. And anything that becomes clumsy is bound to deteriorate. The man was afraid that everything would be transformed into brain and that the human head would get bigger and bigger and the legs smaller and smaller and all would atrophy. He thought quite seriously that human beings would someday be no more than round heads rolling around the world — and then what would happen? The man was completely, tragically in earnest. And his thought was perfectly correct. For if the human being does not find his way again to what he was once able to grasp through imagination, if he does not come again to the spirit, then he will become a ball of this kind! It is literally true that spiritual science does not simply make a man clever. As a matter of fact, if he takes it merely as one more theory, far from becoming more clever, he will become definitely more stupid. But if he assimilates spiritual science in the right way, it will work into his very fingers! Clumsy fingers will become more skillful again because the external world is getting its rightful significance again. Through spiritual science the outer world becomes spiritualized, but that does not make you clumsier. These are things to which attention must be paid. You see, in the days when mankind created sagas, legends, mythologies (there was recently a question about this), much less sense activity had so far been transformed into brain. In those days, people dreamed more than we do now, and when they dreamed, pictures appeared to them. Our thoughts today are barren. And the stories you hear about Wotan, Loki, about the old Greek gods — Zeus, Aphrodite and so forth — these stories originated from the fact that man did not yet have so much of that cleverness which is valued so highly today. People become more clever, certainly — but one learns to know the world not merely through intelligence but rather by learning to observe it. Think of an adult person with a child in front of him. The adult may be a bit conceited about his own cleverness; if so, the child will seem stupid. But if the adult has any sense for what comes from a child out of his very nature, he will regard that as having far higher value than his own cleverness. One cannot grasp what exists in nature by brainwork alone, but by being able to penetrate into the secrets of nature. Cleverness does not necessarily lead to knowledge. A clever man is not necessarily very wise. Clever people can't, of course, be stupid, but they may certainly lack wisdom; they may have no real knowledge of the world. Cleverness can be used in all sorts of ways: to classify plants and minerals, to make chemical compounds, to vote, to play dominoes and chess, to speculate on the Stock Exchange. The cleverness by which people cheat on the Stock Exchange is the same cleverness that one uses to study chemistry. The only difference is that a man is simply concentrating on something else when he is studying chemistry than when he is speculating on the Stock Exchange! Cleverness is present in both cases. It is simply a question of what one is concentrating on. Obviously, too much should not be transformed into brain. If one were to dissect the heads of great financial magnates, one would find extraordinary brains. In this area, anatomy has brought a great deal to light. It has been possible to see in a brain proof of cleverness — but never proof of knowledge! So — I have tried to develop a few aspects of the question. I hope you are not altogether dissatisfied with the answer. As soon as I return, we will have the next meeting. I'm sorry I can't give lectures here and in England at the same time — such a thing is still beyond us! When we reach that point, there will be no need for a break. But for the time being, gentlemen, I must say goodbye.

The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars

The sense of smell

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA354/English/RSP1987/19240809p01.html

Dornach

9 Aug 1924

GA354-9

Rudolf Steiner : Good morning, gentlemen! Are there any questions? Written question : Mars is near the earth. What effect does that have upon the earth? What is known about Mars? Dr. Steiner : There has been a great deal of talk recently about the nearness of Mars to the earth, and the newspapers have made utterly futile statements without even a rudimentary understanding of what this means. We must not attach prime importance to these external circumstances in the planetary constellations due to the relative positions of earth and sun, because the influences arising from them do not really amount to very much. It is interesting that there has been all this talk about the proximity of Mars, because every planet, including the moon, is constantly coming nearer to the earth, and the planets are undergoing a process that will finally end in all of them uniting again with the earth, forming a single body. Of course, if it is imagined, as most people imagine today, that the planets are solid bodies just like the earth, the expectation could well be that if they were to unite with the earth, this would mean the end of all life on our globe! But no such thing will happen, because the degrees of density of the various planets are not the same as that of the earth. If Mars, for instance, were actually to come down and unite with the earth, it would not be able to lay waste the land but only to inundate it. For as far as investigation is possible — it can never be done with physical instruments but only through spiritual science, spiritual vision — Mars consists primarily of a more or less fluid mass, not as fluid as our water but, shall we say, more like the consistency of jelly, or something of that kind. There are also dense components, but they are not as densely solid as those of our earth. Their consistency would be more comparable to that of the antlers or horns of our animals, which form out of the general mass and dissolve back into it again. So we must realize that the constitution of Mars is entirely different from that of our earth. Now a great deal is said about “canals” existing on Mars. But why “canals”? There is nothing to be seen except lines, and these are called canals. 18 See Rudolf Steiner, Occult History , Lecture V: “... so-called canals on Mars. There it is a matter of certain streams of force which correspond to an earlier stage of the earth ...” In one sense that is correct, but in another, incorrect. As Mars is not solid to the degree that the earth is solid, one cannot, of course, speak of canals as we know them on the earth. But it can be said that on Mars there is something rather similar to our trade winds. You know that the warm air from the Torrid Zone of the earth, from Africa, streams toward the cold North Pole, and the air from the cold North Pole streams back toward the central region of the earth. So that if looked at from outside, such lines would indeed be seen, but they are the lines of the trade winds, of the air currents in the trade winds. There is something rather similar on Mars. Only everything on Mars is much more full of life than on the earth. The earth is a dead planet in a far stronger sense than Mars, on which everything is still more or less living. I want to mention something that can help you to understand the character of Mars' relation to the earth. We know that the sun, to us the most important of all the heavenly bodies, is the sustainer of a very great deal on the earth. Think of the sun as we know it from day to day. At night you see the plants drawing in their blossoms because the sun is not shining on them. By day they open again to be irradiated by the sun. Very many things depend upon the spread of sunlight over one part of the earth and the spread of darkness over another part when the sun is not there. But if you think of a whole year, you could not conceive of the plants growing in the spring if the sun's power did not return. Again, when the sun loses power in the autumn, the plants fade away, all life dies and snow falls. Quite obviously, life on the earth is connected with the sun. Indeed, we humans would be unable to breathe the air around us if the sun were not there, if the rays of the sun did not make the air suitable for us to breathe. The sun is undeniably the most important heavenly body for us. Just think what a different story it would be if the sun were not-as it appears-to go around the earth every twenty-four hours but instead took twice that time! All life would be slower. So all life on earth depends upon the revolution of the sun around the earth. In reality, of course, the sun does not revolve around the earth, but that is how it appears. The influence of the moon is of less significance for man, but nevertheless it is there. When you remember that the tides ebb and flow according to the moon, that they have the same rhythm as the moon's revolution, you will realize with what kind of power the moon works upon the earth. And then it will also be clear that the time of the moon's rotation around the earth has a definite significance. If you were to investigate how the plants develop when the sun has shone upon them, you would also find evidence of the influence of the moon. Thus the sun and the moon have a tremendous influence upon the earth. We can recognize the lunar influence from the time of the rotation, that is, from the time it takes for the moon to become full moon, new moon, and so on. We can recognize the influence of the sun from its rising and setting, or from the fact that it acquires its power in the spring and loses it in the autumn. And now let me tell you something. You all know of the existence of the grubs of cockchafers. These little worm-like creatures are particularly harmful when they eat up our potatoes. There are years when the potatoes are unharmed by these troublesome little maggots, and then there are years when simply nothing can be done because the grubs are everywhere at work. Well now, suppose there has been a year when the grubs have eaten nearly all the potatoes — if you wait now for four years, the cockchafers will be there in great numbers, because it takes them four years to develop from the grubs. There is a period of approximately four years between the appearance of the grubs — which, like all insects, first have a maggot form before becoming a chrysalis — and the fully developed insect. The grub needs four years to develop into the cockchafer. Naturally, there are always cockchafers, but if there are only a few grubs some year, four years after that there will only be a few cockchafers. The number of cockchafers depends upon the number of grubs that were present four years earlier. We can see quite clearly that this period of time is connected with the rotation of Mars. The course of propagation of certain insects shows us the kind of influence that Mars exercises upon the life of the earth. But the influence is rather hidden. The influence of the sun is quite obvious, that of the moon not obvious to the same extent, and the influence of Mars is hidden. Everything for which intervals of years are needed on the earth — as in the case of grubs and cockchafers — is dependent upon Mars. So there you see a significant effect of Mars. Of course someone may say that he doesn't believe this. Well, gentlemen, we ourselves can't possibly make all the experiments, but anyone who doesn't believe what I've said should do the following: he should take the grubs he has collected in a year when they are very numerous and force their development artificially in some container. Within the same year he will find that the majority of them do not develop into cockchafers. Such experiments are never made because these things are not believed. However, we come now to the essential point. The sun has the most powerful influence of all. But it exerts its greatest influence upon everything on the earth that is dead, that must be called to new life every year — while the moon influences only what is living. Mars exerts its influence only upon what exists in a more delicate form of life, in the sentient realm. The other planets have their influence upon what is of the nature of soul and spirit. The sun, then, is the heavenly body that works the most strongly; it works into the very minerals of the earth. In the minerals the moon can do nothing — nor Mars. If the moon were not there, no animal creature could live and move about on the earth; there could only be plants on the earth, no animals. Again, there are many animal creatures that could not have intervals of years between the larva-stage and the insect if Mars were not there. You see how closely all things are connected. For instance, we might ask ourselves: When do we human beings become fully grown? When do we stop in the process of our development? Obviously very early, at the age of about twenty or twenty-one. And yet even then something continues to be added. Most people do not actually grow any more, but something is added inwardly. Until about our thirtieth year we do really “increase”; but then, for the first time, we begin to “decrease”. If we compare this with happenings in the universe, we get the time of the rotation of Saturn. So the planets exercise their influence upon the more delicate conditions of growth and of life. Hence we can say: When, like all the planets, Mars comes near the earth, we must not attach primary importance to this outer nearness. What is of far greater importance is how things in the universe are connected with the finer, more delicate states and conditions of life. You must remember that the constitution of Mars is quite different from that of the earth. As I said, Mars is not densely solid in the sense in which today the earth is solid, But I described to you quite recently how the earth too was once in a condition when mineral, solid matter took shape for the first time, how there were then gigantic animals which, however, had as yet no solid bones. Mars today is in a condition similar to that of the earth in that earlier epoch and therefore also has upon it those living beings, those animal beings which the earth had upon it at that time. And “human beings” on Mars are as they were on the earth at that time — still without bones. I described this to you when I was speaking of an earlier period of the earth. These things can be known. They cannot become known by the means employed in modern science for acquiring knowledge; nevertheless it is possible to know these things. If, then, you want to have an idea of what Mars is like today, picture to yourselves what the earth was like in a much earlier age: then you will have a picture of Mars. You know that on the earth today, the trade winds blow from the south to the north, from the north to the south. These streamings were once much denser than the air; they were currents of fluid, watery air: so it is on Mars today. The air currents on Mars are much more full of life, much more watery. Jupiter consists almost entirely of air, but again somewhat denser than the air of the earth. Jupiter today represents a condition toward which the earth is now striving, which it will attain only in the future. And so in the planetary system we find certain states or conditions through which the earth also passes. When we understand the planets in this sense, we understand them rightly. Has anyone something else to ask about this subject? Perhaps Herr Burle himself? Herr Burle : I am quite satisfied, thank you! Question : In one of your last lectures you said that the scents of flowers are related to the planets. Does this also apply to the colors of flowers and colors of stones? Dr. Steiner : I will repeat very briefly what I said. It was also in answer to a question that had been asked. I said that flowers, and also other substances of the earth, have scent — something in them that exercises a corresponding influence upon man's organ of smell. I said that this is connected with the planets, that the plants and, similarly, certain substances, are “big noses,” noses that perceive the effects coming from the planets. The planets have an influence upon life in its finer, more delicate forms-here, once again, we must think of the finer forms of life. And it can be said that the plants really do come into being out of the scent of the universe, but this scent is so rarefied, so delicate, that we human beings with our coarse noses do not smell it. But I reminded you that there can be a sense of smell quite different from that possessed by man. You need think only of police dogs. A thief has stolen something and the police dog is taken to the spot where the theft has been committed; it is conveyed to him in some way that a thief has been there and he picks up the scent; then he leads the police on the trail and the thief is often found. Police dogs are used in this way. All kinds of interesting things would come to light if one were to study how scents that are quite imperceptible to a human being are perceptible to a dog. People have not always realized that dogs have such keen noses. If they had, dogs would have been used earlier to assist the police. It is only rather recently that this has been discovered. Likewise, people today still have no conception of what indescribably delicate noses are possessed by the plants. As a matter of fact, the entire plant is a nose; it takes in the scent of the universe, and if its structure is such that it gives back this cosmic aroma in the way that an echo gives back a sound, it becomes a fragrant plant. So we can say: The scents of flowers, of plants in general, and also other scents on the earth, do indeed relate to the planetary system. It has been asked whether this also applies to the colors of plants and flowers. As I said, the plant takes shape out of the aroma of the universe and throughout the year it is exposed to the sun. While the form of the plant is shaped by the planets out of the cosmic fragrance, its color is due to the sun and also to some extent to the moon. The scent and the color of plants do not, therefore, come from the same source; the scent comes from the planets, the color from the sun and moon. Things don't always have to come from the same source; just as one has a father and a mother, so the plant has its scent from the planets and its colors from the sun and moon. You can see from the following that the colors of plants are connected with the sun and moon. If you take plants that have beautiful green leaves and put them in the cellar, they become white, they lose every trace of color because the sun has not been shining on them. They retain their structure, their form, because the cosmic fragrance penetrates everywhere, but they don't keep their color because no sunlight is reaching them. The colors of the plants, therefore, undeniably come from the sun and, as I have said, also from the moon, only this is more difficult to determine. Experiments would have to be made and could be made, by exposing plants in various ways to moonlight; then one would certainly discover it. Does anyone else want to say something? Herr Burle : I would like to expand the question by asking about the colors of stones. Dr. Steiner : With stones and minerals it is like this. If you picture to yourself that the sun has a definite influence upon the plants every day, and also during the course of a year, then you find that the yearly effects of the sun are different from its daily effects. The daily effects of the sun do not bring about much change in the color of the plants; but its yearly influence does affect their color. However, the sun has not only daily and yearly effects; it has other, quite different effects as well. I spoke to you about this some time ago, but I will mention it again. Imagine the earth here. The sun rises at a certain point in the heavens, let us say in the spring, on the twenty-first of March. If in the present epoch we look at the point in the heavens where the sun rises on the twenty-first of March, we find behind the sun the constellation of the Fishes (Pisces). The sun has been rising in this particular constellation for hundreds of years, but always at a different point. The point at which the sun rises on the twenty-first of March is different every year. A year ago the sun rose at a point a little farther back, and still farther back the year before that. Going back through a few centuries we find that the point at which the sun rose in spring was still in the same constellation, but if we go back as far as the year 1200 AD. we find that the sun rose in the constellation of the Ram (Aries). Again for a long time it rose in spring in the constellation of the Ram. Still earlier, however, let us say in the epoch of ancient Egypt, the sun rose in the constellation of the Bull (Taurus); and earlier than that in the constellation of the Twins (Gemini), and so on. So we can say that the point at which the sun rises in spring is changing all the time. This indicates, as you can see, that the sun itself moves its position in the universe; I say it moves its position — but only apparently so, for in reality it is the earth that moves its position. That, however, does not concern us at the moment. In a period of 25,915 years, the point at which the sun rises in spring moves the whole way around the zodiac. In the present year — 1924 — the sun rises at a certain point in the heavens. 25,915 years ago, that is to say, 23,991 years before the birth of Christ (25,915 minus 1924) the sun rose at the same point! Since then it has made one complete circuit. The sun has a daily circuit, a yearly circuit, and a circuit that takes it 25,915 years to complete. Thus we have a sun-day, a sun-year and a great cosmic year consisting of 25,915 years. That is very interesting, is it not? And the number 25,915 is itself very interesting! If you think of the breath and remember that a man draws approximately 18 breaths a minute, you can reckon how many breaths he draws in a day. Eighteen breaths a minute, 60 x 18 in an hour = 1,080 breaths. How many breaths, then, does he draw in a day, that is to say, in 24 hours? Twenty-four times 1,080 = 25,920, which is approximately the same as this number 25,915! In a day, man breathes as many times as the sun needs years to make its circuit of the universe. These correspondences are very remarkable. Now why am I telling you all this? You see, to give color to a plant, the sun needs a year; to give color to a stone, the sun needs 25,915 years. The stone is a much harder fellow. To bestow color on a plant the sun makes a circuit lasting one year. But there is also a circuit which the sun needs 25,915 years to complete. And not until this great circuit has been completed is the sun able to give color to the stones. But at any rate it is always the sun that gives the color. You will realize from this how widely removed the mineral kingdom is from the plant kingdom. If the sun did not move around yearly in the way it does, if it only made daily circuits as well as the great circuit of 25,915 years, then there would be no plants, and instead of cabbage you would be obliged to eat silica — and the human stomach would have to adjust itself accordingly! Question : Do the herbs that grow on mountains have greater healing properties than those that grow in valleys? If so, what is the explanation? Dr. Steiner : It is an actual fact that mountain-plants are more valuable as remedies than those that grow in valleys, particularly than those we plant in our ordinary gardens or in a field. It is a good thing that this is the case, for if the plants growing in the valleys were just like those on the mountains, every foodstuff would at the same time be a medicine, and that would not do at all! The plants that have the greatest therapeutic value are indeed those that grow on the mountains. Why is this? All you need to do is to compare the kind of soil in which mountain-plants grow with that in which valley-plants grow. It is a very different thing if plants grow wild, in uncultivated soil, or are artificially cultivated in a garden. Think of strawberries! Wild strawberries from the woods are tiny but very aromatic; garden strawberries have less scent, are less sharp in taste, but they can grow to an enormous size — why, there are cultivated strawberries as large as eggs! How is this to be accounted for? It is because the soil in the low-lying ground of valleys is not so full of stones that have crumbled away from the rock of the mountains. It is on mountains that really hard stone is to be found — the real mineral. Down in the valleys you find soil that has already been saturated and carried down by the rivers and is therefore completely pulverized. On the mountains there is also, of course, pulverized soil, but it is invariably permeated with tiny granules, especially, shall we say, of quartz, feldspar, and so on. Everywhere there are substances which can be used for healing. Very, very much can be achieved if, for example, we grind down quartz (silica) and make a remedy of it. We are then using these minerals directly as remedies. The soil in low-lying valleys no longer contains these little stones. But on the mountains the stones are all the time crumbling from the rocks, and the plants draw into their sap the tiny particles of these stones, and that makes them into remedial plants. Now the following is interesting. The so-called homeopaths — they're not right about everything, but they're right about a good many things — these homeopaths take substances and by grinding them finer and finer, obtain medical remedies. If the substance were used in its crude state it would not be a remedy. But you see, the plants themselves are the most precious homeopaths of all, for they absorb tiny, minute particles from all these stones, which otherwise would have to be refined and pulverized when a medicine is being prepared. So because nature does this far better than we could, we can take the plants themselves and use them directly for healing purposes. And it is a fact that the plants and herbs growing on mountains have far greater healing properties than those in the valleys. You know, too, how the whole appearance of a plant changes. I spoke about the strawberry: the wild strawberry absorbs a large quantity of a certain mineral. Where does the wild strawberry thrive best? Where there are minerals that contain a little iron. This iron penetrates the soil and from that the strawberry gets its fragrant smell. Certain people whose blood is very sensitive get a rash when they eat strawberries. This is due to the fact that their blood in its ordinary state has sufficient iron and it is getting too much when they eat strawberries. If, then, some people with normal blood get a rash from eating strawberries, one can certainly advise someone whose blood is poor, to eat them! In this way their remedial value is gradually discovered. As a rule, the soil in gardens where the giant strawberries are growing contains no iron; there the strawberries propagate themselves without any impetus from iron. But people are rather short-sighted in this connection and don't follow things up for a sufficiently long time. It is a fact that by growing strawberries in soil that doesn't contain much iron, one can get huge berries, for the reason that the plants do not become fully solid. For think of it — if the strawberry has to get hold of every tiny bit of iron there may be in the soil, then it must have plenty of leeway! But that is a characteristic of the strawberry. Suppose you look at soil. It contains very minute traces of iron. The strawberry growing in the soil draws these traces of iron to itself from a long way off, for its root has a strong force and attracts the iron from some distance away. Now take a wild strawberry from the woods. It contains a very strong force. Put this strawberry into a garden: there is no iron in the soil, but the strawberry has acquired this tremendous force already, it has it within itself. It draws to itself everything it possibly can, in the garden cultivation too, from a long way away, and nourishes itself exceedingly well. In a garden it does not get iron, but it draws everything else to itself because it is well able to do so. And so it becomes very large. However, as I have said, people are very short-sighted; they do not observe things thoroughly. So they do not notice that although with garden cultivation they can produce huge strawberries for a number of years, this will only last for a certain time. The fertility then dies away, and they must bring in new strawberry plants from the woods. Fertility cannot be promoted entirely by artificial means; there must be knowledge of things that are directly connected with Nature herself The rose is the best illustration of this. If you go out into the countryside you will see the wild rose, the dog rose, as it is called, Rosa canina . You know it, I'm sure. This wild rose has five rather pale petals. Why is it that it has this form, produces only five petals, remains so small and at once produces this tiny fruit? These reddish rose hips — you know them — develop from the wild rose. Well, this is due to the fact that the soil where the rose grows wild contains a certain kind of oil — just as the soil of the earth in general contains different oils in its minerals. We get oils out of the earth or out of the plants which have themselves absorbed them from the earth. Now the rose, when it is growing wild out there in the country, must work far and wide with its roots in order to collect from the minerals the tiny amount of oil it needs in order to become a rose. Why is it that the rose must stretch out so far, must extend the drawing power contained in its root to such a distance? The reason is that there is very little humus in the country soil where the rose grows wild. Humus is more oily than the soil of the countryside. Now the rose has a tremendous power for drawing oil to itself. When the rose is near soil which contains humus, this is fortunate for it; it draws a great deal of oil to itself and develops not only five petals but a whole mass of petals, becoming the luxuriantly-petalled garden rose. But it no longer develops real rosehips because that would need what is contained in the stony soil out in the country. So we can make the wild rose into the ornamental garden rose when we transplant it into soil that is richer in humus, where it can easily get the oils from which to produce its many petals. This is the opposite of what happens with the strawberry: it is difficult for the strawberry to find in the garden what it finds out in the woods. The rose finds a great deal in the garden that is scarce along the roads and so it develops luxuriant petals; but then in fruit formation it remains behind. So when we know what a particular soil contains, we know what will grow on it. Naturally, this is tremendously important for plant cultivation, especially for the plants needed in agriculture. For there, through manure and the substances added as fertilizers, the soil must be restored so that it will produce what is required. Knowledge of the soil is of enormous importance to the farmer. These things have been more or less forgotten. Simple country farmers used to apply the proper manure by instinct. But nowadays in large-scale agriculture not much attention is paid to the matter. The consequence is that in the course of the last decades nearly all our foodstuffs have greatly deteriorated in quality from what they were when those of us who are now elderly were children. Earlier this year there was an interesting agricultural conference at which farmers expressed their deep concern for what will become of the plants, of the foodstuffs, if this tendency continues. And indeed, gentlemen, it will continue! In the coming century foodstuffs will become quite unusable if a certain knowledge of the soil is not regained. We have made a beginning with agriculture in the domain of anthroposophical spiritual science. Recently I gave a course of lectures on agriculture near Breslau, 19 At Koberwitz, June 7–16, 1924. See Rudolf Steiner, Agriculture . and an association has been formed that will take up this work. And we too have done something here to help the situation. We are only at the very beginning but the problem is being tackled. Thus anthroposophy will gradually penetrate into practical life. There are still some sessions to make up, so let us meet again next Friday. 20 This lecture was postponed to Saturday, Sept. 13

The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars

Planetary influences on animals, plants and stones

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA354/English/RSP1987/19240909p01.html

Dornach

9 Sep 1924

GA354-10

Rudolf Steiner : Good morning, gentlemen! Does anyone have a question? Question : Has Mars' proximity to the earth anything to do with the weather? The summer has been so unbelievably bad! Have planetary influences in general any effect upon the weather? Dr. Steiner : The weather conditions which have shown such irregularities through the years, particularly recent years, do have something to do with conditions in the heavens, but not specifically with Mars. When these irregularities are observed we must take very strongly into consideration a phenomenon of which little account is usually taken, although it is constantly spoken of. I mean the phenomenon of sunspots. The sunspots are dark patches, varying in size and duration, which appear on the surface of the sun at intervals of about ten or eleven or twelve years. Naturally, these dark patches impede the sun's radiations, for, as you can well imagine, at the places where its surface is dark, the sun does not radiate. If in any given year the number of such dark patches increases, the sun's radiation is affected. And in view of the enormous significance the sun has for the earth, this is a matter of importance. In another respect this phenomenon of sunspots is also noteworthy. In the course of centuries their number has increased, and the number varies from year to year. This is due to the fact that the position of the heavenly bodies changes as they revolve, and the aspect they present is therefore always changing. The sunspots do not appear at the same place every year, but — according to how the sun is turning — in the course of years they appear in that place again. In the course of centuries they have increased enormously in number and this certainly means something for the relationship of the earth to the sun. Thousands of years ago there were no spots on the sun. They began to appear, they have increased in number, and they will continue to increase. Hence there will come a time when the sun will radiate less and less strongly, and finally, when it has become completely dark, it will cease to radiate any light at all. Therefore we have to reckon with the fact that in the course of time, a comparatively long time, the source of the light and life that now issues from the sun will be physically obliterated for the earth. And so the phenomenon of the sunspots — among other things — shows clearly that one can speak of the earth coming to an end. Everything of the earth that is spiritual will then take on a different form, just as I have told you that in olden times it had a different form. Just as a human being grows old and changes, so the sun and the whole planetary system will grow old and change. The planet Mars, as I said, is not very strongly connected with weather conditions; Mars is more connected with phenomena that belong to the realm of life, such as the appearance and development of the grubs and cockchafers every four years. And please do not misunderstand this. You must not compare it directly with what astronomy calculates as being the period of revolution of Mars, 21 The “synodic” revolution, that is, the time between two successive conjunctions or oppositions to the sun, varies with Mars between 2 years 34 days and 2 years 80 days, the average time therefore being 2 years 50 days. because the actual position of Mars comes into consideration here. Mars stands in the same position relatively to the earth and the sun every four years, so that the grubs which take four years to develop into cockchafers are also connected with this. If you take two revolutions of Mars — requiring four years and three months — you get the period between the cockchafers and the grubs, and the other way around, between the grubs and the cockchafers. In connection with the smaller heavenly bodies you must think of the finer differentiations in earth phenomena, whereas the sun and moon are connected with cruder, more tangible phenomena such as weather, and so on. A good or bad vintage year, for example, is connected with phenomena such as the sunspots, also with the appearance of comets. Only when they are observed in connection with phenomena in the heavens can happenings on the earth be studied properly. Now of course still other matters must be considered if one is looking for the reasons for abnormal weather. For naturally the weather conditions — which concern us so closely because health and a great deal else is affected by them — depend upon very many factors. You must think of the following. Going back in the evolution of the earth we come to a time of about six to ten thousand years ago. Six to ten thousand years ago there were no mountains in this region where we are now living. You would not have been able to climb the Swiss mountains then, because you would not have existed in the way you do now. You could not have lived here or in other European lands because at that time these regions were covered with ice. It was the so-called Ice Age. This Ice Age was responsible for the fact that the greatest part of the population then living in Europe either perished or was obliged to move to other regions. These Ice Age conditions will be repeated, in a somewhat different form, in about five or six or seven thousand years — not in exactly the same regions of the earth as formerly, but there will again be an Ice Age. It must never be imagined that evolution proceeds in an unbroken line. To understand how the earth actually evolves it must be realized that interruptions such as the Ice Age do indeed take place in the straightforward process of evolution. What is the reason? The reason is that the earth's surface is constantly rising and sinking. If you go up a mountain which need by no means be very high, you will still find an Ice Age, even today, for the top is perpetually covered with snow and ice. If the mountain is high enough, it has snow and ice on it. But it is only when, in the course of a long time, the surface of the earth has risen to the height of a mountain that we can really speak of snow and ice on a very large scale. So it is, gentlemen! It happens. The surface of the earth rises and sinks. Some six thousand or more years ago the level of this region where we are now living was high; then it sank, but it is now already rising again, for the lowest point was reached around the year 1250. That was the lowest point. The temperature here then was extremely pleasant, much warmer than it is today. The earth's surface is now slowly rising, so that after five or six thousand years there will again be a kind of Ice Age. From this you will realize that when weather conditions are observed over ten-year periods, they are not the same; the weather is changing all the time. Now if in a given year, in accordance with the height of the earth's surface a certain warm temperature prevails over regions of the earth, there are still other factors to be considered. Suppose you look at the earth. At the equator it is hot; above and below, at the Poles it is cold. In the middle zone, the earth is warm. When people travel to Africa or India, they travel into the heat; when they travel to the North Pole or the South Pole, they travel into the cold. You certainly know this from accounts of polar expeditions. Think of the distribution of heat and cold when you begin to heat a room. It doesn't get warm all over right away. If you would get a stepladder and climb to the top of it, you would find that down below it may still be quite cold while up above at the ceiling it is already warm. Why is that? It is because warm air, and every gaseous substance when it is warmed, becomes lighter and rises; cold air stays down below because it is heavier. Warmth always ascends. So in the middle zone of the earth the warm air is always rising. But when it is up above it wafts toward the North Pole: winds blow from the middle zone of the earth toward the North Pole. These are warm winds, warm air. But the cold air at the North Pole tries to warm itself and streams downward toward the empty spaces left in the middle zone. Cold air is perpetually streaming from the North Pole to the equator, and warm air in the opposite direction, from the equator to the North Pole. These are the currents called the trade winds. In a region such as ours they are not very noticeable, but very much so in others. Not only the air, but the water of the sea, too, streams from the middle zone of the earth toward the North Pole and back again. That phenomenon is, naturally, distributed in the most manifold ways, but it is nevertheless there. But now there are also electric currents in the universe; for when we generate wireless electric currents on the earth we are only imitating what is also present in some way in the universe. Suppose a current from the universe is present, let's say, here in Switzerland, where we have a certain temperature. If a current of this kind comes in such a way that it brings warmth with it, the temperature here rises a little. Thus the warmth on earth is also redistributed by currents from the universe. They too influence the weather. In addition, however, you must consider that such electromagnetic currents in the universe are also influenced by the sunspots. Wherever the sun has spots, there are the currents which affect the weather. These particular influences are of great importance. Now in regard to the division of the seasons — spring, summer, autumn, winter — there is a certain regularity in the universe. We can indicate in our calendar that spring will begin at a definite time, and so on. This is regulated by the more obvious relationships in which the heavenly bodies stand to one another. But the influences resulting from this are few. Not many of the stars can be said to have an influence; most of them are far distant and their influence is only of a highly spiritual character. But in regard to weather conditions the following may be said. Suppose you have a disc with, let's say, four colors on it — red, yellow, green, blue. If you rotate the disc slowly, you can easily distinguish all the four colors. If you rotate it more quickly, it is difficult but still possible to distinguish the colors. But if you rotate the disc very rapidly indeed, all the colors run into each other and you cannot possibly distinguish one from the other. Likewise, the seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter can be distinguished because the determining factors are more or less obvious. But the weather depends upon so many circumstances that the mind cannot grasp all of them; it is impossible, therefore, to mark anything definite in the calendar in regard to it — while this is obviously quite possible in regard to the seasons. The weather is a complicated matter because so many factors are involved. But in old folklore something was known about these things. Old folklore should not be cast aside altogether. When the conditions of life were simpler, people took an interest in things far more than they do today. Today our interest in a subject lasts for 24 hours ... then the next newspaper comes and brings a new interest! We forget what happens — it is really so! The conditions of our life are so terribly complicated. The lives of our grandparents, not to speak of our great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents, were quite different. They would sit together in a room around and behind the stove and tell stories, often stories of olden times. And they knew how the weather had been a long time ago, because they knew that it was connected with the stars; they observed a certain regularity in the weather. And among these great-grandparents there may have been one or two “wiseacres”, as they are called. By a “wiseacre” I mean someone who was a little more astute than the others, someone who had a certain cleverness. Such a person would talk in an interesting way. A “wiseacre” might have said to a grandchild or great-grandchild: Look, there's the moon — the moon, you know, has an influence on the weather. This was obvious to people in those days, and they also knew that rainwater is better for washing clothes than water fetched from the spring. So they put pails out to collect the rainwater to wash the clothes — my own mother used to do this. Rainwater has a different quality, it has much more life in it than ordinary water; it absorbs bluing and other additives far better. And it wouldn't be a bad idea if we ourselves did the same thing, for washing with hard water can, as you know, ruin your clothes. So you see, these things used to be known; it was science in the 19th century that first caused people to have different views. Some of you already know the story I told once about the two professors at the Leipzig University: 22 Matthias Jakob Schleiden, 1804–1881. Naturalist. Gustav Theodor Fechner, 1801–1887. Naturalist; founder of psychophysics. See his publication “Professor Schleiden und der Mond,” Leipzig 1856. one was called Schleiden and the other Fechner. Fechner declared that the moon has an influence on the earth's weather. He had observed this and had compiled statistics on it. The other professor, Schleiden, was a very clever man. He said: That is sheer stupidity and superstition; there is no such influence. Now when professors quarrel, nothing very much is gained by it and that's mostly the case also when other people quarrel! But both these professors were married; there was a Frau Professor Schleiden and a Frau Professor Fechner. In Leipzig at that time people still collected rainwater for washing clothes. So Professor Fechner said to his wife: That man Schleiden insists that one can get just as much rainwater at the time of new moon as at full moon; so let Frau Professor Schleiden put out her pail and collect the rainwater at the time of the next new moon, and you collect it at the time of full moon, when I maintain that you will get more rainwater. Well, Frau Professor Schleiden heard of this proposal and said: Oh no! I will put my pail out when it is full moon and Frau Professor Fechner shall put hers out at the time of new moon! You see, the wives of the two professors actually needed the water! The husbands could squabble theoretically, but their wives decided according to practical needs. Our great-grandparents knew these things and said to their grandchildren: The moon has an influence upon rainwater. But remember this: everything connected with the moon is repeated every 18 or 19 years. For example, in a certain year, on a certain day, there are sun eclipses and on another day moon eclipses; this happens regularly in the course of 18 to 19 years. All phenomena connected with the positions of the stars in the heavens are repeated regularly. Why, then, should not weather conditions be repeated, since they depend upon the moon? After 18 or 19 years there must be something in the weather similar to what happened 18 or 19 years before. So as everything repeats itself, these people observed other repetitions too, and indicated in the calendar certain particulars of what the weather had been 18 or 19 years earlier, and now expected the same kind of weather after the lapse of this period. The only reason the calendar was called the Hundred-Years' Calendar was that 100 is a number which is easy to keep in mind; other figures too were included in the calendar according to which predictions were made about the weather. Naturally, such things need not be quite exact, because again the conditions are complicated. Nevertheless, the predictions were useful, for people acted accordingly and did indeed succeed in producing better growing conditions. Through such observations something can certainly be done for the fertility of the soil. Weather conditions do depend upon the sun and moon, for the repetitions of the positions of the moon have to do with the relation of these two heavenly bodies. In the case of the other stars and their relative positions, there are different periods of repetition. One such repetition is that of Venus, the morning and evening star. Suppose the sun is here and the earth over there. Between them is Venus. Venus moves to this point or that, and can be seen accordingly; but when Venus is here, it stands in front of the sun and covers part of it. This is called a “Venus transit”. 23 There is a period of 243 years 2 days in which the intervals between the Venus transits are 8 years, 121.5 years, 8 years and 105.5 years. The last transit took place December 6, 1882. According to astronomical calculation the next transit will be on June 7, 2004. (Venus, of course, looks much smaller than the moon, although it is, in fact, larger.) These Venus transits are very interesting because for one thing they take place only once every hundred years or so, and for another, very significant things can be observed when Venus is passing in front of the sun. One can see what the sun's halo looks like when Venus is standing in front of the sun. This event brings about great changes. The descriptions of it are very interesting. And as these Venus transits take place only once in about a hundred years, they are an example of the phenomena about which science is obliged to say that it believes some things that it has not actually perceived! If the scientists declare that they believe only things they have seen, an astronomer who was born, say, in the year 1890 could not lecture today about a Venus transit, for that has not occurred in the meantime, and presumably he will have died before the next Venus transit, which will apparently take place in the year 2004. There, even the scientist is obliged to believe in something he does not see! Here again, when Venus is having a special effect upon the sun because it is shutting out the light, an influence is exercised upon weather conditions that occurs only once about every hundred years. There is something remarkable about these Venus transits and in earlier times they were regarded as being extraordinarily interesting. Now when the moon is full, you see a shining orb in the sky; at other times you see a shining part of an orb. But at new moon, if you train your eyes a little — I don't know whether you know this — you can even see the rest of the new moon. If you look carefully when the moon is waxing, you can also see the other part of the moon — it appears bluish-black. Even at new moon a bluish-black disc can be seen by practiced eyes; as a rule it is not noticed, but it can be seen. Why is it that this disc is visible at all? It is because the part of the moon that is otherwise dark is still illuminated by the earth. The moon is about 240,000 miles from the earth and is not, properly speaking, illuminated by it; but the tiny amount of light that falls upon the moon from the earth makes this part of the moon visible. But now no light at all radiates from the earth to Venus. Venus has to rely upon the light of the sun; no light streams to it from the earth. Venus is the morning and evening star. It changes just as the moon changes but not within the same periods. Only the changes are not seen because Venus is very far away and all that is visible is a gleaming star. Looked at through a darkened telescope Venus can be seen to change, just as the moon changes. But in spite of the fact that Venus cannot be illuminated from the earth, part of it is always visible as a dull bluish light. The sun's light is seen at the semi-circle above — but this is not the whole of Venus; where Venus is not being shone upon by the sun, a bluish light is seen. Now, gentlemen, there are certain minerals — for instance, in Bologna — which contain barium compounds. Barium is a metallic element. If light is allowed to fall on these minerals for a certain time, and the room is then darkened, you see a bluish light being thrown off by them. One says that the mineral, after it has been illuminated, becomes phosphorescent. It has caught the light, “eaten” some of the light, and is now spitting it out again when the room is made dark. This is of course also happening before the room is dark, but the light is then not visible to the eye. The mineral takes something in and gives something back. As it cannot take in a great deal, what it gives back is also not very much, and this is not seen when the room is light, just as a feeble candle-light is not seen in strong sunlight. But the mineral is phosphorescent and if the room is darkened, one sees the light it radiates. From this you will certainly be able to understand where the light of Venus comes from. While it receives no light from this side, Venus is illuminated from the other side by the sun, and it eats up the sun's light, so to say. Then, when you see it on a dark night, it is throwing off the light, it becomes phosphorescent. In days when people had better eyes than they have now, they saw the phosphorescence of Venus. Their eyes were really better in those days; it was in the 16th century that spectacles first began to be used, and they would certainly have come earlier if people had needed them! Inventions and discoveries always come when they are needed by human beings. And so in earlier times the changes that come about when phosphorescent Venus is in transit across the sun were also seen. And in still earlier times the conclusion was drawn that because the sun's light is influenced at that time by Venus, this same influence will be there again after about a hundred years; and so there will be similar weather conditions again in a region where a transit of Venus is seen to be taking place. (As you know, eclipses of the sun are not visible from everywhere, but only in certain regions.) In a hundred years, therefore, the same weather conditions will be there — so the people concluded — and they drew up the Hundred Years' Calendar accordingly. Later on, people who did not understand the thing at all, made a Hundred Years' Calendar every year, then they found that the details given in the calendar did not tally with the actual facts. It could just as well have said: “If the cock crows on the dunghill, the weather changes, or stays as it is!” But originally, the principle of the thing was perfectly correct. The people perceived that when Venus transits the sun, this produces weather conditions that are repeated somewhere after a hundred years. Since the weather of the whole year is affected, then the influences are at work not only during the few days when Venus is in transit across the sun but they last for a longer period. So you see from what I have said that to know by what laws the weather is governed during some week or day, one would have to ask many questions: How many years ago was there a Venus transit? How many years ago was there a sun-eclipse? What is the present phase of the moon? I have mentioned only a few points. One would have to know how the trade winds are affected by magnetism and electricity, and so on. All these questions would have to be answered if one wanted to determine the regularity of weather conditions. It is a subject that leads to infinity! People will eventually give up trying to make definite predictions about the weather. Although we hear about the regularity of all the phenomena with which astronomy is concerned — astronomy, as you know, is the science of the stars — the science that deals with factors influencing the weather (meteorology, as it is called) is by no means definite or certain. If you get hold of a book on meteorology, you'll be exasperated. You'll be exclaiming that it's useless, because everyone says something different. That is not the case with astronomy. I have now given you a brief survey of the laws affecting wind and weather and the like. But still it must be added that the forces arising in the atmosphere itself have a tremendously strong influence on the weather. Think of a very hot summer when there is constant lightning out of the clouds and constant thunder growling: there you have influences on the weather that come from the immediate vicinity of the earth. Modern science holds a strange view of this. It says that it is electricity that causes the lightning to flash out of the clouds. Now you probably know that electricity is explained to children at school by rubbing a glass rod with a piece of cloth smeared with some kind of amalgam; after it has been rubbed for some time, the rod begins to attract little scraps of paper, and after still more rubbing, sparks are emitted, and so on. Such experiments with electricity are made in school, but care has to be taken that everything has been thoroughly wiped beforehand, because the objects that are to become electric must not even be moist, let alone wet; they must be absolutely dry, even warm and dry, for otherwise nothing will be got out of the glass rod or the stick of sealing-wax. From this you can gather that electricity is conducted away by water and fluids. Everyone knows this, and naturally the scientists know it, for it is they who make the experiments. In spite of this, however, they declare that the lightning comes out of the clouds — and clouds are certainly wet! If it were a fact that lightning comes out of the clouds, “someone” would have had to rub them long enough with a gigantic towel to make them quite dry! But the matter is not so simple. A stick of sealing wax is rubbed and electricity comes out of it; and so the clouds rub against one another and electricity comes out of them! But if the sealing wax is just slightly damp, electricity does not come out of it. And yet electricity is alleged to come out of the clouds — which are all moisture! This shows you what kind of nonsense is taught nowadays. The fact of the matter is this: You can heat air and it becomes hotter and hotter. Suppose you have this air in a closed container. The hotter you make the air, the greater is the pressure it exerts against the walls of the container. The hotter you make it, the sooner it reaches the point where, if the walls of the container are not strong enough, the hot air will burst them asunder. What's the usual reason for a child's balloon bursting? It's because the air rushes out of it. Now when the air becomes hot it acquires the density, the strength to burst. The lightning process originates in the vicinity of the earth; when the air gets hotter and hotter, it becomes strong enough to burst. At very high levels the air may for some reason become intensely hot — this can happen, for example, as the result of certain influences in winter when somewhere or other the air has been very strongly compressed. This intense heat will press out in all directions, just as the hot air will press against the sides of the container. But suppose you have a layer of warm air, and there is a current of wind sweeping away the air. The hot air streams toward the area where the air is thinnest. Lightning is the heat generated in the air itself that makes its way to where there is a kind of hole in the surrounding air, because at that spot the air is thinnest. So we must say: Lightning is not caused by electricity, but by the fact that the air is getting rid of, emptying away, it's own heat. Just because of this intensely violent movement, the electric currents that are always present in the air receive a stimulus. It is the lightning that stimulates electricity; lightning itself is not electricity. All this shows you that warmth is differently distributed in the air everywhere; this again influences the weather. These are influences that come from the vicinity of the earth and operate there. You will realize now how many things influence the weather and that today there are still no correct opinions about these influences — I have told you about the entirely distorted views that are held about lightning. A change must come about in this domain, for spiritual science, anthroposophy, surveys a much wider field and makes thinking more mobile. We cannot, of course, expect the following to be verified in autopsies, but if one investigates with the methods of spiritual science, one finds that in the last hundred years human brains have become much stiffer, alarmingly stiffer, than they were formerly. One finds, for example, that the ancient Egyptians thought quite definite things, of which they were just as sure as we ourselves are sure of the things we think about. But today we are less able to understand things in the winter than in the summer. People pay no attention to such matters. If they would adjust themselves to the laws prevailing in the world, they would arrange life differently. In school, for instance, different subjects would be studied in the winter than in the summer. (This is already being done to some extent in the Waldorf School.) 24 The Waldorf School, Stuttgart, Germany, opened in 1919 under Rudolf Steiner's guidance. There are now more than 300 schools in the international Waldorf School movement. It is not simply a matter of taking botany in the summer because the plants bloom then, but some of the subjects that are easier should be transferred to the winter, and some that are more difficult to the spring and autumn, because the power to understand depends upon this. It is because our brains are harder than men's brains were in earlier times. What we can think about in a real sense only in summer, the ancient Egyptians were able to think about all year round. Such things can be discovered when one observes the various matters connected with the seasons of the year and the weather. Is there anything that is not clear? Are you satisfied with what has been said? I have answered the question at some length. The world is a living whole and in explaining one thing one is naturally led to other things, because everything is related. Question : Herr Burle says that his friends may laugh at his question — he had mentioned the subject two or three years ago. He would like to know whether there is any truth in the saying that when sugar is put into a cup of coffee and it dissolves properly, there will be fine weather, and when it does not dissolve properly there will be bad weather. Dr. Steiner : I have never made this experiment, so I don't know whether there is anything in it or not. But the fact of the sugar dissolving evenly or unevenly might indicate something — if, that is to say, there is anything in the statement at all. I speak quite hypothetically, because I don't know whether there is any foundation for the statement, but we will presume that there is. There is something else that certainly has meaning, for I have observed it myself. What the weather is likely to be can be discovered by watching tree frogs, green tree frogs. I've made tiny ladders and observed whether they ran up or down. The tree frog is very sensitive to what the weather is going to be. This need not surprise you, for in certain places it has happened that animals in their stalls suddenly became restless and tried to get out; those that were not tethered ran away quickly. Human beings stayed where they were. And then there was an earthquake! The animals knew it beforehand, because something was already happening in nature in advance. Human beings with their crude noses and other crude senses do not detect anything, but animals do. So naturally the tree frog, too, has a definite “nose” for what is coming. The word Witterung (weather) is used in such a connection because it means “smelling” the weather that is coming. Now there are many things in the human being of which he himself has no inkling. He simply does not observe them. When we get out of bed on a fine summer day and look out the window, we are in quite a different humor than when a storm is raging. We don't notice that this feeling penetrates to the tips of our fingers. What the animals sense, we also sense; it is only that we don't bring it up to our consciousness. So just suppose, Herr Burle, that although you know nothing about it, your fingertips, like the tree frogs, have a delicate feeling for the kind of weather that is coming. On a day when the weather is obviously going to be fine and you are therefore in a good humor, you put the sugar into your coffee with a stronger movement than on another day. So the way the sugar dissolves does not necessarily depend upon the coffee or the sugar, but upon a force that is in yourself. The force I'm speaking of lies in your fingertips themselves; it is not the force that is connected with your consciously throwing the sugar into the coffee. It lies in your fingertips, and is not the same on a day when the weather is going to be fine as when the weather is going to be bad. So the dissolving of the sugar does not depend upon the way you consciously put it into your coffee but upon the feeling in your fingertips, upon how your fingertips are “sensing” the weather. This force in your fingertips is not the same as the force you are consciously applying when you put the sugar into your coffee. It is a different force, a different movement. Think of the following: A group of people sits around a table; sentimental music, or perhaps the singing of a hymn, puts them into a suitable mood. Then delicate vibrations begin to stir in them. Music continues. The people begin to convey their vibrations to the table, and the table begins to dance. This is what may happen at a spiritualistic séance. Movements are set going as the effect of the delicate vibrations produced through the music and the singing. In a similar fashion the weather may also cause very subtle movements, and these in turn may influence what happens with the sugar in the coffee. But I am speaking quite hypothetically because, as I said, I don't know whether it is absolutely correct in the case of which you are speaking. It is more probable that it is a premonition which the person himself has about the weather that affects the sugar — although this is not very probable either. I am saying all this as pure hypothesis. A spiritual scientist has to reject such phenomena until he possesses strict proof of their validity. If I were to tell you in a casual way the things I do tell you, you really wouldn't have to believe any of it. You should only believe me because you know that things which cannot be proved are not accepted by spiritual science. And so as a spiritual scientist I can only accept the story of the coffee if it is definitely proved. In the meantime I can make the comment that one knows, for instance, of the delicate vibrations of the nerves, also that this is how animals know beforehand of some impending event — how even the tree frog begins to tremble and then the leaves on which it sits also begin to tremble. So it could also be — I don't say that it is, but it could be — that when bad weather is coming, the coffee begins to behave differently from the way it behaves when the weather is good. So — let us meet next Wednesday. 25 This lecture was postponed to Thursday, September 18th After that, I think we'll be able to have our sessions regularly again.

The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars

The weather and its causes

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA354/English/RSP1987/19240913p01.html

Dornach

13 Sep 1924

GA354-11

Rudolf Steiner : Good morning, gentlemen! Perhaps someone has a question? Question : Why does lightning not come in a straight line? — instead of zigzag. Should it not take a straight line? Dr. Steiner : So — the questioner thinks that when lightning is released from the air, as I described last time, it ought to come in a straight line. But it takes a zigzag form and can that be explained? Yes, one can indeed explain it. Let us consider again the explanation I gave of how lightning actually comes about. I told you that lightning comes out of the overheated air, the overheated universe, the overheated cosmic gas. I said that there is no question of lightning arising from some sort of friction of the clouds. Clouds, of course, are wet, and if you want to produce miniature lightning with laboratory apparatus, everything must first be wiped absolutely dry. It must not be supposed, therefore, that lightning is a true electrical phenomenon that comes about from the friction of dry elements. It is known that when one rubs glass or sealing wax one produces electricity and so people think that if clouds rub together — well, then there'll be electricity there too. But that is not so. What happens is this: As a consequence of the inner overheating of the cosmic gas, the warmth living in the cosmic gas comes out in the way I have described. Through the fact that the air exerts less pressure toward one side or another, the radiation of the overheated force goes toward that side and lightning flashes. Now let us imagine that we have this happening somewhere. In consequence of the greatly overheated cosmic gas — not clouds — the lightning flashes out. And it is quite correct to think that it should stream out in a straight line. But you see, it is like this. Picture to yourselves: If an accumulation of heat is present somewhere, it is generally not alone; there are similar accumulations in the neighborhood. In fact, if the earth is here, let us say, and one looks up there and lightning begins where a concentration of heat exists, then in the neighborhood there are other accumulations: they are not all at one single place. You can imagine, of course, that these accumulations of heat are connected with the sun's radiations to the various places. Now there are these heat accumulations along the entire path of the lightning and while it is streaming out it snatches up these other accumulations in its course. So it shines here, then over there, and so on. It takes all the other accumulations with it, and so it moves quite irregularly, and gets this seemingly zigzag formation. The lower it descends, the more it does move in a straight line. There are no longer these heat accumulations; they were higher up. The zigzag of the lightning comes about because it does not arise in one single spot, but from where the heat accumulations are strongest and then it carries the others along on its way. That's similar to when you're out walking and you meet an acquaintance and take him along with you, then the two of you pick up another one, and so on. So that's the story of the lightning. Now perhaps someone has another question? Question : Could we hear something about the origin of volcanoes? Dr. Steiner : That's a question that can't be answered quite so quickly. I will lead you to the point where you can find an answer to it. For if you read present-day books you can certainly find all sorts of ideas on the origin of volcanoes, but if you read older books, lying farther back in time, you find other views, and in still earlier books again other views. People have never inquired into the real origin of the earth and so views on volcanic phenomena have changed in the course of time. As a matter of fact, no one has been able to form a true idea of how these fire-erupting mountains originated. One must go very far back if one wants to understand this. Otherwise one cannot grasp how it happens that at certain spots on the earth fiery, molten masses come out. One will be able to form an idea of it only if one first of all rejects the dictum that the earth was once a balloon of gas, that it became more and more solid, and that there is fire in the interior which for some reason or other comes out here or there. That is a convenient explanation, but it brings us no nearer to an understanding. I'll tell you a little story. It's a long time ago, more than forty years, that we made a certain experiment in the laboratory of the geologist Hochstetter 26 Ferdinand Hochstetter, 1829–1884. Geographer and geologist of Vienna. He is long since dead. We produced a substance that contained — among other things — a little sulphur. We didn't put it all together, but this is what we did: here someone had a bit of the stuff, there someone had a bit, over there a bit, and so on, and we hurled, we shot the substance, all of us, toward a certain point. In this way there arose a little globe with all sorts of hills which was curiously like the moon seen through a telescope. Thus at that time in Hochstetter's geological laboratory an experiment was actually made by which a small moon was created. The surface of the moon as it is seen through a telescope had come out quite wonderfully. The whole thing looked just like a little moon. Above all one could realize that a cosmic body need not originate as gas, but can actually be flung together from all corners of the universe. Nor can we explain our earth in any other way than by its being thrown together out of the universe. Now in connection with this I want to explain something that is little spoken of today but which is nevertheless true. You hear it said everywhere, don't you, that the earth is a globe, has formed itself as a globe. Now actually it is not true that the earth is a globe! I will explain to you what the earth really Is. It is only fantasy that the earth is a globe. If we picture the earth's true form as a regular solid, we come to what in science is called a tetrahedron. I will draw it for you, naturally only in perspective. A tetrahedron looks like this. [see diagram] You see there are one, two, three triangles and here in front the fourth triangle. Can you picture it? It stands on a triangle, a triangle is underneath; and on that triangle, the base, are three other triangles; that forms a little pyramid. That is how we picture a tetrahedron. We must be clear that four triangles are joined to one another. We must stand it up on one triangle and the other three range upward like a pyramid. That is a perfectly regular solid. But now imagine that I round out the surfaces of these triangles a little, then it becomes a little different. Now it stands on what has become rounded but yet is still free. And the sides of the triangles which formerly were straight lines are now rounded too. Can you picture that? So now there arises a form which is actually a tetrahedron become round! And you see, our earth is actually such a rounded tetrahedron. This can even be established to the extent of finding the edges, the sides of this earth-tetrahedron. It is like this: suppose I draw the earth as it is often drawn, on a flat plane — then here would be North America, here South America, between them, Central America; over here we have Africa; here we have Europe. And there is Asia Minor, the Mediterranean, Greece, Italy, Spain, France, in fact Europe. Up here we have Scandinavia. There is England and over there is Asia. So we have Asia here, Africa here, Europe here and America here. Now the South Pole is here, and around the South Pole in particular there are many volcanic mountains. There is the North Pole. And now it is like this: we can trace a line that goes from Central America, from the Colima volcano 27 Active volcano in Mexico. down through the mountains that are called the Andes, down to the South Pole. It is rounded, but actually though rounded it is this edge of the earth. Then it goes on from the South Pole, goes over here past Africa to the volcanic mountains of the Caucasus. Then the same line comes over here, past Switzerland, over the Rhine and arrives here. If you follow this line, which looks like a triangle, you can compare it with this triangle here. And so, if you take this portion of the earth, it is the base of a tetrahedron. Just think, the base of a tetrahedron! Now: how do we come to that point there? Well, we have to go through to the other side of the earth. But I cannot draw that, I would have to make everything round. If I were to make it round, I would come to the point just over there in Japan. Thus if I mark the tetrahedron, here we have Central America, here the South Pole, here the Caucasus, and over there, which one cannot see, would be Japan. If we picture the earth in this way, we have it existing in the universe as a rounded-out pyramid that sends its apex over there to Japan and has its base here, containing Africa, South America and the whole Southern Ocean. So the earth stands in the universe, curiously, as such a rounded-out tetrahedron, as a kind of pyramid. That, gentlemen, is actually still the form of the earth! And now if you take these lines that I've drawn forming the tetrahedron, you find that most of the volcanic mountains are located along the lines. You have these frightful fire-belching mountains of which you've often heard, over in South America, in Chile and other places, then around the South Pole; and then you have the mighty ones in the Caucasus. And when you come over here, we don't have so many in our part of the continent, and yet it can be shown that the fiery mountains were once here, but are now extinct. For instance, when you drive along the stretch of road from northern Silesia to Breslau, you see a mountain standing conspicuously alone which is still feared by the people of today. If you examine its rocks, you find this dreaded mountain standing there is simply an extinct volcano. Similarly we have extinct volcanoes in many parts of Germany. And now let us go further. We have only marked out the base. Then we have lines everywhere that go over toward Japan. Yes, and you see, along all these lines one would always be able to find volcanoes on the earth's surface! You can see that if someone would sit down and draw the most important volcanoes, not on a flat surface, but so that they formed a solid, he would get this shape of the earth. Strangely, the volcanic mountains give us the lines that make the earth into a tetrahedron. So now, if you do not picture the earth as originally a ball of gas which then became condensed — that's the convenient opinion which people hold — if you explain it as having been formed by substance flung from all sides, then you must admit something else. If the earth is a tetrahedron, a regular solid, you'll have to explain it by imagining that a great master geometrician with plenty of knowledge had actually pushed the earth together from outside, along the lines which we still see today. Now imagine that I draw this tetrahedron, that I first fling this triangle in here from the periphery, then this triangle, then this, and then the one up above. I make it as small boys do: they cut out four triangles, tilt them together from outside and then glue them together to form a tetrahedron. And the earth too has originated like that, it has been flung together as triangles from outside. Now watch the boys when they paste the triangles together: where they join the sides they must be careful to apply the paste or the glue evenly. As to the earth, at the places I've shown you — South America, then here toward the Caucasus and over here through the Alps, and so on — there the earth was originally “cemented” together! But one finds when one examines the mountains that there it has, so to say, been joined rather badly; the sides don't quite fit together. If in particular we trace the mountains that go over here from the Caucasus through our Carpathians and Alps, we can show from the form of the mountains that they have not yet quite grown together. The earth actually consists of four pieces flung out of cosmic space and joined together, four pieces which then form a tetrahedron, and along the edges there are still, as it were, places not tightly closed. At these leaky places it is possible for the cosmic heat from the sun to get into the earth more than at other places. Now when the sun's power enters into these places beneath the surface of the earth, they become hotter and get soft — as is always the case when things, even metals, are consumed by fire — and they make an outlet for themselves in the direction of those places which are not properly fastened together. Then through the combined cosmic action of the sun and the “cemented” places of the earth there arise these regular volcanoes, the fire-belching mountains. However, volcanoes are found at other places too. Etna, for instance, and Vesuvius do not, it is true, lie along these edges; where they are, no such line passes through. In fact, the very volcanoes that are not located along the principal lines are especially instructive, for one can learn from them what causes the eruptions to occur. You see, it can always be shown that when things like fiery eruptions happen on the earth, they are connected with the constellations, the relation of the stars to the sun. An eruption can never occur unless at some particular place the sun is able to shine more strongly than usual because it is not covered by other stars. If it is covered by other stars as is generally the case, then the sunshine is normal. Starlight is everywhere; one must not think that the stars are not up there during the day, it is just that we don't see them. In the old city of Jena where people had time to do such things, where so many German philosophers taught, where Haeckel 28 Ernst Haeckel, 1834–1919. Biologist and philosopher. lived too, there is a deep cellar with a tower 29 The so-called “little Weigel house,” built in 1647, demolished in 1898 when Weigelstrasse was constructed. One of the “Seven Wonders of Jena”. It was 7 stories high and contained a circular staircase through which one could look up by day and see the stars shining in the heavens. above it, open at the top. If you go down into this cellar in the daytime and look up through the tower it is all dark inside, but you see up above the most beautiful starry sky. When it is daytime, and clear and bright outside, you can see the most beautiful star-lit heavens, with stars everywhere. But when the stars are in such a position that the sun can develop its heat to full strength, when they do not obstruct the sun, then the sun's forces of warmth shine down upon some special places. These are the places where, after the earth had been fastened together, later volcanoes arose. They came about later. On the other hand, those that lie along the edges of the tetrahedron are the original volcanoes. Now sometimes a man who has no place in the ordinary life of science discovers quite useful things in this direction. Perhaps you've heard, or at least the older ones among you, of a certain Falb? 30 Rudolf Falb, 1838–1903. See “Grundzüge der Theorie der Erdbeben und Vulkanausbrüche,” Graz 1870; “Gedanken und Studien über den Vulkanismus,” Graz 1875. He was neither an astronomer nor a geologist nor geographer nor natural scientist, but a former priest who had given up his calling — run away from it! He devoted himself especially to a study of star constellations and whether they really have an influence on the earth. He came to the opinion that constellations are connected with volcanoes, that when the influence of the sun is supported by the stars in a certain way, a volcano erupts. He maintained further that floods also come about for the same reason, because the situation attracts water: beneath, the heated mass; above, the water. And he contended still more: that in the mines the miners suffer most of all from so-called firedamp, that is, when the air in the mines catches fire of itself. He asked himself how this could happen. He decided that for this to happen the stars must aid the sun activity by giving it full play. Then the sun shines too strongly into the mine and the air in the mine ignites. Therefore, said Falb, if one knows about mining conditions, one ought to be able to say when firedamp may be expected in the course of the year. So he made a calendar and indicated when according to the constellations firedamp must occur somewhere. Those were the so-called critical days which he marked in his calendar. This calendar has been printed many times and Falb's critical days are still there. Now what was to be expected when these days were reached? Either the eruption of a volcano, or an earthquake (an earthquake is a subterranean wave, subterranean overheating), or a flood, or firedamp. Now, gentlemen, I was present once at an amusing little incident. You see, this Falb was very clever, he had been able to light upon these facts, but he was also very conceited, frightfully conceited. As you know, to be learned is no protection from vanity. And the following happened. About forty years ago I was at a lecture given by Falb. He went with great pompousness and a well-pleased expression up to the podium and began his address. He said: Yes, this very day the stars are in a position from which one can expect the occurrence of considerable firedamp. At that moment the door opened and a messenger from the “New Free Press” entered and handed him a telegram. Falb stood up there with his long patriarchal beard and said: “It must be something important if they send it to me straight to the lecture room!” He took out his knife and cut the telegram open and read: “A terrible firedamp has occurred!” Now you can imagine the publicity he got! Falb had just said, “Firedamp could happen today” and the messenger brings the telegram! “You see”, he said, “one gets proofs laid on the table!” Those were his words. But the whole thing smelled of show business. Falb knew quite well that firedamp was due: that was correct. But he went early in the day to the office of the “New Free Press” and left word that if such a telegram came, they should send it immediately to the lecture hall. That is one of the tricks to which bad speakers gladly resort — though usually in a milder form! I am quite pleased to relate the story so that audiences may be warned to be a little cautious and not simply to accept everything. The clientele that Falb had at that time rustled with silk dresses and tuxedos: it was a very distinguished one. But you should have seen how impressed they were by his performance! However strongly he might have voiced his opinion in words, the audience would never have been so convinced as they were by the entry at exactly the right moment of the messenger with the telegram. People would much rather be convinced through external events than by what can be put into words. So one can say that at certain places, namely, at the edges of this tetrahedron, the earth is actually not quite joined together. It is exposed therefore to the cosmic warmth of sun and stars, and the consequence is that those lines showing active volcanoes can be drawn. Outbursts of volcanic fire can, of course, occur at other spots too. But now does this imply that the interior of the earth must necessarily be molten fire? That is what is constantly maintained. Actually there is no other proof of it than the fact that it becomes warmer and warmer the deeper one sinks a shaft into the earth. Still one cannot go very deep. Moreover, with this increase of warmth as one descends into the earth there is likewise an increase of pressure. Whatever might be dissolved by the heat and become fluid is pressed together again by the pressure in the interior. If the earth were really molten inside then something else would not be in accord. One can consider, for instance, the weight of the earth. It is naturally hypothetical, since the earth floats freely in the universe and cannot be weighed. In order to weigh it, one would have to have it on top of another, gigantic earth, for if there is to be weight there must be something that attracts, that develops gravity. One could calculate how much it would weigh from how it attracts other bodies; in fact, such a calculation has been made. But if it were possible to weigh the earth one would find that it is far, far heavier than it would be if it were fluid inside. Goethe 31 Goethe fought vehemently the ideas on volcanoes held by Leopold von Buch and others, which were at that time becoming well-known, and which in his opinion lacked a central idea that could have illumined the individual facts. See his letter to Nees von Esenbeck, June 13, 1823. for this reason vigorously attacked the idea that the earth was molten fire inside. Now when one knows how the earth has been created, when one sees that it is really an incompletely fastened tetrahedron, there is then no need to picture it as molten inside and to suppose that at certain times, one wouldn't know why or wherefore, it must suddenly erupt fire — like a moody, hysterical person! If the earth were molten inside, one would have to fancy that it is actually a little crazy — like a man who is insane and at any sudden moment begins to rage; one doesn't know when the moments will occur. But this is not true of the earth. You can always show where the warmth comes from: that it comes from outside, that at this moment such powerful heating occurs, not at all very deep in the earth, that it forces an outlet for itself. So the fire when Vesuvius or any other volcano erupts originates only when the cosmic temperature has become fiery. It always takes a little time before the effect is seen. The particular constellation of stars, for instance, must first work upon the earth for a time. But that also follows from certain facts which I have already related here in quite a different connection. Suppose here is a part of the earth, the sun's rays strike upon it powerfully, and underneath, something develops that later seeks an outlet through an eruption or an earthquake. You see, what I drew first, the powerful warmth going down into the earth: people don't feel that because they don't pay attention. At most, a few people go about the place where as yet there is no hint of volcanic activity though the effects of the sun's activity are already present in the air, and these few have violent stomach aches, others have headaches, migraine, others find that their heart is disturbed. But people put up with all that in a vague fashion and take no notice. But the animals, as I have said in another connection, which have more delicate noses, finer organs in this respect, perceive what is happening and break away. The people, in spite of their stomach aches and headaches, don't know why the animals have become so restless and are running away. But after a few days the earthquake comes, or the volcanic eruption. The animals have fled because they already scented what was coming; human beings are so coarsely organized in this respect that they are not aware of the event until the whole business is on top of them. You can see from this that something is already happening a long time in advance before the final event takes place. What is happening is the streaming in of a bit of cosmic heat. But you can still put a question. You can say, this cosmic heat only heats the ground, and where the earth contains substances that are easily inflammable, there could of course be ignition ... but why should it all flare up instantly? Here I'll tell you something else. When one goes to Italy, to the places between Rome and Naples, particularly to the neighborhood of Naples, and to the islands and peninsulas on the coast, the guides always delight in showing one the following experiment. They take a piece of paper and light it and hold it so — in a moment smoke begins to come out of the earth! The earth smokes — why? Because the air becomes warm from the burning paper and so becomes lighter and expands. The warmth caused by the sun's heat streams out of the earth as smoke. This is very interesting to see. One lights a piece of paper and instantly the earth smokes at that spot. Now think of that enlarged to giant proportions: the sun heating not only the ground below, but also the air above — and you have Vesuvius. And when the latter has once established itself — well, then the beginning has been made, and the process continues in places that are especially favorable to it. It is interesting to realize that those very things that take place on earth irregularly are caused by the whole of cosmic space. Now I told you that when we flung out that sulphur substance during those days in the geological laboratory, we produced something that really looked like a little moon. And so when one observes the real moon, whom our little moon actually resembled, one gets the idea that it too has been flung together out of the universe. That is one idea one gets. The other idea is established through spiritual scientific investigation, namely, that the moon has actually been thrown together in the cosmos, mainly from the earth. What does that imply? Well, we did that too in the laboratory. First we threw together such a cosmic body out of substances. Then we attacked it from all sides, flinging material against it from outside, and lo and behold — it became more and more like a moon. And what has one got then? Well, one has the whole process. The main mass of the moon was cast out from the earth, and once it was there, fine matter from every part of space was flung against it. Fine matter is always present in the universe — it falls down in the meteors — it is always being flung out. And so one has the origin of the moon. These things are all connected. The development of science, you know, is sometimes remarkable. A monument stands today in Heilbronn — certainly it is rather dreadful as a work of art, but still it stands there and represents Julius Robert Mayer. 32 Julius Robert Mayer, 1814 – 1878. See “Beiträge zur Dynamik des Himmels,” Heilbronn, 1848. If you hear about him in science today, you learn that he was a pioneering genius through his researches in the 40's of the last century into the nature of the action of heat. Julius Robert Mayer was born in Heilbronn, practiced there as a doctor and went about without being particularly noticed. The scientists of the time paid no special attention to him. And although today he is described everywhere as a highly gifted pioneer in physics, at that time when he sat for his medical examination at Tubingen he failed it. If you made investigations, you would come on the remarkable fact that the majority of men who later became geniuses failed earlier in their examinations. And this was also the fate of Julius Robert Mayer. By the skin of his teeth, he managed to get through and become a doctor. But no one considered him remarkable during his lifetime — in fact, quite the contrary. He became so enthusiastic about his discovery that he talked of it everywhere. Then people said that his mind was wandering and put him in an asylum. His own generation put him in a madhouse while posterity looks upon him as a great genius and puts up a monument to him in his native town. It was Julius Robert Mayer who as a result of thought and investigation asked how it was that the sun which gives us so much heat does not become cold. He said to himself that it does not become as cold as it ought to become after always giving out warmth. He thought therefore that comets, an immense number of comets, must continually rush into the sun, hurled toward it from the universe. They are very fine, tenuous bodies, but they rush into it. It is true that they rush into the sun. The sun is very different from what the physicists of today imagine. They would be very astonished if they were to approach it: they would not find fiery gas but they would find something that causes any earthly substance to be sucked in and disappear. The sun is an empty space that exerts suction. It is not a globe of gas. It resembles a pearl in the universe, a suction globe with nothing in it that one looks for, but which continuously absorbs this mass of comets. The fine etheric structures of the universe, which are almost spiritual, are continuously being sucked in by the sun as nourishment. We still see today, therefore, this dashing against the sun. This should draw our attention, gentlemen, to something important. You see, when one arrives at the fact that the earth is really a tetrahedron, — well, if one has been obliged to study such forms and to note the number of sides and corners, one realizes that a certain knowledge of geometry is necessary to understand how to construct them. They don't come about so simply. Boys enjoy doing it, making these tetrahedrons, cubes, octahedrons, icosahedrons, dodecahedrons, the five regular solids. The boys like to put them together from sheets of cardboard, gluing the pieces together, but one needs geometry for it. Now the earth is formed in this very way out of the universe — formed from knowledge of geometry, in this sense, not formed through calculation, but with knowledge — for it is regular! You can infer from this that there is really geometry in the world, that everything is in accord with geometry. That is true. Real science shows us something that I have always stated, namely, that thoughts are spread out in the world, thoughts are everywhere and only those people don't find them who have none themselves! It is very praiseworthy, is it not, to be a free and independently thinking person? And yet it is slightly ridiculous to find the expression “freethinker” which has appeared in modern times, in the 19th century. Thinking independently: that is very good, but many in their freedom have misused this expression “freethinker.” And the men who have felt themselves to be the freest thinkers were just those who had the fewest thoughts, who simply repeated what other people had said. An Englishman made a delightful remark: he said, “Free thought does not mean that people have thoughts, but that they are free from thought” — a remark that has been much quoted. What is a freethinker? A freethinker is one who is free from thinking! Well, in science one must endeavor not to develop such freedom from thought or else nothing will be achieved. The actual form of the earth could long ago have been discovered — the fact that it is not a completely spherical cabbage-head, but that it has something of the shape of a tetrahedron! Knowledge of the earth is related to knowledge of man. Man imitates the universe in his own form. He copies the universe in his head, and so the head is round up above like the round universe. Below, where the jaws begin there are quite remarkable structures: they come from the triangular earth. In the jaw formation you find triangles everywhere, they come from below, from the triangular earth. With both, men copy the universe: they have more or less rounded heads above, and the earth-forces reach up from below. Look for it sometime. You will find in most varied ways man's tendency (and animals) to triangular formation in the jaws; this comes from the earth. Forces work upward from the earth and imprint the triangle into him. And the universe works downward from above and molds the rounded form. It is very interesting! That is knowledge that may be gained if one penetrates genuine science correctly. If one is free from thought, then one talks all sorts of nonsense. And in our time all sorts of nonsense is talked; that cannot lead to an understanding of what things are in their reality. So, gentlemen, let us speak further about this next Saturday.

The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars

Form and origin of the earth and moon. Volcanism

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA354/English/RSP1987/19240918p01.html

Dornach

18 Sep 1924

GA354-12

Rudolf Steiner : Good morning, gentlemen! Has an interesting question occurred to someone? Question : Sir, in reference to anthroposophy: what is it actually? What is its aim and its task in the world? Dr. Steiner : The questioner wants to know what anthroposophy is and what its significance is for humanity in general. I think he means its significance also for the working class. It is obviously difficult to speak briefly about these matters. Those who have been here for a considerable time will have become more and more convinced that anthroposophy is something that had to enter the evolution of humanity. Those who have not been here long will naturally have some difficulty and only gradually be able to understand. First and foremost, we must realize that people are little inclined to accept something new when it comes into the world. Remarkable examples could be given of how new scientific discoveries have been received. Think, for instance, of the extent to which everything today has been affected by the discovery of the power of steam and the invention of the steam engine. Think what the world would be like today if there were no steam engines in their many different forms! When the steam engine was first invented, a small boat, driven by steam, made its way up a river and was smashed up by the peasants because they said they were not going to put up with such a thing; it was such a silly, useless thing! Nor has it always been the peasants who behaved in that way. When an account of meteorites was given for the first time in a learned assembly in Paris, the lecturer was declared to be a fool. And I told you recently about Julius Robert Mayer, who is regarded today as a most illustrious man and a very great scholar: he was shut up in an asylum! The fate of the railroads has been particularly remarkable. As you know, they have not been in existence very long; they came into use for the first time in the 19th century. Before that, people had to travel by stagecoach. When it was proposed to build the first railroad between Berlin and Potsdam, the Director of Mallcoaches 33 Karl von Nagler, 1770–1846, Prussian statesman. Postmaster 1823 – 1846. Initiated our modern mail system. said that two went empty from Berlin to Potsdam every week, so he couldn't imagine what use railroads would be. It didn't occur to him that once the railroads were there, more people would travel by them than by the stagecoach. Even more interesting was the attitude of a body of medical men, 34 See R. Hagen, “Die erste deutsche Eisenbahn,” 1885. in the forties of the 19th century. When the railroad from Furth to Nuremberg was being built, these learned gentlemen declared that the work should be stopped, because the speed could very easily make a traveler ill by damaging his nerves. When the people refused to accept this ban, they were told that high plank walls must be erected on both sides of the tracks, in order to save the peasants from concussion of the brain when the trains passed! You can still read about this in delightful old documents. But despite all this opposition, the railroads made rapid headway. And anthroposophy, too, will make its way in the world, simply because it is a necessity, because nothing in the world can really be understood unless the spiritual foundation of things is recognized and known. Anthroposophy has not come for the purpose of opposing natural science: it has come just because natural science is there. But science with its elaborate instruments and remarkably clever experiments has discovered a mass of facts which — in the way it presents them — cannot really be understood. Nor will they ever be understood until it is realized that the spiritual world is behind everything and within everything. Let us take a very ordinary, practical matter: the eating of potatoes. Once upon a time there were no potatoes in Europe; they were introduced into Europe from foreign countries. It is maintained that Sir Francis Drake 35 Sir Francis Drake, 1540–1596. Famous British navigator. introduced potatoes, but that is not correct; they were introduced from a different source. Yet in Offenburg there is a memorial statue of Drake. During the war we were once obliged to stop at Offenburg, and I was curious to find out why this statue had been erected. I looked in the encyclopedia and there it was: A memorial statue of Drake stands in Offenburg because he was the man who first brought potatoes to Europe. But now what about potatoes? Suppose a scientist or a doctor were asked to say what effect potatoes have when they are eaten. As you know, potatoes have become a staple. In some places it is very difficult to dissuade the people from feeding almost exclusively on them. What does the modern scientist do when he tests potatoes for their nutritional value? He makes a laboratory investigation to find what substances are contained in the potato. He finds carbohydrates, which consist of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen in definite proportions; he also discovers that in the human body these substances are finally transformed into a kind of sugar. But he gets no further than that; nor can he do so. For think of this: if some animal is fed on milk, it may thrive. But if the milk is analyzed for its chemical components and if these chemical components are given to the animal instead of the milk, it will waste away for lack of nourishment. Why is that? It is because something is working in the milk in addition to the chemical components. And in the potato, too, there is something more than the mere chemical components: namely, the spiritual element. A spiritual element works everywhere, in all of nature. If in spiritual science (anthroposophy is, after all, only a name) genuine investigation is made into how the potato nourishes the human being, the potato is found to be something that is not completely digested by the digestive organs, but it passes into the head through the lymph glands, through the blood, in such a way that the head itself must also serve as a digestive organ for the potato. When potatoes are eaten in large quantities, the head becomes a kind of stomach and also digests. There is a very great difference between eating potatoes and, for instance, good, wholesome bread. When wholesome bread is eaten, the material part of the rye or wheat is digested properly and healthily in the digestive tract. And consequently only what is spiritual in the rye or wheat comes into the head, where it belongs. This kind of knowledge can never be derived from natural science. When things are genuinely investigated with respect to their spiritual quality, it becomes apparent that in this modern age humanity has been seriously injured by the excessive consumption of potatoes. Spiritual science finds that the eating of potatoes has played a very large part in the general deterioration of health in recent centuries. That is a crude example of how spiritual science can investigate the excellent results of natural science by taking them as the basis for its research. But there is something else as well. Every substance in the world can be examined to determine its spiritual quality. That is the only way in which real remedies for illnesses can be discovered. So spiritual science provides a very definite foundation for medicine as well. Spiritual science is only an extension of natural science; it is by no means something that refutes natural science. And besides that, we have in spiritual science something that investigates the spiritual in a scientific way and therefore does not ask people simply to believe things that are said. Matters of faith are thus replaced by scientific inquiry. It must also be said that in all provinces science acquires a certain amount of knowledge. Humanity cannot, of course, concern itself with scientific details, but every individual ought at least to know something about the essential things in the world. I'd like to tell you something that will show you how important it is to be able to recognize how the spirit actually works. In the year 1773, a rumor suddenly spread in Paris that a distinguished scholar 36 J.J.L. Lalande, 1732–1807. French astronomer. was to give a lecture in a certain learned Society, in which he would prove that a comet was about to collide with the earth and destroy it. In those days it was believed that such a thing could be proven exactly and scientifically. So at that time, in the 18th century, when superstition was still rife, a terrible panic spread through the whole of Paris. If we read the records of what happened in Paris at that time, we find that there were enormous numbers of miscarriages: the women gave birth prematurely out of sheer terror. People who were seriously ill, died; others became ill because of fright. There was terrific agitation throughout Paris because it became known that a learned man would announce in a lecture the coming collision of a comet with the earth and the consequent destruction of the earth. The police — who, as you know, are ever on the alert — forbade the lecture, so the people never discovered what the professor had intended to say. But there was anxiety nevertheless! You may now ask: Was the professor who wanted to give the lecture right or wrong? Well, the matter is not quite so simple as that. For since Copernicus propounded his new theory of the universe, everything has become a matter of calculation, and the calculations at that time led to the following conclusion: The sun is taken to be the center of the universe; then come Mercury, Venus, Moon, Earth, and Mars, then the planetoids, then Jupiter, then Saturn. And now the comets and their orbits. And now think of it: the earth is circling and men can calculate when it will reach a certain point where the comet will be approaching it. Bang! — according to the calculations-they will collide. And at that time, gentlemen, they would actually have collided — only the comet was so small that it dissolved in the air! Not exactly in the air over Paris, but somewhere else. The calculation was therefore quite correct, but there was no ground for anxiety. In the year 1832 there was an even stranger story. For then it was calculated that a comet — it was the Biela comet — was about to cross the earth's orbit and would pass quite near to the earth. This comet was not such a midget as the other, and was likely to be more dangerous. But the calculation turned out happily, for it showed that when the comet would be passing the earth it would still be 13,000,000 miles away — and that's at least a tiny bit away, don't you think? So there was no need to fear that the earth would be demolished. But even so, the people were very alarmed at the time, because heavenly bodies are mutually attracted to each other, and it had to be expected that the comet would cause great convulsions in the oceans and seas through the force of gravity, and so on. Nothing very special happened-there was, it is true, a general unrest in nature, but nothing of particular interest. The comet was 13,000,000 miles away — the sun is thirteen times farther away — so no harm was done to the earth at that time. In 1872, when I was a boy living with my parents at a small railroad station, we were always reading in the papers: “The world is going to be destroyed!” — for the comet was due to appear again. Certain comets always do return, and this one, on its return, would now be nearer to the earth and therefore more dangerous. This remarkable comet had already come in 1845/46 and again in 1852 — but it had then split in two! Each half had become more rarefied in consequence of the split. And what was there to be seen in 1872? Something like a gleaming rain of shooting stars, a great number of shooting stars! The comet had indeed come nearer but it had split and was throwing off rarefied matter that came down like shining rain. Everyone could see it, for when such a tremendous array of shooting stars occurs in the night, they can be seen coming down from the sky. And some people who saw this happening believed that the Day of judgment had come. Again there was great alarm. However, the shooting stars dissolved in the atmosphere. Now think of this: If the comet had remained whole, our earth would have suffered badly in the year 1872. As I said, papers reached our station announcing the imminent destruction of the earth. The astronomers had calculated the time. According to scientific reckoning this was quite correct. And it really would not do to put on record how many people at that time paid large fees to their priests — to be safely absolved from their sins. In 1773 too, in Paris, the father-confessors had made a great deal of money because the people wanted to be absolved from their sins immediately! There was an astronomer called Littrow 37 Joseph Johann Littrow, 1781–1840, Über den gefürchteten Kometen des Jahres 1832 and über Kometen überhaupt , Wien, 1832. who made a noteworthy calculation about what would have happened if things had remained as they were in the year 1832, that is, if the comet had not split up as it subsequently did. In the 19th century it was still thirteen million miles away from the earth, but every time it came it came closer. Littrow reckoned quite correctly that in September 1872 there would be the danger of the comet colliding with the earth. If the comet had then reached the point which as a matter of fact it did not actually reach in that year until November 27th, it would not just have been a matter of meteor showers but it would have been a serious matter. Such things do indeed happen. Littrow calculated that in 1933 (we are now in 1924), if the comet had remained as it still was in the 18th century, a collision would be inevitable and the earth would be demolished. The calculation was correct to the breadth of a hair. But the comet had not remained as it was! And so already at that time people could say: The comet has been merciful, for if it were still fiery, in 1933 it would be striking the earth in such a way that all the seas would surge from the equator to the North Pole and the whole earth would perish. Yes, the comet split up and it threw off the substance that had become too heavy for it, in the form of meteor stones that are not harmful. So you see, we are living at a time when we can say: If that comet had not been merciful, none of us would be sitting here today! That is a fact. What has finally happened is this: The comet no longer appears as a comet, but on those dates when in the ordinary course of events it would have appeared, there are always showers of meteors. Gradually through the centuries it is throwing off its entire substance. Soon it will no longer be visible because it will have given up its substance to the universe and to the earth. But now I want to show you the other side of this matter. It is obvious that in the process of human evolution man's spiritual faculties are constantly changing. Those who do not believe this simply do not understand the spiritual evolution of mankind. For think of it: All our modern discoveries would have been made long ago if men had possessed the same spiritual faculties that they possess today. In ancient times their spiritual faculties were not less, but they were different. I have explained this to you in the most various ways, also in answer to questions on the subject. And now to return to the comets. The comet of which I've been speaking is not the only one that was merciful enough to split up and dissolve in cosmic space at the right time. There is a large number of other comets that have done the same. A great deal of superstition has always been connected with the subject of comets. Anthroposophy approaches the matter in an absolutely scientific way. But now, what will happen if we go on developing in the same direction as we are developing today? Mankind is now so dreadfully clever! Just compare a man of today with all his cleverness, with all that he has learnt in school, with someone living in the 12th or 13th century, when very, very few people could write. Think of this: there is a beautiful poem by Wolfram von Eschenbach, 38 Wolfram von Eschenbach, 1170–1220, “Parzival,” completed in 1210. Richard Wagner, 1813 – 1883, “Parsifal, a sacred dramatic festival” appeared as poem in 1877; the opera was finished in 1882. who was a nobleman of the 13th century. He composed the poem, but he could not write, so he was obliged to call in a priest to whom he dictated it. And that poem was the “Parzival” from which Wagner composed his opera. So you see, in those days people had different faculties. We need to go no further back than the 12th or 13th century. At that time a nobleman could not write. Wolfram von Eschenbach could read but not write. These faculties of ours do not come to us ready-made; they are developed. And if we continue our present way of living, when between the ages of seven and fourteen we are crammed with scientific knowledge of every kind – there is, of course, a good side to this as well — we'll gradually all suffer from something that was previously quite unknown and that is now so prevalent. We'll all suffer from what you call “nerves”, from nervous illnesses. This shows you that those wise doctors in the forties of the last century who believed so “stupidly” that people would not be able to live if railroads were built, were — from the knowledge they had — not so stupid after all! For everything they knew at that time convinced them that if a man travels in trains, he will eventually become utterly incapable of work, lose his memory, exhaust his nerves and become shaky and abnormally restless. The science of their day justified them in their conviction. Moreover, what they said was correct, absolutely correct. But there is one thing they left out of account. People have indeed become more nervous. You yourselves, when you get home from work, are not quite like the people of the thirties and forties of the last century who would simply put on their nightcaps in the evening and be snug and cozy without any trace of “nerves”. The world has certainly changed in this respect. But what was it that those Nuremberg doctors could not know at that time? They could not know that while they were learning all these things from their science, the comet was already in the process of dissolving. And what has the comet done? It gives us the meteors, the fine meteor rain. Instead of colliding with the earth and breaking people's heads it is giving all its substance away, and this substance, every piece of it, is in the earth. Every few years the comet gives something to the earth. And people who want to live by science alone and who will not admit that the earth receives something from the cosmos are every bit as stupid as someone who would say that when a person eats a piece of bread, it is not in him. Obviously, what the comet gives us is in the earth, but science takes no notice of it. Where, then, is it to be found? It goes into the air, is passed from the air into the water, from the water into the roots of the plants, from the roots of the plant into the food on our tables. From there it passes into our bodies. We eat what the comet has been giving us for centuries! This, however, has long been spiritualized. Instead of the comet putting an end to the earth in 1933, its substance has long been in the earth as a means of earthly nourishment, and it is a remedy, a cosmic remedy: it alleviates nervous troubles in human beings. There, you see, you have a little piece of history. The comets appear out there in the heavens, and after a time they find their way into us out of the earth. By that time their substance has become spiritualized. Such things play a real part in human life. History can no longer be presented as it is still being presented by those who want to be philistines; account must now be taken of what is going on in the world spiritually. That is possible only when light is shed upon the world through anthroposophy. You may say: Oh, well, life will go on just the same. All that comet business shows that it doesn't matter if we're stupid, and there is no need for us to bother about it! Although people want to be enlightened, in practice they are dreadfully fatalistic, thinking that everything in the world will go on “as it is meant to.” Well, perhaps — but there is also the opportunity either to take up a true science or to ignore it. You recall, gentlemen, that for years I gave lectures to workers. 39 Rudolf Steiner taught in the Arbeiterbildungschule, a workmen's college, Berlin, 1899 – 1904. See The Course of My Life chap. 28, Dornach, 1962. Anthroposophic Press, Hudson. And I often called attention to a splendid lecture given by Lassalle 40 Ferdinand Lassalle, 1825–1864. Founder of Socialism in Germany. in 1863 entitled “Science and the Worker”. I don't know whether there is still any widespread knowledge of it, but in the meantime I've grown older and I've witnessed the rise of the labor movement. From my parents' house in the early seventies of the last century I could look out the window and watch the first Social Democrats — they still wore big hats, “democratic hats” — marching out into the woods where they held their meetings. So I've seen all stages in the development of the movement. At that time Lassalle was still greatly venerated; wherever workers' meetings took place, busts of him were displayed. Today these things have been more or less forgotten, for fifty years have elapsed since then. I was ten or eleven years old at the time, but I was already paying attention to what was happening. Lassalle had given this lecture, Science and the Worker, about eight or nine years earlier. In it he had stressed that science is absolutely crucial for the solution of the whole labor problem and that out of science the workers have developed a social outlook that has occurred to no one else. In a certain sense this was an extremely important thing that he said. But now think what has happened since that time. I ask you: Are you satisfied? Can you be satisfied with the way the labor problem has developed, with the form it has taken? Are there not many widespread complaints about the way the workers are tyrannized by their labor unions and so forth? These things are in the air and the worker is aware of them. But what he does not perceive is where these conditions come from. Where do they come from? The answer is that in very fact the solution of the labor problem cannot be found without science. Formerly, these problems were solved through religion and the like; today they must be dealt with by means of science. But this requires genuinely scientific thinking — which was nowhere to be found because attention was invariably riveted upon matter, and science itself was sheer materialism. Nothing that is contained in our social problems will ever be solved until science becomes spiritual again. This can happen only when science is prepared to look for the spiritual element in every single thing — whether it be a potato or a comet. For spiritual knowledge alone enables us to investigate the true connections of things. The true connections of social problems, too, can only be discovered through spiritual knowledge. These connections must be fully understood; and when they are, it will be found that the things which have been brought into prominence through Marxism, for example, were extremely well-meant, but they were based upon an erroneous science. I will show you in what respect this was the case. Nothing that is based on an erroneous science can really prosper. Marx's arguments and calculations are uncommonly astute, uncommonly clever, and cannot be denied, because the principles upon which he bases them are from a science that is purely materialistic. Everything tallies, just as it tallied for the astronomers who calculated that the comet would collide with the earth in 1773, but then actually the comet had dissolved to such an extent that no harm was done to the earth! (This was the earlier, not the later comet.) The conclusions reached by Marx are based upon an equally meticulous but equally incomplete science. One of his calculations was the following. He said: When a man is working, he uses up inner forces. The forces are given up to his work and in the evening he is fatigued. During the day he has used up a definite quantity of force or energy. Naturally, the worker needs something that enables his forces to be restored. It can be calculated with exactitude how much pay will make it possible for the worker to restore his forces. Yes, but along these lines expounded by Marx, does one really get at the right and proper wage for labor? The question is: Does one get at it in that way? Obviously, up to now no great progress has been made in this direction, but the fact is that it simply cannot be got at in that way — because although the science itself is admirable, it is untrue. Think of someone who does no work the whole day long, someone who has private wealth. He can go for walks, or he can move from one armchair to another — and from morning till night he's using up his forces just the same. I've noticed at workers' concerts that those who had been working all day were much less fatigued than the well-to-do people who had done nothing at all. The latter kept yawning, while the others were bright and lively. You see, there is an error in the calculation. The forces used up inwardly in our organism are not the ones we use in our outer work or labor. That is why the calculation cannot be based on scientific foundations. The whole matter must be approached in a different way; it must be based upon the intrinsic dignity of man, upon his rights as a human being, and so forth. The same applies in many other spheres. And the consequence is that science, as it has presented itself up to the present day, is responsible for dreadful confusion of thought, for ignorance in the social field. Spiritual science will show you what nutritive value there is in potatoes, in cabbage, in salt, and so on. And then you can get at what the human being needs in order to be healthy and to thrive. You can only get at this through spiritual science, only on the basis of knowledge that comes from spiritual science. Then you can proceed to the study of social problems. And then the labor problem will look quite different. It will finally be given a sounder basis, because everything in connection with it will be looked at from a spiritual point of view. People today simply don't understand how things are connected in this world; they believe everything goes on just as it is. But that is not true. People must understand how things in the world are constantly changing. And the greatest misfortune, one might say, is that in earlier times humanity was superstitious and now it is scientific! For little by little, superstition has crept into science itself. Today we have a natural science that is full of superstitions. People believe that when their stomach is full of potatoes, they have had a nourishing meal. The truth is that the health of their head is impaired, because the head itself then has to become a digestive organ. Thus all problems should be dealt with in such a way that the spiritual aspect is not ignored as it has been for a long time now. It should be included in every consideration. In the sixties and seventies of the last century, people said: The worker must have science! — and rightly so. But it must be a true science. In those days it was not in existence. Now it is to be found in spiritual science, which has the name, anthroposophy. Anthroposophy refuses to put the cart before the horse as was done formerly. It will put spirit before matter, where it belongs. Then people will discover how things really are. And they will find proper educational methods. There will be a pedagogy that educates children as they really should be educated. Upon that, very much, very much indeed depends. And then human beings will find their right place in society. In a single hour, naturally, I can give no more than hints; but we have arranged these lectures so that you could indicate by your questions what you want me to talk about. And so perhaps I should speak further on today's subject in the next session. Today I could only lay the foundation. But at least you have been able to glean something as to the real aim of spiritual science. So we'll meet again next Wednesday.

The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars

The nature and task of anthroposophy. Biela's comet

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA354/English/RSP1987/19240920p01.html

Dornach

20 Sep 1924

GA354-13

Rudolf Steiner : Good morning, gentlemen! I would like to add a few words to what we were considering last time, and then perhaps someone will have a new question. The question that was asked concerning man's origin can be rightly understood and answered only by looking back at the whole evolution of humanity. The assertion that men were originally animal-like, that they had an animal-like intelligence, and so forth, is nothing but a science fairy tale. It is contradicted by what has been found from the earliest historical times, and what — even though poetic in form — indicates the existence of great wisdom among the human beings who lived during those primeval earth conditions. At that time men did not feel inequality among themselves as they feel it today. The feeling of inequality always comes to the fore in an epoch when men have more or less lost real knowledge. Only think how at a certain period in ancient Egypt slavery was widespread. But slavery was not always there; it developed at a time when men had lost real knowledge of the world, had lost real science, and no longer knew what slavery signified. And if you think intelligently you will certainly ask yourselves: Why is it that, for instance, a labor movement had to arise with such forcefulness? Naturally it was bound to arise because conditions made it necessary, because people had come to feel that things could not go on as they were, and they wanted to call attention to how the conditions should be bettered. What makes the labor problem such a burning question is the fact that industry and all the various discoveries and inventions have gone in one particular direction. Before the spread of industry, need was not so oppressive. Why is it, then, that the advent of industry has brought this burden in its train? As every reasonable person will admit, those few human beings who do not live in actual need — shall we say, the capitalists, as they are usually called — do not create this need deliberately for the pure joy of it. Naturally, they would prefer the needs of all human beings to be satisfied. Obviously, that must be taken into account. But then this other question arises: Why is it that the few who reach leading positions lack the capacity to change conditions so that the needs of the masses will be satisfied? It is always the few leaders in the trade unions upon whom all the others depend. As things have developed, it is quite natural that it is always the few who lead, but they lack clear insight. And the masses of workers feel that these few do not themselves know what should be done. It has become obvious, especially just recently, that these few do not know what they should be doing. So one must say: Something is quite obviously lacking. And from the view of spiritual science, the thing lacking is knowledge of the spiritual world. This knowledge would confirm that it is absolutely untrue to say that at the beginning of their evolution human beings were unintelligent, dull, and that now they are enlightened. That is the general opinion today and it is simply not true. At the beginning of their existence on the earth, human beings possessed a knowledge not only of what was on the earth but also of the stars in the heavens. The reason why today this knowledge has degenerated into superstition — I have often spoken of this — is that, as time went on, these things were no longer investigated and hence came to be misunderstood. Originally there was a widespread knowledge of the stars; today the only knowledge of the stars that exists is one that makes calculations about them. But it is unable to penetrate to their spiritual reality. If a being living on Mars were to know only as much about the earth as our ordinary consciousness, our ordinary science, knows about Mars, that Mars being would believe that there is not a single soul on the earth — whereas actually there are fifteen to twenty hundred million souls on the earth! It is the same with the ideas people hold now about the stars; actually the stars are full of souls — only the souls are different. Of course you may say: But one can't see into the world of stars, so one can't know or observe the conditions there. That is an enormous error! Why can a man standing here see the piano over there? Because his eyes are so organized that he is able to see it. His eyes are not over there in the piano. In exactly the same way — as spiritual science, or anthroposophy, shows — if a human being not only develops from childhood to the level to which our modern education takes him, but develops further than that, he will in very truth be able to perceive what is spiritual in the stars, just as humanity originally perceived it. And then he will know that the stars have an influence upon the human being, each star a different influence. If, for example, it can be shown that Mars has an influence upon the development of grubs into cockchafer — it can also be shown that all the stars have an influence upon man's spiritual life. They have it indeed! But this knowledge of the stars has entirely disappeared — and what has come in its place? In earlier times, when men looked at the moon, they knew that from the moon come the forces for all propagation on the earth. No being would have offspring if the moon did not send to earth the forces of propagation. No being or creature would grow if the forces of growth did not come from the sun. No human being would be able to think if the forces of thinking did not come from Saturn. But all that people know today is the speed at which Saturn moves, the speed at which the moon moves, and whether there are a few extinct volcanoes on the moon. They know nothing more and don't want to know anything more. They simply find out by calculation what they want to know about the stars. But now let us turn from the world of stars to the world of men. Industry has come on the scene. In the age when all people could do about the stars was to make calculations, they began to do the same in the domain of industry. They did nothing but reckon and calculate, with the result that they forgot man altogether. They treated the human being himself as if he were part of a machine. And so the conditions have come about that prevail today. Conditions will never be satisfactory if people merely calculate what kind of conditions ought to prevail on the earth; they will have to know something beside that. That is the point. But then it must be admitted that human knowledge has deteriorated to a terrible extent in the very age that claims to be “enlightened.” I told you that at a recent Farmers' Conference it was the unanimous opinion that all agricultural products have been deteriorating for decades. The reason for this deterioration is that, with the exception of certain peasants who have instinctively hung on to bits of the earlier knowledge, nothing is really known about the way to take care of a farm. But how is such knowledge acquired? Certainly it can never be acquired by calculation, knowing that the moon will be a full moon again in twenty-eight days, but only by knowing, for instance, how the moon forces work in the fruition of grain, and so forth. This knowledge has been entirely forgotten. People don't even know what goes on in the soil in their fields. And they know still less what is going on in the world of men. Social science has produced nothing more than series after series of calculations. Capital, working hours, wages, are nothing but figures that have been calculated. And calculating does not come to grips with human life, or indeed with any life at all. The curse of the modern age is that everything merely is to be calculated. Instead of things being merely calculated, they should be studied and observed as they actually are, and this is only possible through first gaining knowledge of the stars. Today, the moment people hear the phrase, “knowledge of the stars,” they say immediately: That's idiotic! We've known for a long time that the stars have no influence whatever. But to assert that the stars have no influence upon what is happening on the earth, that, gentlemen, is the real idiocy! And the consequence is that there is no real knowledge left. That is a concrete fact. Take capital, for instance: It can be expressed in figures, it can be counted — and what is the result? If capital is merely a matter of calculation, it is of no importance who owns the capital, whether a single individual or everyone in common. For the same results will invariably ensue. Not until we again take hold of life so that our concern centers upon the human being as the prime reality, not until then will there be a social science capable of doing anything effective, a social science capable of really achieving something. That is why I also like to say this: Let us see what will come about through anthroposophy. It is, of course, still only in its beginning, and naturally it appears to be similar in many respects to the other science. But it will develop gradually into a complete knowledge of the human being. In the domain of education, for instance, it has already brought into being the Waldorf School. Not until this stage of knowledge has been reached will anthroposophical science be able to be applied effectively to social problems. Today you can only realize that the world's current knowledge is incapable of really effective intervention in life; it comes to a standstill everywhere. That is what I wanted to add. Are you satisfied so far? (Yes, yes!) Of course, a great deal could still be said, but there will be other opportunities for considering many aspects of the subject. So now, has someone else, perhaps, thought of a question? Question : Can anything be known about man's origin? Where he comes from? Dr. Steiner : That is a question about which many of you who have been here for some time have heard a great deal from me. Those of you who have come recently are naturally interested in such questions, so those who have already heard my answers will perhaps be willing to hear them again. When we look at the human being as he moves about on the earth, we see his body first and foremost. We also notice that he thinks and feels. If we look at a chair, no matter how long we wait, it doesn't begin to move about — because it cannot exercise will. We perceive that the human being wills. But speaking generally it can be said that we really see only the body. And it is very easy to form the opinion that this body constitutes the whole of man. Moreover, if this is believed, many arguments in proof of it can be found. (You see, in anthroposophy other people's opinions cannot be treated lightly. All points of view must be seriously considered.) And so it can be pointed out, for instance, that people can lose their memory if they take poison and are not immediately killed by it. The implication is that the body is a machine and everything depends upon the running of the machine. If the blood vessels burst in a man's brain and the blood presses on the nerves, such a man may lose not only his memory but his whole intelligence. So it can be said that everything is dependent upon the body. But that kind of thinking does not hold water if one really examines it thoroughly. It simply does not hold water. If it did, we could say that man thinks with his brain. But what is actually going on in the brain when a man thinks? Well, a real investigation of the human body shows that it is absolutely incorrect to say that when a man is thinking, something constructive is going on in his brain. On the contrary, something is always being destroyed, demolished, when he is thinking. Substances in the brain are being broken down, destroyed. Death on a small scale is perpetually taking place there. The final death that happens once and for all means that the whole body is destroyed; but what happens all at once in the entire body when a man dies is also taking place throughout the body during life, in a piecemeal process. Man excretes not only through his organs of excretion, the urine, feces, sweat, but in other ways as well. Just think what your head would look like if you never had your hair cut! Something is excreted there, too. And think of the claws you'd have if you never cut your nails! But not only that: man is all the time sloughing off his skin — he just doesn't notice it. Man is casting off substance all the time. In the case of the urine and feces the process is not very significant, because for the most part these simply contain what has been eaten, material that has not gone into the whole body, whereas what is excreted in the nails has gone through the whole body. Suppose you take your scissors and cut a fingernail. What you now cut away, you took in, you ate seven or eight years ago. What you ate went into the blood and nerves and passed through the whole body. It needed seven or eight years to do that. Now you cut it away. Just think of the body you have today, the body in which you are sitting there. If you had sat there seven or eight years ago, it would have been in quite another body! The body you had then has been cast away, has been sweated away, has been cut away with the nails, cut away with the hair. The entire body as it once was, has gone — with the exception of the bones and the like — and within a period of seven or eight years has been entirely renewed. So now we must ask ourselves: Does thinking originate from the constant upbuilding of the body or from the constant tearing-down of the body? That is an important question. If you have something in your body that brings about too much upbuilding — shall I say, if you drink one tiny glass too much, or not just one — most people can manage that — but if you drink enough more so that you know you're “loaded” — what happens then, gentlemen? The blood becomes very active and a terribly rapid process of upbuilding takes place. When that happens, when the blood becomes too tumultuous, a man loses consciousness. Thinking is not the result of an upbuilding process in the brain, but of a process of small, piecemeal destruction. If no tearing-down process took place in the human body, the human being would simply not be able to think. So the fact is that thinking does not come from our building up the body but from our continual killing of it bit by bit. That is why we have to sleep, because we don't do any thinking then. What is continually being demolished through our thinking is quickly restored in sleep. So waking and sleeping show us that while we are thinking, death is always taking place in the body on a small scale. But now picture for a moment not a man's body, but his clothing. If you take off all your clothes you are not, it is true, fit for the drawing room, but you are still there, and you can put on different clothes. That is what man does through the whole of his earthly life. Every seven or eight years he puts on a new body and discards the other. With animals there is a clear illustration of this: if you were to collect all the skins that a snake sloughs off every year, you would find that after a certain number of years it has discarded not only the skin but the whole of its body. In our case, of course, this is not so noticeable! And what about the birds? They moult. What are they doing when they moult? They're discarding part of their body; and after a period of a few years they've discarded it all, with the exception of the bones. What is it that remained? You yourself are sitting there today although you have nothing at all of the body you had some eight years ago. And yet there you are, sitting here. You created a new body for yourself. The soul, gentlemen, sits there. The spirit and soul sit there. The spirit and soul work on the body, building it up all the time. If you go for a walk and find a large pile of stones somewhere, you know that a house is going to be built; you will certainly not assume that the stones will suddenly have feet and will place themselves very neatly one above the other and build themselves into a house! Well, just as little do substances assemble to form themselves into our body. We receive our first body from our father and mother; but this body is thrown off entirely, and after seven or eight years we have a new one. We do not get this one from our parents; we ourselves have to build it up. Where does it come from? The body we had during the first years of life came from our parents; we could not have had a body without them. But what builds up the second body comes from the spiritual world. I do not mean the substance, but the active principle, the essential being, that is what comes out of the spiritual world. So we can say: When the human being is born, the body he has for the first seven or eight years of his life comes from his father and mother, but the soul and spiritual entity come from the spiritual world. And every seven or eight years the human being exchanges his body but retains all of himself that is spiritual. After a certain time the body is worn out and what earlier came into it as spirit and soul goes back again into the spiritual world. Man comes from the spiritual world and returns to the spiritual world. You can see, this is also something that has been entirely forgotten — simply because today people have become thoughtless and do not penetrate to the reality of things. Once they have seen how the body is renewed over and over again, they will realize that the force which brings about the renewal is a soul force working within the body. And now, gentlemen, what do you eat? Let us consider the different foodstuffs a human being eats. The simplest substance of all is protein. Not only in eggs but in the greatest variety of foodstuffs, in plants too, there is protein. Then man eats fat; he eats what are called carbohydrates — in potatoes, for instance — and he eats minerals. All other substances are composite substances; man eats them; he takes them into himself. They come from the earth; they are entirely dependent upon the earth. Everything we take in through the mouth is entirely dependent upon the earth. But now we don't take things in only through the mouth; we also breathe, and through our breathing we take in substances from the air. Usually this process is described very simply by saying: Man breathes in oxygen and breathes out carbon dioxide — as if he did nothing but breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out! But that is not the whole story. Very fine, rarefied substances are contained in the air we breathe. And we live not only on what we eat but also on these nourishing substances from the air. If we did nothing but eat, we would be obliged to replace our body very often, for what we eat is very rapidly transformed in the body. Only think how troublesome it is for someone when he does not get rid of what ought to be excreted within about twenty-four hours. The food that is eaten and then excreted passes through a rapid process. If we lived only on what we eat, we certainly wouldn't need seven or eight years to replace our body. It is because we take in very delicate, rarefied nourishment through the air, which is a slow process, that the replacement takes seven or eight years. It is very important to know that man receives nourishment from the air. The food he eats is used, for example, for the constant renewing of his head. But the nourishment he needs in order, shall we say, to have fingernails does not come from what he eats but from the substances he draws from the air. And so we are nourished through eating and through breathing. But now the really important fact is that when we take in nourishment from the cosmos through our breathing, we take in not only substance, but we take in at the same time the element of soul. The substance is in such a fine, rarefied state that the soul is able to live in it everywhere. So we may say: Man takes in bodily substance through his food; through his breathing he takes in, he lives with a soul element. But it is not the case that with every inhalation we take a piece of soul into ourselves and then with every exhalation breathe out a piece of soul again. In that event we would always be discarding the soul. No — it is like this: with our very first breath we take the soul into ourselves, and it is then the soul that brings about the breathing in us. And with our very last breath we set the soul free so that it can go back to the spiritual world. And now that we know these things, we can make some calculations. Most of you will already know what follows, but it may still surprise you. If you investigate, you will find that a human being draws 18 breaths a minute. Now reckon how many breaths he draws in a day: 18 breaths a minute, 18 x 60 = 1080 breaths an hour; in 24 hours, 24 x 1080 = 25,920 breaths a day. And now let us calculate — we can do so approximately — how many days a human being lives on the earth. For the sake of simplicity let us take 72 years as the average length of human life, and 360 days in a year. 72 years X 360 days = 25,920 days in a man's life. And that is the number of breaths a man draws in a day! So we can say, the human being lives as many days in his life as he draws breaths in one day. Now we know there are one-day flies — and there could also conceivably be 1/18-of-a-minute beings! (For the length of time is not the essential point.) So if the human being were to die every time he breathes we could say: He breathes the soul in and out again with every breath. Yet he remains — remains alive for 25,920 days. So now let us reckon those 72 years as a single breath. As I said before, with his first breath the human being breathes his soul in and with his last breath he breathes it out again. Assuming now that he lives an average of 72 years, we can say: This inbreathing and outbreathing of the soul lasts for a period of 72 years. Taking this period to be one cosmic day, we would again have to multiply 72 X 360 to get a cosmic year: 25,920! If we take the life of a human being as one cosmic day, we get the cosmic year: 25,920 cosmic days! But this number has still another meaning. On the 21st of March, the day of the beginning of Spring, the sun rises at the present time in the constellation of Pisces. But it rises only once at that exact point. The point at which it rises shifts all the time. About five hundred years ago it did not rise in Pisces (the Fishes) but in Aries (the Ram), and earlier still in Taurus (the Bull). So the sun makes a circle round the whole zodiac, finally getting back to Pisces. At a definite time it will rise again at exactly the same point, having made a complete circuit. How long does the sun need for this? It needs 25,920 years to go around and return to the same point at which it will rise at the beginning of Spring. When we have breathed 25,920 times, we have completed one day. Our soul remains while the breaths change. When we have completed 25,920 days, we have awakened as often as we have slept. In sleep, as we know, we do not think, we do not move, we are inactive. During sleep our spirit and soul have gone off to the spiritual world for a few hours; at waking we get them back again. Just as we let the breath go out and come back 18 times a minute, so in a day we let the soul leave once and return. Sleeping and waking, you see, are simply more lengthy breaths. We do short breathing 18 times a minute. The longer breathing is our sleeping and waking. And the longest breathing is our breathing in the soul and spirit when we are born and breathing it out again when we die. But there is still the very longest breathing of all; for we go with the sun as it completes its circuit of 25,920 years; we go into the world of the stars. When we think of the soul, gentlemen, at that very moment we leave the earth and go to the world of the stars. So — this is just a beginning of the foundation for an answer to the question which the gentleman asked. Just think what order and regularity prevail in the universe if again and again we get the number 25,920! Man's breathing is a living expression of the course of the sun. That is a fact of tremendous significance. So — I have begun to answer the question. I will continue next Saturday at 9 o'clock. 41 This scheduled lecture did not take place. The lecture of September 24, 1924, concluding this volume was the last Rudolf Steiner was able to give to the workmen. His illness began within a few days.

The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars

How did man originate? Earth life and star wisdom

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA354/English/RSP1987/19240924p01.html

Dornach

24 Sep 1924

GA354-14