The Spriitual Development of Man. Lecture 1.
Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, April 20, 1923:
In my
last lectures I have been dealing with the nature of man's being in a way which
I think our visitors who are giving us the pleasure of attending the Teachers'
Course here will have had no difficulty in following. To link up with my last
lecture I will briefly recapitulate the main points.
In
speaking about man's external observations and sense perceptions and about the
way in which the intellect, possibly assisted by experiments, is able to arrange
and coordinate them, I pointed out that in all these functions it is, to begin
with, only man's physical body that is in active manifestation
This
physical body is permeated by what may be called the etheric body or the body of
formative forces — a finer organization of the human being, a Second Man within
man, so to speak. How can one have actual perception of this Second Man? It must
again and again be emphasized that it is by no means so very difficult to gain a
true perception of this Second Man, a perception as clear and authentic as
anything perceived by the senses or conceived by the reasoning intellect. One
thing however, is necessary, because in our own time man does not live with such
intensity in the element of thought itself as he did in earlier epochs of
evolution, but adopts a more passive attitude to thought and is content to let
impressions simply come to him from the world of the senses. For this reason it
is necessary to strengthen thinking by means of exercises. Of course man
has thoughts today, but he can hardly have real insight into the nature and
activity of thinking because by force of habit he allows the external
sense impressions to stream into his thoughts the moment he wakes from sleep,
because he sets store only by these external sense impressions. True, this fills
his thoughts with a content derived from external sense perceptions, but he does
not actually feel or experience his own activity of thinking. Modern man
can achieve this, however, with the help of such exercises as I have indicated,
for instance, in my book “Knowledge
of Higher Worlds and its Attainment.”
Such
exercises require man as it were to throw himself with the whole of his being
into the activity of thinking, to give himself up to this thinking with all
inner intensity and, with complete indifference to what the outer senses present
to him, to live consciously and exclusively in this activity of thinking.
It
can be of great assistance in these meditative exercises if one has had some
practice in mathematics, especially in geometry. As regards the activity of
thinking that has to be applied in geometry, one need only take a resolute
plunge, as it were, into one's own inmost being, to experience the nature of
this thinking in its independence, in its plasticity, in its inner weaving life,
and one has an experience of the activity of thinking when drawing, say, a
triangle.
Of
course you can draw a triangle on the blackboard. But is that a triangle, in
reality? What you have on the blackboard is not a triangle but a vast number of
tiny particles of chalk which stick to the board and could actually be counted
if one had a sufficiently powerful microscope. That is no triangle! To think
that the triangle is there on the blackboard is nonsense. You can have the
triangle only in your mind, in the thought you form with the aid
of these bits of chalk on the blackboard. But without the use of chalk and
blackboard, when simply sitting or standing quietly without even moving a
finger, when you have merely the idea, the thought of the triangle fixed in your
mind, then you can picture to yourself — but always only in your thoughts — how
you begin to draw a line here, then a second, then a third. Then you can live in
this inner activity without doing anything externally. You can do
more and more exercises of this kind, especially more complicated ones. For
instance [drawing on the blackboard]: you have here a patch of red
chalk and here one of green chalk. I draw it once again, and now you can, for
instance, do the following. — What you have pictured before you in these two
figures you are to do inwardly; now, as previously you drew the triangle in your
mind, quickly imagine this: the red stretches over into the green as far as
this, and the green pushes through beneath the red, so that this figure grows
out of that, and that out of this, entirely in thought. There you have the red
in the center, the green around it. Now picture the red expanding, the green
contracting, and then you get a green circle in the center and surrounding it
the red wheel; then reversed: the red moves inwards, the green expands, and you
keep changing from one to the other in rhythmic sequence, an inner circle, an
outer wheel: red, green; green, red; red, green; green, red ... You picture this
to yourself without it being necessary to do anything outwardly. And you will
gradually become aware that to think means doing something inwardly, just
as one uses one's hands or arms outwardly. When you use your arm, you are aware
of it. So now you must learn to be aware of the forces of thought. When aware of
exercising your arms, you experience your physical body. When you begin to
exercise your thoughts in this way, you experience the Second Man within you,
your etheric body, your body of formative forces. As soon as you have reached
the point where you need only give yourself a mental push in order to transfer
your awareness of arm-and-leg movements to an awareness of your inner forces of
thought, you experience this Second Man within you, your etheric body, your body
of formative forces. But you experience this Second Man as being woven entirely
of thoughts. And at that moment the whole of your earthly life spreads out
before you as if present. In a single panoramic survey, you behold your earthly
life right back to your earliest childhood.
What
is here experienced as the Second Man is not a space-body, but a
time-body. And, as I have already said in the course of these lectures,
when drawing a sketch of the physical body, one can insert into it a sketch of
this time-body. But this represents only a momentary phase, as if you
were catching a glimpse of a flash of lightning. This body of formative forces
does not live in space except for one fleeting moment. The next moment it has
already changed. It is always in a state of flux, ever changing. And this
changing is experienced as the life-tableau.
But
simultaneously with this experience one feels oneself part of the whole
universe; one no longer feels enclosed within one's skin, but one feels that one
is actually in this condition of flux within the universe. One is really only a
ripple in the etheric cosmos. — And one experiences other aspects of this Second
Man.
One
perceives that this Second Man is perpetually trying to dissolve the physical
substance of the body into nothingness. In another connection I said to some of
you the other day: physical matter, physical substance presses; the
etheric forces suck, draw out of space the content which fills it, suck
up everything. And throughout our earthly life we live in this interplay of
forces. For our nourishment we take physical matter into ourselves. Through the
process of nourishment this physical matter streams into our body, setting in
action all kinds of processes in accordance with its own nature. When we eat
pickled cabbage it enters our system, where its action is conditioned by its own
chemical and physical properties. When we drink milk, its action proceeds
according to the nature of milk. But very soon a stop is put to this action of
milk and cabbage. The etheric body begins to assail the
milk-and-cabbage properties in order to effect their extinction. So that within
our system a perpetual battle is in progress between the action of the
cabbage-and-milk properties on the one hand, and, on the other, the
counter-action which aims at their extinction. This battle takes place and its
effect becomes manifest in what man excretes and in that which, as formative
forces, as man's supersensible organization, moves in the direction of the head.
In exact proportion to the amount of matter we excrete through the various
secretory organs, an equal amount changes, in the other direction, into negative
matter, into negative substance which lives as the principle of suction
in our nervous system, especially in our brain.
Nobody can understand the human being by looking at the physical
body only, for then we see, merely from the periphery, no more than part of the
processes operating within the human organism. A certain amount of knowledge is
gained about the processes working within the alimentary track and about what is
excreted through sweating and so on. But for all excretion, that is to say, all
that is passing into the grossly material condition, there is the other pole,
representing what is drawn into the nervous system as the etheric
element. For everything we excrete as material substance, an etheric equivalent
flows into us. This etheric element whirls and surges and weaves in our etheric
body or body of formative forces which permeates us in the way I .have
described.
And
one also learns to know oneself as this Second Man by observing how the power of
memory, the ability to remember, can change. In ordinary life we become aware of
external impressions. These continue inward, entering our thoughts, our mental
pictures;, and then come to a standstill. We can call them forth again, but the
inner force by means of which we recall them does not extend beyond the
nerve endings.
Take
for example, the eye. What happens when we perceive something outside is that we
push through the optic nerve endings which are spread out in the eye right into
the blood circulation of the eye. That is how perception is brought about. When
we only remember, however, we penetrate no further than where the optic
nerve comes to an end in the eye. With our etheric body or body of formative
forces we do not reach through the nerve endings into the bloodstream.
When
we now intensify thinking, it is not as if we merely experience the same
rebound as in the ordinary functioning of memory, when external perceptions are
transformed into mental pictures which are then held and thrust back. If, as it
were in reverse, we also perceive what is etheric in the world, we thrust just
as far into our organism with this etheric thought content of the world as with
our ordinary memory pictures, which, however, are only reminiscences of life. And
then we develop a consciousness of the etheric working in the cosmos; we live
within the etheric formative forces of the world.
How a
man experiences himself when living consciously within the weaving of the
etheric cosmic forces can be sketched in this way:
 Here we have the play of the etheric forces in their manifold manifestation. This must be taken configuratively. Everything lives and weaves within it. And then man experiences himself in this etheric weaving. It makes a strange picture, but that is how it is and how it must be imagined. The feet and legs are hardly noticeable. One has the feeling that at one point, as it were, one is growing out of this play of the etheric forces. One experiences their action as far as one's nerve endings. It runs through the back and on to the nerve endings in the front of the body, and that is the extreme limit to which the etheric world extends in us. That is man's position in the present etheric cosmos. The way in which one experiences the etheric world when finding oneself edged, as it were, into some extreme corner of the etheric cosmos is that it reaches only with its fringe into one's organism, where the etheric action then comes to a halt. In short, that is the way in which one learns to live in the etheric world.
And
indeed this would by no means be so difficult an achievement, if only nowadays
people would take the trouble to practice such mental activity as I have
described. The easiest way to become an adept in this way of thinking is to
absorb in the right manner and really live through what is contained in my “Philosophy
of Spiritual Activity.”
There
is, for instance, the section which deals with this awareness of the activity of
thinking in relation to the ethical and moral principle in the world. What I
have described there is the same from the qualitative aspect. And when one
studies the “Philosophy
of Spiritual Activity” in the right way, one begins to understand what the
nature of this life in the etheric, what this experience of the formative
forces, really is.
The
Inner Aspect of the Activity of Speaking
Our
next experience after that of the activity of thinking can be awareness of the
activity of speaking. And a beginning can well be made with the activity of
speech in ordinary, everyday life. Only it is necessary to become as well
trained in governing speech as in governing thought. Control of the latter must
be achieved to the extent that the senses are silent, that one lives only in
active thinking, that sense impressions are eliminated. As regards speech, it is
necessary to reach the point of having a great deal to say — for one must have a
command of words and not be inarticulate — but at the same time to be able at
will to check the impulse for a time and to practice absolute silence.
I
know that in the case of some people this is asking a great deal; but in order
to gain knowledge of the Third Man, this is absolutely necessary. One must have
a clear idea of what it means to be eager to deliver a carefully prepared
speech, to have the words on the tip of the tongue, and yet to keep silent. That
is how one learns to practice active silence. To practice passive silence
— as one might in an empty room (not an airless room, of course, but with no
other people present), when there is nobody to speak to — to remain passively
silent is useless — one must learn to be actively silent.
Now
you can say: A dull fellow indeed, going about practicing silence in people's
company, walking up to them and, instead of talking to them, just looking at
them and remaining wrapped in silence. Well, I admit, my dear friends, that
socially this would certainly be anything but pleasant; it could, however,
actually prove exceedingly fruitful for spiritual advancement, and beneficial
results could ensue if, for instance, one attended a party at which people,
including oneself, were by no means silent as a rule, and if one now began to
practice silence. One says nothing although one knows a great deal and, in
giving freely of one's store of knowledge, has formerly always been a great
talker. I say that one could do this, but one need not do it outwardly and,
although it could be fruitful, it would not be so very helpful when aiming high;
the idea is that the entire exercise, as I have described it, is carried out
inwardly, that one is fully prepared to speak but has the ability to suppress
the impulse inwardly.
You
will understand better what I mean when I tell you, for instance, that in
ordinary, everyday life one does not think in the true sense of the word. One
does think in the field of mathematics if, for instance, one makes a mental
picture of a triangle in the way I have described. One does some real thinking
particularly when the mind is occupied with unusual things of a kind for which
the language has no words. But when completely absorbed in the things which
nowadays make up the content of current popular interest, one does not really do
any actual thinking, for in this mental process the organs of speech constantly
co-vibrate, albeit so quietly that one does not hear it. The mental activity of
modern man, who so dislikes thinking about anything that is not to be found in
the external world of the senses, is not real thinking. The mind is merely
weaving in shadow-pictures of words..
You
can test it yourself and you will find this weaving of the soul in the
shadow-pictures of words to be a fact. When one can really bring the larynx
inwardly into a state of complete rest while still maintaining that inner
activity of the soul which normally animates the movements of the larynx, so
that the escape from the spoken word remains an entirely inward exercise — if,
in other words, one does with the activity of speech what one has previously
done with the activity of thinking that is a transformed faculty of memory
(where one pushes only as far as the nerve endings, while now one exercises the
activity of speech only as far as the larynx, just to the point where the latter
is about to break into speech) — then gradually there will develop what in
recent lectures I have called “the deep silence of the human soul,” because
checking and preventing speech inwardly means developing the deep silence of the
soul.
To
get an idea of what this deep silence in the soul means, imagine yourself in a
town, not Basel perhaps, but in London or in a city even noisier still. You are
right within this noise and turmoil. Now you leave the town and the noise
gradually fades as you get further away. Presently you find yourself in the
stillness and solitude of a wood. You say: All is quiet within and without.
There comes a point when the stillness reaches the degree ‘nought.’ First the
noise, then it grows quieter, then absolute stillness at point ‘nought.’
But
now this can go further. And indeed this process of not only experiencing the
quietness of a silent outer world and the soul at rest, but of passing into the
deep silence, can be the direct result of abstaining from the use of words while
maintaining that full inner activity which normally is bent on becoming vocal.
One merely refrains from making use of the physical body. (I have described the
various meditative exercises in my book “Knowledge
of Higher Worlds and its Attainment.”) Then one realizes that there is
something beyond the point ‘nought’ of stillness. In public lectures I have made
use of a commonplace comparison. I said: Supposing someone with a certain amount
of capital spends some of it and reduces his means; then continues to spend
until finally there is nothing left; he has reached point ‘nought.’ But he goes
on spending and runs into debt. Now he has less than nought; and so it goes on.
Here the mathematicians have introduced the negative numbers: -2, -4, -6,
etc. In a similar way you can also imagine how in the realm of sound the
stillness at point ‘nought’ passes over into the negative, into a state that is
stiller than stillness, quieter than quietness. You can establish the same
conditions in the depths of your soul.
But
then, when the outer world is now not only silent but has passed beyond mere
silence, when the soul's reaction extends beyond the stillness at point ‘nought’
into the negative sphere of all external sound, then the spirit begins to speak
out of the depths of the soul's stillness and we become aware of our Third Man,
the astral man, as we say. Expressions do not matter, they are terminology;
another name could serve as well.
Of
this Third, astral Man, we become aware when we reach the deep silence of the
soul, and from out of this profound silence the Spiritual sounds forth, a
sounding which is the opposite of physical sound.
This
astral body, as you will see, takes us in every respect further than the etheric
body alone could have done. To make this clear, let me deal with it from a
cosmic point of view.
What
is the modern physicist or astronomer, in fact the modern scientist, trying to
do? He studies the laws of nature. Through observation or experiment he
establishes them. These laws of nature constitute his science. They present him
with what is inherent in things. With that he ought to rest content. But
instead, he begins to be proud of his laws of nature, he begins to be arrogant.
And he now asserts what he cannot by any means substantiate, that these laws
apply to the whole of the universe. He says: Discoveries I make in my laboratory
on the Earth would, if tested under similar conditions, prove equally valid on
the most distant stars of the universe, stars from which the light takes so many
light-years to reach the Earth — people pretend that these things make sense —
so that, given similar conditions the same laws of nature must prevail there,
because their validity is absolute.
Yes,
but it is not like that. At its source the light shines brightly into its
immediate surroundings; further away from the source its strength decreases, and
the further we go the weaker it becomes, it grows faint. The power of light
diminishes at a ratio equal to the square of the distance. So it is with light.
And curiously enough, so it is also on Earth with the laws of nature.
The
validity of what you establish on the Earth as laws of nature becomes less and
less the further you get away from the Earth. To be sure it seems dreadful to
say such a thing, and in the eyes of a staunch student of natural science anyone
with such ideas must necessarily appear as the perfect idiot. That one can well
understand, because when this happens, and one looks at it from the modern
scientist's point of view, one can very easily put oneself in his place. Only
the reverse does not happen: the modern scientist cannot put himself in the
place of the spiritual investigator. The latter knows perfectly well how the
student of natural science arrives at his facts. Such understanding is lacking
when the case is reversed. Therefore most criticisms leveled at spiritual
science from that quarter are, from their point of view, quite justified. But
they merely show that the student of natural science cannot honestly find any
real meaning in what the spiritual investigator has to say. That one must grant
him, because it is a fact. It is simply beyond him. He must himself become a
spiritual investigator before one can enter into polemics with him. For that
reason the futility of polemics with a man who, firmly entrenched in natural
science, has no mind for the findings of spiritual science, is obvious.
Well,
with what has been said about the light, the student of natural science will
agree, as he has discovered it himself, but as far as the laws of nature are
concerned, he will disagree. However, with regard to light, the spiritual
investigator must make a reservation. Natural science says: As the light
radiates, its strength diminishes with distance, until at last it fades to the
extent that its strength is identical with the degree ‘nought.’ But such a
statement is just as clever as if someone were to say: Here I have an elastic
rubber ball; now I press it. Naturally the ball tends to bulge out on the other
side. The elasticity pushes the surface this way and that way. Now someone says:
That cannot be; if I press elastic substance the process must go on and on, only
it becomes so weak at last that it is no longer perceptible. — It is, however,
not like that: elasticity rebounds.
And
this also applies to the light. The light does not radiate in a way that one
could say: Far out there it is so weak that it will soon approach the point of
darkness, yet it continues to spread further and further. That is not true. Its
radiation extends only to a certain point, to the periphery of a given sphere;
then it rebounds. And as it comes back it is visible only to the spiritual
investigator, not to the natural scientist. Because when the radiation of light
has exhausted its elasticity and rebounds, it returns as spirit, as the
supersensible. Then the natural scientist cannot perceive it. There is no
light that shines and does not come to a certain boundary from which it is
thrown back to return as spirit. What I am now telling you about the
light applies equally to the laws of nature. The validity of these laws
diminishes the further you get away into space. But this continues only as far
as the outer shell of a given sphere; thus everything comes back. The laws of
nature, however, then return as thoughts that are wisdom-inwoven. And that is
the cosmic ether.
The
cosmic ether does not radiate in an outward direction with regard to the Earth,
it radiates with a centripetal movement from all sides. But what lives in all
these incoming forces that radiate to the Earth are creative,
wisdom-filled thoughts. The cosmic ether is at the same time a thought-world
of formative forces. There is, however, a difference: When here on Earth I form
the kind of thoughts which lead to the laws of nature, such thoughts are,
figuratively speaking, neatly aligned, so that one can say: there exists a
certain constancy of matter, a constancy of energy. We have exponents of the law
of light, and so on. The formulations of what lives in matter are made by means
of thoughts.
But
when the thoughts come back, when one experiences how they live in the cosmic
ether, they are not thoughts born of logic, not thoughts with such sharply
defined outlines; they are experienced as pictorial thoughts, pictures,
Imaginations.
When
such questions arise one meets with strange things in modern cultural life. To
some of you present here I said a few days ago: During the last 40 to 50 years,
theories without number — or, if you like, hypotheses — have been advanced about
the cosmic ether. Some have conceived it as a rigid body, some as a liquid body,
others as cosmic gas, as something in a state of whirling motion or the like,
and so on. But what is happening when such hypotheses are advanced? They are
simply the logical outcome of a mental approach that clings to the kind of
thinking that has become habitual in dealing with the visible beings and
processes of nature. But what comes back to us from the cosmos has long since
become incapable of being grasped within the framework of thoughts in which the
laws of nature are formulated. What is coming back can be apprehended only when
one begins to think in pictures, to think imaginatively.
One
could say: the validity of all that is contained in and governs the formulation
of the laws of nature diminishes at the ratio of the square of the distance
measured up to the periphery of a given sphere. There the laws of nature have
altogether ceased to exist as such. They have become fused, they blend, to
return, now, as pictures; they come back in figurations, in images.
And
now, when one has achieved the stage of vision I have described, one perceives
the world etherically, that is to say, in the form of pictures, and one has to
acknowledge that now, while living in the etheric realm one does not only see
nothing of one's physical body, but also one's power of thought that is employed
in the ordinary world has ebbed away. Instead, it is as if the universe were
radiating back pictures, Imaginations, from all directions. So that in
order to understand the ether, one begins to change ordinary thinking into
thinking that is plastic, pictorial. It follows then, as a matter of course,
that the ether could never be understood by means of any of these misconceived
hypotheses. For at the boundaries of etheric radiation, all those calculations
and theories concerned with physical phenomena in nature have lost their
meaning. At that point the outstreaming has ceased and we have incoming
radiation which no longer responds to the range of thought that depends on the
ordinary consciousness, but demands a fundamentally artistic approach,
inspired by thoughts springing from the realm of art, from the realm of art in
the earthly sense.
What
I have to tell you now will sound paradoxical, but it is the simple truth for
one who sees the world in its true light. Supposing I carve a figure in wood,
mould it into the shape of a human being and really succeed in creating a good
likeness of the outward appearance of a man. But there is one thing a sculptor
cannot do, namely, to let the space be ‘sucked out.’ All I can do as a sculptor
is to master the physical material. If I were also able to make the laws
governing the cosmic ether operate within the space occupied by my wooden
figure — that is to say. if that deep silence were to reign externally, if the
negative stillness, not only the stillness at point ‘nought,’ were to take
possession, leaving not only space but something space-less — then my wooden
sculpture would not, it is true, become a human being, but something like a
plant. The wooden figure remains a sculpture only, as it has only physical
properties and is merely a replica of an external form, because space-suction,
which should really be the supplementary element in the form, does not also come
into operation. As it is, that cannot happen — otherwise my wooden sculpture
would be a growing organism.
You
must realize that with ordinary artistic thinking, with ordinary artistic
feeling, you cannot reach the etheric world because, to do so, one has not only
to project mental images into space, but one must really lay hold of space, so
that the ether empties it. Then one experiences life, the living, in this
sucked-out space, or rather in the process of this suction. Thus a very
different kind of thinking is needed to reach these higher worlds. — And when
one has also had the other experience I described as the deep silence of the
soul, then something else happens. One experiences how, coming out of cosmic
space, etheric forms approach one, and in these forms one feels the presence of
sentient, spiritual being. Not only etheric formations but actual spiritual
beings of the so-called higher hierarchies approach one. One lives as spirit
among spirits; one experiences a real spiritual world. It approaches with the
inflow of this back-streaming radiation. Wherever the etheric forms approach us,
the spiritual world is revealed. The physical has departed and returns in
etheric forms. But now, together with these returning etheric forms,
spiritual beings can approach us. Only, if you were to ask yourselves:
Where do they come from? — the ‘where’ has no longer any spatial meaning.
Their relation to space is that, converging from the periphery of the universe,
they are coming in from all sides of the universe, because they let themselves
be borne in on the cosmic ether. The cosmic ether gives them a spatial ‘where,’
but this ‘where’ connotes a gravitating from without.
These
two ‘substantialities’ which I discover in this way in the world — the one which,
working in the formative forces, approaches me in etheric forms and suffuses me,
and the other, which lives and has its being in the spiritual world — these two
substantialities the human being acquires as he descends from his pre-earthly to
his earthly life, filling his whole being with a content held together by a part
of the infinite world of formative forces — infinite only in a relative sense,
namely, only as far as the boundaries of the universe; and itself filled with
the astral body, with what is borne in on the ether and has a ‘where’ only
through the ether.
We
bear within us the physical body consisting of physical ingredients of the
Earth; we bear within us the etheric body which we receive from out of cosmic
space; and within the etheric body we bear the astral body which is
spirit from cosmic spirit. We confine within the limits of our own being what
appears without contour and without limit in the universe.
And
when we now proceed to do still more advanced exercises in which we do not only
reach the deep silence of the soul but, penetrating this deep silence, we awake
in the activity of our own will, as we normally awake only in the activity of
thinking and conceiving, then we experience our fourth member, our ‘I.’ — About
this experience of the ‘I’ it is my intention to speak to you tomorrow.
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