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| Ex Deo Nascimur In Christo Morimur Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus |
The Spiritual Development of Man. Lecture 3.
Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland, April 22, 1923:
In
the last few days I have been speaking of man's place in the universe. On the
one side we envisaged man's organization as composed of physical body, etheric
body or body of formative forces, astral body, and the true ‘I’ which passes from
earthly life to earthly life. At the same time I also tried to show how these
members of the human being are each connected in a different way with the
universe. It can be said that the physical body is connected with all that is
the physical, earthly world of the senses; man's physical body is part of that
world. But when we think of the etheric body or the body of formative forces, we
must understand that this belongs to quite a different kind of world, to that
world which is itself etheric and of which I told you that man should experience
it as coming to him from the far spaces of the cosmos. If, then, we imagine the
forces of the Earth spreading out in all directions and man living within these
forces, which are those of the physical world, we must conceive the etheric
world as coming in on all sides from the direction of the outer global shell of
the universe to meet the outstreaming physical forces, and thus reaching man. It
is obvious, therefore, that man's etheric body is subject to entirely different
laws from those governing the physical body. — And again, when contemplating
man's astral body, we perceive it to be connected with worlds that are not to be
found at all in that cosmos which is contained in the physical and the etheric,
and in which we find that with our astral body we belong to the world we enter
between death and a new birth.
And
finally with the ‘I’ itself we belong to a world that flows as from a quickening
fount through worlds which, as for instance our own world, are threefold in
character. The three members of our world are the physical, the etheric, the
astral. The world of the ‘I’ passes through this world and through other
similarly threefold worlds. It is therefore a far more embracing world, one that
we must regard as eternal as compared with the temporal.
But
we must also have regard to the fact that, whenever we employ those human
faculties of perception and understanding which inform us about the etheric body
or the body of formative forces, the astral body, and the ‘I,’ we do in fact
enter into entirely different worlds. We have to change over to the sphere of
active, living thinking in order to experience our etheric body. What we then
have to bear in mind is that in that world everything is different from what we
experience while bound to the physical world of the senses. In the first place
the things and happenings we know from the aspect of the physical world appear
in quite a different light in these higher worlds. As it is, the things and
events encountered in the physical world are after all only final
manifestations. They have their source in the higher worlds; so that we then see
more into the primary origins of our surroundings in the physical world. But
apart from that, when in the physical world we have, to begin with, the world
well known to ordinary consciousness, where man is surrounded by the three
kingdoms of nature besides his own. But when we rise to those powers of
cognition — in my books I have used the expression ‘Imaginative cognition’ —
which enable us to experience our own etheric body or the body of formative
forces, we enter the etheric world. And we have sufficiently developed and
strengthened our faculties when we have kindled the inner light and can
experience ourselves, as it were, in the Second Man, in the body of formative
forces; we then enter the world which, at any rate to begin with, reveals itself
to us in images: the world of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai.
Having broken through, as it were, into the cosmic spheres where
the etheric body, the body of formative forces, becomes perceptible to us, we
recognize on entering this world of flowing images that these reveal
manifestations of the beings of the third hierarchy: the Angeloi, Archangeloi,
and Archai. There we are among beings who are not with us in the physical world
of the senses. The presence of these beings reveals itself to us through the
medium of qualities similar in kind to those we perceive also through our senses
in the physical world.
But
here, in the world of the senses, we see for instance the colors spread over
the surface of things or in purely physical configurations such as the rainbow.
Sounds are experienced as connected with specific objects in the physical world.
In the same way, warmth and cold are felt as emanating from certain objects in
the physical world of the senses. But when we regard the world in which the
third hierarchy is revealed to us, we do not have colors adhering to things,
sounds reverberating from objects, and so on, but colors, sounds, warmth and
cold flowing and vibrating — one can hardly say through space — but flowing and
vibrating in time. Color is not spread over the surface of things but it
fluctuates and moves in waves. And by applying the faculties which enabled us to
enter these worlds, we know that, just as in the physical world color-effect
suggests a material foundation, so in yonder world the floating cloud of color,
a flowing organism of color, is the manifestation of the working and weaving of
the spirit-and-soul forces of the third hierarchy. So that the moment we behold
the life-tableau of which I have spoken, which gives a clear and spontaneous
picture of the whole of our life since birth, there also appears within this
stream of our own life's events something of which one can. say: within the
de-materialized world of flowing colors and sounds lives the third
hierarchy.
The
Connection of the Various Members of Man's
Being with the Corresponding
Worlds of the Universe
When
our faculties of cognition are strong enough to rise to the level where we can
observe our own astral body — that is to say, that part of us which existed
before we descended into earthly life, and which we shall again carry with us
when we have passed through the gate of death — then we know: this is a wider
world, a world we do not find in the cosmic ether but beyond the gates of birth
and death. Here we enter the wider astral world.
Things do not tally exactly with descriptions given in my book “Theosophy,” where they are presented from a different point
of view. But just as we meet the third hierarchy when we have attained
experience of our body of formative forces, so we encounter the second
hierarchy, the Exusiai, Kyriotetes, and Dynamis, in the world which reveals to us
our own astral body. And this second hierarchy does not become perceptible to us
in flowing colors and sounds, but it manifests itself to us by heralding and
proclaiming the import of revelations of the Logos resounding and weaving
through the universe. The second hierarchy speaks to us.
If,
after having attained the necessary powers of cognition, one wants to give some
indication of how one is related to these worlds, using words which naturally no
longer have meaning that is applicable in the sense-world, and yet are to some
extent expressive in regard to the higher worlds, one must say: For the etheric
world the inner living thinking becomes a kind of organ of touch. With
living thinking we touch this world of flowing colors and so on. We must not
imagine that we see the red as the eye sees the red of the senses, spread out on
the surface of things; instead we sense, we ‘touch,’ red and yellow and so forth;
we touch the sounds, so that we can say: in the etheric world, living thinking
is the element of touch in relation to what lives in the world of the third
hierarchy.
On
entering that world to which in a sense our astral body belongs, we cannot speak
of experiencing this astral world merely through the element of touch, but we
must say: we apprehend this world as the revelation of the beings of the second
hierarchy. Each separate manifestation presents itself to us as a member, a part,
of the World Logos. Out of the deep silence resounds the voice of the spiritual
beings. Thus, after touch: speech, communication.
And
when, in the way I have indicated, sustained effort rewards us with the
experience of the ‘I’ which goes from earthly life to earthly life and, between
them, passes through the other lives between each death and a new birth, then we
enter the spirit-world proper, the higher spirit-world. What happens in this
world, to begin with, is that we enter into a special relationship to our true
‘I.’ The ‘I’ we experience inwardly here in this life on Earth between birth and
death is, as we know, bound to the physical corporeality. We are aware of it as
long as we experience ourselves in the physical body and, in a way, we are
forced to practice selflessness when we rise into the etheric world and the
astral world. There we have at most something like a recollection of this
earthly ‘I.’
But
now we find the true ‘I’ as it passes from earthly life to earthly life. Our
first impression is that of an entirely different being. We say to ourselves:
Here I live through this earthly existence between birth and death. Looking back
I see that strip of etheric world which takes me back as far as my birth on
Earth. Then my vision opens into world-wide realms existing only in time, where
to speak of space would be quite misleading; but in a wide perspective the world
appears to me in all its fullness, as it lives and weaves between death and a
new birth. Looking through and beyond the ether, the world of the third
hierarchy, and through the astral, where I was between death and a new birth as
in a supersensible world whose life is revelation of the Logos manifesting as
the Cosmic Word — as my vision penetrates all this, I finally behold a being at
first far remote, a being representing the essence of my previous life on Earth.
First, then, I see myself here in this earthly life with my present ghost-like
‘I,’ and then, looking far back through all that has just been described, I see
what constitutes the essence of my previous life on Earth. But at the same time
I perceive how the content of the latter, as the gradually evolving ‘I,’ has
been passing through the worlds I have been observing in retrospective
perspective as far as my present life on Earth. To begin with I do, in fact,
perceive my true ‘I’ as some strange, remote being. And in this being, strange
as it appears to me at first, I recognize myself.
Every
word in this passage should be taken with absolute seriousness because every
single word is of significance. This whole experience must culminate in the
realization that the true ‘I,’ first taken to be some strange being, is indeed
one's own self; that there appeared what seemed to be some other being which
lived in the far distant past, but that it is, in fact, you yourself.
And
then one discovers how this self has flowed from the previous existence on Earth
into the present earthly life, but that now, in this life, it is covered up, as
it were, and could emerge only if all that befalls between going to sleep and
waking were to stand revealed before the soul. It is there that all that which
on its way through the astral and etheric world has reached us from our previous
life on Earth, continues to live and weave.
It
is, you see, a world of earthly contradictions mingled with chords of heavenly
harmonies in this inner process of the striving soul: earthly contradictions
inasmuch as by means which are designed to meet the needs of ordinary daily life
on Earth, one cannot really reach one's own true ‘I.’ As it is, only the first
rudiments of love live in our earthly ‘I.’ And even so, a glow is shed over life
on Earth through the power of love which radiates into this earthly life. But
this love must grow stronger. It must gain sufficient strength to enable man to
behold the etheric world and the astral world through the power of love and thus
to overcome what lives in him as his lower self, as egoism — the opposite of
love — to gain mastery over that which, as the antithesis of love, enables him
to experience himself in earthly life as an independent ‘I.’ Love must grow so
strong that one learns to ignore this earthly ‘I,’ to forget it, to disregard
it. Love is the identification of one's own self with the other being. This
impulse must be so strong that one ceases to heed one's own ‘I’ as it lives in
the earthly body. Here then arises the contradiction, that it is precisely
through selflessness, through the highest capacity for love, that one advances
towards one's own true ‘I’ beckoning as it radiates through the cycles of
time.
One
has to lose one's earthly ‘I’ to behold one's true ‘I.’ And he who fails to
accomplish this act of surrender has simply no means of finding the true ‘I.’
One could say that the true ‘I’ does not want to be sought whenever revelation
of its presence is desired. If sought for, it hides. For only in love will it be
found, and love is a surrender of self to the other being. For that reason the
true Self must be found as if it were another being.
At
the moment of coming face to face with one's true ‘I,’ one also becomes aware of
what lives in a wider world, in the spiritual world itself. One meets the beings
of the first hierarchy: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones.
And
just as there one finds again one's ‘I’ — of which one has really only a
reflection in earthly life — so now one finds the entire world of earthly
environment in its true spiritual form. Hence one must also love this
earthly world to find the world of its primal origins, together with the true
‘I.’
So
that we can say: What reveals itself in the spiritual world is something
remembered, is touch, speech, memory — but remembrance of something which
formerly one had known only in reflections, in images.
Thus,
by experiencing one's human self, and with the realization of one's own
humanity, one enters into the life of the universe in its totality. And to give
a clear picture of the various members of man's being — the physical body, the
etheric body, the astral body, and the ‘I’ — each must also be shown in its
relationship to the corresponding worlds of the universe.
What
I have now described must be well understood and taken in its full meaning
before any approach to the problem of the four parts of man's nature can
disclose their true significance. Here is a case in point which shows very
clearly that man must not only turn his thoughts in other directions, but
think in a different way if he is to rise to a true understanding of the
spiritual world. He must bring to life what are really only dead images
in purely physical sense-perception: his attitude of mind must
change.
And
here one can indeed come across some extraordinary products of modern spiritual
life, which show the difficulties that have to be overcome if Anthroposophy is
to enter into the souls of men.
Anthroposophy as Academic Philosophy
(“Chair-Philosophy”)
Sees It
When
the book “Occult Science” had been published, a well-known modern
philosopher took it upon himself to analyze it. He first read the chapter about
the four members of man's constitution — physical body, etheric body, astral
body, ‘I’ — and so on. Now, this book has also been read by many quite simple
people, but people possessed of healthy common sense. For them it had point and
meaning because with healthy common sense one can always follow a subject, just
as one can understand a picture without being a painter. But to one who in these
days is a much quoted philosopher, such understanding presents considerably more
difficulties than It does to a naive, simple human being. As this renowned
philosopher reads: physical body, etheric body, astral body, ‘I,’ he is puzzled
and wonders what he can make of it all. What does it all mean? Physical body,
yes, of course. Etheric body? — well, perhaps it exists. What is dense matter in
the physical body may here be of finer substance, but it is still matter. He
argues, therefore, that to distinguish between physical and etheric body is to
draw an arbitrary dividing line between the two. — Astral body? — We know
something about a soul, says this philosopher, but — astral body? In the soul we
have our thinking, feeling, and willing. These are functions of the physical
body. If one understands the physical body one has also grasped the meaning of
thinking, feeling, and willing. And the ‘I’ — that is only the synthesis of all
this. Such was his way of arguing.
And
now please observe how the renowned philosopher's critical thought was
formulated. — Having taken account of what he could find in “Occult Science” much as one might look at a chair, he said
to himself: a chair can also be divided into its parts — legs, seat, back,
first, second and third part — and there is no reason why man could not be
divided in the same way as a chair. Finally he grants that this will serve well
enough as a classification of man's constitution, but there is really nothing
remarkably new in it, as in his view the principle underlying the division of
man's constitution into its four members applies equally to the chair.
When
we turn to physical chemistry, the matter already becomes less difficult. There
one could not talk so glibly about simple division. The chemist divides water
into hydrogen and oxygen, H2O; the natural scientist will not simply
divide water in an abstract sense into two parts, hydrogen and oxygen. He
cannot leave it at that because he knows that hydrogen will not only combine
with oxygen, as in water, but that it also combines, for instance in nitric
acid, with chloride. It follows that hydrogen contained in water is not only to
be found there as part of water but is capable, when not forming part of water,
of entering into quite different combinations. And likewise oxygen, when not
forming part of water, can enter into other combinations and unite with quite
different substances, as for instance, calcium, in lime. Hydrogen plus chloride
can become nitric acid, oxygen plus calcium becomes lime. Here one could not
say: all you have to do is to divide water into its parts in the abstract, like
a chair.
Man
has to be considered on a still higher level. Here we have not merely a division
into physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ‘I,’ but man's physical body
must be conceived as belonging to the Earth. When a human being passes through
the gate of death and leaves his physical corpse behind, the physical body turns
to Earth, but the etheric body rises up into the ether. The astral body leaves
both and enters those worlds which are the domain of the second hierarchy. And
the 'I' belongs to a different world again, the domain of the first hierarchy. These
four members do not merely represent a division for classification, they belong
to quite different spheres of the universe. At the same time, the distinction
illustrates the nature of man's being. We have here, on a much higher level,
something for which one has to search already when progressing from the
comparison of the chair with that of the water.
Naturally the level of mentality in our modern civilization again
presents a considerable obstacle, for the much-cited philosopher could have
learned already from chemistry that it is not enough to go on talking only about
abstract divisions, that one can apply them to a chair but not to water.
However, in the case of this so-called philosopher, the philosophy unfortunately
did not get past the chair to the water. It did not rise from the observation of
life's trivialities to natural science. On the other hand, natural science does
not concern itself with philosophy, so that the chemist of today does not think
about such things at all.
It
shows that in a philosophy which, from this point of view, might be called a
‘chair-doctrine,’ thinking in terms of natural science has as yet no part.
Again, in chemistry, in natural science, philosophy plays no pert. Therefore it
is precisely in the world of the scientist that those conditions are wanting
which can pave the way to an understanding of the deeper, inner truths of the
universe in their relation to man.
The
man who undertook this critical study did in fact submit his article to me
first, in manuscript. But what could I do with it? One cannot enter into a
discussion with a man whose mind lacks the very first prerequisites. I did
nothing about it, but later found the article printed with all the mistakes and
all the nonsense contained in such ‘chair-philosophy.’ Such are the trials of
fate which Anthroposophy has to suffer on the way. One must be clear about such
situations, as they so often arise between Anthroposophy and its critics. It is
precisely in that quarter that for the time being there is not the slightest
possibility of an understanding.
And
this philosopher, much quoted among philosophers, even makes certain concessions
in line with ideas which are more or less popular currency in modern
civilization. For instance, he admits that there once existed a continent
between Europe and America called ‘Atlantis,’ inhabited by the ancient
Atlanteans, a prehistoric humanity. Then he asks the hypothetical question — I
am not quoting verbatim — how is it possible that today, when we have a proper
physiology and a proper psychology, anyone could conceive the idea of dividing
man's being in such a way! Of course in Anthroposophy one does not do it in the
way it can be done with a chair, but he thinks so. This philosopher — in his own
way he is perfectly conscientious — was honestly puzzled how anyone could make
such a division, or could hold such a primitive conception as compared with the
knowledge a modern philosopher can command.
Well,
as regards fundamental truths the modem philosopher is not in a particularly
favorable position, but he thinks he is. Two days ago I explained to those who
attended the Teachers' Course what modern so-called ‘psychoanalysis’ really
is.
I
should like to repeat that the peculiar thing about psychoanalysis is that it
arises on the one side from dilettante physiology, in which the soul-forces do
not reach the sphere of the spirit but remain bound to the body, while on the
other hand it is based on dilettante psychology. The two do not meet. As a
result, grotesque connections are being formulated when dilettantism endeavors
to establish links between research work in psychology and research work in
physiology. And the dilettantism is of immense proportions, and equally great in
both cases. The psychiatrists' own psychological dilettantism equals in
magnitude that of their physical dilettantism, but when both are the same in volume
and operate jointly, they multiply each other. That, according to simple
arithmetic, makes the square of dilettantism. So that, seen in the true light,
psychoanalysis is the square of dilettantism, because it is the product of the
multiplication of dilettantism by dilettantism.
Now
the problem for our much quoted philosopher amounted to this: he could not
understand how anyone could conceive such a primitive idea as to divide man's
being into four members as one divides a chair into three. So he advances the
hypothesis that I must be a reincarnated Atlantean. Really quite ingenious from
the chair-philosophy point of view!
The
Overcoming of Materialism by Knowledge Attained
Through Living
Thinking
One
can be a materialist if lack of inner strength makes it impossible for the
soul-forces to seek an opening for finding the way which leads into the world of
soul-and-spirit, to the archetypal origins. Nothing can be gained by trying to
prove anything on crude evidence, because materialism can certainly be proved as
long as the evidence of proof is taken from the physical world. That is the
crucial point. To find the way from the physical into the spiritual, inner
activity is needed, not abstract reasoning. The way to true Anthroposophy is
found through that inner activity in man which stimulates the search for true
knowledge. And all skirmishing in attempts to prove anything is useless, because
you cannot argue with a man whose proofs are based entirely on the physical
world of the senses. To disprove to such a man what to him is indisputable
remains an impossibility as long as he lacks that primal strength of the inner
life which alone could start him on the way to finding the spiritual world.
This
must be understood. One must realize that it is given to man to rise of his own
free will from the physical to the spiritual — that this rising into the
spiritual world is not an act of sense-bound reasoning, but an act of inner,
conscious human experience. It is only when one really has this vital inner
experience that one becomes capable of appreciating Anthroposophy in the right
perspective, as seen against the merits of merely physical methods of
cognition.
Our
time is sorely in need of this. — A philosophy whose analytic powers of
reasoning are only applicable to such things as chairs can hardly be expected
to have a ready understanding for what are real human values. It is, however,
quite competent when dealing with chair-values. But what humanity needs today is
what leads man to man, to the real man, not merely to his outward appearance. In
its outer aspect the appearance reflects all that is inherent in the archetype
of the spiritual entity, but it does not reveal that to inner experience. For in
the experience of self, man must first find and recognize himself as a
being of soul-and-spirit. Thus in the last resort the way to all knowledge is
bound up with knowing oneself as an image of the true Self of man.
If
with the growing strength of love that level of knowledge is attained by which
one recognizes as one's own self what at first seems to be a strange being, and
again, if one rises to the height where the earthly world is found again in the
archetypal world, then one is no longer engaged in a process of gaining abstract
knowledge, but in a process of living cognition.
And
it is in this living process of attaining knowledge that the world reveals
itself to man through his own being, and that his own being reveals itself in
his experience of the outer world. Thus man becomes a being who finds himself
again in the entire universe, for knowing himself he learns to know the world
and, knowing the world, he learns to know himself. In this inter-relationship
between world and man there reveals itself what unites man with the
Divine-Spiritual, that which makes his being aglow with the religious mood of
all real higher knowledge. And finally, when earnest cognition blends with
religious experience, then knowledge radiates religious emotion, and the
transparency of knowledge is lifted to that sphere where faith becomes knowledge
through its own inner power of cognition. The world is found in man and man in
the world on the path of knowledge through the world.
(In
the etheric world: through living thinking: touch.
In the astral world: through the deep silence of the soul: speech.
In the spiritual world: through re-cognition: memory.)
In the astral world: through the deep silence of the soul: speech.
In the spiritual world: through re-cognition: memory.)
Thus
world and man become united in an all-embracing, cosmic, spiritual-divine being,
in which man finds himself and the world and so for the first time rises to his
true human dignity which can then also enter his religious and moral
ethos and make him fully Man.
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