Wonders of the World, Ordeals of the Soul, Revelations of the Spirit. Lecture 9 of 10.
Rudolf Steiner, Munich, August 26, 1911:
Yesterday I had to point out how a kind of reversal of the forces which led to a densification of the body is taking place in the human organization. As an example of this I drew attention to a kind of etherization of the coarser physical substance of the blood which emanates all the time from our system of heart-and-blood circulation, with the result that the finest elements of the blood are passing over all the time into the same substance as that of which the human ether body consists. And we have seen that these etheric elements stream upward from the heart in quite distinct currents and permeate the brain; we have seen further that it is in fact because this newly formed element of our etheric body streams through the brain that we are able to develop knowledge which goes beyond the completely egotistic knowledge of what takes place within our own organization. I tried to make it clear that unless these etheric streams were to rise up from the heart to the brain, only ideas, concepts, feelings connected with our own bodily organization could find expression through the instrument of the brain.
The whole future
evolution of mankind is involved in this process of which I have just told you.
Let me remind you once more that Earth evolution was preceded by the Saturn, Sun,
and Moon evolutions, and that these preceding evolutions had resulted in the
formation of an etheric man in the period of Earth-development prior to Lemuria.
Before man entered upon his Lemurian development he was, even as regards his
physical forces, a purely etheric form. A physically solid man such as we have
today, with his thick physical blood, his system of nerves and bones and so on,
did not exist before Lemuria. All the forces which we also have in the physical
body today were at that time still in etheric form. This etheric human form was
shadowy and phantom-like in comparison with the later man, it barely hinted at
what was to crystallize out later as the denser man; and it has taken the
Lemurian, the Atlantean, and the post-Atlantean epochs to complete the
densification.
Now, in order to
understand fully what is meant by ‘Wonders of the World, Ordeals of the Soul,
Revelations of the Spirit’ we must look somewhat closely into this formation of
man, we must see just how man gradually solidified out of that original
shadow-form. Today let us try to picture to ourselves what the human being was
like in this pre-Lemurian era. At that time man had only a kind of shadowy form,
merely hinting at what came later. Into this Phantom [ 1 ] there entered the most diverse currents; the beings of the
higher hierarchies were working within it. At that time man did not walk upon
the earth with his feet, he hovered as a Phantom in the periphery; it was only
later that he so to say stepped down upon the Earth.
The Earth itself
was as yet in a more rarefied condition. All that the higher hierarchies wrought
upon man poured into him in all kinds of currents, but while man lived upon the
Earth in this way in phantom-form, the Earth too continued to develop, since it
was by no means the solid lump of matter described by the geologists or the
mineralogists or the physicists. To describe the Earth as the physicists and the
mineralogists do is as if in describing man one were to confine oneself to the
skeleton. What physical science describes is only a part of the Earth, it is its
skeleton. There are yet other forces, quite other substantial things connected
with the Earth, and these constitute it as an organism in which we are
embedded.
Thus the Earth
too has pursued its evolution, and during the course of the Lemurian, Atlantean,
and post-Atlantean evolutions other forces have streamed continuously toward
man out of the Earth itself. We will now examine these forces more closely.
First we must pay attention to certain forces which through the spiritual beings
of the higher hierarchies belong to the sub-earthly current to which I referred
yesterday. These forces actually stream into man from below, they are directed
upon man (if we are to express it spatially) from the Earth upward. During the
course of Earth evolution the forces of the higher hierarchies penetrated into
man from below; these forces — which particularly during the Lemurian epoch but
continuing also afterwards, streamed into man and cooperated in his formation —
these forces are recognized by ordinary science as well as by spiritual science
as in their nature working through the Earth. Everywhere on the Earth's surface,
wherever one goes, these forces are present. They had another task in Earth
evolution as well, but let us begin by trying to throw light on them in relation
to beings of another kingdom, in the formation of which they were conspicuously
active.
The zoologists
and the naturalists will one day be very astonished to find how complicated has
really been the formation out of the spiritual world of all that they represent
by their abstract and tidy genealogical trees, from a certain aspect quite
correctly. The relationships which they quite rightly recognize have been
brought about as the result of very complicated currents arising from widely
different spiritual directions. Actually it is quite wrong to describe the
animals which are known in zoology as mammals as the Darwinists do. It is quite
wrong to believe that one can draw a straight line from the very simplest
mammals to the most complicated. In two different species of mammal very
different formative forces are at work. The mammals which we have around us and
which belong to the category of the ruminants — mainly domestic animals, as you
know — have in the course of their development been subjected to quite different
spiritual conditions from, for example, the feline, the lion-like animals. We
have to think of the spiritual forces as working specifically upon the
group-souls of the animals and through the group-souls upon their physical
forms. The influences which resulted in the lion species did not begin to work
upon the Earth until the approach of the Atlantean time, and during that time,
and these influences reached the Earth as if driven outward from its center
toward its surface. But the influences which worked during the Lemurian time —
and which also worked upon the human being — are connected with what worked as
formative force upon our ruminants, influences which esotericism summarizes
under the symbol of the bull. All this began at that time to exercise an
influence upon man himself, working into his formation as if from the depths of
the Earth toward its surface.
You must not be
shocked if I say that if nothing else had worked upon man he would in his
external form have resembled the bull. If these forces alone had worked upon man,
their effect would have been to make him like a bull. But little by little other
forces working from within the Earth outward laid hold of the human
organization. They are the same forces which exercised the main influence upon
the other order of mammals. In esotericism these influences are summarised under
the name lion. These forces enter into Earth evolution somewhat later. If
the earlier forces had not been there, if these forces alone had worked upon
man, his appearance would have resembled that of the lion, with all the
characteristics of the leonine organization. The complex human form has come
into existence because it has been influenced not only by one current, but by
several currents one after another.
You can now form
some idea of why the animals resembling the bull remained bull-like, and those
resembling the lion became lion-like: it is because the shadowy forms which
underlay them were not organized in the same way as the pre-Lemurian Phantoms of
human beings had been. As a result of their preceding Saturn, Sun, and Moon
evolutions the human Phantoms were so organized that they always waited for the
right moment, that they allowed a variety of successive streams to work upon
them one after another, in order that one stream should neutralize the other and
thereby bring about a higher harmony. A bull would not remain a bull were the
lion nature to work upon it and to modify its structure. The human being
approached the Earth in such a way as to enable all these influences to work
upon him.
It was not until
Atlantis that something else happened, which will throw a flood of light upon
zoology when once it is recognized and made fruitful for external science.
During the course of the Atlantean epoch quite other conditions came about. I
have already said that these bull forces and these lion forces worked as if from
the depths of the Earth toward its surface. The forces which were now to unite
with these came from without, came from the periphery. During Atlantis we have
to think of forces entering into man and fashioning him from below upward, and
other forces from cosmic space flowing into him in the downward direction. Thus
the human Phantom again became exposed to fresh forces which now worked upon man
from another, and an opposite, direction.
To get an idea
of what these forces are like which stream upon the Earth from cosmic space we
must ask ourselves which are the creatures upon whom they worked with especial
intensity, unhampered by other forces. We can point to certain creatures in our
environment upon which the bull forces and the lion forces coming from within
the Earth have little influence, upon which on the contrary the forces working
into the substance of the Earth from cosmic space are almost exclusively active.
They are the creatures belonging to the bird kingdom. Our abstract zoology will
one day be very much astonished to have to admit that the forces at work in the
mammals are quite different from those which work mainly on the bird kingdom,
and, in a broader field upon all things that propagate themselves by laying eggs
outside their own bodies. In the case of all creatures in which reproduction
takes place in this way, but especially in members of the bird kingdom, forces
streaming in from cosmic space are predominantly at work. In esotericism these
forces are comprised under the name eagle.
Now, if we think
of these forces, which come to expression pre-eminently in the formation of the
bird world, as harmonized in man with the lion forces and the bull forces, so
that they all become part of the original Phantom, then this harmony results in
the present-day human form. If you consider the totally different world of the
birds, you will not long be in any doubt that the whole structure of the bird is
completely different from that of the mammal. Today I will not go into the
structure of the other members of the animal kingdom. In the structure of the
bird there is something very striking, even to clairvoyant sight. Whereas in the
case of the mammals, wherever we turn our clairvoyant gaze we find the astral
body very strongly developed, in the case of the birds the most outstanding
feature which meets the clairvoyant eye is the etheric body. For example, it is
the etheric body, stimulated by cosmic forces coming in from space, which brings
to expression the feathers, the plumage. The plumage is formed from without, and
a feather can only come into being because the forces which work down upon the
Earth from cosmic space are stronger than the forces coming from the Earth. The
framework of the feather, what one may call its quill or spine, is of course
subject to certain forces coming from the Earth, but it is the cosmic forces
which contribute what is attached to the quill and constitute the bird's
plumage.
It is quite
different as regards creatures covered with hair. Forces working upward from the
Earth, forces working in the opposite direction from those in the feathers of
the birds, are predominantly at work in hair, and hair cannot become feather,
because in the case of animals and men forces coming from cosmic space affect
their hair but little. This seeming paradox fully expresses the reality, and if
one cared to elaborate it one could say that every feather has the tendency to
become a hair, but is not a hair because the forces of cosmic space work inward
on the feather from all sides; and every hair has the tendency to become a
feather, but does not become a feather because the forces which work from the
Earth upward are stronger than the forces which work from without inward. If
one takes such paradoxes seriously one discovers certain fundamental secrets in
the constitution of our world.
Let us suppose
that a man endowed with the ancient clairvoyance wanted not simply to describe
man — who really distorts the several streams which flow into him by harmonizing
them — but precisely to make manifest these different currents: he would have to
say: ‘Something forms the foundation of the human being which cannot be seen
physically: the archetypal Phantom, which today only appears in physical form
because man has harmonized the eagle, bull, and lion influences.’ Anyone who
wants to study the evolution of man must study man's archetypal Phantom as a
supersensible form. But in order to do this he would have to separate out again
what has flowed together in man. He would have to realize that an etheric
shadow-form lies behind the whole of human development, and that into this there
enters and intermingles a bull-influence, a lion-influence, and a bird-influence,
in such a way that in the finished man of today they are no longer to be
distinguished.
Suppose a
culture-epoch — for instance, that of ancient Egypt — were trying to represent
human evolution, were trying to put before man the immense riddle of human
evolution: then the real man, the archetypal Phantom, which arose as the result
of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions, would have to remain invisible; but, as
if out of the invisible, a composite figure would have to be formed, put
together out of the forms of bull and lion, with wings such as an eagle has,
such as birds in general have. If you recall the all-embracing significance of
the figure of the Sphinx, which was intended to represent the great riddle of
human evolution, then you have in fact what a clairvoyant culture, which was
inwardly aware of the truth about humanity, put before this humanity. The
features which stand out separately in the Sphinx are in human nature inwardly
interwoven. For clairvoyant sight the human form has a very strange appearance.
If one allows such a sphinx, made up of a lion-form and a bull-form, together
with the wings of a bird, to work upon the clairvoyant vision, and if one
completes it by adding the human Phantom which underlies it, if one weaves these
elements together, then the human form as we have it today comes into being
before us. The clairvoyant consciousness cannot then look upon a sphinx — which
to begin with does not resemble a man at all — without saying to himself: ‘Thou
art I myself!’
Now, it should be
noted that in the course of this study we have also thrown light upon the four
members of man from another standpoint. A Phantom, a shadow-form, designated in
esotericism as Man, came over as the product of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon
evolutions. In the process of the densification of this Phantom the influences
named in esotericism lion, bull, and eagle are at work. And
here we have the four esoteric symbols which together make up the human being
and which have a profound meaning for human evolution.
We have said
that in the course of humanity's evolution on the Earth, forces from without,
cosmic forces, were at work, both upon the human being himself and upon other
creatures, especially the bird creation. That in fact came about during the
Atlantean time; so that one can say that an influence from cosmic space came
down into those parts of the human organization to which normal human
consciousness no longer reaches. This influence was at work in Atlantis, and of
course it has also continued in the post-Atlantean time. This was the current
coming from what I called yesterday the upper gods, the gods who were in a sense
the representations of the sub-earthly, the Chthonic gods. They are beings who
were encountered by the pupils of the Greek Mysteries, who had to wrestle with
the great riddle of the Sphinx. They had to behold the unconscious part of the
human being in such a way that through self-knowledge they also arrived at the
four-foldness of humanity.
What since the
time of Atlantis had streamed into the subconscious from cosmic space, even into
its baser elements, now at the Baptism by John in the Jordan began to flow into
man's higher, more purified parts. That is a most significant event. These
forces from cosmic space, which since the time of Atlantis have worked
continuously upon the formation of the Earth and of humanity, begin to stream in
the purest way not only into the unconscious part of the human being, but in
such a way that they can influence consciousness. That is why a pictorial image,
one of the great symbols which have come down to us through occult and religious
scriptures — the symbol of the dove, which we find in the Gospels — had to make
its appearance.
How was it
possible to describe this instreaming in its purest form from above? We know of
course what took place in the Baptism in the Jordan. We know that at that time
the threefold body of Jesus of Nazareth, which had been prepared through the two
Jesus children, as is described in my little book The
Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind, was abandoned by its ego,
which was the ego of Zarathustra, and on its departure there entered into this
body the purest part of that stream which had been pouring in all the time from
cosmic space, but hitherto only into that part of man which is today
unconscious. Hence it was correctly symbolized in the form of a bird, the figure
of the pure white dove, which represents as it were the purest extract of what
in the ancient figure of the Sphinx was the eagle or cherubic element. That this
cosmic stream should flow into the conscious part of the human being is
essential to the perfection of humanity upon the Earth. In the picture of Jesus
of Nazareth on the banks of the Jordan with the dove hovering over him we have
in fact the expression of the Mystery which had now been brought to a certain
conclusion.
Yesterday we
were able to follow a little the cosmic history of this inward streaming from
cosmic space. Why was this cosmic instreaming able to transmute itself into that
Christ Power, that Christ Impulse, which, as it continues to work further upon the
Earth, will permeate the human being completely? As man inwardly receives this
Impulse he will more and more feel the truth of St. Paul's words ‘Not I, but
Christ in me!’ As contrasted with the other three currents which were there as
the outcome of earlier evolution, this new influence, which is the purest stream
from above, will take hold of the human being, will encompass him to a greater
and greater extent, will also liberate him ever more and more from what binds
him to the Earth. Yesterday we spoke of the historical development of this
stream and said that it was only able to be what it has in fact become because
it had been prepared for upon the Old Sun.
Whereas the
upper gods, those who, in the sense we explained yesterday, were the
representations of the others, only wished to live in the finer elements — in
the warmth, light, chemical, and life elements — this being, who later through
the Baptism by John in the Jordan descended to Earth, out of the most profound
wisdom took with Him the forces to which our Earth evolution had already
advanced on the Old Sun. We know from spiritual science that the condensation of
the warmth element to air (warmth being the essential feature of the Saturn
evolution) had already taken place during the Sun evolution. Whereas the other
beings among the upper gods refused to take the air element with them when they
withdrew from development as a whole into cosmic space, this being did take the
air-element with Him, so that He remained related to the Earth. Thus through
this being there was outside in cosmic space all the time for all future
evolution an element akin to the Earth — the element which had already on the
Old Sun condensed to air or gas. If we gaze up into space, gaze up to the Sun,
as though with the eye of Zarathustra of old, we have to see it primarily as a
survival of the ancient Sun, so to say as the ancient Sun planet come to life
again, repeating in the present what existed during the Sun evolution.
Thus, expressed
in terms of spiritual science, we have in the first place to see in the Sun the
dwelling place — or part of it at any rate, for this dwelling-place extends to
the other planets as well — the most essential part of the dwelling-place of the
upper gods, whom we designated yesterday as one stream of the divine world. But
if you look at this whole Sun with the clairvoyant eye, you see that everything
in it which is those upper gods is there only in etheric form, from the warmth
ether upward to the light ether, the chemical ether, and the life ether. But the
Sun as it moves in space today is not only there for clairvoyant sight as an
etheric structure, it is also a globe of gas, it is condensed to the state of
air. The Sun would never have condensed to the state of air had not the being of
whom I spoke yesterday, the being who descended to Earth with the dove in the
Baptism by John in the Jordan, during the Sun evolution detached Himself from
the Sun in a body of air and not merely in an etheric body. Thus when we look up
at the Sun we have to say: ‘The warmth, light, and chemical impulses in the Sun
are connected with the other beings, those who are only the ideas or
representations of the lower gods; but the gaseous element in the Sun is
actually the body of Christ.’
Our modern
materialistic science will one day come to learn once more the ancient doctrine
of Zarathustra, will one day have to say to itself: ‘The Sun as a globe of
vapor outside in space is not merely what our astro-chemistry makes of it, not
merely what our spectral-analysis reveals, but the Sun as a globe of air or
vapor there outside in the heavens is the pristine body of Christ, who was
associated with the other upper gods, but was also connected with the being of
the Earth.’ — That is what Zarathustra perceived when he expressed the Mystery
of the Christ in the Sun by the word Aura Mazdao or Ahura Mazdao — the great
wisdom-filled Spirit, the great wisdom, the great aura. And then what up to that
time had existed solely in the Sun, and yet was akin to the nature of the Earth,
did in fact take possession, in the mysterious moment of the Baptism by John in
the Jordan, of the physical, etheric, and astral bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. In
the body of Jesus of Nazareth, for the first time upon our Earth, the purified
stream from cosmic space united with the newly arising etheric body streaming
from the human heart to the brain. During the Baptism by John in the Jordan
there took place a union between what was indeed a real stream that came from
without, from cosmic space — being moreover permeated with airy substance — and
the stream which rises upward continuously as the finest etheric constituents
of the heart-blood toward the head. This is what first gave to every human soul
the possibility of permeating itself with that element out of cosmic space which
is represented to us in the sign of the dove at the Baptism by John in the
Jordan. In fact, through that event an intercourse was created between the
entire universe, so far as it is accessible to us, and its purest extract, which
previously — provisionally, we might say — had cooperated in what is called
esoterically the eagle-stream. It was a communication, an interaction, between
all that streamed from the Earth and formed the human body from below upward
and what as macrocosmic stream worked into man from without. From this you see
how we can enter ever more deeply into the Mystery which took place in
Palestine. The more we ourselves advance in knowledge of what the world is, the
better we come to understand the Mystery of Palestine.
Now, we are bound
to ask why the human being no longer sees or feels anything at all of this
etheric stream which flows upward from his heart to his brain. Modern science
is superficial, hence its attitude to history is also superficial, and it often
takes age-old truths to be age-old errors. If you studied the Greek philosopher
Aristotle you would find in his writings a remarkable teaching about the
nature of man, a remarkable description of that ‘wonder of the world’, the human
being. You would find a description of how extremely fine etheric elements flow
from the heart to the head and there, as they contact the brain, cool down.
Modern science of course says ‘Aristotle was certainly very intelligent for a
Greek, but today every schoolboy knows that this is not so.’ But it is those
who speak in this way of Aristotle who are in the wrong. The truth is that
though Aristotle had not himself the clairvoyant consciousness which enabled him
to know it for himself, he knew from old traditions what in still earlier times
it had been possible to observe through an original, natural clairvoyance. This
consciousness of etheric currents rising from the heart to the head was
certainly to be found until far on into the Middle Ages, right on into the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We find a certain awareness of it even in the
works of Descartes. But according to historians of philosophy ‘Descartes has
some fantastic tale about the vital spirits which flow from the heart to the
brain, but that is just an old-wives' tale. Happily we know better than
that.’
But it is not an
old-wives' tale, it is the truth, a truth which originated in the time when such
things could be perceived by a natural clairvoyance. How then must we put the
matter from the point of view of modern clairvoyance, modern occult science? We
may perhaps feel somewhat uneasy with the way in which Aristotle puts it, since
of necessity he only drew upon tradition, the old clairvoyant forces being no
longer at his disposal. But if by means of the esotericism which has been
available since the thirteenth century one undertakes an investigation of the
whole human being, then one perceives that in fact there is such an etheric
current from the heart to the head.
One observes
also something else. Not only does an etheric current go from the heart to the
head, but astral currents are also present in this stream. If one looks closely
at these currents it becomes clear that they contain both etheric elements — substances of the human etheric body — and substances of man's astral body. A
substance streams from heart to head in which substantial elements both of the
etheric and of the astral body of man are present. Now, the brain is a most
remarkable instrument of human nature. Owing to the way it has been formed since
the last third of the Atlantean epoch, it has acquired one very peculiar
quality. It arrests the astrality which rises up, prevents the astral current
from passing through it, while it does allow the etheric current to pass. I
repeat — the brain as physical instrument is an organ in which part of the
current which comes from the heart is dammed up. The brain is permeable for the
etheric current, but not for the astral one. The astral current is arrested in
our brain; in the region of the head the seer perceives that astral currents
rising upward from the body spread out in the brain but are held up there, are
allowed to pass through the brain not at all, or only to a very small extent.
These upward astral currents which are arrested by the brain have a certain
power of attraction for the external astral substantialities which are always
around us in the astral substance of the Earth. Hence the astral body of man in
the region of the head is as though knit together out of two astralities: out of
the astrality which continually streams toward us from the cosmos, and the
astrality in the human body which comes up from below and is attracted by the
outer astrality.
Thus the astral
body around the head, quite near the skin of the head, has a thickening,
something like a cap — to put it rather grotesquely — made of astral substance —
a cap which we wear all the time. We have in the region of the head an astral
covering consisting of the thickening which arises through the knitting together
of the inner and the outer astralities. The rays of the etheric body pass
through this astral hood or cap, since they are not arrested by the brain, and
the purer they are — that is, the less they still contain of the instincts,
desires, passions, and emotions of human nature — the lighter and more brilliant
they appear. Thus the human aura, when seen from the front, acquires a kind of
coronet, a wreath of astrality, through which the rays of the etheric body pass.
That is the halo which those gifted with the ancient clairvoyance perceived in
those whose etheric aura shone brightly because of the purity of their being.
This is what we see depicted in pictures. That is what is meant by the halo,
that is what becomes visible to the clairvoyant who clearly sees the aura round
the head. The inner astral aura, the inner astral substance, through a peculiar
characteristic of the brain, is retained and disposed around the head.
Please try to
grasp this process very clearly. Etheric-astral substance in man flows from
below upward. This etheric-astral substance expands in the brain in such a way
as to fill it, but is held back there, just as a ray of light which falls upon a
mirror is arrested and thrown back. Here we have the true mirroring-process.
Because the astral stuff of the brain is held back, it reflects itself, and what
in this way enters into you and is reflected is your thought, your conscious
feeling, what you normally experience as your soul-life. And it is only because
this astral part is so to speak tied together or sewn together by the etheric
currents streaming through the brain, which thus effect a union between the
inner astrality and the outer, that knowledge of the outer world comes about.
Everything that we know of the outer world we know because the outer astrality
unites with the inner astrality by virtue of the strange astral cap or hood
which everyone has.
Yes, my dear
friends, even the history of civilization will still be greatly enriched by
means of occultism. Let me draw your attention to the fact that in ancient times
men actually saw such things, and that the aura which was in olden times still
visible was copied in men's clothing. Men adopted helmets because they were
shaped like the astral cap or hood which crowns every man. All clothing
originated in this way, through man's imitating in his dress the etheric or the
astral element which he had around him. If we want to understand ancient
garments, priestly robes in particular, if we want to know why this or that
originated, we only need to be able to look clairvoyantly upon what surounds men
as their etheric or astral auras. For the form of these auras was reproduced in
ancient garments, and is still represented in the vestments connected with
religious cults or rituals. Nowadays — I say this by the way — we have become so
corrupted by materialism that we ignore the aura and will have nothing to do
with the kind of clothing which represents what man bears within him. The craze
for nudism has emerged in our time because the materialistic mind is no longer
aware of those higher etheric and astral auras which men bear around them, and
from which they have derived the shape of their garments. In olden times, though
not so very long ago, the colors of these auras were reproduced in human
clothing. If you look at pictures by the old masters, the color of the garments
still bears witness to a vestigial consciousness of the aura. Notice how Mary is
usually depicted with undergarment and cloak of specific colors. The painter
could not give to Mary the yellow robe of the Magdalene! Why not? Because the
aura of a Magdalene is quite different from that of a Mary! The painter of old
brought very clearly to expression that the raiment represented what the human
being carries around him supersensibly as a kind of clothing. And if you look at
what the figures of the Greek gods wear, you see that not only their clothing,
but also their helmet-shaped headdresses and the like — as apparent for example
in the case of Pallas Athene — are due to the way the Greek sculptors were
conditioned to think of the auras of their gods.
Thus you see
that the man who has progressed to real spiritual knowledge of human nature has
to admit: ‘All that you see around you is only a very superficial expression of
your true being.’ When a man feels his consciousness strong within him he is
driven to say: ‘This consciousness of mine only grasps a very small part indeed
of human nature; there is something else working in me all the time.’
Now we are in a
position to carry to completion what we have already said about the brain. If we
go farther and consider the human being clairvoyantly in respect of other
regions of his being, we find something most remarkable. Whereas the etheric and
astral elements mount upward as far as his brain, where the astral part is
arrested and the etheric part protrudes beyond as a kind of corona, we see that
the ego-part of man has been arrested earlier as a kind of inner aura in the
region of the heart. The true inner ego-aura is already arrested in the region
of the heart, it only presses upward as far as the heart, and there unites with
a part of the outer aura, unites with the corresponding part of the macrocosmic
aura. Two elements in fact are entwined in the heart: the element which enters
from the cosmos, and the ego-aura which mounts up from below, but is dammed back
in the heart. Just as the astral aura is arrested in the brain, so is the
ego-aura held back in the heart, where it makes contact with an element of
ego-aura coming from without. Hence the fact is that the real ego-consciousness
of man does not take place in the brain. What I have said about the man of
Atlantis, that his ego was drawn into him, must be thought of more explicitly as
an incoming of the external cosmic ego, which since the time of Atlantis has
advanced as far as the heart, where it has united with another stream which
comes up from below and reaches the heart. Thus the heart is organically the
place where through the instrument of the blood the real ego of man as it
manifests in our consciousness comes into being.
Everything that
I have just been telling you shows the place man holds in the macrocosmic world.
We are all that; all that is in us. All that is taking place in us; and the
normal consciousness of present-day man grasps only so much of it as everybody
of course knows, that is to say, only what lies on the surface. When you realize
that the world-wonder — man — contains such immensities, you can well imagine how
complex and manifold is the world that lies about us and how our conscious
knowledge merely skims the surface of the three kingdoms of Nature which are our
environment. Yes; we must face the fact that our ordinary life of soul, our
consciousness, stays on the surface and gives us knowledge of only the tiniest
important part of the human being.
A time comes
when what I have just been saying in such a matter of fact way penetrates and
oppresses the man who is striving for higher knowledge, for supersensible
knowledge. He suddenly becomes aware: ‘The knowledge you have had hitherto has
tended rather to conceal than to reveal.’ There he stands in all his human
weakness before the wonders of the world. It is the very essence of what we must
call the ordeals of the soul that this consciousness should not render him
faint-hearted, impotent, that he should find that confidence to persevere of
which I spoke yesterday. Strong, forceful energy, hope, and confidence bring the
soul through each trial, for these qualities enable it to face all that we have
called the world-wonders—the riddles of the world. And the world displays ever
more ‘wonders’ the further we penetrate into the supersensible. But since each
fresh marvel presents us with a fresh unknown, we are perpetually faced with new
challenges. In everyday life, for example, it would be a test if, after having
known a man for some time, believing him to be what he seemed to be, we were
suddenly to discover him to be something quite different. We could then either
break with him or rise above this difficulty and remain true to him. In that
case we should have stood the test of friendship. Trials of this kind exist too
as regards the world-wonders. We face them with all the ideas and feelings which
our soul has acquired about them, but we are progressing and — not that the
world is changing, but because we are penetrating further and further into it —
fresh things are continually meeting us, and again and again we have to say
‘What you have perceived hitherto is maya.’ Then we can be assailed by
doubt. Above all we can begin to feel that we have pressed on too fast — as
Johannes Thomasius does in the last scene but one of The Soul's Probation. Hitherto he has made a certain
picture of Lucifer which accorded with his soul's development, but it is only an
image, a shadow. As he progresses further a deeper, more significant Lucifer
appears to him, and he has to retrace his steps in order to get to know him in
his fullness, and no longer as a shadow.
In the same way
a man who has advanced to what for him is the next higher stage of clairvoyance
can advance still further and say to himself, ‘What I have reached so far is
nevertheless still only shadow, image; it must become more solid.’ Because we
are all the time advancing we are faced by ever new configurations of the world.
We can enter into these new configurations with stout souls: then we shall
withstand the challenge and be able to derive from it ever fresh spiritual
revelations. Every time a fresh spiritual revelation comes to us there will be a
fresh test to surmount. At every stage of progress new ordeals arise, and we
have to see it as the impulse for all higher development that our souls never
need give up, but can undertake ever higher and perhaps severer tests. But if
the soul withstands the test, spiritual revelations are never lacking; though it
may be only after a long time that spiritual revelation gives to the soul what
it has to go through ordeals to attain.
Thus we see that
such ordeals are the goad which drives us upward, and moreover that spiritual
revelations coming from above are always the reward of effort. For this reason
we must never rashly regard what can be attained at any one stage as the final
goal. For example, we should be quite wrong to look upon what was expressed in
our first Rosicrucian Mystery Play as our end. A man can be very expert in
seeing images in the higher worlds and yet realize one day that he has only seen
images and not realities. Then he is faced by the severe trial which Johannes
Thomasius has yet to face when the second Mystery Play comes to an end. He then
becomes aware that what he has seen is image, that he has not come to know
reality sufficiently even on the physical plane to fill out his picture with
reality. Then the soul is assailed by trials in which it has to learn how to
develop the strength to impart content to what is at first merely image. We have
to realize that we must not shrink from such trials, for every new configuration
of the world which is presented to us furnishes us with new ordeals to be
overcome; to come to an end of these trials would mean the death of true
spiritual life. We have to recognize that we should not shrink from the trials,
because they make us strong, strong to rise up into the spiritual world.
Notes:1. In the Cycle From Jesus to Christ, given at Carlsruhe a few weeks later, Dr. Steiner repeatedly used the word ‘Phantom’ when speaking of this shadow-form.
Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/GA/GA0129/19110826p02.html
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