The yoga of anthroposophy : a resurgent awareness of eternal life

 

Rudolf Steiner, February 26, 1911, St. Gallen

Automated Translation

During the course of our branch of life, when we acquire the concepts of the nature of the human being and of human evolution, when we learn, for example, that the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an I, then we have indeed gained something over and above the knowledge that exists in the world today, but we cannot yet say that with such more or less theoretical knowledge we have acquired what 'theosophy can actually be for a human being in truth. Theosophy only becomes what it should be for the individual and for the human community when it is put into practice, when it becomes a way of life. On such occasions, when I am able to see my dear friends again, I also like to take the opportunity to draw attention to how those ideas, world and human laws that we otherwise acquire in the course of our annual lives play their great role in human life. So today we also want to do such a contemplation of the influence of Theosophy on life.

Sometimes the question arises, especially for those who know little about Theosophy: Yes, there is talk of facts and truths of a supersensible nature, but how can a person who has not yet become clairvoyant talk much about these spiritual worlds, how can he know something about these worlds, except that these things are told to him? This is a very common prejudice, but it is quite unfounded. Without being clairvoyant, one cannot see the astral body of a person, for example, but what happens in this astral body can be experienced in one's own existence, and in this respect 'Theosophy is extremely effective.

I will give an example of a case where a person can experience having an astral body. You know that in everyday life people are accustomed to doing many things without thinking about them, and that they are also accustomed to doing many things that are not at all in their own interest. Consider how much people do from morning till night without thinking, without really thinking about it, without being present with their thoughts; how much people do in such a way that afterwards they say, “I do not entirely agree with what I did.” Can we not say then that we do something that we only partially consider, only partially accompany with thoughts? In particular, our inclinations underlie those habits that we have taken on from the outside and that we would not have if we had educated ourselves.

Thus, life viewed in a materialistic sense appears as if it does not matter whether we do things that we agree with or not, things that we can justify ourselves to others for or not. For the clairvoyant eye it is not so. For the clairvoyant eye it turns out that with every deed, with every action, the part that is not so that we could morally justify ourselves with regard to it makes an impression on our astral body. Such an action has a kind of setback effect on our astral body. And so one can say of such a person: He has so many cracks, so many pits in his astral body, because he does many such things that, if he thought about them, he would not morally justify.

I am not thinking here of professional matters, but of habitual actions. Every such impact affects the astral body and because it no longer disappears as it is, it continues to affect the etheric body, leaving an imprint like a seal and remains there, so that the person walks around with seal imprints in his etheric body. Up to this point, a person who is not clairvoyant can say that he cannot know this; but what happens here is experienced by the person. In a certain way, these things remain present, actually throughout the whole of the following life, and now have an effect on the person again, so that he sometimes says: If only I didn't remember the whole of my life! — Or he shows a sullenness to all those around him, and this grumpy nature has an effect on his health. It is extremely important to be clear about such things, because it often happens, for example in our thirty-seventh year, that something occurs that makes us inwardly grumpy, upset, melancholy, without any external cause, and this then has a damaging effect on our health, destroys our digestive system and so on. In the twentieth year, the reason may have been laid that the impression of the astral on the etheric body has been effected.

So we can say: only a clairvoyant can see what is in the astral body, but a person experiences in life what becomes of it. Many a person would not go around sullen, with a certain helplessness of soul and a shattered physical system, if people would consider that what does not immediately become effective as a result of our actions in the visible world enters into our invisible part and then later becomes visible. A person who says, “I will observe whether what the clairvoyant says is correct,” can see and feel that what the clairvoyants say is true in this way.

— It is like this: in deeds and actions that we undertake daily and cannot justify before us, we are dealing with the consequences.

Let us assume the opposite case, that man can consider more, think further, than is reflected in his actions. In this case, everyone is an idealist. He knows that not all ideals can be realized, but only some of them. If we have great ideas, we must be content that we can only realize a part of them. If we are capable of thinking far beyond what life allows us, this also has an effect on the astral body, but differently, so that the person is imbued with healthy powers, making him strong, inwardly firm and calm. If, for example, a person was an idealist around the age of twenty and did not listen to the materialists, if he retained faith and trust in ideals, then this is shown by the fact that at a later age he does not get worked up by every little accident, nor by being unwell, that he stands firm and lets things pass him by more than is the case with others.

What gives us strength and peace are the thoughts we have that go beyond what life allows us to realize in terms of ideals. Doctors are already officially aware of this, but they don't know how to really enable people to have positive thoughts about things that go beyond everyday life to a fairly large extent.

Of course there are popular writings that are praised as beneficial for mental health. They tell you that you have to have strength, inner peace, steadiness, not to stray with your thoughts, and the like. For some, such writings on mental health are a very good start. But you won't get very far with them if you want real nourishment for your soul. Such writings by Duboc, Ralph Waldo Trine and so on are quite good for a start. Compared to the real requirements of mental health, they are as if we were asking: How do we have to live in a physical way to be healthy? — and then get the answer: Then you have to eat food that is beneficial to your health, food whose substances can easily be absorbed into your organism. Quite right! But anyone who seriously wants to get to the bottom of the matter will ask: What kind of food is that? Please tell me in more detail what I should be eating!

Such writings, which relate to mental health in the same way as these rules relate to physical health, may be quite good for the beginning, but for the further course of mental searching, not much can be done with them. In contrast, spiritual science gives us thoughts that are formulated in the most precise way, very definite thoughts about how man has developed in every age, how he is developing in the present. This is revealed to us more and more from the theosophical wisdom, so that we can say: spiritual science gives us many opportunities to go far beyond with our thoughts what we can realize. Therefore, it is Theosophy that makes us strong people in our souls, who, when something happens in our environment that threatens to upset us, can draw from within something that gives us balance.

It is not important whether something that happens in our environment reaches our ears so that we are disturbed, but rather whether we take an interest in it and turn our attention to the process. This applies not only to external things, but also to our inner state, in which we sometimes go through the world elated and sometimes saddened to death, thereby undermining our moral and physical health. There are many painful conditions of the soul that can be compared to the clattering of the mill: the miller who works in the mill no longer hears the clattering. So you can surrender to any such pain, even the smallest, to hear the clattering of your own mill, so to speak, or you can turn your attention away. You can't get over it if you have an empty soul. You can only do that if you have something of a spiritual nature that you can draw from.

Let us take an example. There are two people, one of whom lives like this: in the morning he does his usual work in the office, in the afternoon he has a drink and entertains a small conversation, in the evening he has another drink and then goes to bed. If anything occurs to disturb his usual course of life, such a person will immediately be overwhelmed by it: he hears the clattering of his own mill or his own pain. For he has nothing in his soul, nothing that he can bring out to drown out the clattering.

Another person lives just as much in his daily duties, only he has many great thoughts within him, as given to us by spiritual science. These then resound from within him, and he no longer hears the clatter. It is not as if we have to exert ourselves or spend a long time to bring it out, but it comes out all by itself because we have developed strong feelings for it. Thus we will suffer less from the disturbances of life and find more and more comfort in what has accumulated in the soul through years of spiritual striving. This is a possession of a special kind, the only one that no one can take from us. What we otherwise acquire in the world, or what otherwise comes to us in the world, belongs to what can be taken from us. But what we acquire for the spirit is the only possession that can never be taken from us.

People are accustomed to saying: Death makes everything equal. – That is certainly true, but it is equally true that no situation can be imagined to which what has been said here does not apply equally. Nothing in the world can help, not whether one is rich or whether one is the descendant of a rich noble family – if one wants to attain this spiritual possession, one must travel the same path, one and the same path. Not only does death make everything equal, it is the spiritual life before which all are equal. This gives the spiritual life a far-reaching significance, for it gives rise to something that lifts us above the deceptive appearance of sense.

Someone may object: a brick can hit me and I can then become a cripple, or I can injure my brain so that I become an idiot. —But anyone who can make the treasures of Theosophy his own in such a way that he carries them in his soul knows that such an event is only a temporary condition. Even if the brain were broken, it would be no different than if we wanted to do something and the instrument broke; for example, if we wanted to hammer in a nail and the hammer broke. There is nothing we can do but pick up another hammer; and so we do with the brain. Consciousness can lose its tools, but in a new life we can rebuild them, so that we are not disturbed in our sense of eternity by the loss of this spiritual possession. It is not a matter of knowing something, but of how it penetrates our hearts, and it is able to penetrate our hearts in such a way that we keep the fruit of it and that it also leads us beyond the loss of this tool.

All this is a testimony to the fact that we can say in a certain respect: It affects our astral body, which we have just characterized. Only the clairvoyant can know how it works, but everyone experiences the consequences in their everyday life. A person who performs many actions for which he cannot morally answer, and who becomes grumpy as a result, will be particularly vulnerable to pain in difficult life situations. If, on the other hand, a person can say to himself in the face of the same incidents: They are of little consequence compared to my inner experiences, my ideals – then this certainty will have a healing effect. He will then always hold fast to that which lives in him as the eternal. When the spirit of eternity approaches us in this all-encompassing way, as it does in Theosophy, then we are secured for all situations in life.

Now, my dear friends, there are other things by which we can well convince ourselves that the spiritual that we take in, that we allow to permeate us, is intimately connected with our entire happiness in life, with our ability to cope with life. Just as a person can have good moods, so can he also be exposed to bad moods that may go through his whole life and never let him be happy, that dominate the whole inner soul structure. The spiritual researcher says: Such moods have an effect in the supersensible nature of man; in the etheric body such moods have an effect, are reflected in the physical body and affect the blood. The effect of a mood in the human etheric body is felt in the blood, and the result is that such a mood, which does not allow a person to be happy throughout his life, impairs blood circulation and makes his blood heavy. Here we have an example of how the effects of what is going on in the soul can be felt in the physical body. Even someone who is not clairvoyant can notice this and say to themselves: I suffer from my physicality. This comes from my overall mood. If I could change my overall mood, then a healing influence could be exerted on my whole constitution.

One might think that it is important for a person to free themselves from their physical body. But it is not about simply demanding that people recognize that the body is dependent on the spirit. Rather, it is about the reality that we do not have to be dependent on the body through the power of the spirit. We become independent by making it an instrument of our spirit.

Not the materialist who believes in the teachings of materialism is the worst, who believes in the doctrine of “power and matter,” but the worst is he who is dependent on power and matter, for example, when he can only live in this place in winter and only in that place in summer, making himself completely dependent on matter in order to avoid being neurasthenic. Therefore, it is not just a matter of not believing in this teaching of force and matter, but of becoming independent of matter. What kind of life is it when a person can only live in a big city in winter and only in the countryside in summer? For such a person, prayer does not help and faith does not help, because he is a materialist, he is dependent on “force and matter”.

When we allow thoughts that arise from spiritual research to take effect on us, our connection with the spiritual world becomes apparent. But we see something else as well. When we are really unhappy, in a way that would overwhelm anyone, it becomes apparent that a theosophist can cope with it. Let us assume, for example, that a person who has turned eighteen and has been living off his father now experiences the father going bankrupt. He is then forced to work. He can perceive this as misfortune. He will live with this for fifty years and become someone respectable. He can say, “Thank God this misfortune happened, otherwise I would have become a good-for-nothing.” If you are no longer in the midst of adversity, you can see the adversity as a tool for education. We must be able to say to ourselves: It is we ourselves who, through our karma, have brought this misfortune upon us because we need it in this life for our education. At least a person who can think in such terms will not grumble against the governance of the world in unhappy hours, but will recognize its wisdom. But little by little this prepares moods for us that work in a completely different way than those we have when we feel completely dependent on “force and matter”. Now we know that we depend on the spiritual guidance of the world. This is communicated to the mood, and then, through the influences on the etheric body, we withdraw from dependence on “force and matter”. Then we do not need to go to the Riviera to raise our spirits, but our spiritual possessions enable us to shape our tools in such a way that we can be independent of external influences.

In the soul health writings of Ralph Waldo Trine and others, you will not find how to achieve this mood. Pouring into the mood the wisdom of 'Theosophy' makes us independent of matter and force, opening up a source that elevates us above space and time. Then we withdraw from the power of matter and work back on the instrument of our body. In this way, we gradually acquire a practical knowledge of life through spiritual science. My dear friends, not everyone believes this right away, because very few people today, when everyone is so dependent on material and power, are inclined to see things this way. They should be convinced by experience that this is so, because experience will be able to provide them with more and more proof of life. This is the result of spiritual science in general, that it has an effect on the very ordinary external management of life.

I will substantiate what spiritual science teaches by means of examples; I will cite some of the trivialities of life. For example, the fact that we now live on the physical plane with external matter means that in certain cases we must have the ability to perceive the spirit everywhere around us in external matter. After all, matter is only an illusion, maya; everything is condensed spirit. So that we have to sense spirit in our ordinary life among the objects of matter. We must therefore be able to develop an external relationship with it, so that we are able to enter into intimate relationships with things, so to speak. There are people who wash their hands often, and there are those who rarely wash their hands. Now, in a certain respect, there is an enormous difference between the one and the other. Man is permeated by the supersensible in a very different way in the various parts of his body. For example, the chest and thighs are not permeated by the etheric body in the same way as the hands. Powerful rays of the etheric body emanate from the fingers. Because this is the case with the hands, we can develop a wonderfully intimate relationship with the outer world through them. People who wash their hands often have a more delicate relationship with their surroundings, are more delicately receptive to them, because the spirit materialized in the blood has the effect of making the human being more sensitive in his hands. Pachyderms, as they are called, in relation to the outer world, do not often wash their hands. You see how little such robust people are open to the peculiarities of their fellow human beings, while those who wash their hands more often enter into a more intimate relationship with their environment. If a person were to try to achieve the same thing in another place, for example on the shoulders, it would be shown that if he were to wash them as much, he would become neurasthenic. What is healthy for the hands is not healthy for the shoulders. The human being is organized in such a way that he is able to enter into this intimate relationship with the environment through the hands.

It would also be detrimental if a person were inclined to wash their face just as often. Treating the face in this way would not be beneficial to health. With other parts of the human body, the situation is quite different. People who are not properly trained in spiritual science, materialistically thinking doctors, for example, do not notice the difference and recommend cold washes to children; such things are fanatically pursued. It should be known that nothing is more mischievously done! This is the basis for a great deal of neurasthenia, that one's health is impaired in such an abstruse way. The hands can tolerate it, but the rest of the body becomes receptive to material things as a result. There you see the effect of materialism. I am speaking here of the rule. Where it is a matter of a temporary cure, the matter is different.

Not only do even the youngest children try to wash it off in a systematic way – they are tormented every morning – but people do not stop there. They walk around in the sun to take light baths, to let the material of the external world take effect on them. We should be glad that we are able to work from the inner center outwards and should not make ourselves more and more dependent on the material. This exposure of oneself with all parts is the same as when the miller would do anything to hear the clatter of his mill all the time and was not satisfied that he no longer hears it. Of course, the cases where it is a temporary cure are to be excluded. If this is practised in youth, then man is thereby made to allow the slightest influence to take effect in his organism. He hardens himself, that is, he hardens himself in such a way that he is finally quite “hardened” and no longer feels any external influences.*)

Such insights do not simply arise from ordinary life practice – that is not possible. This can only be judged when one knows the whole person. And that man is a complicated being, and that with regard to his individual members the most diverse relationships exist between the physical, etheric and astral bodies and so on, you can see that from very simple things. Today it may have seemed a little funny to you what was said in connection with the fact that man has a very special relationship with his astral and etheric bodies to the physical body. On the other hand, you may have heard that the distance or illness of a particular organ brings a person close to a condition that resembles idiocy. But if you now give such a person the thyroid juice of a sheep, for example, he will again become a thinking person instead of an idiot. This is a well-known fact. These facts are only correctly judged by Spiritual Science. Why is that so? Yes, you see, that is so because not only in the thyroid gland, but also in the far greater number of glandular organs, there are tools that are built from the etheric body. We need our tools in the physical world to get things done. As we need a hammer to drive in a nail, so we need the tools for what they are given to us. If they are removed, we no longer have the tool. But that is no proof that the ability to replace their effect. But we must know that such an effect is only possible if the etheric body comes into function.

In the case of organs related to the astral body, we cannot possibly change anything in the organs by replacing the secretion. I have seen that people who had a defective brain ate sheep brains or the like without any improvement in their intellect, because the brain is an organ related to the astral body. There we see how spiritual science also sheds light on these things. You cannot understand people if you cannot go into these higher, supersensible aspects of people, and then you basically don't know at all what comes into consideration.

When you read medical books today, it is described as if a person loses their mind through illness or the absence of the thyroid gland. No, he only loses interest, becomes dull and does not apply his mind. You don't become stupid because you can't think. If you have no interest, your mind remains intact. What is lost is the living interest that a person takes in things, the interest to draw attention to things. A person who has no interest pays no attention to anything because he lacks the tool. We don't give him a brain with a thyroid gland, but we do give him a tool for taking a lively interest in the things of the world. People are judged quite wrongly when they know nothing at all about the transcendental world, and a great deal of what is taught in our scientific and popular books is at this level. If you read that a person becomes cleverer through the loss of the thyroid glands and through eating thyroidin, then it is not true. It is true that his attention is awakened. Everywhere it can be seen from the consequences: what is said from clairvoyant research is not fantastic. Even if not everyone can see it, one can prove that what the clairvoyants see is there. It is everywhere. I recommend that you always remember the sentence: If you cannot see for yourself what is being investigated in clairvoyant research, you can experience it in the world. - In this way you can indirectly obtain evidence for what is communicated in spiritual science.

I have now told you a number of things about the way in which the human astral body can show its influence in relation to life. I have told you how the ether body affects life. I would now also like to say a few words about the ego, from which you can build a bridge from theosophical theory to the reality of life. You are all familiar with a widespread phenomenon in life that is described in two words because it manifests itself in two ways: shedding tears and being sad.

What does it mean in human life to feel sadness caused from outside, which manifests physically in tears, or to have an inner soul experience that also manifests in tears? Man has something within him by which he can not only experience what is going on in his own body, but can also, in his ordinary, normal consciousness, experience and empathize with what is going on in his environment. We are then involved in our surroundings when we are sad about this or that loss, sad to the point of crying. What does that prove? That we can take into ourselves what lives in our surroundings and carry it within ourselves in our hearts. It means that we have an I within us that is mysteriously and magically connected to our entire environment. Through this magical connection of people with what does not live in them, a connection with the outside world is experienced. The ego can be in itself in two ways: firstly, in an egotistical way; then it comes down in particular to us gaining relief from pain through tears. Because we do not want to have any [true] part. Secondly, however, sadness can also be fully justified because we pour something that lives in our environment into ourselves. That is why tears mean the most to a person when he can be sad about things that concern him as little as possible. There are people who cry out of mere selfishness because they cannot bear what is happening in their lives or cannot bear their own loss. Of course, there are also people who cry over things that do not concern them, so that the world says: he howls like a dog over a passage in a novel or in a drama. And this possibility can create a certain splendor in him, which may also emanate from his grief to all other tears and other sadness, because the more we are moved by everything else, the greater is our sadness. And in his grief, man is in a sense led to his ego in a non-selfish way. What has no ego cannot cry or be sad. The claim that animals also cry is therefore basically nonsense. It is much more correct that animals do not cry and cannot be sad like humans. A dog only seems sad because it no longer receives everything it got when its master was still around. Psychologists are right when they say that animals can only howl, but humans can weep. For crying and sadness can be the strongest proof that the deepening of the self is within us and that through this we come into contact with what is around us. Therefore, there is a condensation of our self, which then comes out in tears. Because this is so, we can say that, basically, crying and tears are something that is connected with the innermost essence of human nature.

When a person rediscovers their inner stability, the best way for them to express this state is to give way to tears. The words spoken by Faust in 'Faust' after he returns from attempting suicide and removes the poison cup from his mouth are spoken from the depths of his soul: “The tear welled up, the earth has me again!” It is the 'I' that speaks at this moment. This is expressed in this word: “The tear wells up, the earth has me again.

Therefore, what we experience in mourning with our surroundings is connected with the innermost being of the human being. And what is connected with the innermost being demands that we take it with the right seriousness and that we can become sad about the misery in our surroundings, but never through the merely imagined misery. All those dramas that merely stage misery can only produce unnatural emotions. We can only connect all the unreal misery on the stage with our human dignity if the meaning is connected with the fact that the hero, even if he falls, emerges as a victor. We can only bear the dramas that depict misery if we see the victory of good. Then it has a right to our sadness and our tears, because it so rightly sinks into our innermost being the sorrow of reality.

It is quite different with regard to another experience of our ego, which we can call by many names. What is expressed in laughter, merriment, joy, perhaps even in jokes – in our sense of the comic – is the other way around. To laugh at a fool in reality is inhuman, but to laugh at the imagined foolishness is actually infinitely liberating. You should experience foolishness because it has a healing effect – you can even experience this good mental healing in the circus – because it is, in turn, a discovery of your own self. When we are able to laugh, we rise above the situation. We become aware of our own inner worth, and in this way we rise up. There is something tremendously healing in the burlesque jokes of the Punch and Judy show, to the comedians who commit all sorts of follies, getting entangled in all sorts of contradictions, while laughter at folly, when it is real, betrays the monster.

The ego shows itself strangely in its healthy relationship to the environment. We are inclined to weep when faced with misery, real misery, not the depicted. The opposite is true when we laugh and joke. Here we are monsters when we laugh at the follies that reside in a person as natural characteristics. But they are healthy and contribute to the healthy education of the person when we can take pleasure in the depicted burlesque and comic. For this points to the healthy ego within us.

There you see how the healthy in the environment can also be understood when we realize that we also have an ego. Now we ask: Does this also show in our materialistic humanity in relation to art? Yes, it shows very characteristically and actually. If people were really confronted with what is presented, for example, in Hauptmann's or Sudermann's dramas, how many would faint! In the presentation they can endure what in real life would plunge them into sadness and move them to intervene. This is not possible on stage. Where does such a reversal of facts come from? It comes from the fact that in our materialistic age people live mostly on the periphery, where the I does not reveal itself. Indeed, what can make us most sad is what happened as the most terrible thing in the evolution of the world in the Mystery of Golgotha, in the suffering, in the whole tragedy of Christ Jesus. And we can be most jubilant where the victory, the victory of life over death, which was directly portrayed for the realms of eternity, was won in the resurrection. No other victory exists in which the highest hallelujah is so united with the deepest sadness, all suffering in the death on Golgotha and all the glory of the Easter season in the resurrection - there is no other event in which both the deepest sadness and the highest exultation are so expressed.

Therefore, there is no deeper wisdom than that which Paul proclaimed with regard to this event: Not I, but the Christ in me! — There we see how we find the right focus to make the I in us as firm as possible, by permeating the I with what the Christ-Revelation is. When Theosophy is permeated with Christianity, it also penetrates into our I, thus giving us the greatest possible security in life, the greatest strengthening of life. For it is only through the understanding of Christ, as we attain it through spiritual science, that we get the right center of gravity within us.

If, then, Theosophy is to have such an effect, as you will also find indicated in my “Occult Science in Outline”, then an attempt is made to give something that can pour such firmness into people as is in the saying: Not I, but Christ in me! —, by which more and more the human being can be transformed, so that that consciousness of eternity can well up in us, by which we can say: What can be taken up into us cannot be taken from us.

Then we feel such a word as that uttered by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the great discoverer of Theosophy, we feel what it means, what he says: When I feel and understand my connection with the Eternal - and nothing can convey this connection to us more than Theosophy - when I feel and understand my connection with the Eternal - so says Johann Gottlieb Fichte - and if we also grasp this connection, we too stand on the earth and say with him: “I look to you, you rocks, and to you, mountains; come crashing down and bury my body except for the last speck of sunlight and destroy everything that is my physical tools - and I defy you, for you are not eternal; but I am connected to the eternal, I am eternal!

Thus speaks man, who comprehends the value of the wisdom of the Eternal. Thus speaks man, who has absorbed theosophy within himself, to his corporeal, astral, and etheric totality, for the elevation of his existence, for his incorporation into the spiritual worlds, of which he must only know that he is spirit from their Spirit. For man is not only flesh of the flesh, but is spirit of the spirit of eternity.

Source: February 26, 1911