Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, January 22, 1914:
Yesterday I tried to set forth those world-outlooks which are possible for man; so possible that
certain valid proofs can be produced for the correctness of each of them in a
certain realm. For anyone who is not concerned to weld together into a single
system all that he has been in a position to observe and reflect upon in a
certain limited domain, and then sets out to seek proofs for it, but who wants
to penetrate into the truth of the world, it is important to realize that
broadmindedness is necessary because twelve typical varieties of world-outlook
are actually possible for the mind of man. (For the moment we need not go into
the transitional ones.) If one wants to come really to the truth, then one must
try clearly to understand the significance of these twelve typical varieties,
must endeavor to recognize for what domain of existence one or other variety
holds the best key. If we let these twelve varieties pass once again before our
mind's eye, as we did yesterday, then we find that they are: Materialism,
Sensationalism, Phenomenalism, Realism, Dynamism, Monadism, Spiritism,
Pneumatism, Psychism, Idealism, Rationalism, and Mathematism.
Now, in the actual field of human searching after truth it is
unfortunate that individual minds, individual personalities, always incline to
let one or the other of these varieties have the upper hand, with the result
that different epochs develop one-sided outlooks which then work back on the
people living at that time.
We had better arrange the twelve world-outlooks in the form of a
circle, and quietly observe them. They are possible, and
one must know them. They really stand in such a relation to one another that
they form a mental copy of the Zodiac with which we are now so well acquainted.
As the Sun apparently passes through the Zodiac, and as other planets apparently
do the same, so it is possible for the human soul to pass through a mental
circle which embraces twelve world-pictures. Indeed, one can even bring the
characteristics of these pictures into connection with the individual signs of
the Zodiac, and this is in no wise arbitrary, for between the individual signs
of the Zodiac and the Earth there really is a connection similar to that between
the twelve world-outlooks and the human soul. I mean this in the following
sense.
We could not say that there is an easily understandable relation
between, e.g. the sign Aries and the Earth. But when the Sun, Saturn, or Mercury
are so placed that from the Earth they are seen in the sign Aries, then
influence is different from what it is when they are seen in the sign Leo. Thus
the effect which comes to us out of the cosmos from the different planets varies
according as the individual planets stand in one or other of the Zodiacal signs.
In the case of the human soul, it is even easier to recognize the effects of
these twelve “mental-zodiacal-signs” (Geistes-Tierkreisbilder). There are
souls who have the tendency to receive a given influence on their inner life, on
their scientific, philosophic, or other mental proclivities, so that their souls
are open to be illuminated, as it were, by Idealism. Other souls are open to be
shone upon by Materialism, others by Sensationalism. A man is not a
Sensationalist, Materialist, Spiritist, or Pneumatist because this or that
world-outlook is — and can be seen to be — correct, but because his soul is so
conditioned that it is predominantly influenced by the respective
mental-zodiacal-sign. Thus in the twelve mental-zodiacal-signs we have something
that can lead us to a deep insight into the way in which human world-outlooks
arise, and can help us to see far into the reasons why, on the one hand, men
dispute about world-outlooks, and why, on the other hand, they ought not to
dispute but would do much better to understand why it happens that people have
different world-outlooks. How, in spite of this, it may be necessary for certain
epochs strongly to oppose the trend of this or the other world-outlook, we shall
have to explain the next lecture. What I have said so far refers to the moulding
of human thought by the spiritual cosmos of the twelve zodiacal signs, which
form as it were our spiritual horizon.
But there is still something else that determines human
world-outlooks. You will best understand this if I first of all show you the
following.
A man can be so attuned in his soul — for the present it is
immaterial by which of these twelve “mental-zodiacal signs” his soul is
illuminated — that the soul-mood expressed in the whole configuration of his
world-outlook can be designated as Gnosis. A man is a Gnostic when his
disposition is such that he gets to know the things of the world not through the
senses, but through certain cognitional forces in the soul itself. A man can be
a Gnostic and at the same time have a certain inclination to be illuminated by
e.g. the mental-zodiacal-sign that we have here called “Spiritism”. Then his
Gnosticism will have a deeply illuminated insight into the relationships of the
spiritual worlds. But a man can also be, e.g. a Gnostic of Idealism; then he
will have a special proclivity for seeing clearly the ideals of mankind and the
ideas of the world. Thus there can be a difference between two men who are both
Idealists. One man will be an idealistic enthusiast who always has the word
“ideal”, “ideal”, “ideal” on his lips, but does not know much about idealism;
he lacks the faculty for conjuring up ideals in sharp outline before his inner
sight. The other man not only speaks of Idealism, but knows how to picture the
ideals clearly in his soul. The latter, who inwardly grasps Idealism quite
concretely — as intensely as a man grasps external things with his hand — is a
Gnostic in the domain of Idealism. Thus one could say that he is basically a
Gnostic, but is specially illuminated by the mental-zodiacal-sign of
Idealism.
There are also persons who are specially illuminated by the
world-outlook sign of Realism. They go through the world in such a way that
their whole mode of perceiving and encountering the world enables them to say
much, very much, to others about the world. They are neither Spiritists nor
Idealists; they are quite ordinary Realists. They are equipped to have really
fine perceptions of the external reality around them, and of the intrinsic
qualities of things. They are Gnostics, genuine Gnostics, only they are Gnostics
of Realism. There are such Gnostics of Realism, and Spiritists or Idealists are
often not Gnostics of Realism at all. We can indeed find that people who call
themselves good Theosophists may go through a picture-gallery and understand
nothing about it, whereas others who are not Theosophists at all, but are
Gnostics of Realism, are able to make an abundance of significant comments on
it, because with their whole personality they are in touch with the reality of
the things they see. Or again, many Theosophists go out into the country and are
unable to grasp with their whole souls anything of the greatness and sublimity
of nature; they are not Gnostics of Realism.
There are also Gnostics of Materialism. Certainly they are strange
Gnostics. But quite in the sense in which there are Gnostics of Realism, there
can be Gnostics of Materialism. They are persons who have feeling and perception
only for all that is material; persons who try to get to know what the material
is by coming into direct contact with it, like the dog who sniffs at substances
and tries to get to know them intimately in that way, and who really is, in
regard to material things, an excellent Gnostic. One can be a Gnostic in
connection with all twelve world-outlook signs. Hence, if we want to put Gnosis
in its right place, we must draw a circle, and the whole circle signifies that
the Gnosis can move round through all twelve world-outlook signs. Just as a
planet goes through all twelve signs of the Zodiac, so can the Gnosis pass
through the twelve world-outlook signs. Certainly, the Gnosis will render the
greatest service for the healing of souls when the Gnostic frame of mind is
applied to Spiritism. One might say that Gnosis is thoroughly at home in
Spiritism. That is its true home. In the other world-outlook-signs it is outside
its home. Logically speaking, one is not justified in saying that there could
not be a materialistic Gnosis. The pedants of concepts and ideas can settle such
knotty points more easily than the sound logicians, who have a somewhat more
complicated task. One might say, for example: “I will call nothing ‘Gnosis’
except what penetrates into the ‘spirit’.” That is an arbitrary attitude with
regard to concepts; as arbitrary as if one were to say “So far I have seen
violets only in Austria; therefore I call violets only flowers that grow in
Austria and have a violet color — nothing else.” Logically it is just as
impossible to say that there is Gnosis only in the world-outlook-sign of
Spiritism; for Gnosis is a “planet” which passes through all the
mental-constellations.
There is another world-outlook-mood. Here I speak of “mood”,
whereas otherwise I speak of “signs” or “pictures”. Of late it has been thought
that one could more easily become acquainted — and yet here even the easy is
difficult — with this second mood, because its representative, in the
constellation of Idealism, is Hegel. But this special mood in which Hegel looks
at the world need not be in the constellation of Idealism, for it, too, can pass
through all the constellations. It is the world-outlook of Logicism. The
special mark of Logicism consists in its enabling the soul to connect thoughts,
concepts, and ideas with one another. As when in looking at an organism one comes
from the eyes to the nose and the mouth and regards them as all belonging to
each other, so Hegel arranges all the concepts that he can lay hold of into a
great concept-organism — a logical concept-organism. Hegel was simply able to
seek out everything in the world that can be found as thought, to link together
thought with thought, and to make an organism of it — Logicism! One can develop
Logicism in the constellation of Idealism, as Hegel did; one can develop it, as
Fichte did, in the constellation of Psychism; and one can develop it in other
constellations. Logicism is again something that passes like a planet through
the twelve zodiacal signs.
There is a third mood of the soul, expressed in world-outlooks; we
can study this in Schopenhauer, for example. Whereas the soul of Hegel when he
looked out upon the world was so attuned that with him everything conceptual
takes the form of Logicism, Schopenhauer lays hold of everything in the soul
that pertains to the character of will. The forces of nature, the hardness of a
stone, have this character for him; the whole of reality is a manifestation of
will. This arises from the particular disposition of his soul. This outlook can
once more be regarded as a planet which passes through all twelve zodiacal
signs. I will call this world-outlook Voluntarism.
Schopenhauer was a voluntarist, and in his soul he was so
constituted that he laid himself open to the influence of the mental
constellation of Psychism. Thus arose the peculiar Schopenhauerian metaphysics
of the will: Voluntarism in the mental constellation of Psychism.
Let us suppose that someone is a Voluntarist, with a special
inclination toward the constellation of Monadism. Then he would not, like
Schopenhauer, take as basis of the universe a unified soul which is really
“will”; he would take many “monads”, which are, however, will-entities. This
world of monadic voluntarism as been developed most beautifully, ingeniously,
and I might say, in the most inward manner, by the Austrian philosophic poet
Hamerling. Whence came the peculiar teaching that you find in Hamerling's
Atomistics of the Will? It arose because his soul was attuned to
Voluntarism, while he came under the mental constellation of Monadism. If we had
the time, we could mention examples for each soul-mood in each constellation.
They are to be found in the world.
Another special mood is not at all prone to ponder whether behind
the phenomena there is still this or that, as is done by the Gnostic mood, or
the idealistic or voluntary moods, but which simply says “I will incorporate
into my world-conception whatever I meet with in the world, whatever shows
itself to me externally.” One can do this in all domains — i.e. through all
mental constellations. One can do it as a materialist who accepts only what he
encounters externally; one can also do it as Spiritist. A man who has this mood
will not trouble himself to seek for a special connection behind the phenomena;
he lets things approach and waits for whatever comes from them. This mood we can
call Empiricism. Empiricism signifies a soul-mood which simply accepts
whatever experience may offer. Through all twelve constellations one can be an
empiricist, a man with a world-conception based on experience. Empiricism is the
fourth psychic mood which can go through all twelve constellations.
One can equally well develop a mood which is not satisfied with
immediate experience, as in Empiricism, so that one feels through and through,
as an inner necessity, a mood which says: Man is placed in the world; in his
soul he experiences something about the world that he cannot experience
externally; only there, in that inner realm, does the world unveil its secrets.
One may look all round about and yet see nothing of the mysteries which the
world includes. Someone imbued with a mood of this kind can often say: “Of what
help to me is the Gnosis that takes pains to struggle up to a kind of vision?
The things of the external world that one can look upon — they cannot show me
the truth. How does Logicism help me to a world-picture? ... In Logicism the
nature of the world does not express itself. What help is there in speculations
about the will? It merely leads us away from looking into the depths of our own
soul, and into those depths one does not look when the soul wills, but, on the
contrary, just when by surrendering itself it is without will.” Voluntarism,
therefore, is not the mood that I mean here, neither is Empiricism — the mere
looking upon and listening to experience and events. But when the soul has
become quiet and seeks inwardly for the divine Light, this soul-mood can be
called Mysticism.
Again, one can be a mystic through all the twelve mental
constellations. It would certainly not be specially favorable if one were a
mystic of materialism — i.e. if one experienced inwardly not the mental, the
spiritual, but the material. For a mystic of materialism is really he who has
acquired a specially fine perception of how one feels when one enjoys this or
that substance. It is somewhat different if one imbibes the juice of this plant
or the other, and then waits to see what happens to one's organism. One thus
grows together with matter in one's experience; one becomes a mystic of matter.
This can even become an “awakening” for life, so that one follows up how one
substance or another, drawn from this or that plant, works upon the organism,
affecting particularly this or that organ. And so to be a Mystic of Materialism
is a precondition for investigating individual substances in respect of their
healing powers.
One can be a Mystic of the world of matter, and one can be a
Mystic of Idealism. An ordinary Idealist or Gnostic Idealist is not a Mystic of
Idealism. A Mystic of Idealism is one who has above all the possibility in his
own soul of bringing out from its hidden sources the ideals of humanity, of
feeling them as something divine, and of placing them in that light before the
soul. We have an example of the Mystic of Idealism in Meister Eckhardt.
Now, the soul may be so attuned that it cannot become aware of what
may arise from within itself and appear as the real inner solution of the riddle
of the universe. Such a soul may, rather, be so attuned that it will say to
itself: “Yes, in the world there is something behind all things, also behind my
own personality and being, so far as I perceive this being. But I cannot be a
mystic. The mystic believes that this something behind flows into his soul. I do
not feel it flow into my soul; I only feel it must be there, outside.” In this
mood, a person presupposes that outside his soul, and beyond anything his soul
can experience, the essential being of things lies hidden; but he does not
suppose that this essential nature of things can flow into his soul, as does the
Mystic. A person who takes this standpoint is a Transcendentalist — perhaps that
is the best word for it. He accepts that the essence of a thing is transcendent,
but that it does not enter into the soul — hence Transcendentalism. The
Transcendentalist has the feeling: “When I perceive things, their nature
approaches me; but I do not perceive it. It hides behind, but it approaches
me.”
Now, it is possible for a man, given all his perceptions and powers
of cognition, to thrust away the nature of things still further than the
Transcendentalist does. He can say; “The essential nature of things is beyond
the range of ordinary human knowledge.” The Transcendentalist says; “If with
your eyes you see red and blue, then the essential being of the thing is not in
the red or blue, but lies hidden behind it. You must use your eyes; then you can
get to the essential being of the thing. It lies behind.” But the mood I now
have in mind will not accept Transcendentalism. On the contrary, it says: “One
may experience red or blue, or this or that sound, ever so intensely; nothing of
this expresses the hidden being of the thing. My perception never makes contact
with this hidden being.” Anyone who speaks in this way speaks very much as we do
when we take the standpoint that in external sense-appearance, in maya, the
essential nature of things does not find expression. We should be
Transcendentalists if we said: “The world is spread out all around us, and this
world everywhere proclaims its essential being.” This we do not say. We say:
“This world is maya, and one must seek the inner being of things by another way
than through external sense-perception and the ordinary means of cognition.”
Occultism! The psychic mood of Occultism!
Again, one can be an Occultist throughout all the mental-zodiacal
signs. One can even be a thorough Occultist of Materialism. Yes, the
rationally-minded scientists of the present day are all occultists of
materialism, for they talk of “atoms”. But if they are not irrational it will
never occur to them to declare that with any kind of “method” one can come to
the atom. The atom remains in the occult. It is only that they do not like to be
called “Occultists”, but they are so in the fullest sense of the word.
Apart from the seven world-outlooks I have drawn here, there can
be no others — only transitions from one to another. Thus we must not only
distinguish twelve various shades of world-outlook which are at rest round the
circle, so to speak, but we must recognize that in each of the shades a quite
special mood of the human soul is possible. From this you can see how immensely
varied are the outlooks open to human personalities. One can specially cultivate
each of these seven world-outlook-moods, and each of them can exist in one or
other shade.
What I have just depicted is actually the spiritual correlative of
what we find externally in the world as the relations between the signs of the
Zodiac and the planets, the seven planets familiar in spiritual science. Thus we
have an external picture (not invented, but standing out there in the cosmos)
for the relations of our seven world-outlook-moods to our twelve shades of
world-outlook. We shall have the right feeling for this picture if we
contemplate it in the following manner.
Let us begin with Idealism, and let us mark it with the
mental-zodiacal sign of Aries; in like manner let us mark Rationalism as
Taurus, Mathematism as Gemini, Materialism as Cancer,
Sensationalism as Leo, Phenomenalism as Virgo, Realism as
Libra, Dynamism as Scorpio, Monadism as Sagittarius,
Spiritism as Capricorn, Pneumatism as Aquarius, and Psychism as
Pisces. The relations which exist spatially between the individual
zodiacal signs are actually present between these shades of world-outlook in the
realm of spirit. And the relations which are entered into by the planets, as
they follow their orbits through the Zodiac, correspond to the relations which
the seven world-outlook-moods enter into, so that we can feel Gnosticism as
Saturn, Logicism as Jupiter, Voluntarism as Mars, Empiricism as Sun, Mysticism
as Venus, Transcendentalism as Mercury, and Occultism as Moon.
Even in the external pictures — although the main thing is that
the innermost connections correspond — you will find something similar. The Moon
remains occult, invisible, when it is New Moon; it must have the light of the Sun
brought to it, just as occult things remain occult until, through meditation,
concentration, and so on, the powers of the soul rise up and illuminate them. A
person who goes through the world and relies only on the Sun, who accepts only
what the Sun illuminates, is an Empiricist. A person who reflects on what the
Sun illuminates, and retains the thoughts after the Sun has set, is no longer an
Empiricist, because he no longer depends upon the Sun. “Sun” is the symbol of
Empiricism. I might take all this further but we have only four periods to spend
on this important subject, and for the present I must leave you to look for more
exact connections, either throughout your own thinking or through other
investigations. The connections are not difficult to find when the model has
been given.
Broadmindedness is all too seldom sought. Anyone really in earnest
about truth would have to be able to represent the twelve shades of
world-outlook in his soul. He would have to know in terms of his own experience
what it means to be a Gnostic, a Logician, a Voluntarist, an Empiricist, a
Mystic, a Transcendentalist, an Occultist. All this must be gone through
experimentally by anyone who wants to penetrate into the secrets of the universe
according to the ideas of spiritual science. Even if what you will find in the
boo Knowledge of the Higher Worlds does not exactly fit
in with this account, it is really depicted only from other points of view, and
can lead us into the single moods which are here designated as the Gnostic mood,
the Jupiter mood, and so on.
Often a man is so one-sided that he lets himself be influenced by
only one constellation, by one mood. We find this particularly in great men.
Thus, for example, Hamerling is an out-and-out Monadist or a monadologistic
Voluntarist; Schopenhauer is a pronounced voluntaristic Psychist. It is
precisely great men who have so adjusted their souls that their
world-outlook-mood stands in a definite spiritual constellation. Other people
get on much more easily with the different standpoints, as they are called. But
it can also happen that men are stimulated from various sides in reaching their
world-outlook, or for what they place before themselves as world-outlook. Thus
someone may be a good Logician, but his logical mood stands in the constellation
of Sensationalism; he can at the same time be a good Empiricist, but his
empirical mood stands in the constellation of Mathematism. This may happen. When
it does happen, a quite definite world-outlook is produced. Just at the present
time we have an example of the outlook that comes about through someone having
his Sun — in spiritual sense — in Gemini, and his Jupiter in Leo; such a man is
Wundt. And all the details in the philosophical writings of Wundt can be grasped
when the secret of his special psychic configuration has been penetrated.
The effect is specially good when a person has experienced, by way
of exercises, the various psychic moods — Occultism, Transcendentalism,
Mysticism, Empiricism, Voluntarism, Logicism, Gnosis — so that he can conjure
them up in his mind and feel all their effects at once, and can then place all
these moods together in the constellation of Phenomenalism, in Virgo. Then there
actually comes before him as phenomena, and with a quite special magnificence,
that which can be unveiled for him in a remarkable way as the content of his
world-picture. When, in the same way, the individual world-outlook-moods are
brought one after another in relation to another constellation, then it is not
so good. Hence in many ancient Mystery-schools, just this mood, with all the
soul-planets standing in the spiritual constellation of Virgo, was induced in
the pupils because it was through this that they could most easily fathom the
world. They grasped the phenomena, but they grasped them “gnostically”. They
were in a position to pass behind the thought-phenomena, but they had no crude
experience of the will: that would happen only if the soul-mood of Voluntarism
were placed in Scorpio. In short, by means of the constellation given through
the world-outlook-moods — the planetary element — and through the nuances
connected with the spiritual Zodiac, the world-picture which a person carries
with him through a given incarnation is called forth.
But there is one more thing. These world-pictures — they have many
nuances if you reckon with all their combinations — are modified yet again by
possessing quite definite tones. But we have only three tones to distinguish.
All world-pictures, all combinations which arise in this manner, can appear in
one of three ways. First, they can be theistic, so that what appears in the soul
as tone must be called Theism. Or, in contrast to Theism, there may be a
soul-tone that we must call Intuitionism. Theism arises when a person
clings to all that is external in order to find his God, when he seeks his God
in the external. The ancient Hebrew Monotheism was a particularly “theistic”
world-outlook. Intuitionism arises when a person seeks his world-picture
especially through intuitive flashes from his inner depths. And there is a third
tone, Naturalism.
These three psychic tones are reflected in the cosmos, and their
relation to one another in the soul of man is exactly like that of Sun, Moon, and
Earth, so that Theism corresponds to the Sun — the Sun being here considered as
a fixed star — Intuitionism to the Moon, and Naturalism to the Earth. If we
transpose the entities here designated as Sun, Moon, and Earth into the
spiritual, then a man who goes beyond the phenomena of the world and says “When
I look around, then God, Who fills the world, reveals Himself to me in
everything,” or a man who stands up when he comes into the rays of the Sun —
they are Theists. A man who is content to study the details of natural
phenomena, without going beyond them, and equally a man who pays no attention to
the Sun but only to its effects on the Earth — he is a Naturalist. A man who
seeks for the best, guided by his intuitions — he is like the intuitive poet
whose soul is stirred by the mild silvery glance of the Moon to sing its
praises. Just as one can bring moonlight into connection with imagination, so
the occultist, the Intuitionist, as we mean him here, must be brought into
relation with the Moon.
Lastly there is a special thing. It occurs only in a single case,
when a person, taking all the world-pictures to some extent, restricts himself
only to what he can experience on or around or in himself. That is
Anthropomorphism. Such a person corresponds to the man who observes the
Earth on its own account, independently of its being shone upon by the Sun, the
Moon, or anything else. Just as we can consider the Earth for itself alone, so
also with regard to world-outlooks we can reckon only with what as men we can
find in ourselves. So does a widespread Anthropomorphism arise in the world. If
one goes out beyond man in himself, as one must go out to Sun and Moon for an
explanation of the phenomenon of the Earth — something that present-day science
does not do — then one comes to recognize three different things — Theism,
Intuitionism, and Naturalism — side by side and each with its justification. For it
is not by insisting on one of these tones, but by letting them sound together,
that one arrives at the truth. And just as our intimate corporeal relation with
Sun, Moon, and Earth is placed in the midst of the seven planets, so
Anthropomorphism is the world-outlook nearest to the harmony that can sound
forth from Theism, Intuitionism, and Naturalism, while this harmony again is
closest to the conjoined effect of the seven psychic moods; and these seven
moods are shaded according to the twelve signs of the Zodiac.
You see, it is not true to talk in terms of one cosmic conception,
but of
12
+ 7 == 19 + 3 == 22 + 1 == 23
cosmic
conceptions which all have their justification. We have twenty-three legitimate
names for cosmic conceptions. But all the rest can arise from the fact that the
corresponding planets pass through the twelve spiritual signs of the encircling
Zodiac. And now try, from what has been explained, to enter into the task
confronting spiritual science: the task of acting as peacemaker among the
various world-outlooks. The way to peace is to realize that the world-outlooks
conjointly, in their reciprocal action on one another, can be in a certain sense
explained, but that they cannot lead into the inner nature of truth if they
remain one-sided. One must experience in oneself the truth-value of the
different world-outlooks, in order — if one may say so — to be in agreement with
truth. Just as you can picture to yourselves the physical cosmos — the Zodiac;
the planetary system; Sun, Moon, and Earth (the three together); and the Earth on
its own account — so you can think of a spiritual universe: Anthropomorphism;
Theism, Intuitionism, Naturalism; Gnosis, Logicism, Voluntarism, Empiricism,
Mysticism, Transcendentalism, Occultism, and all this moving round through the
twelve spiritual Zodiacal signs. All this does exist, only it exists
spiritually. As truly as the physical cosmos exists physically, so truly does
this other universe exist spiritually.
In that half of the brain which is found by the anatomist, and of
which one may say that it is shaped like a half-hemisphere, those activities of
the spiritual cosmos which proceed from the upper nuances are specially
operative. On the other hand, there is a part of the brain which is visible only
when one observes the etheric body; and this is specially influenced by the
lower part of the spiritual cosmos. But how is it with this influencing? Let us say of
someone that with his Logicism he is placed in Sensationalism, and that with his
Empiricism he is placed in Mathematism. The resulting forces then work into his
brain, so that the upper part of his brain is specially active and dominates the
rest. Countless varieties of brain-activity arise from the fact that the brain
swims, as it were, in the spiritual cosmos, and its forces work into the brain
in the way we have been able to describe. The brains of men are as varied in
kind as all the possible combinations that can spring from this spiritual
cosmos. The lower part of the spiritual cosmos does not act on the physical
brain at all, but on the etheric brain.
The best impression one can retain from the whole subject would
lead one to say: It opens out for me a feeling for the immensity of the world,
for the qualitatively sublime in the world, for the possibility that man can
exist in endless variety in this world. Truly, if we consider only this, we can
already say to ourselves: There is no lack of varied possibilities open to us
for the different incarnations that we have to go through on Earth. And one can
also feel sure that anyone who looks at the world in this light will be impelled
to say: “Ah, how grand, how rich, the world is! What happiness it is to go on
and on taking part, in ways ever more varied, in its existence, its activities,
its endeavors!”
Source: January 22, 1914. GA 151
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