Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland
July 16, 1921
Yesterday I concluded here by saying that in recent times a confusion has arisen regarding the conception of what Ormuzd-Ahriman, living out in Persian duality, actually is. I have also pointed out how one can go back to the older European-Germanic views, such as, for example, in the poem known as the “Muspilli” poem, the poem about the firmament and the earth, in which the antithesis of an upper, luciferic principle and a lower, ahrimanic principle is expressed in a thoroughly Christian form. I say, in a thoroughly Christian form, because it has not been infected by that out of whose spiritual makeup the antithesis of above and below in the sense of the “Muspilli” poem has vanished. It was not presupposed that the Christ principle, so to speak, belongs to the higher spirituality, but the higher spirituality has been raised to the Elijah principle, and it is Elijah who fights against the Antichrist with his trickling blood, which is nothing other than the expression of the Ahrimanic principle in Christian form. Thus, in these older European-Germanic conceptions there still exists a clear consciousness of the necessity to distinguish between an upper and a lower principle, upper forces and lower forces, and that, as it were, the equalization, the harmonization of the two principles is to be sought in the Christ principle. It will also be easy to see that when one has elevated the Elijah principle and placed the antichrist principle below, then in the higher principle there is that which follows the moral impulse of the world order, and in the Ahrimanic principle that which follows the intellectual impulse of world evolution.
In such an awareness of the upper and the lower, one has generally seen a polarity that exists in the world order. When one says up and down, it is of course projected onto the human being in a certain way. And we know that the human being determines up and down by orienting the most essential direction of the spine vertically. This is how up and down arise. So this is meant to be quite relative. But what is being referred to today, quite apart from up and down, is a certain polaric contrast. This polar contrast appears to us in an extraordinarily complicated way in the human being. But one can also study this polar contrast, I would say more externalized, in the world, and it is extraordinarily useful to look at the world order in such a way that it reveals to one, through very special phenomena in which certain forces are radically developed, what secrets actually prevail in it.
Now, in man a certain contrast is less clearly expressed, but it can be very clearly seen if you look at the organization as a whole. Just as man has grown out of the whole order of the world, so too has the bird race. But the secrets that prevail in the world show us this bird race in a certain direction much more clearly than we can see it in humans, where we then have to apply it in a more complicated way.
What then is the characteristic of the bird kingdom? The characteristic of the bird kingdom is that the bird, before our world order, insofar as it is given to us in the physical sphere, first appears to the outer world in the form of an egg, if I may say so. The bird appears to the world in the form of an egg. Then the egg must be broken. The bird develops out of the egg, and you will be aware – because you will have seen what a chicken looks like when it has just hatched from the egg – you will have noticed how it is only when it hatches from the egg that the growth of what feathers are and so on really comes to life. Now, this contrast, if I may call it that, between being in the egg and being in the world with feathers, is not so clearly expressed in humans. After all, humans are not born into the world in an egg, and they are spared the later stage of entering this world with such preparation as growing feathers. But what a contrast we have in the bird kingdom with regard to the egg shape and the later form of life!
If you look at the egg from the outside, the first thing you see is, of course, the chalky shell. This chalky shell has a certain shape. But basically you cannot consider this chalky shell to be something essential in a bird, because otherwise it could not shed it. It cannot belong to something essential in the bird. You can call it, if you speak in trivial terms, a protective covering of the young being. But in any case, something that is particularly localized in the lime shell does not actually have an effect on the shape of the bird. So we have this secretion of matter in the outer shell. We have this secretion of matter as something that is pushed out of the organization of the bird, as something that is thrown off, something that the bird, in the later stages, cannot use for its development; it is therefore something that is thrown out. So there must be forces within the being that secrete what is in the egg and throw it out of itself.
When we consider this whole matter, we cannot really come to terms with it within the natural laws that present themselves within the earthly. One must take what is said in 'Occult Science' to help. In 'Occult Science' you have the indication of how, in a certain epoch of the development of our earth, the moon separates from the earth, how the matter of the moon is separated from the earth. This process actually mimics what takes place here in a certain way. Just as the formative forces of the entire Earth cosmos once separated the forces of the moon from themselves, so the matter of the bird separates this lime shell as something one might say is super-mineral. And what is it that was initially inside this lime shell? (See drawing, red.)
The creature that was originally inside this lime shell was protected by this lime shell from the forces that act in the earth's environment. If the chicken were exposed to these forces too soon, say to the sun too soon, it would of course die. It would not be able to withstand the forces that are at work in the earth's environment. The point is that the being, protected by the chalk shell, lives in a world that is not actually the earthly one.
What kind of world is it in which this creature protected by the lime shell lives? This world is the one we have gone through through Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution and which has ceased to exist, which is no longer there as Earth evolution. The past is still present in the present. And if we say to ourselves: everything that is outside of an egg shell belongs to the earth, then in that which is inside an egg shell we have everything that does not belong to the earth, that wants nothing to do with the earth itself, that, so to speak, does not want to go along with the evolution of the earth. For it must first mature, break the shell and then have matured for the evolution of the earth.
This is also the point where we may draw attention to something else. We may point out that not all the beings that are laid in the egg are actually born. A great many bird's eggs perish, and even more of the eggs of fish and the like, they all perish. And besides, I don't know if it's always opportune to discuss things in such a dry way. Humanity likes to leave a lot in the unconscious, but for the times to come, a certain amount of knowledge is necessary for humanity, and one must not close oneself off from this knowledge. Besides, a large number of bird's eggs also perish because people eat them. They do not reach their goal. And now the question is: What happens to all this, what develops from the egg content, including the latter fact, without it becoming a mature chicken or mature bird or mature fish on earth, what happens to all this? The ordinary materialist will say: Well, nature just creates nonsense, into the blind, and so and so much of what nature creates just perishes. But that is not correct. The essential substances that are in the egg shell in some way do not just become ripe for earthly existence, but they are ripe in their powers for the pre-earthly existence, for the existence that we ourselves, that the earthly beings have gone through during the Saturn, Sun and Moon time. And that is the luciferic existence. They become substances from which the luciferic existence continues to feed. Everything that perishes in the form of eggs provides nourishment for the entities, for certain spiritual entities. But now let us consider what concerns the earth.
So, when we look at the bird species, we first have the Luciferic in the egg content, that which, as such, wants nothing to do with the earth, that which does not want to be on the earth, that which, I might say, surrounds itself with a wall against the laws of the earth, which only then intervene when that which otherwise works on the earth, warmth, light, has burst the shell.
And what intervenes there? The opposing forces intervene there. If you have a bird's egg in front of you, you can say to yourself: Lucifer in his essence is sitting inside there. If you pluck the feathers of a bird, you can say: Here I have the purest image of the Ahrimanic directional forces. The Ahrimanic directional forces are at work here, even in the fine, downy feathers that you find on the fledgling chick. The Ahrimanic forces have already worked through the shell. They were already in conflict with that which does not want to be permeated by feathers. So when you look at the bird's plumage, you have the purest image of the Ahrimanic.
Therefore, you can say: When I look at an egg, Lucifer veils himself from me. He betrays himself to me only through the outer form that he sheds, through that which is cast out in a certain way as matter. So whatever falls away, whether it is a bird's egg shell, a snake skin that is thrown off and so on, that is thrown out of the Luciferic principle, out of the Luciferic forces. In what is thrown away, one can still see something of the actual formation of the Luciferic forces. They actually work, when they work purely, in spirals. And in what you have as plumage, or what you have in general, that it moves from the outside into the physical, there you have the Ahrimanic. Its directional forces act tangentially. Take a peacock's tail and look at it very closely, thinking: This is the purest image of Ahrimanic directional forces.
Now, of course, you must be aware that everywhere Lucifer and Ahriman work into and through each other, so that we only have images of them. But these images are actually most beautifully available in the bird sex; for we need only look at this bird sex as I have just described it.
But of course the forces that are within the eggshell are also active in the bird inside. The bird has these forces, which were inside the eggshell (red), surrounded by the Ahrimanic forces (blue) in its feathers. In the bird, you also have the possibility of being able to localize the etheric and the physical. If you take everything that the bird retains of the Luciferic, which was only in the egg shell, what it retains of the growth forces, then you have what underlies the etheric body. So what I have drawn in red, these are the forces, and that is subject to the activity of the etheric forces. So that we can also say about the bird: What the bird receives as an inheritance from the egg is under the influence of the life forces, the etheric forces, throughout its life. And what it acquires as its plumage is under the influence of the physical forces (arrows) throughout its life. And what is in between, its flesh, muscles and so on, is under the influence of the astral forces (yellow) throughout its life. In the case of the bird, we can thus localize, so to speak, the astral in the flesh and muscles, the physical in the plumage, and the etheric in what remains of the egg contents as growth forces.
In the case of humans, it is much more complicated. Man does not live externally in an egg. He develops his Luciferic in the mother's body, which the bird still carries outwards. That is why Ahriman does not yet come over him in the mother's body. With birds, it is the case that they show, as it were, how they bring the Luciferic out into the world without it actually going astray, and how they also, in turn, take on the Ahrimanic. With human beings, you can see the individual examples develop with particular clarity. Between the human and the bird sex, we can then insert the mammal sex.
In the human being, you have a very strange difference compared to the bird. Take the bird's legs. The bird's legs are, as a rule, when you compare them to the human leg, actually quite stunted organs. How did the bird come to have legs just like it has? Take the sparrow's legs: What miserable rods they are compared to the proud legs that humans have! So take these stunted bird legs – yes, when you look at the bird's entire stunted form, you will say to yourself: the bird is designed primarily for flying, it takes off from the earth, and that is also the reason for the shape of its legs. They are, so to speak, only a hint of its connection to the earth. Man does not lift his legs off the earth. Man cannot fly. He places both his legs on the earth like proud pillars. The way these legs are formed, they are essentially an earthly gift. The bird does not receive this earthly gift because it is not bound to the earth in this way at all, because it is separate from the earth. And by receiving this earthly gift, the human being is more bound to the forces of Ahriman in this earthly gift than the bird is. In a sense, the bird also does not receive its Ahrimanic forces from the earth as fully as the human being does. In the human being, Ahriman shoots into the legs and from there up into the rest of the organism. In the bird, Ahriman sprouts into the feathers.
Now, if you look at a human being, who is more built for the earth in terms of his legs, then you may well ask: Why does a human being not have feathers? A human being does not have feathers because, unlike a bird, he is not built for the earth. If a human being were to fly in the air, he would also have feathers, because then the Ahrimanic forces would affect him from completely different directions. So he has only these few Ahrimanic tendencies, which are present in the hair. These are the Ahrimanic tendencies he has. They are strongest in the head, which is proof enough that the human head has a great deal of Ahrimanism, which we have already gathered from other insights.
If you look at mammals, you will say to yourself: They are even more bound to the earth than humans. These mammals are also bound to the earth with what humans are not bound to, for example with the front limbs; because monkeys only walk upright in rare cases, and even dogs do that when they are attentive, but it is not natural for them. Even for the gorilla it is not natural to walk upright; he climbs. These front limbs are real grasping organs, they are for moving around. Man is therefore half lifted off the earth, the bird is completely lifted off the earth, the mammal is bound to the earth with its front limbs as well as with its hind limbs. So in a sense it is entirely an earthly creature. The human being frees itself from the earth again through the upright position of its backbone, while the mammal is entirely bound to the earth. The mammal's entire remaining form is built accordingly. The mammal has, so to speak, only its hair from the region where the bird has its feathers, which are actually incorporated into the organism from the outside.
If you take all this into account, you will say to yourself: You can, if you look at the relationships of a being – a mammal, bird, human being, and you could now move on to the other beings – you can, if you look at the relationship of these beings to the environment and have a complete overview, find the shape of the being from the understanding of the relationship to the environment. – You can construct the shape for yourself. You can say that the bird has within itself the Luciferic principle, which the Earth does not like at all, so the bird in its egg separates itself from the Earth for as long as possible; then it comes about that the Earth has as little effect on it as possible. Its legs remain stunted, and the forces surrounding the Earth, the nearest forces to the Earth, which surround the Earth in the mantle of warmth, then affect the bird. Therefore, it will have to take on the shape that it has: stunted legs and so on. Man is bound to the earth by his lower limbs; he frees himself. The mammal is in the middle of it all, standing on the earth with four pillars: it is formed out of the earth. It is therefore the forces that directly emanate from the earth that primarily affect the mammal.
Such things were well known to an older, more instinctive science. Therefore, in that which is formed most independently of the earth in man, because it is actually only a metamorphosis of earlier life on earth, therefore an earlier view saw a bird, an eagle, in man's mind. In the human being with a metabolism of the limbs, which is completely organized towards the earth, an earlier view saw an ox or a bull or a cow, because that is an animal that is now completely organized towards the earth. In the middle part of man, who is, as it were, the connecting link between the eagle and the cow or calf, in this middle man, one has seen that which, through the metabolism, is indeed detached from the earthly in a certain way; you can see from this, cannot you, that the lion has a very short intestine. Its metabolic system is extremely primitive, whereas its chest and heart systems are very specially developed. Hence its passion, its rage, and so on. The lion has been seen by the older, more instinctive view as being in the middle part of the human being. These were views that were based on something.
Now we have to come back to these things in a different, I would say much more conscious way. We have to realize, for example, that we humans differ from all animals in our I. For the vast majority of people today, our I is still a very dormant organ. If one believes that the I is very much awake, one is actually mistaken. For in the will — I have already explained this to you — the human being is actually asleep too, and when the I acts willfully, we are not dealing with something that stands before us as the I, but rather with something that stands before us as night actually stands before us. We take the night for granted, even though it is dark, and we do the same in our lives. If you really look back on your life, it does not only consist of the days that were as bright as day, but also of the nights. But they are always crossed out of the course of time, so to speak. It is similar with our ego. Our ego is actually noticeable to ordinary consciousness in that it is not there for consciousness; it is already there, but for consciousness it is not there. Something is missing in that place, and that is how you see the ego. It is really like having a white wall and a place that has not been painted white; then you see the black. And so you actually see our ego in ordinary consciousness as the erased. And so it is also during waking: the I is actually always asleep at first; but it shines through as the sleeping one through thoughts, ideas and feelings, and therefore the I is also perceived in ordinary consciousness, that is, it is supposed that it is perceived. So we can say: our I is actually not perceived directly at first.
Now, a prejudiced psychology, a doctrine of the soul, believes that this I actually sits inside the human being; where his muscles are, his flesh is, his bones are and so on, there the I is also inside. If one were to survey life just a little, one would very soon perceive that this is not the case. But it is difficult to bring such a consideration before people today. I already tried it in 1911 in my lecture at the philosophers' congress in Bologna. But to this day no one has understood this lecture. I tried to show what the ego actually is. This I actually lies in every perception, it actually lies in everything that makes an impression on us. The I does not lie in my flesh and in my bones, but in that which I can perceive through my eyes. When you see a red flower somewhere: in your I, in your entire experience, which you have because you are devoted to the red, you cannot separate the red from the flower. With all of it, you have also given the I, the I is connected with the content of your soul. But your soul content is not in your bones! You spread the content of your soul throughout the entire space. So this I is even less than the air you are breathing in, even less than the air that was in you before. This I is connected with every perception and with everything that is actually outside of you. It is only active within you because it sends forces into it from your perception. And furthermore, the I is connected with something else: You need only walk, that is, develop your will. In doing so, your ego goes with you, or rather, the ego participates in the movement, and whether you sneak along slowly, walk, move in a Kiebitz step or turn somehow and the like, whether you dance or jump, the ego participates in all of it. The ego participates in everything that comes from you. But that is not in you either. Think, it takes you with it. When you dance a round dance, do you think the dance is in you? It wouldn't have any space in you! How could it have space? But the I is there, the I is doing the dance. So in your perceptions and in your activity, there sits the I. But it is never actually in you in the full sense of the word, not in the way that your stomach is in you. It is always something outside you, this I. It is just as much outside the head as it is outside the legs, except that when you walk it is very much involved in the movements your legs make. The I is actually very much involved in the movement that the legs make. But the head is less involved in the I.
But what is the further difference between the legs or the limbs in general and the metabolism of the head? In the case of the head, the etheric body and the astral body are also relatively independent; the head is mostly physical body. This head, which is so old that it comes from the previous incarnation, has become the most physical, and is really the worst inhabitant of the earth. In contrast, in the case of the legs, or rather the limbs, and in the case of the metabolism, the etheric body and the astral body are intimately connected with the physical body. So we can say: In the case of the legs, the etheric body and the astral body are connected to the physical body; only the I is relatively free of the legs and only takes the legs with it when the legs move. And it is the same with the metabolism: the metabolic organs are essentially connected to the etheric and astral bodies.
We can now say: How does the human head differ from the 'metabolic-limb human'? — In that the head actually has a free ether body, a free astral body and a free I; the metabolic limb-human being has only a free I, while the ether body and the astral body in the metabolic limb-human being are bound to the physical body; they are not free from it.
Perhaps the following will help you to understand the matter even better. Imagine that your astral body or your etheric body, the part that has to supply your metabolic limb man, suddenly decides to behave in the same way as the etheric body and the astral body of the head: it also wants to be free. Do you think it would have this strange idea that it also wanted to be free? Let's say, for example, that the astral body of your metabolic person wanted to behave like its colleague, the astral body of the head is allowed to behave. It is just a different part, so I say: its colleague. What arises there? What arises is something that should not arise at all because it contradicts the shape of the human being: our abdomen wants to become a head, it wants to become like the head. And the strange thing is, what is healthy in the head makes the abdomen sick. Basically, it is a general characteristic of all abdominal diseases that the abdomen takes on the configuration of the head.
It is, of course, only a special case of what I have explained, for example, for carcinoma in a Stuttgart or Zurich lecture, where I have shown that carcinoma formation is based on the fact that in a part of the human body where no sensory organs are supposed to develop inwardly, the astral body suddenly begins to want to develop sensory organs. A carcinoma is just an ear or an eye that wants to be in the wrong place. It grows there. It wants to form an ear or an eye. So when the astral body or the etheric body of the lower body wants to behave like the astral or etheric body of the head, the lower body becomes ill.
And the other way around, when the head also begins – it begins quietly in migraine-like conditions – to want to live like the lower body, to draw its astral body or its etheric body into its affairs, then the head becomes ill. When it draws in its etheric body, migraine-like conditions arise. When it draws in its astral body, even worse things arise.
These are the things that show you how complicated human nature is. This human nature cannot be studied in the way that today's trivial science does, but it must be studied by looking at it in all its complexity, by saying: the head cannot be like the abdomen, because if the head is like the abdomen, it can only be sick. So if, for example, the cerebrum begins to develop its metabolism too strongly, if it begins to develop secretion processes too strongly, then illnesses will arise. And these strong secretory processes arise precisely from the fact that the head makes too much use of its etheric body. But as soon as our abdomen is left to its own devices, when it becomes head-like, so to speak, when it develops an inclination to develop sensory organs, for example, then its diseases develop. So you can say: the head of the human being has a free etheric body, a free astral body, a free I. The metabolic-limb man has a bound etheric body, that is, an etheric body bound to physical matter, a bound astral body and only a free ego. And the middle man, the rhythmic man, has a bound etheric body, a free astral body and a free ego.
Head: free etheric body, free astral body, free I
Rhythmic human being: bound etheric body, free astral body, free I
Metabolic-limb human being: bound etheric body, bound astral body, free I
This is an overview of the human constitution from an extremely important point of view, because it gives you an impression of how the I actually has something free in relation to the whole human being, how the I actually falling asleep, has an effect on the human being, but how it always remains relatively free from the human being, how it is actually connected with external perception as well as with what the human being does as an external movement, but how it does not actually merge completely with the human body. In what does the human being's I live? Is there any way to see in what the human being's I lives?
Well, we can see something of it in what develops in the feathers of birds. Human beings do not have feathers, but their I lives in the forces that are in our environment and that are the guiding forces for the feathers of birds. The I lives externally in these forces. And we can see these formative forces even more clearly. In the feathers of birds we see them, as it were, held by the bird's body; but these forces also form the guidelines for free-moving beings: insects. When you see the insects buzzing around and grasp them imaginatively, you have an image of the realm in which your I lives. Just imagine insects buzzing around you: beetles, flies, beautiful butterflies, ugly horseflies and bumblebees and all sorts; imagine all of them floating around you in the most diverse guidelines: that is the outwardly visible image of what your ego actually lives in. And it is more than a mere image when one says: ugly thoughts live there, like bumblebees, like horseflies; beautiful thoughts like butterflies; some people's thoughts bite like evil flies, and so on. Only one is spiritual and the other physical. Man's I lives entirely in the environment.
This has an extraordinarily strong significance, and much of the real knowledge of the world depends on correctly assessing what one sees, on not just raving and rambling in general about a spirit, but also being able to see in the image outside what one experiences in an abstract, spiritual form within one's own self for one's own sake. For everything that exists spiritually also exists in the world in the form of images. What exists only in spirit exists somewhere in the image. One must only know how to properly assess the image. And when the Ahrimanic enters our ego, in that the ego finds itself in the butterflies and the feathers of the birds out there, that is, in the formative forces out there, then our ego in turn has the ability to form all kinds of forms from within. We construct the circle, we construct the egg shape, the triangle; we also build a world out of the inner being. And if we search for it, we will find: these are precisely the forces that are thrown out of the luciferic principle.
I said the other day: Mathematicians, when they study space, should consider the relationship of spatial dimensions to a hen's egg; something very interesting would come out of it.
This is the contrast: we live with the I both in the forms that we can construct into the world in this way and in that which is constructed out of the world.
On the one hand, we live in the chicken egg, which is closed off from the world by its shell, in the Luciferic; we experience with our ego the perception and participation in our movements in that which is set in the body of the bird in the feathers and what flutters around in the butterflies and in the insects in general.
Yes, anyone who understands the various wonderful shades of the bird world also understands something of the nature of the human soul in its relationship to the world. For what the bird turns outward in its plumage, what it lets us see, that shimmers through our ego in the flickering, shimmering, glittering perception from the outside in.
So we must try to grasp the world with the help of images. Our abstract science today grasps very little of the real world.
Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive
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