consciousness without an object : the human form

1. Physical body = Echo of the Zodiac
2. Etheric body  = Echo of the planetary movements
3. Astral body   = Experience of the planetary movements
4. Ego           = Perception of the echo of the Zodiac

1. Upright posture ^.
2. Orientation to the utterance of sound _.
3. Symmetry `.
4. Enclosure within itself a.
5. The interior of man that is so enclosed b.
6. The interior of man that in bodily aspect has no connection with the outside world c.
7. Balance d.
8. Organs of Reproduction e.
9. Thigh f.
10. Knee g.
11. Leg h.
12. Feet i.

Man in the Light of Occutism, Theosophy, and Philosophy. Lecture 5 of 10
Rudolf Steiner, Christiania [Oslo], Norway, June 7, 1912:

My dear friends,

Yesterday we made a general survey of some of the various forms of mysticism. We saw how the mystic, and especially the mystic of modern Christian times, is one who sets out to tread the occult path and undertakes in the first place, in preparation for the same, to overcome and transcend his personal everyday ego-consciousness.

We had to show also, from examples we brought forward, how it is possible for such a mystic to miss the road. Having done his best to extinguish ordinary consciousness, then in the moment when a supersensible experience ought to emerge in its place it may well be that he enters into a region which excludes the possibility of all experience whatsoever. We saw how this has actually happened in the case of eminent mystics. We found that one very distinguished mystic spoke of the goal she had in view as a “marriage” and a “union.” At the same time we had to describe this marriage or union as inevitably involving a loss of self. The mystic is estranged from himself, he no longer possesses himself, but passes over — as it were in a kind of higher sleep — into a completely different element.

Herein lies the cause why mysticism, generally speaking, although it can be a path to occultism, does not attain to the consciousness that is without an object. For the moment the mystic leaves the objects of this world, he loses also consciousness itself, and another state intervenes, a kind of intoxication; he loses himself and so cannot attain to what we named as the third element of occult experience — that higher consciousness which possesses not one of all the objects consciousness ordinarily possesses, and yet still is a consciousness.

I want now today to show you how the occultist on the other hand contrives to make, as it were, the leap out of ordinary consciousness and yet not lose himself but still retain something within which he himself can live. Let us first ask ourselves the question: How is it that the fact that in the case of the majority of mystics, the most thorough investigation can discover no inner compelling reason why they should go out of themselves. No such inner need is present.

It would be quite easy, in the case of the mystics of whom we spoke yesterday, to point to external grounds that induced them to overstep the bounds of their own personality. In Saint Francis of Assisi, for instance, there is evidence of inherited clairvoyant, visionary states; and in the case of the various women mystics we cited, it was the personality — I say expressly, the personality — of Jesus Himself, Whom they regarded as a Bridegroom. Had it not been for the Christian tradition that worked upon them as a stimulus from without, they would never have arrived at their mystical state. In the case of all the mystics whom we studied yesterday, there was this external stimulus, but there was no inward compelling cause that moved them to overstep the bounds of self. Such an inward compelling cause is present in the case of the true aspirant after occultism. We may picture it to ourselves in the following way.

Imagine that someone sets out to meditate upon his ego, that strange and mysterious member of man's nature, the very center of his consciousness. He will note in the first place how it is the ego that holds his life together on the Earth. If you study your life, you will quickly discover that your external substantial body has very little to do with your continued existence on this Earth. Natural science can tell you that the substance of the body is completely renewed in the course of seven or eight years; so that there will certainly not be many of you who can claim to have today anything at all of the bodily substance you had as children: all of you will have to admit that your body has changed its substance completely and fundamentally in the course of your life. It has, indeed, become an entirely new body. The permanent element in your life is therefore most certainly not to be found in the substance of the body.

And if you now turn from the external substance of the body and cast your eye over your inner life of soul, over your thinking, feeling, and willing, there too you cannot fail to notice how much change has come about. Look back over the years of your life and try to recall the thoughts — still more, the feelings and will impulses — that held sway in you when you were young. You have only to compare them with those of a later time of life to see at once what fundamental changes go on in your inner life of soul. It would not, however, occur to anyone in his senses to speak of himself as being a different ego from what he was ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, or as many years ago as he can remember. The moment a man did have to admit to himself that, let us say, from three or four years of age up to seventeen he was one ego, but that since he was seventeen years of age he had been another ego — in that moment his being would be torn asunder; he would be, as we say, no longer in his right mind. Our ego, which is the center point of our consciousness, must be assumed to be something that is permanent throughout the course of earthly life.

And yet, if we stop to think it over, we soon discover that even this assumption concerning the ego is not after all quite correct. When you speak to your fellowman of yourself, you say “I”; and you mean by “I” that which has held your consciousness together during the course of your earthly life. This is the fundamental feeling men have about the I or ego, and it has led a number of philosophers to regard the I as something which can be taken as a starting-point for any statement about the nature of the human being. In all modern philosophy we find again and again this inclination to take the ego as the starting-point. From Fichte to Bergson — to go no further back in time — you will find that philosophy is continually given this orientation. Remarkable and significant results have come to light from such considerations.

Nevertheless, when one comes to reflect more deeply, quite another thought suddenly thrusts itself forward. It is this. We are constantly speaking of our ego and we are persuaded that this ego is something that persists and is permanent for the whole of earthly life; but do we really know this ego? Could we give any description or definition of it? Careful reflection will show us that the ego is not after all so permanent as we thought. Life itself contradicts the philosophers who speak of an enduring ego and think they can have knowledge of it. Every night when man goes to sleep, the “permanent” ego is disproved. For when man is asleep it is extinguished. So that when we speak of our ego in this way, we are in error. We contemplate our life, forgetting that we are omitting entirely what happens to our ego during sleep! This ego, of which we know that it belongs to us—in the night we know nothing of it at all. Therefore, when we think of our ego, we have to make the picture not of a continuous line, but of an interrupted line.

How can such a thing be? How can it be that ego-consciousness is continually being broken? The explanation is that when we speak of the ego we mean really no more than the thought or idea of the ego. And since all ideas sink down in sleep into the darkness of unconsciousness, so does also the thought of the ego. The very fact that it sinks away with all our world of ideas should demonstrate to us that in the ego as we conceive it we have merely a picture or image of that of which we mean to speak when we say “I.”

We shall not, therefore, be able to find in the ego the occult starting-point for which we are looking. For the ego is only there for us, to begin with, as a picture. It is, however, a picture of a unique kind, the study of which can bring us to a very interesting result. For how in any case do pictures and ideas come into the soul? Through the fact that man has around him objects. If you examine carefully the ideas with which your consciousness is filled, you will find they are aroused by external objects, they are all — originally — pictures of external objects. Herein lies the source of our life of ideation; we owe it to the stimulation of external objects. If the objects were not there we should never have ideas of them. With the idea of the I, however, it is different. In this respect the picture we have of the I is unique. In the world outside, look where you will, you can find no object to arouse it. This it is that distinguishes the idea of the I from all other ideas, We can point to no object that is the origin of it. Whatever it is that lives in the idea of the I and clothes itself in the words “I am,” we cannot find it anywhere in the whole wide compass of external life.

We are obliged, therefore, to admit that behind the idea of the I lies something totally unknown, something that is nowhere to be found in the external world in so far as this is open to man's perception. A strange and a marvellous thing, this I of ours! If we could lay hold of it inside us, as Bergson and others think we can, if it were possible to grasp more of it than the mere picture or idea, then we would be able to say that we had — not perhaps very much, but something of an earthly reality that is not given from without. But we cannot catch it, we cannot reach it!

There is, however, one thing we can know of this ego, one thing that can serve as a fulcrum, like the fulcrum Archimedes called for long ago, that he might unhinge the Earth. One thing we can discover when we focus our attention upon the I. Among all the multitude of questions and riddles that present themselves to us when we turn our thought to the outer world, there is one particular question that calls loudly for an answer, and it is the question which every aspirant after occultism must face if he would make the leap out of consciousness. He must ask himself: “In all the wide realm of earthly experience, do you see nothing at all of which you can say that it brings to expression the innermost part of your own being? Do you find nowhere anything in which your ego is expressed?”

To search for such an expression in our inner life will only lead to disappointment. There we simply enter into our transitory and fleeting ideas, and we can never be sure of finding anything to lead us beyond this world of temporal ideas. In any case we can never hope to get free of our personality — the very thing we must do as occultists — so long as we are gazing perpetually into it! In the external world outside us, on the other hand, there are only the experiences of man on Earth. Any expression of what corresponds to the I in man must needs be an external expression. The I itself we cannot reach; but when we look around us, we do find something that is an expression — and for the moment, the one and only expression — for our I. It is the human form or figure.

We have here reached a difficult point in our consideration, but we must find the way to master it. In the first place let me ask you to understand the term “human form” as indicating the form of man as we meet with it in the external world You will, I think, not have any difficulty in following me when I say that as a plant is in its outward form the expression of its nature and being, as a crystal is formed in such a way as to correspond with its inner being, and as an animal too has a form that corresponds with its inner being, so must the human form correspond with the nature and being of man. And since from out the whole range of our earthly experiences we gather together our being in our I, the human form must needs be an expression of the human I. In other words, in all the vast realm of our experience there is this one thing — the human form or figure — which is an expression of the human being. It sounds a trivial thing to say, but it is in reality one of the most important utterances that can be made, and one upon which we do well to ponder and meditate.

The occultist must now go further. Of the ego he can say that he expresses it when he says “I,” but he cannot say that he has it, that it is “there” for perception. What he has, what is there, is the idea of the ego. The human form, on the other hand, seems to be there. And so the occultist finds himself in a strange and puzzling situation. He meets at every turn the human form, the expression of the human ego, while the ego itself still eludes him.

There is here only one possible course for the occultist to follow. And it is this. He must clearly understand that it is no different with the human form than it is with a human ego. If the human form be always there, then it does not correspond to the ego that is not always there. We are faced with the necessity of coming somehow to understand that the human form — which apparently we encounter every minute of our life — is not there, has no existence among earthly objects. It is exceedingly important to arrive at a perception that the form of man is possessed of a peculiar quality, and one in which it very nearly resembles the idea of the ego. For the human form too in its external aspect deceives us, it lies to us. That is what the occultist comes to realize — that the human form lies to him, pretending to be an expression of man's being, claiming to be there as plain reality, when all the time man's being remains hidden.

As you will see, we should be coming no nearer the goal we have set before us — namely, a “consciousness that has no object and is yet a consciousness” — if we set about acquiring a consciousness of the human form, since the human form is after all an external object! This means that the human form as we meet it in life cannot be what we are looking for as an expression of the ego.

Now, the occultist must of course know that he cannot live in ideas and conclusions that are taken from the world outside, that the experiences to which he has now to penetrate cannot be received from without; for what comes to him from without goes to make up his Earth consciousness, and this he wants to transcend. When the occultist looks at the human form, what he has to do is to experience something in it that leads him out beyond Earth consciousness.

Is it possible to experience in the human form something that leads us out beyond all Earth consciousness? Yes, it is possible. Let us look first at the human countenance and observe the impression it makes upon us. If we want to attain a true perception of the human countenance, we must not be so foolish as to cling to our accustomed ideas of it. For we have here to enter upon a profound experience that will lead at last to the startling conclusion that the human countenance is not as it should be. We learn to see how the human countenance and all that belongs to it — indeed the whole of the upper part of man — has undergone change in the course of time through the working of pride in the soul of man — pride and haughtiness and presumption.

This is the first experience we have to meet when we begin to overstep the bounds of ordinary consciousness. We enter right down into a deep and original feeling of the soul where we say: “You lie to me, you human countenance and human head! Through pride and presumption you have given yourself a form you should not have. As I look at the whole upper part of man, I begin to see through your appearance; when I behold how pride and presumption have made their impress on man throughout many incarnations, then I begin to perceive an original human countenance that is quite different from you.” Thus, looking at the upper part of man, we perceive how through pride and presumption man has changed his original form.

A further observation has then to be made, and this time it concerns the remaining parts of the human figure. Here again, when the deepest and original perceptions of the soul are aroused, we have the impression that the human form is lying to us. The remaining parts of it — these too, no less than the head, ought to be different from what they are. Again we have to discover and eliminate some interfering influence in order to come to the original; and here it is passionate longing and desire. Changed in form and figure has man become — above through pride and presumption, below through desire. If desire were not aflame within him, then the lower part of his organism would have a different form.

These two experiences are fundamental; upon them we must build. They are experiences that it is possible to have and that can lead one to pronounce two judgments — that man is too proud, and that man is too full of longing and desire. They are definite inner experiences in consciousness, and they force themselves upon one if one looks at the human being with the soul's deepest powers of perception.
But what about their origin? Have they been aroused by any object in the whole wide world of Earth life? They are, as we have seen, only present when man begins to feel the imperfection of his own form, when he feels that his form had originally a different plan and character and has become changed through the working of pride and desire. It is not, therefore, any external object that has occasioned these experiences. Yet they are experiences that can make their appearance in human consciousness, that can be there simply through the fact that man lives his life on Earth together with his environment.

We have here made a discovery of extraordinary importance, namely, that it is possible to come to an inner judgment, an inner experience, that has no object. And this inner experience has the following result. The occult student conceives a dislike for his human form. He says to it: “You are false.” He withdraws from it — not like the mystics of whom we spoke yesterday, who when they withdraw themselves retain nothing of the experiences of Earth. No, the occultist steps forth out of ordinary experience and takes something with him; what he takes is a judgment about the human form. It is a judgment to which, in fact, expression has been given by man again and again in countless different ways.

What has here been described is, so to speak, the first elementary perception that stands at the beginning of occult consciousness — if it is genuine occult consciousness and not mere mystical experience. At the very beginning stands a judgment about the human being. The human form as such has been extinguished; not so, however, all inner experience. There remains a judgment concerning man, which says to him: “It is Earth life that has made you as you are; the form in which we see you now refers us back to another and altogether different form.”

In order to see quite clearly that we have here to do with the dawning of a “consciousness without object,” it will be necessary for us to study a little more closely this human form or figure. For when we showed how the occult student makes this leap out of himself, retaining only a kind of judgmatic feeling about the human form — finding fault with the one half for being too proud and with the other half for being too full of desire — we were speaking of an inner experience that is rather indefinite. As a matter of fact it is one which leads on, as we shall see later, to the highest regions of spiritual experience; as yet, however, it is undefined.

To come to greater definiteness, let us now study the human form in some detail. Speaking in scientific language, let us dissect the human form! When we try to do so, we are at once struck by the remarkable fact that the human form divides up of itself quite naturally into various members, We shall see clearly what these members are when we enquire how man came to receive his present form. We shall find that the truths which are drawn from the deep wells of occultism give us a complete picture of the memberment of the human form, show us how the human form has been put together.

The first thing about the human form that arrests our attention, the first thing in his form that makes man, is what I laid stress on in the opening words of these lectures — the fact that it is upright. Man is a being who walks upright. That is the first important thing about him — so to speak, the first member of his form: his upright posture.

It will perhaps seem to you as though there were something arbitrary about the way I am dissecting the form of man. But if you follow closely and carefully, you will see that it is not really so at all; the fact is, the essential being of man, as described for us in occult knowledge, is reflected in his form or figure.

The second thing that makes man man and that will also be readily recognized as essential to the human form is the fact that he is so constituted as to enable him to be a speaking being. Sound can be born in him. Consider how essential a characteristic this is. In general, man is organized in an upward direction, and in particular he is so organized that his speech organs, beginning from the heart and larynx, go upwards — up to the face. Study the human being from this aspect and you will find that all the forms of the limbs are so arranged as to suit the creation and the molding and forming of spoken sound. Thus we can say, the second important factor in the ordering of the members of the human form is that they are ordered and disposed with a view to speech.

The third thing that we have to regard as important for the form of man is the fact that it is symmetrical. Inevitably one feels that the human form would lose something of its real nature if it were not symmetrical. That then is the third essential, that the limbs and members are symmetrically disposed. As we know, there are exceptions, but the quality of symmetry is essential.

The fourth thing that comes into consideration manifests in the following way. If you will observe attentively these three first members of man's form — upright posture, speaking, symmetry — you will see that they are all directed outwards. The fact that man holds himself upright is something that places him into the external world. Speech is again something that obviously relates him to the external world. Finally, the symmetry of his form gives him a certain balance in space. Now we come to a different aspect. We come to the fact that man has an inside. From the purely physical point of view man has organs that are enclosed within his skin. We may, therefore, say that man has as the fourth member of his form the fact of enclosure within the skin, so that the organs on which the inner functions depend are inside and are protected from the external world. Enclosure or isolation within the skin is thus something that properly belongs to the human form.

To find the fifth member of the human form you must give your attention to the fact that within it, in the parts that are shut away from the outside, we find organs, active inner organs. All that lives and works inside man — that is the fifth thing we have to note. That there is movement and life within him can convince us that man as he stands before us in his form is not dependent merely on the external world, but is dependent on his own inner man as well: he has within him as it were a center for all the weaving of his life and being. Contrast, for example, with the members we have already described, such a thing as the circulation of the blood. There you have a process that takes its course entirely inside man, it is something completely isolated from the world outside. Thus we have as fourth member the fact of enclosure or isolation, and as fifth, the inside of man that is so enclosed. 

But now there is something further we have to observe about this inside of the human form. Looked at from the purely physical aspect, it is a duality. There are, first of all, organs like the lungs and heart, which owe their form to a compromise, for they receive an influence also from without. Even the heart, by reason of its connection with the lungs, has to be adapted to outside conditions. The air from outside enters into man through the lungs and is by this means brought into contact with the inner organs.
Then we have, on the other hand, organs which show by their form that they are adapted solely and entirely to the inside of the body. These are the organs of the abdomen. They owe their very shape and form to the fact that they are inside man. It is quite possible to imagine that the stomach, intestines, liver, or spleen, if they were differently formed, could still be in connection with the heart and lungs and in some way or other fulfill their right and proper functions. When once the external world has found entrance into the lungs, then all the inner organs can assume their own several forms. They are determined entirely from within.
So that we may say we have, as sixth, a member of the human being which we may call the true inside of man in the bodily sense. It is important to realize that here we have a member of the human form which has no connection with the outside world.

We have now come to a boundary in the human form, where the outward direction begins to work again, where once more we find something that has strong relation to the outside world. Consider the shape of man's foot. If it were not formed for the ground, if it had not a sole, man would not be able to walk. If his foot, for example, ended in a point, he would be continually falling down. Thus, as we follow the human form downwards, we come again to organs that are adapted to external conditions. At the same time we note that the feet, and also the legs, help to give man his distinctively human form. If man were a fish, or if he were a creature that flies in the air, these organs would have to be formed quite differently; as it is, their form expresses the fact that man is a being who stands and walks upon the Earth. All the organs from the hips downwards are shaped with this end in view — that man shall be a being able to work and stand and walk upon the Earth. So that we may say, in the hips we have, as seventh member, a condition of balance What is above the place of balance is either given an outward direction in its form, or as we have seen, turned inwards; what is below is formed in a downward direction. In the hips you have a point of equilibrium between these tendencies. Of all that comes below the hips, we may say that it is adapted to earthly conditions.

Then we have as eighth member organs that are entirely orientated with a view to conditions outside the human being—the organs of reproduction. Continuing further, a little reflection will enable you to see that for man to walk in the way that is proper to him, the thigh must be separate from the leg, there must be the bend between them. And so he has, joined on to the thigh, the knee, making it possible for him to adapt himself in his walk to earthly conditions. For it is earthly conditions that determine altogether the lower part of the figure of man. Then we have the leg and, separated again from it, the foot. Perhaps you will say, what about the hands? We shall see in the next lecture why the hands are left out in this connection.

And now I will ask you to follow this list we have made of the members of man's form.

1. Upright posture.
2. Orientation to the utterance of sound.
3. Symmetry.
4. Enclosure within itself.
5. The interior of man that is so enclosed.
6. The interior of man in bodily aspect, having no connection with the outside world.
7. Balance.
8. Organs of reproduction.
9. Thigh.
10. Knee.
11. Leg.
12. Feet.

As I said before, it might at first sight appear arbitrary to show the human form divided in this way into twelve members. But everything man requires in his form in order for him to be man on Earth is really comprised in these twelve members (I will explain tomorrow how it is with the hands), and in such a way that each member has a certain independence, each member is separate from the others. One could even imagine that each one of them, while remaining still in connection with the others, might assume quite another form from the form it actually has. It is perfectly possible in each single case to imagine other shapes or forms for the several members; but that the whole human figure stands before us as the result of the conjunction of twelve such members is a fact that cannot be disregarded.

When you reflect upon the whole meaning and intention of man's existence upon Earth you cannot leave out of account that he has a form and figure membered in this particular way, so that when we come to study his form we must inevitably think of it as divisible into twelve parts or members. These twelve members have always been regarded in occultism as of the deepest possible significance. We are bound to take them into consideration if we would understand the meaning of the form and figure of man in its relation to his being. Occultism has always known of them, and for reasons which will become clear to us in the course of these lectures, as we continue our study of man in the light of occultism, philosophy, and theosophy, the twelve members have received twelve specific designations.

What we gave as the first member has been called “Ram” (Aries) and is denoted by the Sign ^.

The second is named “Bull” (Taurus) and symbolized with the Sign _.

Symmetry is called “Twins” (Gemini) and is denoted with the Sign `.

What we described as the quality of enclosure within itself is given the Sign a and called “Crab” (Cancer).

What we described as the interior, the life that is so enclosed, is called “Lion” (Leo) and symbolized with the Sign b.

The inner parts of man, that in bodily aspect have no connection at all with the outside world and point to the threefold character of man's nature, themselves typifying complete isolation from the outside world, are called “Virgin” (Virgo) and denoted with the Sign c.

Then we come to the condition of balance, and there no explanation will be needed for giving the name of “Scales” (Libra) d.

The organs of reproduction, which have once more the direction outwards, are denoted by the expression “Scorpion” (Scorpio) and symbolized with the Sign e.

The Thigh is called “Archer” (Sagittarius) and has the Sign f.

The knees, the “Goat” (Capricorn), are symbolized with the Sign g.

The leg below the knee is “Waterman” (Aquarius) and has the Sign h.

Finally, the feet are termed “Fishes” (Pisces) and have the Sign i.

For the moment, I ask you to see in these Signs no more than signs and signatures for the various members that go to make the complete human form. Please regard them as nothing else than a means of distinguishing the several members of the human form. You know very well that these Signs belong to habits of mind and thought that are of great antiquity, and in particular that they play a part in astrology. I want you, however, to connect nothing else with them now than the fact that with their help we are able to study the human form and see how it lends itself naturally to division into twelve members. If it should seem that we are giving rather strange names and signs to these members of the human form, it is really only as it is with the sounds of human speech, where we cannot by any means always quickly recognize the meaning from the sound, or, shall we say, as it is with the letters of the alphabet, of which we are often quite unable to say at once why they designate this or that sound. All we have done is to find an expression for the twelve-membered figure of man and, for convenience of further reference, give these members names which have here and there found their way out of occultism into general use.

1. Upright posture ^.
2. Orientation to the utterance of Sound _.
3. Symmetry `.
4. Enclosure within itself a.
5. The Interior of man that is so enclosed b.
6. The Interior of man that in bodily aspect has no connection with the outside world c.
7. Balance d.
8. Organs of Reproduction e.
9. Thigh f.
10. Knee g.
11. Leg h.
12. Feet i.

Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Dates/19120607p01.html

Eurythmy: Dances with Vowels

T-shirt of the week:

Eurythmy

Dances with Vowels

The Alphabet: An Expression of the Mystery of Man

1. Physical body = Echo of the Zodiac
2. Etheric body  = Echo of the planetary movements
3. Astral body   = Experience of the planetary movements
4. Ego           = perception of the echo of the Zodiac

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland, December 18, 1921:

For some time we have been occupied with gaining a more accurate knowledge of man's relation to the universe, and today we would like to supplement our past studies. If we consider how man lives in the present period of his evolution — taking this period so widely that it encompasses not only what is historical but also in part the pre-historical — we must conclude that speech is a preeminent characteristic at this moment of the cosmic evolution of mankind. It is speech that elevates man above the other kingdoms of nature.

In the lectures last week I mentioned that in the course of mankind's evolution, language, speech as a whole, has also undergone a development. I alluded to how, in very ancient times, speech was something that man formed out of himself as his most primal ability; how with the help of his organs of speech he was able to manifest the divine spiritual forces living within him. I also referred to how, in the transition from the Greek culture to the Roman-Latin culture, that is to say in the fourth post-Atlantean period, the single sounds in language lose their names and, as in contemporary usage, merely have value as sounds. In Greek culture we still have a name for the first letter of the alphabet but in Latin it is just ‘A’. In passing from the Greek to the Latin culture something living in speech, something eminently concrete, changes into abstraction. It might be said: as long as man called the first letter of the alphabet ‘Alpha’, he experienced a certain amount of inspiration in it, but the moment he called it just ‘A’, the letters conformed to outer convention, to the prosaic aspects of life, replacing inspiration and inner experience. This constituted the actual transition from everything belonging to Greece to what is Roman-Latin — men of culture became estranged from the spiritual world of poetry and entered into the prose of life.

The people of Rome were a sober, prosaic race, a race of jurists, who brought prose and jurisprudence into the culture of later years. What lived in the people of Greece developed within mankind more or less like a cultural dream which men approach through their own revelations when they have inner experiences and wish to give expression to them. It might be said that all poetry has in it something which makes it appear to Europeans as a daughter of Greece, whereas all jurisprudence, all outer compartmentalization, all the prose of life, suggest descent from the Roman-Latin people.

I have previously called your attention to how a real understanding of the Alpha — Aleph in Hebrew — leads us to recognize in it the desire to express man in a symbol. If one seeks the nearest modern words to convey the meaning of Alpha, these would be: ‘The one who experiences his own breathing’. In this name we have a direct reference to the Old Testament words: ‘And God formed man ... and breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life’. What at that time was done with the breath, to make man a man of Earth, the being who had his manhood imprinted on him by becoming the experiencer, the feeler, of his own breathing, by receiving into himself consciousness of his breathing, is meant to be expressed in the first letter of the alphabet.

And the name ‘Beta’ considered with an open mind, turning here to the Hebrew equivalent, represents something of the nature of a wrapping, a covering, a house. Thus, if we were to put our experience on uttering ‘Alpha, Beta,’ into modern language we could say: ‘Man in his house’. And we could go through the whole alphabet in this way, giving expression to a concept, a meaning, a truth about man simply by saying the names of the letters of the alphabet one after another. A comprehensive sentence would be uttered giving expression to the Mystery of Man. This sentence would begin by our being shown man in his building, in his temple. The following parts of the sentence would go on to express how man conducts himself in his temple and how he relates to the cosmos. In short, what would be expressed by speaking the names of the alphabet consecutively would not be the abstraction we have today when we say A, B, C, without any accompanying thoughts, but it would be the expression of the Mystery of Man and of how his roots are in the universe.

When today in various societies ‘the lost archetypal word’ is talked about, there is no recognition that it is actually contained in the sentence that comprises the names of the alphabet. Thus we can look back on a time in the evolution of humanity when man, in repeating his alphabet, did not express what was related to external events, external needs, but what the divine spiritual mystery of his being brought to expression through his larynx and his speech organs.

It might be said that what belongs to the alphabet was applied later to external objects, and forgotten was all that can be revealed to man through his speech about the mystery of his soul and spirit. Man's original word of truth, his word of wisdom, was lost. Speech was poured out over the matter-of-factness of life. In speaking today, man is no longer conscious that the original primordial sentence has been forgotten — the sentence through which the Divine revealed its own being to him. He is no longer aware that the single words, the single sentences, uttered today represent the mere shreds of that primordial sentence.

The poet, by avoiding the prose element in speech, and going back to the inner experience, the inner feeling, the inner formation of speech, attempts to return to its inspired archetypal element. One could perhaps say that every true poem, the humblest as well as the greatest, is an attempt to return to the word that has been lost, to retrace the steps from a life arranged in accordance with utility to times when cosmic being still revealed itself in the inner organism of speech.

Today we distinguish the consonant from the vowel element in speech. I have spoken of how it would appear to man if he were to dive beneath the threshold of his consciousness. In ordinary consciousness memories are reflected upwards — or, in other words, thoughts are reflections of what is experienced between birth and death. Normally we do not penetrate man's actual being beyond this recollection, this thought left behind in memory. From another point of view I have indicated how, beneath the threshold of consciousness, there lives what may be called a universal tragedy of mankind. This can also be described in the following way: When man wakes up in the morning and his ego and astral body dive down into his etheric body and his physical body, he does not perceive these bodies from within outwards; what he perceives is something quite different. We can get an idea of this by means of a diagram.

Let us say that here we have the boundary between the conscious and the unconscious, red representing the conscious, blue the unconscious. If a person sees something belonging to the outer world or to himself — for instance, if with his own eye he sees another man's eye — then the visible rays which go out of his eye into the other man are thrown back, and he experiences it in his consciousness. What he also bears of his own being beneath the threshold of consciousness he experiences in his astral body and his ego, but not in the ordinary waking state. It remains unconscious and essentially forms the actual content of the etheric and the physical bodies. The etheric body is never recognized at all by ordinary consciousness; it recognizes only the external aspect of the physical body. As I have mentioned in the past, we must plunge beneath memory to perceive the primal source of evil in human beings — but then something else can also be perceived, namely, an aspect of man's connection with the cosmos.

We may, through appropriate meditation, succeed in penetrating the memory representations, as it were, to put aside what separates us inwardly from our etheric and physical bodies; if we then look down into the etheric body and the physical body so that we perceive what normally lies beneath the threshold of consciousness, we will hear something sounding within these bodies. And what sounds is the echo of the music of the spheres, which man absorbed between death and new birth, during his descent out of the divine spiritual world into what is given to him through physical inheritance by parents and ancestors. In the etheric body and in the physical body there echoes the music of the spheres. In so far as it is of a vowel nature it echoes in the etheric body, and in the physical body in so far as it is of a consonantal nature.

It is indeed true that man, as he goes forward in the life between death and a new birth, raises himself to the world of the higher hierarchies. We have learned how man in the world of the angels, the archangels, and the archai joins in with their life and lives within the realm of the hierarchies, as here we live among the beings of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. After this life between death and a new birth he descends once more to earthly life. And we have also learned how on his way down he first gathers to him the influences of the firmament of the fixed stars, represented in the signs of the Zodiac; then, as he descends further, he takes with him the influence of the moving planets.

Now just picture to yourselves the Zodiac, the representation of the fixed stars. Man is exposed to their influence on descending from the life of soul and spirit into earthly life. If their effects are to be designated in accordance with their actual being we must say that they are cosmic music, they are consonants. And the forming of consonants in the physical body is the echo of what resounds from the single formations of the Zodiac, whereas the formation of vowels within the music of the spheres occurs through the movements of the planets in the cosmos. This is imprinted into the etheric body. Thus, in our physical body we unconsciously bear a reflection of the cosmic consonants, whereas in our etheric body we bear a reflection of the cosmic vowels. This remains, one might say, in the silence of the subconscious. But as the child develops, forces press upward within the body and strengthen the speech organs; these are forces that, as reflections of the formative forces of the cosmos, build up the speech organs. The more interior speech organs are so formed out of man's essential being that they can produce vowels, and the organs nearer to the periphery — the palate, the tongue, the lips, and everything that contributes to the form of the physical body — are built up in such a way that consonants can be produced. While the child is learning to speak something takes place in the upper part of his being, as a result of the activity of his lower part, which is a consequence of the formative forces taken up into the physical body, and also into the etheric body. (This is naturally not a material process but has to do with formative activity.) Thus when we speak, we bring to manifestation what we might call an echo of the experience man goes through with the cosmos in the life between death and a new birth during his descent out of the divine spiritual world. All the single letters of the alphabet are actually formed as images of what lives in the cosmos.

We can get an approximate idea of the signs of the Zodiac if we relate them to modern speech by setting up B, C, D, F, and so forth, as constellations of the Zodiac. You can follow them by feeling the revolution of the planets in H [ed.: ‘H’ like in him, her] — H is not actually a letter like the others, H imitates the rotational movement, the circling around. And the single planets in their revolutions are always the individual vowels which are placed in various ways in front of the consonants. If you imagine the vowel A to be placed in here (see diagram) you have the A in harmony with B and C, but in each vowel there is the H. You can trace it in speaking — AH, IH, EH. H is in each vowel. What does it signify that H is in each vowel? It signifies that the vowel is revolving in the cosmos. The vowel is not at rest, it circles around in the cosmos. And the circling, the moving, is expressed in the H hidden in each of the vowels. Consider, therefore, a vowel harmony expressed somewhere in speech: let us say I, O, U, A. (ed.: IH, OH, UH, AH in German) What is expressed by this? Something is expressed that is the cosmic working of four planets. Let us add one of the consonants to something like this — IOSUA — let us add this S in the middle of it, and this would mean that not only the forming of vowels within the planetary spheres is expressed, but also the effect that the planets connected with I, O, U, A experience in their movement through the connection with the star sign S. Thus if a man in the days of ancient civilization uttered the name of a God in vowels, a planetary mystery was expressed. The deed of a divine being within the planetary world was expressed in the name. Were a divine name expressed with a consonant in it, the deed of the divine being concerned reached in thought to the representative of the fixed star firmament — the Zodiac.

When there was still an instinctive understanding of these things — in the time of atavistic clairvoyance, clairaudience, and so on — a connection with the cosmos was experienced in human speech. When speaking, man felt himself within the cosmos. When the child learned to speak it was felt how what was experienced in the divine spiritual world before birth, or before conception, gradually evolved out of the being of the child.

It may be said that if a man could look through himself inwardly he would have to admit: I am an etheric body, in other words, I am the echo of cosmic vowels; I am a physical body, in other words, the echo of cosmic consonants. Because I stand here on the Earth there sounds through my being an echo of all that is said by the signs of the Zodiac; and the life of this echo is my physical body. An echo is formed of all that is said by the planetary spheres, and this echo is my etheric body.

1. Physical body = Echo of the Zodiac
2. Etheric body  = Echo of the planetary movements
3. Astral body   = Experience of the planetary movements
4. Ego           = perception of the echo of the Zodiac

Nothing is said, my dear friends, by repeating that man consists of physical body and etheric body. Those are no more than vague, indefinite words. If we want to speak in a real language, which can be learned from the mysteries of the cosmos, we would have to say: Man is constituted out of the echo of the heavens, of the fixed stars; of the echo of the planetary movements; of what is experienced of the echo of the planetary movements; and of what knowingly experiences the echo of the fixed star heavens. Then we would have expressed in real cosmic speech what is abstractly expressed by the words: Man is made up of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. We remain entirely in the abstract by saying: Man is composed first of physical body, secondly of etheric body, thirdly of astral body, fourthly of ego. But we pass into concrete cosmic speech if we say: Man consists of the echo of the Zodiac, of the echo of the planetary movements, of the experience of the impression of the planetary movements in thinking, feeling, and willing, and in the perception of the echo of the Zodiac. The first is abstraction, the second reality.

When you say ‘I’, what is that exactly? Now just imagine someone had planted trees in a beautifully artistic order. Each individual tree can be seen. However, at a distance all the trees resolve into a single point. Take all the individual things — all that resounds from the Zodiac in the way of world consonants — then go far enough away: Everything that is formed as inward sound, in the most manifold way, is compressed within you to the single point ‘I’.

It is an actual fact that this name which man gives himself is really only an expression for what we perceive in the measureless spaces of the universe. Everywhere it is necessary to go back to what, as reflection, as echo, appears here upon Earth. Thus, when the matter is seen in its reality, before man's higher and inward experience, everything out of which man builds himself up as a phenomenon, as pure experience, melts away. If we look upon man and gradually learn to know his true nature, then his physical body actually ceases to be in the way it normally confronts us and otherwise stands before us: our vision widens and man grows into the heavens of the fixed stars. The etheric body, too, ceases to be before us. Vision is extended, experience is extended, and we arrive at a perception of planetary life, for this human etheric body is a mere reflection of planetary life.

Man standing before you is nothing but the phenomenon, the appearance, the image, of what goes on in the life of the planets. We think we have an individual human being in front of us, but this individual is a picture, on a certain spot, of the whole world. What then is the reason for the difference between an Asiatic and an American? The reason is that the starry heavens are portrayed at two different earthly points, just as we have various pictures of one and the same external fact. It is indeed true that when we observe man the world begins to dawn upon us, and by such observation we are faced by the great mystery of the extent to which man is an actual pictured microcosm of the reality of the macrocosm.

Now, of what does modern life consist? When we look back from these modern times upon mankind's life in primeval times, we still find an experience of man's connection with the spiritual world in the instinctive consciousness of those ancient days. In the alphabet we can have a concrete experience of this. When, in primeval words, man had to express the rich store of the Divine in all its fullness, he uttered the letters of the alphabet. When he expressed the mystery of his own nature, in the way he learned about it in the Mysteries, then he voiced how he had descended through Saturn or Jupiter in their stellar relation to the Lion or the Virgin — in other words, how he had descended through the A or the I in their relation to the M or the L. He gave utterance to what he had then experienced of the music of the spheres, and that was his cosmic name. And in those ancient days men were instinctively aware that they brought a name down with them from the cosmos to the Earth.

Since then Christian consciousness still preserves this primeval consciousness in an abstract way by consecrating individual days to the memory of saints, who, rightly understood, should give new life to the spiritual cosmos. By being born on a particular day of the year we should receive the name of the saint whose day it is on the calendar. What is meant to be expressed here in a more abstract way was more concretely expressed in primeval times, when in the Mysteries the cosmic name of a person was found in accordance with what he experienced as he descended to Earth, when with his being he created vowels with the planets and added them to the consonants of the Zodiac. The various groups of the human race had many names then, but these names were conceived in such a way that they harmonized with the universal all-embracing name.

Considered from this point of view, what was the alphabet? It was what the heavens revealed through their fixed stars and through the planets moving across them. When the alphabet was spoken out of the original, instinctive, human wisdom it was astronomy that was expressed. What was spoken through the alphabet and what was taught in astronomy in those olden days was one and the same thing. The wisdom in the astronomy of those times was not presented in the same way as the learning contained in any branch of knowledge today, which is built up from single perceptions and concepts. It was conceived as a revelation that made itself felt on the surface of human experience, either in the form of an axiomatic truth or as part of an axiomatic truth. Thus a concrete experience was represented with a part of the primal wisdom. And there was something of quite a dim consciousness connected with the fact that, in the Middle Ages, those who were highly educated still had to learn grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. In this ascent through the various spheres of learning lies a half-conscious recognition of something, which in earlier days, existed in instinctive clarity. Today grammar has become very abstract. Going back into times of which history tells us nothing, but which, nevertheless, are still historical times, we find that grammar was not the abstract subject it is today but that men were led through grammar into the mystery of the individual letters. They learned that the secrets of the cosmos found expression in the letters. The single vowel was brought into connection with its planet, the single consonant with the single sign of the Zodiac; thus, through the letters of the alphabet, man gained knowledge of the stars.

Passing from grammar to rhetoric entailed the application of what lived in man as active astronomy. And by rising to dialectics one came in thought to comprehending and working on what lived in man out of astronomy. Arithmetic was not taught as the abstraction of today, but as the entity expressed in the mystery of numbers. Number itself was looked upon differently from how it is done today. I will give you a trifling instance of this.

How does one picture 1, 2, 3 to oneself today? It is done by thinking of a pea, then of another pea, and this makes two; then another is added and there are three. It is a matter of adding one to another — piling them up. In olden days one did not count in this way. A start was made with a unit. And by splitting the unit into two parts one had 2. Thus 2 was not arrived at by adding one unit to another. It was not a putting together of units, but the two were contained in the one. Three was contained in the one in a different way — four again in a different way. The unit embraced all numbers and was the greatest. Today the unit is the smallest. Everything today is atomistically conceived. The unit is one member and the two is added to it; this is all imagined atomistically. The original idea was organic. There the unit is the greatest and the following numbers always appear as being smaller and are all contained in the unit. Here we come to quite different mysteries in the world of numbers.

These mysteries in the world of numbers give the merest intimation that here we are not concerned with what merely lives in the hollow of man's head. (I say the hollow of his head because I have often shown it really to be hollow from the spiritual point of view.) In the relations of number we can come to perceive the relations of the objectivity of the world. If we always just add one to one naturally this is something that has nothing to do with the facts. I have a piece of chalk. If beside it I place a second piece of chalk this has nothing to do with the first. The one is not concerned with the other. If, however, I presuppose that everything is a unit and now pass to the numbers contained in this unit, I get a two in a way that is a matter of some consequence. I have to break up the piece. I then get right into reality.

Thus after being borne up in dialectics to grasping the thought of the astronomical, one reached still further into the cosmos with arithmetic, and in a similar way with geometry. From geometry one got the feeling that the geometrical, thought concretely, was the music of the spheres. This is the difference between what holds good today and what once existed in the instinctive wisdom of primeval times. Take music today — the mathematical physicist reckons the pitch of a note, for example, reckons which pitch is at work in a melody. Then anyone who is musical is obliged to forget his music and enter the sphere of the abstract if, being a keen musician, he has not already run away from the mathematician. Man is led away from immediate experience into abstraction and this has very little to do with experience.

In itself it is really interesting — if one has a mathematical bent — to press on from the musical into the sphere of acoustics, but one does not gain much in the way of musical experience. That someone today learns geometry and as he proceeds begins to experience forms as musical notes, that is to say, if he rises from the 5th to the 6th grade, and makes geometry sound musically, all this, as far as I know, does not enter the curriculum. But that was once the meaning of rising to the sixth part of what was to be learned — from geometry to music. And only then did the archetypal, underlying reality become an experience. The astronomy in the subconscious then became something that one consciously mastered as astronomy, as the highest and 7th member of the so-called Trivium and Quadrivium.

The history of man should be studied in accordance with the development of his consciousness, for then we can gain a feeling that consciousness must return to these matters. That is just what is attempted in anthroposophical spiritual science. There is no need to marvel that those who are accustomed to accept the recognized science of the day find nothing right in what I have written, for example, in Occult Science. It is necessary, however, that man should go back, in a fully conscious way, to the true reality which for a time had to recede into the background to enable man to develop his freedom. Man would have been able ever more strongly to develop the consciousness of how necessary it is for him to stand within a divine cosmic world had he not been cast out of this cosmos into the merely phenomenal, into pure appearance, so strongly indeed that the whole manifold splendor and majesty of the starry sky was condensed into the abstract ego.

This was a necessary step in the struggle for freedom. For man could develop his freedom only by pressing together quite indistinguishably into the single point of the ego something that, filled out by the whole of cosmic space, streamed through all time. But he would lose his being, he would no longer know or possess himself, no longer be active and act on his own initiative, were he not to reconquer the whole world from this single point of his ego, were he not to rise again from the abstract to the concrete. It is indeed important to understand how, in passing from the Greek to the Latin culture, abstraction took hold of European culture and thus resulted in the loss of the primeval word. It must be remembered that the Latin language was for a long time the language of the cultural elite. What persisted, however, was a kind of desperate holding on to what this Latin language had actually already discarded. And what had been spoken in the Greek world then remained behind only in thought. Of the logos there remained logic — abstract thought.

In the longing that a man such as Goethe had for knowledge of the Greek culture there lies something that may be expressed as follows: he longed for liberation from the abstraction of modern times, from the dry prose of Romanism. He wanted to reach the other daughter of the primeval wisdom of the world, what remained of all that stood for Greece. — We too must experience something of this kind if we wish to understand Goethe's intense yearning for the South. In modern school biographies we find nothing of all this. Only when in every individual thing there echoes a consciousness of man being an expression of the whole cosmos will the way be cleared for the forces needed for man's progress, if civilization is not to decline into utter barbarism.

Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Alphab_index.html

Anthroposophy = Spiritual Science

“By anthroposophy I understand a scientific research of the spiritual world which sees through the one-sidedness of both normal, natural science and traditional mysticism. Anthroposophy seeks to develop those forces of soul not yet active in normal consciousness and science but which make possible such a penetration into the supersensible world.” — Rudolf Steiner

The ground of the world is the being of inward love appearing outwardly as light.

"When we enter into that divine condition which is in a state of balance, a state of ever-repeated balance between the luciferic and the ahrimanic, and when we grasp this in its deepest essence, we then realize--if we look correctly--that wherever the influence of Lucifer is not and wherever the influence of Ahriman is not, that is where there exists what comes from the progressive divine spirituality which is linked to the evolution of humanity. If, in the realms into which the luciferic constantly streams and into which the ahrimanic constantly streams, we look toward the divine that holds the balance, we find there pure love as the fundamental force of everything that streams continuously, forming the human being outwardly, and giving him soul and spirit inwardly. This fundamental force is pure love. In its substance and in its being, and insofar as it is the cosmos of the human being, the universe consists of pure love, it is nothing other than pure love. In the part of the divine that is associated with the human being we find nothing except pure love. This love is something inward; souls can experience it inwardly. It would never achieve an outward appearance if it did not first build itself a body out of the etheric element of light. When we observe the world in a genuinely occult manner we cannot help but say to ourselves: The ground of the world is the being of inward love appearing outwardly as light."

Rudolf Steiner, lecture of 19 September 1924, in The Book of Revelation and the Work of the Priest, p. 210. Blackboard drawing by Rudolf Steiner.

Exoteric and Esoteric Christianity

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland, April 2, 1922:

The story of the evolution of humanity is preserved in ancient records mostly either of a religious or philosophical character. But it must be emphasized that as well as these records which have had a deep and good influence upon mankind through the ages, there exists what we may call esoteric knowledge.

Wherever the deeper aspects of human knowledge and human thought have been studied, a distinction has always been made between exoteric teaching (concerned with the more external side of things) and esoteric teaching, which is accessible only to those who have undergone the necessary inner preparation. And so in the case of Christianity itself, especially in respect of the spiritual kernel of Christianity — the Mystery of Golgotha — a distinction must also be made between exoteric and esoteric knowledge. The exoteric teaching is contained in the Gospels and is there for all the world; but side by side with this exoteric teaching there has always been an esoteric Christianity, available to those who have prepared their minds and hearts to receive it.

In this esoteric Christianity the teaching of greatest moment is that concerning the communion between the Risen Christ — the Christ Who has passed through death — and those of His disciples who were able to understand Him. The Gospels, as you know, make only brief references to this. What the Gospels say of this communion between Christ after His Resurrection and His disciples does indeed enable them to surmise that something of the deepest import to earthly evolution came to pass through the Resurrection; but unless the step is taken into the realm of esoteric teaching, the words can be little more than indications.

The avowal of Paul, of course, is of the greatest importance, for Paul testifies that he was only able to believe in Christ after He had appeared to him at Damascus. Paul knew then, with absolute conviction: Christ had passed through death and in His life now, after death, is united with earthly evolution. We must reflect upon the significance of the testimony which came from Paul when, through the event at Damascus, the reality of the Living Christ was revealed to him.

Why was it that before the vision at Damascus Paul — or Saul, as he then was — could not be convinced of the reality of the Christ?

We must understand what it meant to Paul — who to a certain extent had been initiated into the secret doctrines of the Hebrews — to learn that Christ Jesus had been condemned to a death of shame by crucifixion. It was, at first, impossible for Paul to conceive that the old prophecies could have been fulfilled by one who had been condemned by human law to this shameful death. Until the revelation came to him at Damascus, the fact that Jesus of Nazareth had suffered the shame of crucifixion was for Paul conclusive proof that He could not have been the Messiah. It was only after the revelation at Damascus that conviction came to Paul concerning the Mystery of Golgotha, notwithstanding the fact that Jesus of Nazareth, or rather, the being indwelling the body of Jesus of Nazareth, had experienced a death of shame on the Cross.

It was of immeasurable significance that Paul should have proclaimed his conviction of the truth of the Mystery of Golgotha. Traditions that were still extant during the first centuries of Christendom are, of course, no longer available. At most they have survived in the form of fragments in the possession of a few isolated secret societies, where they are not understood. Anything that goes beyond the very sparse traditions concerning Christ after the Mystery of Golgotha must be rediscovered today through anthroposophical spiritual science. We have again to discover how Christ spoke after the Resurrection. What was the nature of the teaching given by Him to those disciples with whom He was in communion but of whom the Gospels make no mention? The Gospel story concerning the disciples who met Christ on the way to Emmaus, or concerning the host of disciples, has always been clothed in a form of tradition adapted for naive and simple minds incapable of understanding the esoteric truths. Going further, we must ask: What was the teaching given by Christ after the Resurrection to his initiated disciples? Before we can begin to understand this, we must think of the nature of the human soul as it was in very ancient times and of the change brought about by the Mystery of Golgotha.

A most important truth concerning the earliest periods in the evolution of earthly humanity, and one which it is exceedingly difficult for the modern mind to understand, is that the first human beings who lived on the Earth had no knowledge or science in the form familiar to us today. Because of their faculties of atavistic clairvoyance, these early men were able to receive the wisdom of the Gods. This means that it was actually possible for humanity to be taught by divine beings who descended spiritually to the Earth from the realm of the higher hierarchies and who then imparted spiritual teaching to the souls of men. Those who received such teaching — for the most part they were men who had been initiated in the Mysteries — were able, through their initiation, to live in a state of remoteness from earthly affairs; the soul lived to a great extent outside the body. In this state of consciousness men were not dependent upon oral conversation or instruction; they were able to receive communications from the gods in a spiritual way. Nor did they receive these teachings in a condition of consciousness resembling dream-life as we know it today. They entered into living, spiritual communion with divine beings, receiving the wisdom imparted by these beings. This wisdom consisted of teachings given by the gods to man in regard to the sojourn of the human soul in the divine-spiritual world before the descent into an earthly body. The experiences of the soul before descent into a physical body through conception — such was the substance of the teaching imparted to human beings in the state of consciousness I have described. And the feeling arose in these men that they were only being reminded of something. As they received the teachings of the gods they felt that they were being reminded of what they themselves had experienced before birth, or rather, before conception: the world of soul-and-spirit.

In Plato's writings there are still echoes of these things. And so today we can look back to a divine-spiritual wisdom once received by men on the Earth from the gods themselves.

This wisdom was of a very special character. Strange as it will seem to you today, the earliest dwellers on the Earth knew nothing of death — just as a child knows nothing of death. Those men who received the teachings of the gods and who then passed them on to others also possessing the faculty of atavistic clairvoyance — such men knew quite consciously that their souls had come down from divine-spiritual worlds, had entered into physical bodies, and would in time pass out of these bodies. They regarded this as the onward flow of the life of soul-and-spirit. Birth and death seemed to them to be metamorphoses, not a beginning and end.

Speaking figuratively, we should say: In those times man saw how the human soul can develop onwards and he felt that earthly life was only a section of the onflowing stream of the life of soul-and-spirit. Two given points within this stream were not regarded as any kind of beginning or end. It is, of course, true that man saw other human beings around him, die. You will not accuse me of comparing these early men with animals, for although their outward appearance was not entirely dissimilar from that of animals, the soul-and-spirit within them was on a very much loftier level. — I have spoken of this many times. — As little as an animal today understands death when it sees another animal lying dead, as little did the men of those early times understand death, for they could only conceive of an onflowing stream of soul-and-spirit. Death belonged to maya, to the great illusion, and made no particular impression on them. They knew life and life only — not death, although it was there before their eyes. In their life of soul-and-spirit they were not involved in death. They saw human life only from within, stretching beyond death into the spiritual world. Birth and death were of no significance to life. They knew only life; they did not know death.

Little by little, men emerged from this state of consciousness. Following the evolution and progress of humanity from the earliest epochs to about the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, we may say: men were learning more and more to know the reality of death. Death was something that made an impression upon them. Their souls became entangled with death, and a question arose within them: What becomes of the soul when the human being passes through death?

In the very earliest times, men were not faced with the question of death as an ending. At most they enquired about the nature of the change that took place. They asked: Is it the breath that goes out of a man and then streams onwards, bearing the soul to eternity? Or they formed some other picture of the life of soul-and-spirit in its onward flow. They pondered about this, but never about death as an ending.

It was only when the epoch of the Mystery of Golgotha drew near that men began, for the first time, to feel that there is a significance in death, that earthly life has indeed an ending. Naturally, this question was not formulated in philosophical or scientific terms; it was more like a feeling, a perceptive experience — an experience necessary in earthly life because reason and intellect were to become an essential part of human evolution. Intellect, however, is dependent upon the fact that the human being can die.

It was necessary, then, for the human being to be involved in death, to know death. The ancient epochs, when men knew nothing of death, were all unintellectual. Ideas were inspired from the spiritual world, not ‘thought out.’ There was no intellect as we know it. But intellect had to take root, and this is possible only because the human being can die, only because he has within him perpetually the forces of death. In a physical sense we may say: Death can only set in when certain salts — that is to say, certain dead, mineral substances — deposit themselves in the brain as well as in the other parts of the human organism. In the brain there is a constant tendency toward the depositing of salts, toward a process of bone-formation that has been arrested before completion. So that all the time the brain has the tendency toward death.

Humanity had, however, to be impregnated with death. Outer acquaintance with death, realization that death plays an important part in human existence, was simply a consequence of this necessity. If human beings had remained as they were in ancient times when they had no real knowledge of death, they would never have been able to develop intellect — for intellect is only possible in a world where death holds sway.

So it is when viewed from the standpoint of the human world. But the matter may also be viewed from the side of the higher hierarchies, and presented in the following way. —

The beings of the higher hierarchies have within them the forces which fashioned Saturn, Sun, and Moon [The three earlier embodiments of the Earth. See: An Outline of Occult Science] and finally the Earth. If the higher hierarchies had, as it were, been holding council among themselves before the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place on Earth, they would have said: “We have been able to build up the Earth from Saturn, Sun, and Moon. But if the Earth were to contain only what we have been able to incorporate from Saturn, Sun, and Moon, no beings could develop who, knowing death, are able to unfold intellect. We, the higher hierarchies, are unable to bring forth an Earth from the Moon embodiment — an Earth on which men know nothing of death and therefore cannot unfold the faculty of intellect. We, the hierarchies, cannot so fashion the Earth that it will produce the forces necessary for the development of intellect in man. For this purpose we must allow another being to enter, a being whose path of development has been different from ours. Ahriman is a being who does not belong to our hierarchy. He enters the stream of evolution by a different path. If we tolerate Ahriman, if we allow him to participate in the process of the Earth's evolution, he will bring death, and with death, intellect; the seeds of death and of intellect will then be implanted in the being of man ... Ahriman is acquainted with death; he is interwoven with the Earth, because his paths have connected him with earthly evolution. Ahriman is a knower of death; therefore he is also the ruler of intellect.”

The gods were obliged — if such a word is permissible — to enter into dealings with Ahriman, realizing that without Ahriman there could be no progress in evolution. But — so said the gods — if Ahriman is received into the stream of evolution to become the ruler of death and therewith also of the intellect, the Earth will fall away from us; Ahriman, whose only interest is to intellectualize the whole Earth, will demand the Earth for himself.

The gods were confronted with this dilemma that their dominion over the Earth might be usurped by Ahriman. There remained only one possibility: namely, that the gods themselves should acquire knowledge of something inaccessible to them in their own worlds — worlds untouched by Ahriman; that they, the gods, should learn of death as it takes place on Earth through one sent by them, through the Christ. It was necessary for a god to die upon the Earth — moreover, for that death to be the result of the erring ways of men and not the decree of divine wisdom. Human error would take root if Ahriman alone held sway. It was necessary for a god to pass though death and to be victorious over death.

The Mystery of Golgotha signified for the gods an enrichment of wisdom, an enrichment gained from the experience of death. If no divine being had passed through death the Earth would have been wholly intellectualized without ever entering into the evolution originally ordained for it by the Gods.

In very ancient times men had no knowledge of death. But at some point it was necessary for them to face the realization: death, and intellect together with death, brings us into a stream of evolution quite other than that from which we have proceeded.

To His initiated disciples Christ taught that He had come from a world wherein there was no knowledge of death; that He had suffered death upon the Earth and had gained the victory over death.

When this connection of the earthly world with the divine world is understood, intellect can be led back to spirituality. Such, approximately, was the substance of the esoteric teaching given by the Risen Christ to His initiated disciples: it was a teaching concerning death — death as seen from the arena of the divine world.

To have insight into the depths of this esoteric teaching we must realize that the following is known to one who understands the whole sweep of the evolution of mankind. — The gods have gained the victory over Ahriman inasmuch as they have made his forces useful to the Earth but have also blunted his power in that they themselves acquired knowledge of death through the Christ. The gods indeed allowed Ahriman to become part of earthly evolution, but in that they have made use of him, they have prevented him from maintaining his dominion to the end.

Those who have knowledge of Ahriman as he has been since the Mystery of Golgotha and as he was before that event, realize that he waits for the moment when he can invade not only the unconscious, subconscious regions of man's life — which as you know from the book Occult Science have been open to Ahriman's influence since the time of Atlantis — but also the spheres of man's consciousness. Using words of human language to describe the will of a god, it may be said: Ahriman has waited eagerly for the opportunity to carry his influence into the conscious life of man. It was an astonishment to him that he had not previously known of the resolution of the gods to send the Christ down to the Earth — the divine being who passed through death. Ahriman was not thereby deprived of the possibility of intervention, but the edge of his power was broken.

Since then, Ahriman seizes every opportunity of confining man to the operations of the intellect alone. Nor has he yet relinquished the hope that he will succeed.

What would this mean? If Ahriman were to succeed in imbuing man with the conviction — to the exclusion of all others — that he can only exist in a physical body, that as a being of soul-and-spirit he is inseparable from his body, then the human soul would be so possessed by the idea of death that Ahriman could easily fulfill his aims. This is Ahriman's constant hope. And it may be said that from the forties to the end of the nineteenth century, his heart rejoiced — although to speak of a ‘heart’ in the case of Ahriman is merely a figure of speech — for in the rampant materialism of that period he might well hope for the establishment of his rulership on Earth. (Please remember that I am using expressions of ordinary language here, although for such themes others should really be found). — A measure of success in this direction was indeed indicated by the fact that during the nineteenth century, theology itself became materialistic. I have already said that theology has become un-Christian, mentioning that Overbeck, a theologian living in Basle, has written a book in which he has tried to prove that modern theology can no longer truly be called Christian. In this domain, too, there was reason for Ahriman's hopes to rise.

Opposition to Ahriman really exists today only in such teachings as are contained in Anthroposophy. When, through Anthroposophy, man once again realizes that the soul and the spirit are independent of the bodily nature, then Ahriman must begin to abandon hope. Once again, the battle waged by Christ against Ahriman is possible. An indication is contained in the Gospel story of the Temptation, but these things can only fully be understood when it is realized that the more important rôle in ancient times was played by Lucifer and that Ahriman has only acquired the influence upon human consciousness since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. He had of course an influence upon humanity before then but not, properly speaking, upon human consciousness.

Looking deeply into the human heart, we can only say: The most important point in the evolution of earthly humanity is that at which man learns to know that there is a power in the Christ Impulse through which, if he makes it his own, he can overcome the forces of death within him.

And so the hierarchies belonging to Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth drew Ahriman into Earth evolution but restricted his claims for domination in that his forces were used to serve the purposes of evolution. In a sense, Ahriman was forced into the stream of Earth evolution. Without him the gods would not have been able to introduce intellectuality into humanity, but if the edge of his dominion had not been broken by the deed of Christ, Ahriman would have intellectualized the whole Earth inwardly and materialized it outwardly. The Mystery of Golgotha is to be regarded not merely as an inner, mystical experience, but as an external event — which must not, however, be presented in the same light as other events recorded in history. The Ahrimanic impulse entered into earthly evolution and at the same time — in a certain sense — was overcome.

And so, as a result of the Mystery of Golgotha, we have to think of a war between gods, and this also formed part of the esoteric teachings communicated by Christ to His initiated pupils after the Resurrection. In describing this early, esoteric Christianity it must be recalled that in ancient times human beings were aware of their connection with the divine worlds, with the worlds of the gods. They knew of these worlds through revelations. But concerning death they could receive no communication, because in the worlds of the gods there was no death. Moreover for human beings themselves there was no death in the real sense, for they knew only of the onward-flowing life of soul-and-spirit as revealed to them in the sacred institutions of the Mysteries. Gradually, however, the significance of death began to dawn upon human consciousness. It was possible for men to acquire the strength to wait for Christ Who was the victor over death. — Such is the inner aspect of the process of evolution.

The substance of the esoteric teachings given by Christ to His initiated disciples was that in what came to pass on Golgotha super-earthly happenings were reflected, namely, the relationships between the worlds of the gods belonging to Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth as they had been hitherto, and Ahriman. The purport of this esoteric Christianity was that the cross on Golgotha must not be regarded as an expression of earthly conditions but is of significance for the whole cosmos.

A picture may help us to feel our way into the substance of this esoteric Christianity. — Suppose that two of Christ's disciples, absorbing more and more of the esoteric teaching and finding all doubt vanishing, were talking together. The one might have spoken to the other as follows. — Christ our Teacher has come down from those worlds of which the ancient wisdom tells. Men knew the gods, but those gods could not speak of death. If we had remained at that stage, we could never have known anything of the nature of death. The gods had perforce to send a divine being down to the Earth, in order that through one of themselves they might learn the nature of death. The deed which the gods were obliged to perform in order to lead earthly evolution to its fulfillment — of this we are being taught by Christ after His resurrection. If we cleave to Him we learn of many things hitherto unknown to man. We are being taught of deeds performed by the gods behind the scenes of world-existence in order truly to further evolution on the Earth. We are taught that the gods have introduced the forces of Ahriman but by turning these forces to the service of man have averted his destruction. ...

The esoteric teaching given by the Risen Christ to His initiated pupils was deeply and profoundly moving. Such pupils might also have said: Interwoven as we now are with death, we should know nothing whatever of the gods if Christ had not died, and now, since His Resurrection, is telling us how the gods have come to experience death. We should have passed over into an age when all knowledge of the gods would have vanished. The gods have looked for a way by which means they could speak to us again. And this way was through the Mystery of Golgotha ...

The great realization which came to the disciples from this esoteric Christianity was that men have again drawn near to the divine worlds after having departed from them. In the early days of Christendom the disciples and pupils were permeated through and through with this teaching. And many a man of whom history gives only sparse and superficial particulars was the bearer of knowledge that could only be his because he had either received teaching himself from the Risen Christ or had been in contact with others who had received it. — So it was in the earliest days of the Christian era.

As time went on, all this became externalized — externalized in the sense that the earliest messengers of Christianity attached great importance to being able to say that their own teacher had himself been a pupil of a pupil of one of the Apostles. And so it went on.

In those earlier centuries, weight was still attached to this living continuity, but in the form in which the tradition came down to a later humanity it was already externalized, presented as bald, historical data. In essence, however, the tradition leads back to what I have just described. The inculcation of intellectualism — a process which really began about the fourth or fifth century after the Mystery of Golgotha and received its great impulse in the fifteenth century, at the dawn of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch — this evolution of intellect entailed the loss of the old wisdom whereby these things could be understood, and the new form of wisdom was still undeveloped. For centuries the essence and substance of esoteric Christianity was, as it were, forgotten by mankind.

As I have said, fragments exist in certain secret societies whose members, at any rate in modern times, do not understand to what they refer. In reality, such fragments refer to teachings imparted by the Risen Christ to certain of His initiated pupils.

Assume for a moment that there had been no regeneration of the old Hebrew doctrine through Christianity. In that case the conviction held so firmly by Paul before his vision at Damascus would have become universal. Paul was acquainted with the ancient Hebraic doctrine. In its original form it had been divine revelation, received spiritually by men in very ancient times, and it was then preserved as Holy Writ. Among the Hebrews there were learnéd scribes who knew from this Holy Writ what was still preserved of the old divine wisdom. From these scribes came the judgment by which Christ Jesus was condemned to death. And so the mind of a man like Paul, while he was still Saul, turned to the ancient divine wisdom preserved by the learnéd scribes of his day who well knew all that it signified to men. Paul said to himself: The scribes are men of eminence, of great learning; judgment derived on their authority from the divine wisdom could only be lawful judgment. An innocent man condemned to be crucified ... it is impossible, utterly impossible in all the circumstances leading to the condemnation of Christ Jesus! Such was the attitude of Paul.

It was only the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, influenced instinctively as he was by an altogether different mentality, who could speak the momentous word: ‘What is truth?’ While Paul was Saul, it was impossible even to imagine that there might be no truth in the execution of a lawful judgment. The hard-won conviction which was to arise in Paul was that truth once proceeding from the gods could become error among men, that truth had been turned by men into such flagrant error that One in Whom there was no guilt at all had been crucified.

Saul could have no other thought than that the primeval wisdom of the gods was contained in the wisdom of the Hebrew scribes living at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. In such wisdom there could only be truth ... . While Paul was still Saul, he argued that if indeed it were Christ, the Messiah, Who suffered death by crucifixion, gross error must have entered into the flow of this primeval wisdom; for only error could have brought about the death of Christ on the Cross. Divine truth must therefore have become error among men.

Naturally, Saul could only be convinced by the fact itself. Christ Himself and He alone could convince him, when He appeared to him at Damascus. What did this signify for Saul? It signified that the judgment had not been derived from the wisdom of the gods but that the forces of Ahriman had found entrance. And so there came to Paul the realization that the evolution of humanity had fallen into the grip of a foe and that this foe is the source of error on the Earth.

In that this foe brings the intellect to man, he also brings the possibility of error, which in its most extreme form becomes the error responsible for the crucifixion of One Who was without sin. The conviction that the guiltless One could be brought to the Cross had to arise before it was possible for men to understand the path by which Ahriman entered the stream of evolution and to realize that the Mystery of Golgotha is a super-sensible, super-earthly event in the process of the development of the ‘I,’ the ego, within the human being.

Esotericism is by no means identical with simple forms of mysticism. To argue that mysticism and esotericism are one and the same denotes gross misunderstanding. Esotericism is always a recognition of facts in the spiritual world, facts which lie behind the veil of matter. And it is behind the veil of matter that the balance has been established between the divine world and the realm of Ahriman — established by the death of Christ Jesus on the Cross.

Only into a world where the being of man is laid hold of by the Ahrimanic powers can error enter in such magnitude as to lead to the Crucifixion — such was the thought arising in the mind of Paul. And now, having been seized by this conviction, recognition of the truth of esoteric Christianity came to him for the first time.

In this sense, Paul was truly an initiate. But under the influence of intellectualism this initiation-knowledge gradually faded away, and we need today to acquire again a knowledge of esoteric Christianity, to realize that there is more in Christianity than the exoteric truths of which the Gospels do indeed awaken perception. Esoteric Christianity is seldom spoken of in our times. But humanity must find its way back to that of which there is practically no documentary evidence and which must be reached through anthroposophical spiritual science, namely, the teachings given by Christ Himself after the Resurrection to His initiated disciples — teaching that He could only give after passing through an experience which he could not have undergone in the world of the gods; for until the time of the Mystery of Golgotha there was no death in the divine worlds. Until then, no divine being had passed through death. Christ is the First-Born, He Who passed through death, having come from the realm of the hierarchies of Saturn, Sun, and Moon who are interwoven with Earth evolution.

The absorption of death into life — that is the secret of Golgotha. Previously, men had known life — life without death. Now they learned to know death as a constituent of life, as an experience which gives strength to life. The sense of life was feebler in times when humanity had no real knowledge of death; there must be inner strength and robustness in life if men are to pass through death and yet live. In this respect, too, death and intellect are related. Before men were obliged to wrestle with intellect, a comparatively feeble sense of life was sufficient. The men of olden times received their knowledge of the divine world in pictures, in revelations; inwardly they did not die. And because the flow of life continued they could smile at death. Even among the Greeks it was said: The agéd are blessed because with the dulling of their senses they are unaware of the approach of death. This was the last vestige of a view of the world of which death formed no part.

We in modern times have the faculty of intellect; but intellect makes us inwardly cold, inwardly dead; it paralyzes us. In the operations of the intellect we are not alive in the real sense. Try to feel what this means: when man is thinking he does not truly live; he pours out his life into empty, intellectual forms, and he needs a strong, robust sense of life if these dead forms are to be quickened to creative life in that region where moral impulses spring from the force of pure thinking, and where in the operations of pure thinking we understand the reality of freedom, of free spiritual activity. In the book The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I have tried to deal with this subject. The book really amounts to a moral philosophy, indicating how dead thoughts, when filled with life, may be led to their resurrection as moral impulses. To this extent, such a philosophy is essentially Christian.

I have tried in this lecture to place before you certain aspects of esoteric Christianity. In these days where there is so much controversy with regard to the exoteric, historical aspect of Christianity, it is more than ever necessary to point to the esoteric teachings. I hope that these things will not be lightly passed over, but studied with due realization of their significance. In speaking of such matters one is always aware of the difficulty of clothing them in the abstract words of modern language. That is why I have tried rather to awaken a feeling for these things by giving you pictures of inner processes in the life of human beings, leading on to the esoteric significance of the Mystery of Golgotha in the evolution of mankind as a whole.

Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/ExEsCh_index.html

Anthroposophy: A Spiritual Shortcut

Ex Deo Nascimur        In Christo Morimur        Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus

From an Esoteric Lesson given by Rudolf Steiner in Christiania, Norway, June 7, 1912:

Why is it that you're here? From where does your urge for esoteric development come? About 4000 years ago, and so before the Event of Golgotha, the etheric body enlivened the physical body in such a way that not all of the etheric body's forces were used to permeate the physical body, and it was to these forces that an esotericist turned — with these he turned to spiritual worlds. Then about 3000 years ago, all etheric bodies had sunk into the physical bodies, especially in Greece, and those who developed the greatest things in the physical realm felt that the spiritual world was a realm of shades.

But now the physical body no longer absorbs all of the etheric body's forces, it rejects them, it is withering, for we are past the middle of Earth evolution — and it's only through these forces, which the physical body can no longer take in, that we can live in the spiritual world. And you who felt this urge for esoteric development, who were not satisfied with mere physical life and knowledge, you sensed these unused forces in you; they drove you to seek an esoteric life.

What's the difference between esoteric and exoteric? In exoteric life we get communications that are taken from esoteric life as food for our souls. In esoteric life we ourselves try to look into the worlds from which esoteric communications are taken.

What's given here is not just communications — it's advice that flows from spiritual inspiration. It's not just words, concepts, ideals — it's words, concepts, and ideals that are permeated with life, life-germs that are sunk into our etheric forces and that should blossom there — they're realities. They've been tested repeatedly by those whom we call the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings.

Esotericism is a source of life and of forces that flow through the world and that should also stream through us. And so every Sunday morning at 9 o'clock you should meditate on: "In the Spirit of Mankind I feel united with all esotericists."

When we begin our exercises it's of great importance that we first create inner quiet. It can be attained through patience. The only thing we have to combat is the thought: I won't attain it. We should reject this as a temptation. And even if it takes ever so long, the time will come when our thought horizon will become clear, if we just push away the sense impressions and thoughts that distract us with all the willpower that we can muster. We should let the formulas and symbols live in us vigorously and energizingly, shouldn't form thoughts about them but should experience them and feel them to be like an inner light. They must take hold of us strongly, for they are drawn from the unspeakable word that has creative power. This is the Indians' mahavach; it's inspirations from words that sound through spiritual worlds; it's supposed to radiate in us like an inner sun.

Then we must create an inner void by erasing and suppressing everything that arises from memory, including theosophical contents, and just wait for what can rise in our soul — either something entirely new that we've never heard or had a inkling of, or a lively vision of occult facts that we received in exoteric life. Much more strength is needed for independent discoveries than for an intelligent understanding of the Pythagorean theorem or some other already found fact. What's communicated to us now we can also find ourselves, but probably only after 25 incarnations. We have the duty to work along with the present state of evolution by shortening the path as much as possible.

Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Dates/19120607e01.html

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

Shakespeare's Sonnet 30

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.

Anthropos: "one who looks up into the heights"

Rudolf Steiner, June 2, 1912:  "There should really be a fresh feeling of what the Greeks understood by the word 'Anthropos.' If we would find a true modern rendering of the Greek word, we might say: 'one who looks up into the heights.' This is the definition of man which finds expression in the word 'Anthropos': he who looks up into the heights to find the source and origin of his life. Such is man, according to the Greeks. To recognize man as a being of this nature is the very reason for existence of Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy wants to rise above the details of sense existence and of the outer activity of life, into the heights of spiritual experience where we are able to learn whence man has come and whither he is going."