Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland
First-Class Lesson #10
April 25, 1924
"The star-beset heaven becomes the great folio of the world, the tome on which the imaginative mysteries of world existence have been inscribed."
My dear friends! Included in esoteric development, and in true insight, is all that may be found along the way of a person’s attempting to attain an understanding of what it means to live and actually exist in a world in which the senses and the entire corporeal organization are not mediators, and so therefore to live in one’s spiritual-soul nature, which really is a person’s natural state as a member of the spiritual-soul world.
Now to this end, and in general to attain this, to live in the world in a spiritual-soul manner, to this end the multifaceted, more or less meditative soul-life exercises have come, exercises for our souls that are to be pursued vigorously and tenaciously. And a picture of this should be developed, of what a person’s soul can undergo along the way from an experience of the world of physical sensation, the world known through the senses, to an experience of the spiritual world. A picture should initially be developed in these class-sessions, by means of the various deliberations and individual verses appended to the deliberations, a certain picture that includes the possibilities and the prerequisites, from one to the next, of how they are enabled into becoming objects of meditation.
When, after the elapse of a certain time, these Class lessons, which really are impartations from the spiritual world, as I have very often already spoken about, these Class lessons will come together, so that what can be described in the lessons and accomplished through meditation, and it is a karmic fulfillment for those who can accomplish it, what can be accomplished through these meditations will come together as a clear picture and will become for you a first step in esoteric development.
And now it proceeds, from the very different considerations cultivated here in previous lessons, already put forth, how the person in this way can gradually lift himself out of his earth existence-awareness into an experience of being with the cosmos, the feeling, the development of an inner sense that can carry him to the ends of the world, to where the spiritual may be confronted. As long as a person shrinks from this, only entering into a relationship merely through reasoning and understanding with the things around him that are sense-perceptible, persisting in this manner, it is impossible, taking the soul-spiritual so lightly, it is impossible for him to truly connect to spirit-soulfulness, the content of which most certainly is the human approach to truth.
You see, my dear friends, as I have very often stressed, healthy human understanding can grasp it all. If one just exerts oneself with sufficient strength, free of preconceptions, one can grasp all that Anthroposophy will present. But straightaway in the pursuit of this apprehension by healthy human understanding, the question immediately comes to mind of whether any particular individual is in reality karmically called today to take part in Anthroposophy, or whether not.
You see, there are two possibilities. It may happen that a person hearkens unto the content of anthroposophical truth, and such a person may allow the content of anthroposophical truth to work effectively on himself, so as to find himself illuminated. It is of course self-understood, my friends, that all here present belong to this group of men and women. For those who do not belong to this group of men and women, but nonetheless somehow take part in the class as members, these people would certainly not be taking part honorably. And all, all initially rests on honor in esoteric life, on a person’s soul and spirit manner of being completely saturated with honor. There is another group of men and women, however, that finds what is offered by Anthroposophy to be fantasy, belonging more or less to the visionary realm. People in this group show, through their attitudes, that their karma does not align them with the others, with those who with healthy human understanding far removed from corporeality and the senses can grasp truth free of the senses, who can grasp inner knowing free of the senses.
Being bound together, either in having the sense in common of being bound to corporeality, or of having the sense of not being so bound, this certainly constitutes a great differentiation today between human beings. For if and when you honestly identify, innately within yourself, the sort of common sense grasped in Anthroposophy, then this common sense of Anthroposophy is grasped in its immediacy, regardless of one’s general liking for it. And this common sense, grasped honorably in Anthroposophy, is actually the beginning of esoteric pursuit. And one should really appreciate that attaining this common understanding is the beginning of esoteric pursuit. One should not overlook this point. When, by means of this attainment, one goes out and acts in accordance with this initiatory common understanding, which is given in this school, convened for this purpose, then one will be following the esoteric path ever more and more closely. As the case may be, someone may find this or that meditative verse given here personally suitable and applicable, and may utilize it. In doing this, however, one must do it in accordance with the given explanations and clarifications, which fully delineate and characterize the utilization of these meditative verses for inner human life.
Now today I would like once again to give something of a helpful nature, which can help to bring people out of their bodies, if only as a sort of jolt. I would like to give something that might not have been noticed or appreciated up to now.
It is about really perceiving quite a bit more deeply and good-heartedly. Although this can also happen merely in thoughts, it is about perceiving and taking note of the mineral environment around us, and of the plant environment, and of whatever else is in our immediate earth environment. It is about making ourselves directly aware of how this earthly environment is close to us. In relationship to us it is very close. It is about how we as people of earth, bearing our physical embodiment, are closely, very closely, related to everything around us, with everything that has mineral qualities, plant-like qualities, animal qualities, and so on. And so we might say, with inner honesty, we might ask ourselves the question, what is this all about? Why do I take on the physical substance of the earth after I have been born? Why do I keep dragging myself through earth existence from birth to death until my organism is no longer capable of struggling with its earth-bound material nature, until my physical life on earth comes to an end with death? In order to comprehend this personal human conundrum, we must seek out and perceive in-depth our closely associated physical surroundings. In doing this we will also come to know more and more what sort of departure point that esoteric life can be, for we will feel, in doing things in physical life upon the earth, we will feel that in reality we ourselves are blind, as if groping about in the dark.
And please consider carefully, my dear brothers and sisters, please consider carefully the people nurtured into adulthood today in the customary way. They are born, then they become situated in earthly life, and then they become known purely through the external relationships associated with this or that sort of work. They don’t really grasp the inter-relationships of their work with the whole of human existence. It probably doesn’t cross their minds at all, except in knowing that they work in order to eat. It doesn’t cross their minds, truth be told, that the plants they eat contain cosmic forces from the depths of space, forces that wend their way through the human organism, and in a certain sense, by eating they bring into being a cosmic inner development and progression. Most people today cannot identify at all with this first glance leading away from the materialism of the times. They stand firm, at least initially, in the simple observation of earth relationships, and in life they remain spiritually blind to what lives in the darkness, to what is the starting point of a true esoteric development.
And then one may then turn one’s glance away, turning from what lives all around about on the earth, whether engaged merely in thoughts or in the reality of it, one may then turn one’s glance up and out into the heavens, the heavens beset with stars. One gazes at the wandering stars, one gazes at the fixed stars, one is filled with and dwells in the unending grandeur out there confronting a person while gazing out at the world-all, at the universe. One says inwardly that as a human being, I am innately related to and interconnected with what is there resplendent in outer space, just as I am innately related to and interconnected with what surrounds me in the material world.
In reality, in this outward glance at the heavens beset with stars, we have the feeling of not just living in the darkness, but rather also of ourselves becoming free in living in the darkness, of our vaulting up with our spiritual-soul nature into and among the stars, vaulting ourselves out and up to what is in place there, to the stars in their grouped images. And please note, if a person can really and enthusiastically take up this viewing of the starry heavens, then the starry heavens will become an overabundance of imaginations. You have probably seen various old paintings, in which not merely starry groups are portrayed, but in which the star-groups are formed up together in animal symbols. Someone has drawn the group of stars standing in Aries or in Taurus not just as star-groupings, but rather as symbolic arrangements picturing a ram, a bull, and so forth.
Today people think that of course this was present as a free-form unfolding of the will of the ancient inhabitants of the earth, and due to the constellations having been called by these names, then the pictures were made accordingly. This was certainly not the case, but rather just the opposite, for in ancient times, the shepherds on the moors were not simply gazing out upon the star-beset heavens with physical eyes, but rather, they were also deeply immersed in dream-awareness or in sleep-awareness while out there with their herds, and they were wandering eyes-closed in soul out in the depths of space. And what they saw there was not just the star-groupings of visible observation. They took in the actuality, which was somewhat later differently portrayed in pictures. They took in the actuality of the imaginations, the actuality of the depths of space filled with truth.
Today, we can no longer return, creeping back to the instinctive clairvoyance just described in such a manner, to the actual experiences of simple shepherds of long ago. But we can do something else. With a great deal of concerted effort, we can place ourselves, whether in thoughts or in reality, into the starry heavens themselves. We can perceive the depths, and at the same time the enormity of majesty shining down upon us, presenting itself there before us as illumination. And we can come gradually to revere what spreads out there before us in the depths of space. And the reverence itself, the fervor of reverence, is what can call forth out of our souls an experience, an experience of the external sensory image of the stars being swept away and the starry heaven becoming an imagination for us. And then, when the starry heaven becomes an imagination for us, then we feel ourselves being taken up, up and along by our soul-gazing.
You see, up to the time of Plato, when gazing about, one still also felt something quite different in regard to the physical eyes. Plato himself described seeing in such a way, so that when looking out upon a man and seeing in the sense described by Plato, something flowed out from the eyes, a tracing of the man spread out, in ancient times, forming a spread-out connection. Something streamed forth from the eyes and encompassed the other person. The etheric streamed out. As when I stretch out my physical hand and grasp something, and I know in the grasping that with my physical hand I am connected, just so in the times of ancient instinctive clairvoyance, a person knew that etheric substance went out of the eyes and fastened upon what was being looked upon. Today a person merely believes that the eyes are here, and that what is seen is over there. Over there the seen object sends light-waves out through the intervening space, waves that impinge on the eyes, impinging in some way or another so as to be taken in by the soul. Please note that materialists most definitely speak of the soul, but it is placed way down within, and not at the forefront, and they speak of this impingement as somehow being taken in by the soul as truth. But this is not really the case. It is not simply a working into the person from what is present around him. It is also, quite definitely, an outward streaming of a human being’s inner etheric nature.
And we should take our etheric body as the truth in its connectedness to the great world around us, when the star-beset heaven becomes the great folio of the world, the tome on which the imaginative mysteries of world existence have been inscribed, if and when we have the ability to behold it.
The perception may come to us, however, that when present here upon the earth, present in this robust sensory reality, that in reality it is a sort of blindness. It is living in darkness. When your heart and mind soar aloft, you live within what otherwise just shines upon you from the great world all around. You live within the shining of the great surrounding world. But you take your own etheric existence-awareness out there into the broad flowing streaming of this shining of the world. You yourself go along with your etheric existence-awareness.
And the shining ceases to be a shining. It can no longer remain nothingness, when we ourselves sink completely into it. We extend our inner experience of reality out into this shining. And this experience (about which I have written) becomes an enmeshment, a weaving into the shining of the cosmos. Previously we lived blind in the darkness of earth existence. Now we live out there, our etheric existence-awareness having been woven into the shining of the cosmos.
So, we can have this experience, that we weave into the shining of the cosmos. Initially I will draw this as a picture: [It was drawn on the board.] the life of blindness in the darkness of existence-awareness on earth [as a white arch], living out and beyond in the far reaches of the world [gold rays], then the shining of stars at the end, in which world-imaginations can be perceived by us in reverence [red waves].
But having woven ourselves out and beyond, we are certainly out there now in our etheric nature within this imaginative fabric of the world. When we actually get to being within the imaginative fabric of the world, we are certainly no longer in our physical bodies. We have struggled through the empty ether into the experience of world-imaginations.
It happens straightforwardly, you see, as when someone here in the physical world writes something down, and having learned to read, then just reads it. Through our weaving out and beyond into the cosmos, since the gods have inscribed for us world-imaginations in the cosmos, we arrive there and we see these world-imaginations from the other side [drawn as arrows in the first drawing]. We live first here upon the earth [second drawing, in the inner circle], then we soar aloft up to world-imaginations [second drawing, outside the wavy circle], but there we read from the outside.
Yes, my dear friends, brothers and sisters, the zodiac speaks a meaningful speech, if and when looked upon from the other side and not from the earth. It speaks as Ares the Ram, Taurus the Bull, Gemini the Twins, Cancer the Crab, and Leo the Lion, if and when one encompasses it from the outside. And for our understanding, it is a deed, this encompassing of it from the outside. And we begin to read the mysteries of the world. And what we read are the deeds of high spiritual beings. In a novel we read about the deeds of men and women. When looking and seeing things from the other side of the zodiac, things are seen otherwise than as seen from the earth outward, as seen by Moses, who always looked upon God merely from behind, from the earth outward. Initiation consists of seeing from the other side. It is not merely a sort of outward gazing. It becomes a reading. And what one reads are the spiritual deeds of the high spiritual beings, who have brought it all into its present state.
And when we read in this silence sufficiently long, when we nourish and broaden our souls inwardly in this reading, then we may begin to hear in a spiritual manner. Then the gods speak to us. Then we dwell within the spiritual world, when the gods speak to us.
Now look, my dear brothers and sisters, it can be done, as the adept can tell you; the soul can broaden itself out and beyond, can be enmeshed in the depths of the cosmos, can come to world-imaginations, can gaze from the other side upon the deeds of gods. It is so; it is possible to hearken in a spiritual manner unto the gods’ speech. But perhaps someone really gets to the state the adept has described, really deepening, deepening oneself in understanding, deepening oneself in full-blooded courage, deepening in the heart, not simply approaching it stubbornly, not merely saying, well, if I could do it, well, then it would also please me, it would interest me, but I can’t worry about it now. When someone quite differently really takes this description up, takes it up as something that is actually possible, when one begins to take it up as something not just to be considered, but to be revered and loved, then one can take it up as a meditation. Ever and again it then becomes one’s way, finally, to actually come into the esoteric life.
And you will find this way, if and when in meditating you deepen yourself in the words [The first lines were written on the board.]
1. I live in the dark domain of earth,
2. I move 1 in the shine of the stars,
3. I read in the spirit’s deeds,
4. I hear in the god’s speech.
With the necessary feeling this inner meditative way is lived, experienced, works wonders in, and transforms the human soul. It must flow rhythmically again and again through the soul, for it actually leads a person through to his own world-being, contained within himself.
But it is necessary that it should come to light within properly, so that after one has spoken it quite a while in one’s head, it should also be taken up by, should start coursing within, one’s heart, for it is there that one makes the journey out into the etheric world-all, and then into the spiritual world-all on the other side of the etheric world-all. It is necessary, in coursing along such a pathway, to take one’s heart along in one’s experiencing, and to allow it to rule, to allow one’s heart to rule in the perceiving, so that it can join according to its nature in the translation of oneself out and beyond. But in coming into ruling our perceptions properly in this way, it is good initially, in traveling along this whole meditative pathway, it is good thoroughly and inwardly to observe what lies in these words.
I live in the dark domain of earth,
I move in the shine of the stars,
I read in the spirit’s deeds,
I hear in the god’s speech.
You should try to imagine this as if someone were speaking to you from a great spiritual distance, as if you were not thinking it, but rather as if you were listening to and hearing another being speaking to you. One should imagine, really imagine, that another being is speaking to you out of unknown depths. Then the right feeling may be developed for what one hears here. This proper feeling lives in the second part of the verse. [The second part of the verse was written on the board.]
5. Yearning fills me in earth’s darkness,
6. Comforting me is the stars’ shine,
In that I am aware, that most certainly I am living upon the earth in the darkness as if blind, then I yearn to get out. Out there, the shining of the stars is my consolation, broadening my very existence.
Comforting me is the stars’ shine,
Now from the other side,
7. Teaching me are the spirits’ deeds,
And when I read them,
8. Making me2 is the gods’ speech.
Now you know how to utilize this correctly. Call this inner meditation up with vigor into your heart and mind as you are employing it. As if out of depths of spirit, as if someone were speaking to you, in this manner listen to and hear the lines of the upper verse, bringing to bear on each line the corresponding feeling, so that you experience in the meditation the following: first listen carefully to it, then bring it vigorously to the forefront of your heart and mind as a perception, then again listen carefully, and again bring it vigorously into your heart and mind, … and so forth. [During the speaking of the following lines, connecting lines consisting of long curves were drawn on the board connecting lines 1 and 5, 2 and 6, 3 and 7, and 4 and 8.]
I live in the dark domain of earth,
Yearning fills me in earth’s darkness,
I move in the shine of the stars,
Comforting me is the stars’ shine,I read in the spirit’s deeds,
Teaching me are the spirits’ deeds,I hear in the gods’ speech,
Making me is the gods’ speech.
This meditation is at first a dialogue, a meditation in which the first line is always taken objectively, while the second streams out as a feeling from the heart.
Then, while trying once again to bring them to the forefront, enmeshed and working in each other, try to experience with moderate force of will the experience contained within the dialogue. [The third part of the verse was now developed and written as lines 9, 10, 11, and 12.]
From depths of spirit sounds forth:
I live in the dark domain of earth,
The heart answers:
Yearning fills me in earth’s darkness,
And the will perceives the impulse in the dialogue between lines 1 and 5:
9. The earth’s darkness would put me out, 3
Then one remembers back, after having progressed through this dialogue, to the interchange between lines 2 and 6, and to the experience contained within:
I move in the shine of the stars,
Comforting me is the stars’ shine,
10. The stars’ shine would wake me. 4
Then one remembers back, while carrying all this, to what sounds forth from spirit depths, and the answer of heart-felt courage:
I read in the spirit’s deeds,
Teaching me are the spirits’ deeds,
And the resultant experience by means of the will:
11. The spirits’ deeds would summon me, 5
distantly from the spiritual world. And now the most sublime, wherein one feels in dialogue with the gods themselves, wherein the gods not merely allow a reading, but rather actually speak:
I hear in the gods’ speech,
Making me is the gods’ speech.
12. The gods’ speech would deliver me. 6
It not only witnesses me, it begets, it brings forth, engenders, delivers me.
Now let us envision the entire meditation. The meditation in its entirety progresses as a dialogue, line for line, with one in dark spiritual depths under the dominion of spiritual beings, standing there in the lines at the top of the verses, speaking to us. The heart always gives answer:
I live in the dark domain of earth,
Yearning fills me in earth’s darkness,I move in the shine of the stars,
Comforting me is the shine of stars,I read in the spirit’s deeds,
Teaching me are the spirits’ deeds,I hear in the gods’ speech,
Making me is the gods’ speech.
Now I remember each individually and connect the outflow of the will to it, as a memory of what has already happened.
I live in the dark domain of earth,
Yearning fills me in earth’s darkness.
The earth’s darkness would put me out.I move in the shine of the stars,
Comforting me is the stars’ shine.
The stars’ shine would wake me.I read in the spirits’ deeds,
Teaching me are the spirits’ deeds.
The spirits’ deeds would summon me.I hear in the gods’ speech,
Making me is the gods’ speech.
The gods’ speech would deliver me.
This is the correct way to proceed, to come to the stage of the dialogue in the meditation, the dialogue in memory, and then by means of the will to a reinforcement of this memory.
When one actually starts with an inward demeanor of devotion, doubly so, with one’s entire soul inwardly constituted and brought into conformity with what I have just written, when one inwardly envisions it and begins to experience it, when one takes it up not as a mechanical meditation, but rather as a true experience of the soul, then setting things up in this way specifically awakens a relationship of the soul with the spiritual world.
One must really appreciate, however, even in the last set of verses, the specific manner I have just described. It should be experienced as discourse and answer, the discourse of the spirit and the answering discourse of the heart. But one must properly appreciate that initially one’s awareness, which will certainly be attained, is extinguished through the darkness of earth. One must feel as if awareness is overcome, in an instant of extinguishing sleep, and as if there in the second line there is an awakening, as if after the awakening, the calling of the gods to return to them is heard by us, as if one feels, henceforth, that the gods are calling out to us. They are summoning us, out of their own being’s word emerging from the word of worlds, in order to place us as beings of soul and spirit in the spiritual world, there to bear us, there to bring us forth, there to engender us.
When these nuances of inner experience are played out in soul, attention centered on the spiritual beings who speak to us, our heart’s vitality brought forth in devotion to the spiritual beings, then yes, then our souls are in motion, and gradually our souls are in fact brought onto the esoteric path. And we must be clear, as we experience the three stanzas in our souls, as well as we are able, in the manner described, we must be clear that something subliminal, yet powerful, is coming into being in our souls. If we would only live faithfully in these three stanzas, as I have described, our soul would thereby be fashioned, unbeknownst to us, so that when the first line is intoned, we would be just at the point of origin of life on earth, where the etheric body has just been constituted.
Were we to picture this with quick inner vitality, then it would sound forth from the spirit.
I live in the dark domain of earth,
Then more or less unconsciously we hearken unto and approach in spirit the moment our etheric body was constituted. And out of pre-earthly existence, out of the existence between death and a new birth, a force is working in our hearts, which we bring to bear in simple purity.
Yearning fills me in earth’s darkness.
And yearning after the spiritual is without doubt a legacy of ours from pre-earthly existence. And it is always the same, when placed at the beginning of earth existence, what is felt within the heart and works outwardly, that is what flames up in us from pre-earthly existence.
I move in the shine of the stars,
Here we again align with the beginning of our life on earth. The proper consolation, perceived by us, can be given to us by the shining of the stars. Through it, we will be placed back into our hearts’ answer.
Comforting me is the stars’ shine.
Again, there is a return to one’s beginnings on earth:
I read in the spirits’ deeds,
The heart remembers being instructed by high spiritual beings in pre-earthly existence.
Teaching me are the spirits’ deeds,
under whose care and among whom I lived and moved, before I descended down upon the earth.
I hear in the gods’ speech.
We hearkened unto the gods between death and a new birth. We perceive now that what is spoken by the gods is not to be imparted as that which is spoken by men and women. We bear witness, we recognize7 that the gods’ speech is fashioning, creating, quickening, making:8
Making me is the gods’ speech.
Finally, if and when we can appreciate it, then the right sense also comes into lines 9,10,11, and 12.
I live in the dark domain of earth,
Yearning fills me in earth’s darkness.
[Line 9 was written down once again, just to the right of the curved line connecting lines 1 and 5 together.]
The earth’s darkness would put me out,
it puts out, extinguishes my present earth-life, as I am transported back past the time between death and being reborn, back into my earlier incarnation. Then I understand, this is why my awareness has been extinguished, for until now my awareness was that of the present incarnation. The moment I fall asleep I will be transported back again, so that I can divine and sense myself moving within my earlier earth-incarnation.
I move in the shine of the stars, Comforting me is the stars’ shine,
[Line 10 was written down once again, just to the right of the curved line connecting lines 2 and 6 together.]
The stars’ shine would wake me,
I will be placed back as I was then, as I was in the preceding incarnation, if it were to wake me. For me, it depends on karma, it depends on what is appropriate for my destiny, for me it depends on the other side.
I read in the spirits’ deeds,
Teaching me are the spirits’ deeds.
[Line 11 was written down once again, just to the right of the curved line connecting lines 3 and 7 together.]
The spirits’ deeds would summon me,
summon me to the fulfillment of my karma, with the forces that stem from my prior life on earth.
I hear in the gods’ speech.
Making me is the gods’ speech.
[Line 12 was written down once again, just to the right of the curved line connecting lines 4 and 8 together.]
The gods’ speech would deliver me.
All that I am becomes clear to me, when into my present existence, my earlier earth existence floods in, gleams, moves, rumbles, becomes enmeshed. Then there I am. At first, I am present merely as a future becoming, germinative, only to achieve full apparency when eventually passing through the portal of death. Then from the previous earth existence into the present something gleams, interpenetrates, works effectively, making me into the human being I really am, summoning me to be the human being I really am.
Thoroughly infused with this, with its reality, so that really, while we seem to be in the customary world of physical earth existence, our soul takes the journey back, back until it arrives at the former earth life, then we will come to know the importance of what we experience in such a thing. And in the awareness of this importance, that as a gleaming-stream washes through the whole of our thinking, feeling, and willing, in this awareness we will then be infused in our meditation with the feeling of enchantment. This enchantment is essential, for in this way the meditation works effectively in the right way. One may name it an inner feeling of enchantment, a magical feeling, on the grounds that nowhere else on the earth do we find such a comparable feeling, for this feeling is totally disconnected from all corporeality. Even if we cannot yet come out of the physical body with our thinking, with our imagination, this feeling of enchantment, this magical feeling that we experience, coming out of the importance of all that we are doing soulfully, this stands there in the pure spiritual world. In this feeling of enchantment, in this magical feeling, we experience the pure spiritual-soulful element. There we stand, drawn into the spiritual-soulful world.
In such manner, as we experience it, esoteric striving is fulfilled for us. And that, for the time being, that is what I have attempted to lay before your souls today, my dear brothers and sisters.
Ich lebe in dem finstren Erdbereich, Sehnend stimmt mich der Erde Finsternis, Der Erde Finsternis verlöschet mich, | I live in the dark domain of earth, Yearning fills me in earth’s darkness, The earth’s darkness would put me out, |
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Source: April 25, 1924
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