The Cycle of the Year as Breathing Process of the Earth. Lecture 3 of 5.
Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland, April 2, 1923:
We should not
underestimate the significance it once held for mankind to focus the whole
attention during the year on a festival-time. Although in our time the
celebration of religious festivals is largely a matter of habit, it was not
always so. There were times when people united their consciousness with the
course of the year; when, let us say, at the beginning of the year they felt
themselves standing within the course of time in such a way that they said to
themselves: “There is such and such a degree of cold or warmth now; there are
certain relationships among the other weather conditions, certain relationships
also between the growth or non-growth in plants or animals.” — People
experienced along with Nature the gradual changes and metamorphoses she went
through. But they shared this experience with Nature in such a way — when their
consciousness was united with the natural phenomena — that they oriented this
consciousness toward a specific festival. Let us say, at the beginning of the
year, through the various feeling perceptions associated with the passing of
winter, the consciousness was directed toward the Easter time, or in the fall,
with the fading away of life, toward Christmas. Then men's souls were filled
with feelings which found expression in the way they related themselves to what
the festivals meant to them.
Thus people
partook in the course of the year, and this participation meant for the most
part permeating with spirit not only what they saw and heard around them but
what they experienced with their whole human being. They experienced the course
of the year as an organic life process, just as in the human being when he is a
child we relate the utterances of the childish soul with the awkward movements
of a child, or its imperfect way of speaking. As we connect specific
soul-experiences with the change of teeth, other soul experiences with the later
bodily changes, so men once saw the ruling and weaving of the spiritual in the
successive changes of outer nature, in growth and decline, or in a waxing
followed by a waning.
Now, all this
cannot help affecting the whole way man feels himself as earthly man in
the universe. Thus we can say that in that period at the beginning of our
reckoning of time, when the remembrance of the Event of Golgotha began to be
celebrated which later became the Easter festival — in that period in which the
Easter festival was livingly felt and perceived, when man still took part in the
turning of the year as I have just described it — then it was in essence so,
that people felt their own lives surrendered, given over to the outer
spiritual-physical world. Their feeling told them that in order to make their
lives complete, they had need of the vision of the Entombment and the
Resurrection, of that sublime image of the Mystery of Golgotha.
But it is from
filling the consciousness in such a way that inspirations arise for men.
People are not always conscious of these inspirations, but it is a secret of
human evolution that from these religious attitudes toward the phenomena of the
world, inspirations for the whole of life proceed.
First of all,
we must understand clearly that during a certain epoch, during the Middle Ages,
the people who oriented the spiritual life were priests, and those priests were
concerned above all with the ordering of the festivals. They set the tone for
the celebration of the festivals. The priesthood was that group of men who
presented the festivals before the rest of mankind, before the laity, and who
gave the festivals their content. In so doing the priests themselves felt this
content very deeply; and the entire soul-condition that resulted from the
inspiring effect of the festivals was expressed in the rest of the soul-life.
The Middle
Ages would not have produced what is called Scholasticism — the philosophy of
Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus and the other Scholastics — if this
philosophy, this world conception, with all its social consequences, had not
been inspired by the most important thought of the Church, by the Easter
thought. In the vision of the descending Christ, Who lives for a time in man
on Earth and then goes through the Resurrection, that soul impulse was given
which led to the particular relation between faith and science, between
knowledge and revelation, which was agreed upon by the Scholastics. That out of
man himself, only knowledge of the sensible world can be acquired, whereas
everything connected with the supersensible world has to be gained through
revelation — this was determined basically by the way the Easter thought
followed upon the Christmas thought.
And if, in
turn, the idea-world of natural science today is totally the product of
Scholasticism, as I have often explained to you, we must then say: “Although the
natural science of the present is not aware of it, its knowledge is essentially
a direct imprint of the Easter thought which prevailed in the early Middle Ages
and then became paralyzed in the later Middle Ages and in modern times.” Notice
the way natural science applies in its ideas what is so popular today and indeed
dominates our culture: it devotes its ideas entirely to dead nature; it
considers itself incapable of rising above dead nature. This is a result of that
inspiration which was stimulated by viewing the Laying in the Grave.
As long as
people were able to add the Resurrection to the Entombment as something to which
they looked up, they then added also the revelation concerning the
supersensible to mere outer sense-knowledge. But as it became more and more
common to view the Resurrection as an inexplicable and therefore unjustifiable
miracle, revelation — that is, the supersensible world — came to be repudiated.
The present-day natural scientific view is inspired solely by the conception of
Good Friday and lacks any conception of Easter Sunday.
We need to
recognize this inner connection: The inspired element is always that which is
experienced within all the festival moods in relation to Nature. We must come to
know the connection between this inspiring element and all that comes to
expression in human life. When we once gain an insight into the intimate
connection that exists between this living-oneself-into the course of the year
and what men think, feel, and will, then we shall also recognize how significant
it would be if we were to succeed, for example, in making the Michael festival
in autumn a reality; if we were really to succeed, out of spiritual foundations,
out of esoteric foundations, in making the autumn Michael festival something
that would pass over into men's consciousness and again work inspiringly.
If the Easter
thought were to receive its coloration through the fact that to the Easter
thought “He has been laid in the grave and is arisen” the other thought is
added, the human thought, “He is arisen and may be laid in the grave without
perishing” — If this Michael thought could become living, what tremendous
significance just such an event could have for men's whole perceiving
(Empfindung) and feeling and willing — and how this could “live itself
into” the whole social structure of mankind!
My dear
friends, all that people are hoping for from a renewal of the social life will
not come about from all the discussions and all the institutions based on what
is externally sensible. It will be able to come about only when a mighty
inspiration-thought goes through mankind, when an inspiration-thought takes hold
of mankind through which the moral-spiritual element will once again be felt and
perceived along with the natural-sensible element.
People today
are like earthworms, I might say, looking for sunlight under the ground, while
to find the sunlight they need to come forth above the surface of the earth.
Nothing in reality will be accomplished by all of today's organizations and
plans for reform; something can be achieved only by the mighty impact of a
thought-impulse drawn out of the spirit. For it must be clear to us that the
Easter thought itself can only attain its new “nuance” through being
complemented by the Michael thought.
Let us
consider this Michael thought somewhat more closely. If we look at the Easter
thought, we have to consider that Easter occurs at the time of the bursting and
sprouting life of spring. At this time the Earth is breathing out her
soul-forces, in order that these soul-forces may be permeated again by the
astral element surrounding the Earth, the extra-earthly, cosmic element. The
Earth is breathing out her soul. What does this mean?
It means that
certain elemental beings which are just as much in the periphery of the Earth as
the air is or as the forces of growth are — that these unite their own being
with the out-breathed Earth soul in those regions in which it is spring. These
beings float and merge with the out-breathed Earth soul. They become
dis-individualized; they lose their individuality and rise in the general
earthly soul element. We see countless elemental beings in spring just around
Easter time in the final stage of the individual life which was theirs during
the winter. We see them merging into the general Earth soul element and rising
like a sort of cloud (red, yellow, with green). I might say that during
the wintertime these elemental beings are within the soul element of the Earth,
where they had become individualized; before this Easter time they had a certain
individuality, flying and floating about as individual beings. During Easter
time we see them come together in a general cloud (red), and form a
common mass within the Earth soul (green). But by so doing these
elemental beings lose their consciousness to a certain degree and enter into a
sort of sleeping condition. Certain animals sleep in the winter; these elemental
beings sleep in summer. This sleep is deepest during St. John's time, when they
are completely asleep. Then they begin once more to individualize, and when the
Earth breathes in again at Michaelmas, at the end of September, we can see them
already as separate beings again.
Man needs
these elemental beings... This is not in his consciousness, but man needs them
nonetheless, in order to unite them with himself, so that he can prepare his
future. And man could unite these elemental beings with himself, if at a certain
festival time — it would have to be at the end of September — he could perceive
with a special inner soul-filled liveliness how Nature herself changes toward
the autumn; if he could perceive how the animal and plant life recedes, how
certain animals begin to seek their shelters against the winter; how the plant
leaves get their autumn coloring; how all Nature fades and withers.
It is true
that spring is fair, and it is a fine capacity of the human soul to perceive the
beauty of the spring, the growing, sprouting, burgeoning life. But to be able to
perceive also when the leaves fade and take on their fall coloring, when the
animals creep away — to be able to feel how in the sensible which is dying away,
the gleaming, shining, soul-spiritual element arises — to be able to perceive
how with the yellowing of the leaves there is a descent of the springing and
sprouting life, but how the sensible becomes yellow in order that the
spiritual can live in the yellowing as such — to be able to perceive how
in the falling of the leaves the ascent of the spirit takes place, how the
spiritual is the counter-manifestation of the fading sense-perceptible — this
should as a perceptive feeling for the spirit ensoul the human being in
autumn! Then he would prepare himself in the right way precisely for
Christmastide.
Man should
become permeated, out of anthroposophical spiritual science, by the truth that
it is precisely the spiritual life of man on Earth which depends on the
declining physical life. Whenever we think, the physical matter in our nerves is
destroyed; the thought struggles up out of the matter as it perishes. To feel
the becoming of the thought in one's self, the gleaming up of the idea in the
human soul, in the whole human organism of man; to be akin to the yellowing
leaves, the withering foliage, the drying and shriveling of the plant world in
Nature; to feel the kinship of man's spiritual “being-ness” with Nature's
spiritual “being-ness” — this can give man that impulse which strengthens his
will, that impulse which points man to the permeation of his will with
spirituality.
In so doing,
however, in permeating his will with spirituality, the human being becomes an
associate of the Michael activity on earth. And when man lives with Nature in
this way as autumn approaches and brings this living-with-Nature to expression
in an appropriate festival content, then he will be able truly to perceive the
completing (Erganzung) of the Easter mood. But by means of this,
something else will become clear to him. — You see, what man thinks, feels, and
wills today is really inspired by the Easter mood, which is actually one-sided.
This Easter mood is essentially a result of the sprouting, burgeoning life,
which causes everything to merge as in a pantheistic unity. Man is surrendered
to the unity of Nature, and to the unity of the world generally. This is also
the structure of our spiritual life today. Man wants everything to revert to a
unity, to a monon; he is either a devotee of universal spirit or universal
nature; and he is accordingly either a spiritualistic Monist or a materialistic
Monist. Everything is included in an indefinite unity. This is essentially the
spring mood.
But when we
look into the autumn mood, with the rising and becoming free of the spiritual,
and the dropping away and withering of the sensible (red), then we have a
view of the spiritual as such, and the sensible as such.
The sprouting
plant in the spring has the spiritual within its sprouting and growing; the
spiritual is mingled with the sensible; we have essentially a unity. The
withering plant lets the leaf fall, and the spirit rises; we have the spirit,
the invisible, supersensible spirit, and the material falling out of it. I would
say that it is just as if we had in a container, first, a uniform fluid in which
something is dissolved, and then by some process we should cause this to
separate from the fluid and fall to the bottom as sediment. We have now
separated the two which were united, which had formed a unity.
The spring
tends to weave everything together, to blend everything into a vague,
undifferentiated unity. The view of the autumn, if we only look at it in the
right way, if we contrast it in the right way with the view of the spring, calls
attention to the way the spiritual works on the one side and the
physical-material on the other. The Easter thought loses nothing of value if the
Michaelmas thought is added to it. We have on the one side the Easter thought,
where everything appears — I might say — as a pantheistic mixture, a unity. Then
we have what is differentiated; but the differentiation does not occur in any
irregular, chaotic fashion. We have regularity throughout.
Think of the
cyclic course: joining together, intermingling, unifying; an intermediate state
when the differentiating takes place; the complete differentiation; then again
the merging of what was differentiated within the uniform, and so forth. There
you see always besides these two conditions yet a third: you see the rhythm
between the differentiated and the undifferentiated, in a certain way,
between the in-breathing of what was differentiated-out and the out-breathing
again, an intermediate condition. You see a rhythm: a physical-material,
a spiritual, a working-in-each-other of the physical-material and the spiritual:
a soul element.
But the
important thing is this: not to stop with the common human fancy that everything
must be led back to a unity; thereby everything, whether the unity is a
spiritual or a material one, is led back to the indefiniteness of the cosmic
night. In the night all cows are gray; in spiritual Monism all ideas are gray;
in material Monism they are likewise gray. These are only distinctions of
perceiving; they are of no concern for a higher view. What matters is this: that
we as human beings can so unite ourselves with the cosmic course that we are in
a position to follow the living transition from the unity into the trinity, the
return from trinity into unity. When, by complementing the Easter thought with
the Michael thought in this way we have become able to perceive rightly the
primordial trinity in all existence, then we shall take it into our whole
attitude of soul. Then we shall be in a position to understand that actually all
life depends upon the activity and the interworking of primordial trinities. And
when we have the Michael festival inspiring such a view in the same way that the
one-sided Easter festival inspired the view now existing, then we shall have an
inspiration, a Nature/Spirit impulse, to introduce threefoldness, the impulse of
threefoldness into all the observing and forming of life. And it depends finally
and only upon the introduction of this impulse, whether the destructive forces
in human evolution can be transformed once more into ascending forces.
One might say
that when we spoke of the threefold impulse it was in a certain sense a test of
whether the Michael thought is already strong enough so that it can be felt how
such an impulse flows directly out of the forces that shape the time. It was a
test of the human soul, of whether the Michael thought is strong enough as yet
in a large number of people. Well, the test yielded a negative result. The
Michael thought is not strong enough in even a small number of people for it to
be perceived truly in all its time-shaping power and forcefulness. And it will
indeed hardly be possible, for the sake of new forces of ascent, to unite human
souls with the original formative cosmic forces in the way that is necessary,
unless such an inspiring force as can permeate a Michael festival — unless, that
is to say, a new formative impulse can come forth from the depths of the
esoteric life.
If instead of
the passive members of the Anthroposophical Society, even only a few active
members could be found, then it would become possible to set up further
deliberations to consider such a thought. It is essential to the
Anthroposophical Society that while stimuli within the Society should of course
be carried out, the members should actually attach primary value, I might say,
to participating in what is coming to pass. They may perhaps focus the
contemplative forces of their souls on what is taking place, but the activity of
their own souls does not become united with what is passing through the time as
an impulse. Hence, with the present state of the Anthroposophical Movement
there can of course be no question of considering as part of its activity
anything like what has just now been spoken of as an esoteric impulse. But it
must be understood how mankind's evolution really moves, that the great
sustaining forces of humanity's world-evolution come not from what is propounded
in superficial words, but from entirely different quarters.
This has
always been known in ancient times from primeval elementary clairvoyance. In
ancient times it was not the custom for the young people to learn, for example,
that there are so and so many chemical elements; then another is discovered and
there are then 75, then 76; another is discovered and there are 77. One cannot
anticipate how many may still be discovered. Accidentally, one is added to 75,
to 76, and so on. In what is adduced here as number, there is no inner reality.
And so it is everywhere. Who is interested today in anything that would bring to
revelation, let us say, that a systematic threefoldness or trinity prevails in
plants! Order after order is discovered, species after species; and they are
counted just as though one were counting a chance pile of sticks or stones. But
the working of number in the world rests on a real quality of being, and this
quality must be fathomed. Only think how short a time lies behind us since
knowledge of substance was led back to the trinity of the salty, the mercurial,
and the phosphoric; how in this a trinity of archetypal forces was seen; how
everything that appeared as individual had to be fitted into one or another of
the three archetypal forces.
And it is
different again when we look back into still earlier times in which it was
easier for people to come to something like this because of the very situation
of their culture; for the Oriental cultures lay nearer to the Torrid Zone, where
such things were more readily accessible to the ancient elementary clairvoyance.
Today, however, it is possible to come to these things in the Temperate Zone
through free, exact clairvoyance.... Yet people want to go back to the ancient
cultures! In those days people did not distinguish spring, summer, autumn,
winter. To distinguish spring, summer, autumn, winter leads us to a mere
succession because it contains the “four.” It would have been quite impossible
for the ancient Indian culture, for example, to think of something like the
course of the year as ruled by the four, because this contains nothing of the
archetypal forms underlying all activity.
When I wrote
my book Theosophy, it was impossible simply to list in
succession physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego, although we can
summarize it this way once the matter is before us, once it is inwardly
understood. I had therefore to arrange them according to the number three:
physical body, ether body, astral body, forming the first trinity. Then comes
the trinity interwoven with it: sentient soul, intellectual soul, consciousness
soul; then the trinity interwoven with this: spirit self, life spirit, spirit
man — three times three interwoven with one another in such a way as to become
seven.
Only when we look
at the present stage of mankind's evolution does the four appear, which is
really a secondary number. If we want to see the inwardly active principle, if
we want to see the formative process, we must see forming and shaping as
associated with threefoldness, with trinity.
Hence, the
ancient Indian view was of a year divided into a hot season, which would
approximate our months of April, May, June, July; a wet season, comprising
approximately our months, August, September, October, November; and a cold
season, which would include our months, December, January, February, March. The
boundaries do not need to be rigidly fixed according to the months but are only
approximate; they can be thought of as shifting. But the course of the year was
thought of according to the principle of the “three.”
And thus man's
whole state of soul would be imbued with the predisposition to observe this
primal trinity in all weaving and working, and hence to interweave it also into
all human creating and shaping. We can even say that it is only possible to have
true ideas of the free spiritual life, the life of rights, the social-economic
life, when we perceive in the depths this triple pulse of cosmic activity, which
must also permeate human activity.
Any reference
to this sort of thing today is regarded as some sort of superstition, whereas it
is considered great wisdom simply to count “one” and again “one,” “two,”
“three,” and so on. But Nature does not take such a course. If we look, however,
only at a realm in which everything is woven together, as is the case
with Nature in springtime — which of course we must look at if we want to
observe the interweaving of things — then we can never restore the pulse of
three.
But when
anyone follows the whole course of the year, when he sees how the “three” is
organized, how the spiritual and the physical-material life are present as a
duality, and the rhythmic interweaving of the two as the third, then he
perceives this three-in-one, one-in-three, and learns to know how the human
being can place himself in this cosmic activity: three to one, one to three.
It would
become the whole disposition of the human soul to permeate the cosmos, to unite
itself with cosmic worlds, if once the Michael thought could awaken as a
festival thought in such a way that we were to place a Michael festival in the
second half of September alongside the Easter festival; if to the thought of the
resurrection of the God after death could be added the thought, produced
by the Michael force, of the resurrection of man from death, so that man
through the Resurrection of Christ would find the force to die in Christ. This
means, taking the risen Christ into one's soul during earthly life, so as to be
able to die in Him — that is, to be able to die not at death but when one is
living.
Such an inner
consciousness as this would result from the inspiring element that would come
from a Michael service. We can realize full well how far removed from any such
idea is our materialistic time, which is also a time grown narrow-minded and
pedantic. Of course, nothing can be expected of us, so long as it remains dead
and abstract. But if with the same enthusiasm with which festivals were once
introduced in the world when people had the force to form festivals — if such a
thing happens again, then it will work inspiringly. Indeed it will work
inspiringly for our whole spiritual and our whole social life. Then that which
we need will be present in life: not abstract spirit on one hand and spirit-void
nature on the other, but Nature permeated with spirit, and spirit forming and
shaping naturally. For these are one, and they will once again weave religion,
science, and art into oneness, because they will understand how to conceive the
trinity in religion, science, and art in the sense of the Michael thought, so
that these three can then be united in the right way in the Easter thought, in
the anthroposophical shaping and forming. This can work religiously,
artistically, cognitionally, and can also differentiate religiously,
cognitionally. Then the anthroposophical impulse would consist in perceiving in
the Easter season the unity of science, religion, and art; and then at
Michaelmas perceiving how the three — who have one mother, the Easter
mother — how the three become “sisters” and stand side by side, but mutually
complement one another. Then the Michael thought, which should become living as a
festival in the course of the year, would be able to work inspiringly on all
domains of human life.
With such
things as these, which belong to the truly esoteric, we should permeate
ourselves, at least in our cognition, to begin with. If then the time could come
when there are actively working personalities, such a thing could actually
become an impulse which singly and alone would be able, in the present condition
of humanity, to replace the descending forces with ascending ones.
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