The Nature of Original Sin

Rudolf Steiner, December 8, 1908:

We will keep to our set programme, and in the group meetings this winter we will work through a series of apparently widely divergent aspects of human health and illness. And later on these various aspects will group themselves into a whole and culminate in an understanding of certain things towards which we will gradually work our way. In the first lecture of this series we made a kind of classification of illness types, and last time we attempted to portray the text of The Ten Commandments. All that goes beyond this text will follow in the course of the coming meetings. Our main concern last week was to acquaint ourselves with the content and the actual trend of the Commandments. Today we want to speak of other aspects that will not appear to be directly connected with the preceding or following talks, for they are a series of aspects the comprehensive meaning of which will not dawn on us until later.

We will start today by looking at an important moment in man's earthly evolution. Those of you who have been working in the anthroposophical movement for some time have long been familiar with it; the others will gradually accustom themselves to this way of thinking.

The moment in human evolution we want to recall lies a long way back. If we go back through post-Atlantean times and then through Atlantean times as far as ancient Lemuria we come to that moment when the division of the sexes took place in the kingdom of man on earth. You know that before this we cannot speak of such a division of the sexes in the human kingdom. I want to emphasise that we are not speaking of the very first appearance altogether of two sexes in earthly evolution or in evolution as a whole, in so far as it comprises the kingdoms that are around us. Phenomena that doubtlessly belong to bisexuality occur earlier. But what we call the human kingdom did not divide into two sexes until Lemurian times. Prior to that the human shape was formed differently, and both sexes were in a way contained within it undifferentiated. We can form an external picture of the transition from dual sexuality to the division into sexes if we visualise how the earlier dual sexed human being gradually developed in such a way that in one group of individuals the characteristics of the one sex, the female, became more pronounced, whilst in the other group the characteristics of the male sex developed more strongly. This was still a long time before the sexes separated, when there was progressive development in one direction or the other, at a time when man still lived in a very insubstantial material body.

We have focused our attention on this moment in time to start with, because we want to enquire into the meaning of the arising of the two sexes. It is only when we have a spiritual scientific basis that we can enquire into such a meaning, for physical evolution receives its meaning from higher worlds. As long as we are in the physical world, if we consider it let us say philosophically, it is somewhat childish to talk of purposes. And Goethe and others were right to make fun of the people who talked of the purposes in nature, as though nature in her wisdom had created cork so that man could make stoppers with it. This is a childish way of looking at things and can only lead to our missing the main point at issue. This view would be similar to thinking of a clock as having little demonic beings behind it wise enough to make the hands go round. In actual fact if we want to know how the clock works we must go to the mind that produced it, namely the clockmaker. And similarly, when we want to understand purpose in our world, we must step beyond the physical world and enter the spiritual. Thus purpose, meaning and goal are words that we can apply to evolution only when we consider them on a spiritual scientific basis. It is in this sense that we ask the question: What is the meaning behind the two sexes gradually developing and then inter-working?

The meaning will become clear to you when you see what we call fructification, the reciprocal influence of the sexes, (as) replacing something else that had previously existed. You must not think that fructification appeared for the first time at the moment when the division into sexes occurred in human evolution. That was not so. We must picture to ourselves that in the times preceding bisexuality this fructification took place in quite a different way. Clairvoyant vision can see that there was a time in mankind's earthly evolution when fructification happened in connection with the intake of food, and those beings which in those early times were male-female received fructifying forces with their food. This food was still of course of a much more delicate nature, and when human beings partook of nourishment in those times there was something else contained in these nourishing fluids which gave these beings the possibility of bringing forth another being of like kind. You must realise, however, that the nourishing fluids taken from the substance of their surroundings did not always contain these fructifying fluids, but only at quite definite times. This depended on the changes that took place, comparable to today's seasonal changes, changes of climate, and so on. The nourishing foods imbibed from the surroundings by these beings of bisexuality had the power of fructification as well at quite definite times.

If with clairvoyant consciousness we look further back still, we find another peculiarity in the propagation of ancient times. What you know (of) today as the difference between the various individualities, which expresses itself in the multiformity of life in our present cycle of humanity, these differences did not exist before the arising of the sexes. A great uniformity was there then. The beings that arose then were similar to one another and to their forefathers. All these beings that were still undivided into two sexes were outwardly very similar, and their characters were more or less the same too. That men were so much alike did not have the disadvantage in those times that it would have at the present time. Just imagine how infinitely dull human life would be if people were to come into the world today with identical appearance and character, and how little could actually happen in human life, as everybody would want to do the same thing as everybody else. But in ancient times this was not the case. When man was still as it were more etheric, more spiritual, and not so firmly embedded in matter, then at birth and on into childhood human beings were really very similar to one another, and the teachers would not have needed to notice whether the one child was a scamp and the other a gentle little being. Although the people were different in character at different times, they were in a certain way all fundamentally alike. Each person, however, did not remain the same throughout his life. Because man was still in a softer, more spiritual body he was much more open to the permanent influences coming from the environment, so that in those ancient times these influences brought about tremendous changes in him. Man became in a certain way individualised because, having a nature as soft as wax, he became more or less an impress of his surroundings. At a quite definite time in his life, which would coincide nowadays with puberty, it became possible for him to let everything that happened in his environment work upon him. The difference between the various times that were comparable to our present day seasons was very great, and it was of great importance to a man whether he lived in one part of the earth or another. If he traveled just a short distance over the earth, that had a great influence on him. If people go on a long journey nowadays, however much they see, they return on the whole the same as when they went away, unless they are very impressionable. This was different in olden times. Everything had the greatest influence on people, and so long as they had a body of soft material they could actually become gradually individualised in the course of life. Then this possibility ceased.

Something further that reveals itself to us is that the earth itself became denser and denser, and to the same extent as the substance, let us say the earthy nature of the earth intensified, this uniformity became harmful. For this gradually reduced mans capacity to change. He became as it were very dense at birth. This is the reason why men nowadays change so little during their life. And this led Schopenhauer to think that men were absolutely incapable of bringing about any basic changes in their character. The reason for this is that men are embodied in such dense substance. They cannot easily work on the substance or change it. If, as once was the case, men could still alter their limbs at will, and make them long or short according to their need, then man would, of course, still be very impressionable. Then he would really be able to take into his individuality the power to change himself Man always has an inner contact with his environment, especially his human environment. To make this quite clear I would like to tell you something that you may not have noticed before but which is nevertheless true.

Imagine you are sitting facing someone and speaking to him. We are referring to ordinary human relationships in the normal course of life and not to someone who is specially deeply schooled in occultism. Two people are sitting together, one talking and the other just listening. It is generally imagined that the one who is listening is doing nothing. But that is not true. In things like this we still see the influence of the environment. It is not noticeable to outer perception, but inwardly it is very clear, in fact striking, that the one who is merely listening is joining in everything the other one is doing.

He even imitates the movements of the vocal cords, and speaks with the speaker. Everything you hear you also say with a gentle movement of the vocal cords and the other speech organs. It makes a great difference whether the speaker has a croaky voice and those are the movements you have to imitate, or whether he has a pleasant voice. In this respect the human being does everything the other person is doing, and as this is really happening all the time, it has a great influence on a man's whole development, though only in this limited respect. If you imagine this last remains of man's participation with his surroundings vastly increased, you get an idea of how the man of ancient times lived and felt with his environment. Man's faculty of imitation, for instance, was developed on a tremendous scale. If one person made a gesture, then everyone else made the same gesture too. Only a few insignificant things in certain particular directions remain of this today, like for instance when one person yawns, other people do too. But remember that in these ancient times it was entirely a question of their having a dim consciousness with which this power of imitation was connected.

Now as the earth and everything upon it became denser and denser man became less and less capable of transforming himself through the influence of his environment. In comparatively late Atlantean times a sunrise, for instance, had a powerfully creative effect upon man, because he was completely open to its influence and underwent sublime inner experiences, which, if they continually recurred, changed him tremendously in the course of his life. This diminished more and more and gradually disappeared altogether the more humanity progressed.

In Lemurian times, before the moon left the earth, mankind was in a dangerous predicament. It was in danger of becoming rigid to the point of mummification. Through the gradual departure of the moon from the evolution of the earth this danger was averted. At the same time as the moon departed, however, the division into sexes took place, and with this division came a new impulse for the individualisation of man. If it had been possible for human beings to propagate without the two sexes, this individualising would not have taken place. The present diversity among men is due to the inter-working of the sexes. If there was only the female element, human individuality would be extinguished, and men would all become alike. Through the co-operation of the male element human beings are individual characters from birth. So the significance and meaning of the inter-working of the sexes is to be found in the fact that through the separating off of the male element the individualising of man at birth has replaced the old kind of individualisation. What was achieved in earlier times by the whole surrounding environment was compressed into the inter-working of the sexes, so that individualisation was pushed back to the arising of the physical human being at birth. That is the significance of the inter-working of the two sexes. Individualisation happens by way of the effect of the male sex on the female.

Now this came about at the expense of something else, and when I describe the situation I beg you to take it as applying strictly to human beings, for when we are based on spiritual science we must not assume that what applies to man also applies to animals. Health and illness, in their more delicate aspects, are subject to quite different causes in human beings than in animals. So what is being said applies solely to man, and we will begin by looking at the finer aspects.

Imagine yourself actually there in those ancient times when man was entirely given up to his surroundings, and the surroundings entered into him and on the one hand fructified him with the nourishing juices it offered him, and on the other hand he became individualised through its influence upon him. Now we know when we base ourselves on spiritual science that everything around us which influences us, be it light or sound, heat or cold, hardness or softness or this or that colour, is the revelation, the external expression of something spiritual. And in those ancient times man did not at all perceive external sense impressions, he perceived the spiritual. When he looked up to the sun he did not see the physical ball of the sun but that which is preserved in the Persian religion as ‘Ahura Mazdao, the Great Aura’. The spiritual part, all the spiritual sun beings appeared to him, and it was the same with the air, water and the whole environment. Today when you drink in the beauty of a picture, you can have something that is as it were distilled from it, only in those times it was far richer. If we wanted to speak as they did in those times we would not be able to say: ‘This or that tastes in some particular way’; but we would have to say: ‘This or that spirit does me good!’ This is what it was like when men were eating — an activity quite different from what it is today — and quite different, too, was the time when the forces of fructification were received: it was a phenomenon of the spiritual environment. Spirits overshadowed man and stimulated him to bring forth his kind, and this was also experienced and seen as a spiritual process.

Then little by little it became impossible for men to see the spiritual in their environment. It became more and more veiled from sight, especially during their day consciousness. Little by little men lost sight of the spirit behind things, and they only perceived the external objects which are the outer expression of these. They learnt to forget the spiritual background, and the influence of the spirit grew less and less the denser man's body became. Through this densification man became a more and more independent being and shut himself off from his spiritual surroundings. The further we go back into these ancient times the more spiritually godlike was this influence that came from the surroundings. Human beings were really organised in such a way that they were a likeness of the spiritual beings hovering round them in their environment; images of the gods who in older times were present on earth.

Through the inter-working of the two sexes in particular this was lost more and more, and the spiritual world withdrew from men's sight. Men beheld the sense world more and more clearly. We must picture this situation vividly: Just imagine, in those times man was fructified from the spiritual world of the gods. It was the gods themselves who gave forth their forces and made men like themselves. That is why in those ancient times what we call illness did not exist. There was no inner disposition to illness, and it could not be there because everything that was in man and that worked upon him came from the health giving divine-spiritual cosmos. The divine-spiritual beings are full of health, and in those days they made men in their image. Man was healthy. But the nearer he came to the time when the inter-working of the sexes came about and together with it the withdrawal of the spiritual worlds, and the more independent and individual man became, the more the health of divine-spiritual beings withdrew from him and something else took its place. What happened in reality was that this inter-working of the sexes was accompanied by passions and instincts aroused in the physical world. We must look for this incitement in the physical world after human beings had reached the point when the two sexes were sensually attracted to one another. This was a long time after the sexes already existed. The effect of the sexes one upon the other — even in Atlantean times — happened when physical consciousness was actually asleep, during the night. It was not until the middle of Atlantean times that what we call the attraction of the sexes began, what we might call passionate love; that is, sensual love that mingled with pure super-sensual or platonic love. There would be much more platonic love if sensual love did not enter into it. And whereas everything that formerly helped to form man came from the divine-spiritual environment it now came more from the passions and instincts of the two sexes working one upon the other. The kind of sensual longing that is stimulated by seeing the outer appearance of the opposite sex is bound up with the working together of the two sexes. And therefore something was incorporated into man at birth that is connected with the particular kind of passions and feelings human beings have in physical life. Whilst in earlier times man still received what was in him from the divine-spiritual beings of his surroundings, he now acquired something through the act of fructification which, as an independent, self-contained being, he had taken into himself from the world of the senses.

After human beings had been separated into two sexes they passed on to their descendants what they themselves experienced in the sense world. So we now have two types of human being. These two types live in the physical world and perceive the world through their senses, and this leads them to develop various externally aroused impulses and longings, especially those arising from their own externally stimulated sensual attraction to one another. What now confronts man in an external way has been drawn down into the sphere of the independent human being, and it is no longer in full harmony with the divine-spiritual cosmos. That is imparted to men through the act of fructification, it is implanted into them. And this worldly life of theirs, received not from the world of the gods but from the external side of the divine-spiritual world, is passed on to their offspring through fructification. If a man is bad in this respect, then he passes worse qualities on to his descendants than another person who is good and pure.

And this is the true meaning of ‘original sin’. That is the concept of original sin. Original sin is brought about by man coming to the point of transferring to his offspring his own individual experiences in the physical world. Every time the sexes glow with passion the ingredients of the two sexes combine in the human being who is descending from the astral world. When a human being incarnates he comes down from the Devachanic world and forms his astral sphere in accordance with his particular individuality. Something of what belongs to the astral bodies of his parents — their impulses, passions and desires — combines with this astral sphere so that he thereby shares in the experiences of his forefathers. What descends through the generations in this way, what is actually acquired as human attribute through the generations and is handed down as such, is what we have to understand as the concept of original sin. And now we come to something else: an entirely new impetus entered humanity through the individualisation of man.

In earlier times the divine-spiritual beings — and they were absolutely healthy — made man in their own likeness. But now man, as an independent being, detached himself from the all-embracing harmony of divine-spiritual health. In a certain respect he set himself up in his individualism against the whole of this divine-spiritual environment. Imagine that you have a being developing entirely under the influence of his environment. What he expresses will be the environment. Imagine, though, that he shuts himself off in his skin, then in addition to the characteristics of his environment he has his own characteristics as well. And indeed, with the division into sexes men became individual and developed their own individual characteristics. And there was contradiction between the great divine-spiritual harmony with its health and the individualism of man. And through this individuality continuing to work, through it becoming a really effective factor, the possibility of becoming ill has entered into human evolution. This is the moment when the possibility of illness first occurred in human evolution, for it is bound up with the individualisation of man. When man was still connected with the divine-spiritual world the possibility of illness did not exist. It came about at the same time as individualisation, and that is the same time as the division into sexes. This holds good for human evolution, and you must not apply it in the same way to the animal world.

Illness is indeed a result of these processes I have just described, and you can see that it is really the astral body in particular that is originally influenced in this way. The human being draws the astral body into his organism himself to begin with as he comes down from the Devachanic world, and there it encounters what flows into it through the inter-working of the two sexes. So the astral body is the part of man that shows most clearly the non-divine. The etheric body is more divine, for man does not have so great an influence on that, and the physical body is the most divine of all; it is God's temple, for it is completely withdrawn from man's influence. Whereas in his astral body man seeks all kinds of pleasures and can have all sorts of desires that have a harmful effect on the physical body, even today his physical body is still such a wonderful instrument that it can withstand heart poisons and other harmful influences of the astral body for decades. And so we have to admit that because of all these things that occur in the human astral body it has become the worst part of man. Whoever looks deeper into human nature will find that the deepest causes of illness lie in the astral body and in its bad effects on the etheric body, and by way of the etheric body on the physical body. Now we will understand a number of things that cannot be understood otherwise. I will now speak of ordinary mineral medicaments.

A medicament from the mineral kingdom works in the first place on man's physical body. Now what is the significance of man giving his physical body a mineral medicament? Please note that we are not going to speak of any plant medicaments but purely mineral ones, what is prescribed in the way of metals and salts and so on. Suppose someone takes one or another mineral medicament. Something very remarkable is then seen by clairvoyant consciousness. This clairvoyant consciousness can carry out the following feat — it always has the ability to divert its attention away from something. It is possible to divert the attention from the whole physical body. Then you still see the etheric body, the astral body and the ego aura. You have suggested away the physical body through strongly negative attention. Now if someone has taken a mineral medicament, you can remove everything from your attention and just direct your clairvoyant vision to the mineral or metal that he now has within him. That is, you suggest away everything in him of the nature of bone, muscle, blood and so on, and turn your attention solely to the particular mineral substance that has permeated him. Something very remarkable presents itself to clairvoyant consciousness. This mineral substance has become very thinly diffused and has itself acquired the human form. You have before you a human form, a human phantom consisting of the substance taken in by the man. Supposing the person has taken antimony, you have before you a human form of very finely diffused antimony, and it is the same with every mineral medicament a man takes. You create a new man within you consisting of this mineral substance; you incorporate it. Now let us ask ourselves what the purpose and significance of this is?

The significance is that if you were to leave a man as he is and withhold from him the medicine he really needs, then because of certain bad forces in his astral body the astral body would work on the etheric body and the latter on the physical body and gradually destroy it. You have put a double into the physical body. This works to prevent the physical body obeying the influences of the astral body. Imagine you have a bean plant. If you give it a prop it winds up it and is no longer blown by the wind. This double made out of the incorporated substance is a prop like this for the man. It attaches the physical body to itself and removes it from the influences of the astral and etheric body. In this way you make the human being's physical body independent as it were of his astral and etheric body. This is the effect of a mineral medicament. But you will immediately see the bad side of it, for it has a very serious drawback. Since you withdraw the physical body artificially from its connection with the other bodies you have weakened the influence of the astral and etheric body on the physical body and have made the physical body independent. And the oftener you take such medicines the more the influence of the astral and the etheric body disappears, making the physical body a hardened, independent being, subject to its own laws. Imagine what people are doing who take mineral medicaments of this sort all their lives. A man who has in course of time taken a lot of these mineral medicaments has within him a phantom of all these minerals, a round dozen of them. It is as though the physical body were surrounded by solid walls. And what kind of influence can the astral and etheric body still have on it? Such a person is actually dragging his body around with him and has very little power over it. If a man who has been dosing himself in this way for a long time applies for treatment to someone who wants to treat him psychologically and work especially on his finer bodies, he will discover that he has become more or less unreceptive to psychological influences. For by making his physical body independent in the first place, he has deprived it of the possibility of being affected by anything that might take place in his finer bodies. And this has happened mainly because the human being has so many phantoms in him that are not in harmony, that they pull him hither and thither. If the human being has deprived himself of the possibility of working from out of his soul and spirit, he need not be surprised if spiritual treatment is not very successful either. In cases of psychological treatment, therefore, you should always give consideration to the kind of person the patient is. If he has made his astral or etheric body powerless by making his physical body independent, then it will be very difficult to help such a person by means of spiritual treatment.

So now we understand how mineral substances affect a man. They create doubles in him that preserve his physical body and remove it from the possible harmful effects of his astral or etheric body. Because materialistic medicine is ignorant of man's higher members, almost all our present-day medicine works in the direction of treating the physical body in some way or another only.

We have begun today by looking at the effects of mineral substances. Some time we shall have to speak of the effects of plant forces and animal substances on the human organism, and then we shall go on to those influences or remedies that work from one being to another in a psychic or spiritual way. But you will see that it is essential for our studies for us to acquire once again such concepts as the concept of original sin and understand it correctly. With certain things nowadays people just do not see what lies in front of them and show no understanding for them at all.

Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Places/Berlin/19081208p01.html

We must bring the spirit down onto Earth

Rudolf Steiner, June 12, 1921:

"Spiritual life, as we have it generally in common today...is not a real spiritual life, but merely an intellectual life. People speak about the spirit; they have concepts, but concepts are not the living spirit. We must not have the spirit somehow merely in the form of concepts that sit in our heads; rather we must bring the spirit down onto Earth. The spirit must be brought into our institutions; the spirit must hold sway in what weaves and works between human beings. We can achieve this only if we have an independent spiritual life in which we do not work merely out of concepts of the spirit, but where we work out of the spirit itself."

Human Rhythms and Cosmic Rhythms

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, January 12, 1909:

It has already been mentioned here that in the group meetings this winter we want to gather together all the threads as it were that will eventually link up to form a deeper understanding of the being of man and various other things connected with man's whole life and evolution that will lead us deeper and deeper into the secrets of the world. Today I would like to remind you of the group lecture the time before last (21st December 1908) and take our start from there. You will remember that we spoke of a certain rhythm existing in the four members of man's being. We want to start there today and find an answer to the question: How can a knowledge of these things help us understand in a deeper way both the necessity and the object of the anthroposophical movement?

Today we shall have to link up two things apparently very far removed from one another. You will remember that there are certain relationships between man's ego, astral body, etheric body and physical body. What there is to say about the fourth member, the ego, is best seen if we bear in mind the two alternating states of consciousness experienced by the ego in the course of the twenty-four hours of the day. One day with its twenty-four hours, during which the ego experiences day and night, sleeping and waking, will be seen as a kind of unity. So when we say that what the ego goes through in a day is based on the number one, we shall have to say that the number that corresponds in a similar way to our astral body is the number seven. Whereas the ego as it is today comes back as it were to its starting-point in twenty-four hours or a day, our astral body does the same thing in seven days. Let us go into this in greater detail.

Think of waking up in the morning; that is, you rise up out of the darkness of unconsciousness, as people say incorrectly in ordinary life, and the objects of the physical sense world appear round you again. You experience this in the morning and again twenty-four hours later, with the occasional exception. This is the regular course of events, and we can say that our ego returns to its starting-point after a day of twenty-four hours. If we look in the same way for the astral body's corresponding rhythm, we have to say that if the ordered regularity of the astral body is really there, then the astral body returns to the same point after seven days. So whilst the ego goes through its cycle in a day, the astral body goes considerably slower, and carries out its cycle in seven days. The cycle of the etheric body, on the other hand, takes four times seven days; after four times seven days it returns to the same point. And now please bear in mind what was said the time before last. With the physical body it is not as regular as with the astral and the etheric bodies. We can, however, establish a rough figure, and say that it goes through its cycle in about ten times twenty-eight days, and then returns to its starting-point. You know of course that a great difference exists and that the female etheric body is male and the male etheric body female. From this we can see that in a certain respect an irregularity is bound to occur in the rhythm of the etheric bodies. But on the whole the numbers 1:7:(4 x 7):(10 x 7 x 4) are the proportional figures that so to say specify the ‘speeds of rotation’ for the four members of man's being. This is of course speaking figuratively, for they are not really rotations but repetitions of the same conditions; rhythm ratios. A fortnight ago I had to point out that phenomena of daily life are comprehensible only when we know things like this that lie behind the sense perceptible world. And in a public lecture I also indicated a remarkable fact which cannot be denied by even the most materialistic scientist or doctor or be ranked among the ‘spectres of superstition’, because it is an indisputable fact. It is something that really ought to make people think, namely that in pneumonia a special phenomena occurs on the seventh day. A crisis arises, and the patient has to be pulled through this seventh day. The temperature suddenly falls, and if the patient cannot be brought through this crisis then in certain circumstances there is no recovery. This fact is known by most people, but as a rule the starting-point of the illness is not always correctly ascertained, and if you do not know which the first day is then as a rule you do not know which the seventh day is either. But the fact remains, so we have to ask why the temperature drops with pneumonia on the seventh day. Why does a special phenomenon occur at all on the seventh day?

Only a person who sees behind the scenes of existence, behind the physical sense phenomena into the spiritual world, knows of these rhythms, and why phenomena like a temperature arise. What actually is a temperature? Why does it occur? The temperature is not the illness. On the contrary, the temperature is something that the organism calls up to fight against the actual process of the illness. The temperature is the organism's defence against the illness. There is some damage in the organism, in the lungs, say. When the human being is healthy and all his inner activities are working harmoniously, these inner activities are bound to fall into disorder if one particular organ of the human body is upset. Then the whole organism attempts to pull itself together and develop the forces within itself to counterbalance the local upset. There is really a revolution going on in the whole organism, otherwise the organism would not need to gather its forces because there is no enemy to fight. The expressing of this massing of forces in the organism is the temperature.

Now the person who looks behind the scenes of existence knows that the various organs of the human body came into existence and developed at very different periods of human evolution. What from the spiritual scientific point of view is called ‘the study of the human body’ is the most complicated matter imaginable, for the human organism is extremely complex and its individual organs came into existence at quite different times. The rudimentary beginnings of these organs were developed further at a later stage of evolution. Everything in the physical organism is an expression or outcome of man's higher members, so that each physical organ expresses the higher Organisation of the higher members. What we call the lungs today have their origins in the astral body and are to a certain extent connected with it. We will eventually come to talk about what the lungs have to do with the astral body, how the very first, archetype basis of the lungs came into man on the predecessor of our Earth, ancient Moon, and how at that time the astral body was as it were planted into man by higher spiritual beings. But today I want you to look at the fact of the lungs being an expression of the astral body. The actual expression of the astral body is of course the nervous system. But man is complicated, and the development of the various parts always runs parallel. The construction of the lungs began at the same time as the development of the astral body and the incorporation of the present-day nervous system. This in a way includes the lungs in the rhythm of the astral body, that rhythm that is governed by the number seven. The phenomenon of a rising temperature is connected with certain functions of the etheric body. Something must be happening in the etheric body if a temperature runs a certain course. The temperature, then, is somehow within the rhythm of the etheric body. Whenever you have a temperature it has this rhythm, but in what way? We shall have to be clear about the following:

The etheric body, which completes its cycle in four times seven days, moves considerably slower than the astral body with its seven day rhythm. So if we relate the rhythmic course of the etheric body to that of the astral body, we can compare them with the hands of a clock. The clock's hour hand goes round once whilst the minute hand, in the same span of time, goes round twelve times. There you have the relationship of 1:12. Now suppose you look at the clock at noon, when the minute hand lies on top of the hour hand. The two hands coincide. Then the minute hand goes round one, and when it returns to the twelve it can no longer coincide with the hour hand, for this has meanwhile moved on to one. It will be roughly another five minutes before the two hands can coincide, so the minute hand does not point to the same place as the hour hand an hour later but after an hour and just over five minutes later. Now you have a similar relationship between the movement of the astral body and the movement of the etheric body. Imagine that your astral body, that is connected the whole time with the etheric body, were to be in a certain position in relation to the etheric body. Now the astral body begins to rotate. When after seven days it returns to its original position, it does not coincide again with the etheric body, for, after seven days, the etheric body has moved round a quarter of its cycle. So seven days later the position of the astral body does not coincide with the same position of the etheric body but with a position that is a quarter of the cycle behind the original one. Now imagine you have a case of the illness in question. A definite position of the astral body is connected with a definite position of the etheric body. And at this moment, with the co-operation of these two positions working together, the temperature appears, as a summons to fight the enemy. Seven days later the astral body covers an entirely different part of the etheric body. Now in the etheric body there must be not only the power to produce a temperature, for in that case, once it had really got going, it would never drop again; so seven days later this point of the etheric body that is now covered by the part of the astral body that produced the temperature seven days previously has the tendency to counteract the temperature and bring it down. If the patient's disorder has been overcome in seven days, then all is well. But if the disorder has not been overcome, and the astral body has not got the tendency now to push the illness out, the patient comes into the unfortunate position in which the etheric body has the tendency to bring the temperature down. It is important to pay good heed to these two points of coincidence. We could discover points like this for all kinds of phenomena in human life. And just through these rhythms, these mysterious inner workings, man's whole being could be understood. The etheric body really has a tendency that expresses itself in four times seven. In the case of other illnesses you will notice that the fourteenth day is of special importance; that is, two times seven. And we can definitely say that with certain phenomena the paroxysm has to be especially strong after four times seven; The point being that if the trouble decreases then, you can definitely hope for recovery. All these things are connected with rhythms of the kind we touched on three weeks ago and have dealt with in greater detail today. With such things as these, which appear difficult but which can nevertheless be understood, we can begin to penetrate a little way beneath the surface of the physical sense world. And we must penetrate further and further. Now let us enquire into the origin of such rhythms.

We have to look once again to the great cosmic relationships to find the origin of such rhythms. We have often drawn your attention to the fact that what we call the four members of man, physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego have evolved through Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth existence. If we look back to our old Moon we find that it also separated itself from the sun for a certain length of time, though a large part of what is the moon today was then part of the earth. But outside there was a sun, and when such heavenly bodies belong together then their forces, which are the expression of their beings, always have an influence on regulating the life of their creatures. The orbiting of a planet around its sun or of a satellite around its planet is by no means mere chance, nor is it unconnected with life, on the contrary it is regulated by those beings we have learnt about in the hierarchies of spirits. We have seen that it is absolutely untrue that the heavenly bodies rotate by themselves through mere lifeless forces. We have pointed out how grotesquely the modern physicist explains the Kant-Laplace theory by means of his experiment with the blob of fat. A cardboard disc is inserted through the floating blob of farm the direction of the equator and a needle stuck through it from above, and then the whole thing is rotated, whereupon small droplets break off from the large drop and rotate as well. Thus the experimenter shows how a planetary system in miniature arises, and physicists generally draw the conclusion that this is how the large planetary system must have arisen. Although it is usually good to forget yourself, in this particular case it is not. For the good man usually forgets that the miniature planetary system could not arise if he did not turn the handle. It is perfectly permissible to do such experiments, and they are very useful, but you should not forget the most important part. What an infinite number of people fall victim to such suggestions! They overlook the fact that the professor was doing it. There is no gigantic professor out yonder of course, it is the hierarchies of spiritual beings who regulate the rhythms of the heavenly bodies and actually bring about all the ordering of matter in the cosmos, so that the individual planetary bodies revolve around one another. And if we could go into the movements of the planetary spheres that form a correlated system — and a time will come for this — we should recognise the rhythms of our own human members. For the time being, however, we need only point to one thing.

Modern man, with his materialistic mode of thought, laughs at the idea that in earlier times certain conditions in man's life were organised in connection with the four quarters of the moon. Now just with the moon in particular there is in a wonderful way a cosmic reflection of the relationship existing between the astral and the etheric body. The moon moves round its cycle in four times seven days. Those are the positions of the etheric body, and these four times seven positions of the etheric body are exactly mirrored in the four quarters of the moon. It is by no means nonsense to look for a connection between the phenomenon of the rising temperature we described and just these quarters of the moon. Just think, there really is a different quarter of the moon at the end of seven days, just as there is another quarter of the etheric body and the astral body covers a different quarter of the etheric body. Originally the relationship of the human astral body to the etheric body was indeed regulated by spiritual beings bringing the moon into a corresponding orbiting of the earth. And you can see how the things are to a certain extent connected, in that even modern medicine reckons with an ancient heritage of rhythmic knowledge. As the rhythm of the body is ten times twenty-eight and the physical body is as it were back at the same point ten times twenty-eight days later, there are about ten times twenty-eight days between the conception of a human being and his birth, ten lunar months. All these things are connected with the regulating of the great cosmic relationships. Man as microcosm is a true image of the great world relationships, for he is created out of them.

Today we want to turn our thoughts to evolution in the middle of Atlantean times. That was a very important point for earth evolution. Before that time we can distinguish three races in human evolution; the Polarian, the Hyperborean and the Lemurian race. Then comes the Atlantean race. We are now in the fifth race and two races will follow us, so the Atlantean epoch lies right in the middle. The middle of Atlantean times is the most important point in earth evolution. If we were to go back before this time, even then we should have found an exact reflection of cosmic relationships in the relationships of external human life. It would have had a very bad effect on man if he had done the kind of things then that he does now. Nowadays man does not adjust himself very much to the cosmic situation. In town life things often have to be arranged in such a way that people are awake when they would otherwise be asleep and asleep when they ought to be awake. If anything like being awake at night or sleeping in the daytime had occurred in Lemurian times, and man had paid so little attention to the external phenomena that belong to certain inner processes, he would not have survived. Of course such a thing was quite impossible then, because it was a matter of course that man in his inner rhythm conformed with outer rhythm. Man lived as it were with the cycles of the sun and the moon and modeled the rhythm of his astral and etheric bodies on the cycle of sun and moon.

Let us come back to the clock. In a certain respect this also conforms to the great cosmic cycle, when the hour and minute hands coincide at twelve o'clock, that is because there is a certain constellation of the sun and stars. We set our clocks according to this and a clock is unreliable if the two hands do not coincide the following day as soon as this constellation of stars occurs again. In Berlin the clocks are set daily by electricity from the Enckeplatz observatory. So we may say that the movements or rhythms of the clock hands are set every day according to the rhythm of the cosmos. Our clock is correct if it synchronises with the central clock which, in its turn, synchronises with the cosmos. In ancient times man had no need of a clock, for he himself was a clock. His life's course, which he could clearly feel, absolutely conformed to cosmic relationships. Man really was a clock. And if he had not conformed to the cosmic situation, exactly the same thing would have happened to him as happens to a clock if its movement does not correspond to the outer situation: it goes wrong, and he would have gone wrong too. The inner rhythm had to correspond to the outer. And the essential part of man's evolution on earth is that since the middle of Atlantean times the outer situation does not absolutely coincide with the inner one. Something else has come about. Just imagine someone fancying that he could not bear the two hands of his watch coinciding at noon. Supposing he alters them to three o'clock, then when it is one o'clock for other people he makes it four p.m., at two o'clock he makes it 5 p.m., and so on. The inner working of his clock will not have changed, it will only have become displaced compared with the outer situation. Twenty-four hours later he will make it three o'clock again; that it, his clock's movement will not coincide with the cosmic situation but its inner rhythm will still agree with it, for it has only been displaced. Man's rhythm has also been displaced. Man would never have become an independent being if all his activity had remained in cosmic leading strings. The basis of his freedom lies in his having preserved his inner rhythm while severing himself from external rhythm. He has become like a clock that at the nodal points no longer coincides with cosmic occurrences yet is inwardly in harmony with them. Thus in the far distant past a human being could be conceived in one particular stellar constellation only and be born ten lunar months later. This coinciding of conception with a cosmic situation has ceased but the rhythm has remained, just as a clock keeps to its rhythm even though at midday you set it at three o'clock. Of course it is not man's circumstances only though, that have become displaced, the times have become displaced as well. Even if we disregard the last-mentioned cosmic displacement, something very special has occurred in man's inner life, in that he has lifted himself as it were out of the cosmic situation and is no longer a ‘clock’ in the proper sense of the word. He is more or less like a man who has put his clock forward three hours and then, forgetting how much he has put it forward, cannot sort himself out any more. This is what happened to man in earthly evolution once he was free of the situation in which he was like a clock in the cosmos. In certain respects he brought his astral body into disorder. The more the conditions of human life were regulated by the physical, the more the old rhythm was preserved; but the more his life conditions became influenced by thought, the greater the disorder that came into them. I would like to clarify this from another angle.

Men are not the only beings we know of, we also know of beings that are superior to present-day earth man. We know of the sons of life or the angels, and we know that they went through their human stage on ancient Moon. We know of the spirits of fire or the archangels, that went through their human stage on the old Sun condition of the earth, and we also know of the primeval forces, who went through their human stage on ancient Saturn. These beings are in advance of man in their cosmic evolution. If we were to study them today we would find that they are beings of a much more spiritual nature than man. Therefore they live in higher-worlds. But in regard to the particular things we have been mentioning today, their situation is totally different from man's. In spiritual matters they conform absolutely to the cosmic rhythm. An angel would not think in such a disordered way as man, for the simple reason that his thought process is regulated by the cosmic powers which guide him. It is right out of the question for a being like an angel not to think in harmony with the great spiritual processes of the cosmos. The laws of logic for the angels are written in the universal harmony. They need no textbooks. Man needs textbooks because he has brought his inner thought processes into disorder. He no longer knows how to take guidance from the great script of the stars. Angels know the course of the cosmos, and the course of their thought corresponds with the ordered rhythm. When man came on to the earth in his present form he fell out of this rhythm, hence the lack of order in his life of thought and feeling. Regularity still holds sway in the things man has less influence on in his astral and etheric bodies, but in the parts that have been given into man's hands, that is, his sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul disorder and lack of rhythm have entered in. It is one of the least important matters that in our cities man turns night into day. It is of far greater significance that in his inner life of thought man has torn himself away from the great universal rhythm. The way man thinks all day long is in a certain respect in contradiction to the life of the great universe.

Do not imagine though, that all this is being said to encourage a world conception that will bring man back into this kind of rhythm again. Man had to get away from the old rhythm; his progress depends on this: When certain prophets go around today preaching ‘Back to Nature’, they want to bring life into reverse instead of helping it forward. All this chatter about returning to nature contains no understanding of real evolution. When a movement today recommends people to eat certain foods only at certain times of the year because nature herself indicates this by making foods grow only at certain times, this is the abstract talk of the amateur. The essential thing about evolution is that man grows more and more independent of outer rhythm. But we must not lose the ground from under our feet. It is not the best thing for man's progress and salvation to return to the old rhythm and ask himself how he should live in harmony with the four quarters of the moon. For it was essential in olden times for man to be like an impress of the cosmos. But it is important too that man should not believe he can live without rhythm. Just as his inner life was formed from outside inwards he must now create rhythm from inside outwards. That is the essential thing. His inner life must become rhythmic. Just as rhythm created the cosmos, man has to permeate himself with a new rhythm if he wants to share in the creating of a new cosmos. It is characteristic of our age that it has lost the old, external rhythm and has not yet attained a new inner one. Man has outgrown nature — if we call the outer expression of spirit ‘nature’ — but has not yet grown into the spirit. He is still floundering today between nature and spirit. This is just what is characteristic of our time. This floundering between nature and spirit reached its climax in the second third of the nineteenth century. Consequently the beings who know and interpret the signs of the times had to ask themselves at that time: What can be done so that man does not lose all trace of rhythm but acquires an inner rhythm?

What you can see today as the characteristic of mental life is its chaotic nature. Today, when you see something that has been thought out, the first thing that is bound to strike you is its chaotic nature, its inner lack of order. This is the case in almost every sphere. Only the spheres that still possess good old traditions have something of the old order left. In new spheres man has first of all to create a new order. That is why men can see facts today, like the fall in temperature on the seventh day of pneumonia, but their explanation of them is an absolute chaos of thoughts. When the human being thinks about it, then — because he does not think in an ordered way — he piles up a medley of thoughts around the fact. All our sciences take an external fact of the world and stir up a mass of thoughts about it with no inner order, because man has gone astray in a kind of mental abyss. He has no guiding principles of thought today, no inner thought rhythm, and humanity would become completely decadent were they not to acquire an inner rhythm. Look at spiritual science from this point of view.

You will see the element you are in when you begin to study spiritual science. To begin with you hear — and gradually understand — that man has four members of his being: physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. And then you hear that work is done by the ego, and the astral body is changed into manas or spirit-self, the etheric body into buddhi or life-spirit and the principle of physical man into spirit-man or atma. Now just think how much ground we have covered with this basic formula of spiritual science. Think of the many themes that were really fundamental themes, and how we had to build up our whole thought structure time and again out of this basic scheme: physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. You know, some people actually get tired of hearing these basic facts over and over again in certain public lectures. But this is and remains a reliable thread on which to string our thoughts: these four members of man's being and their inter-working; and then on a higher level, the transformation of the three lower members: the third into the fifth, the second into the sixth and the first into the seventh member of our being. If you count all the members of man's being that we know of physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, spirit-self, life-spirit and spirit-man, you have seven. And if you count those that form the foundation of these, namely the physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, you have four. And you are reproducing in thought the macrocosmic rhythm of 7:4 and 4:7 when you follow this train of thought. You are producing the outer, macrocosmic rhythm again from out of yourself You are repeating the rhythm that was once there macrocosmically in the universe and bringing it to birth again. You are laying down the plan or basis for your system of thought, as once the gods laid down the plan for the wisdom of the world. When we bring the inner rhythm of number to life in us again in this way, then out of the chaos of thought life a cosmos of thought is developed out of the innermost being of the soul. Men have freed themselves from external rhythm. By means of what is truly a science of the spirit we return to rhythm again, creating a cosmic structure from within outwards that is inwardly rhythmic. And if we turn to the cosmos and look at the earth's past, at Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth, we find four, then the Moon in spiritualised form at the fifth stage as Jupiter, the Sun at the sixth stage as Venus, and ancient Saturn at the seventh stage as Vulcan. Thus in Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan our evolutionary phases add up to seven. Our physical body as it is today, has developed through the number four, through Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth. In the future it will gradually become completely transformed and spiritualised. So that here too, when we look at the past we have the number four, and when we look to the future the number three: again there is 4:3, or if we include the past in the whole of evolution, 4:7.

We are still only at the beginning of our spiritual scientific activity, even if we have been working at it for many years. Today we could only point out what men meant by the ‘inner number’ at the root of all phenomena. And we see that in order to gain freedom man had to fall away from the original rhythm. But he has to rediscover within himself the laws with which to regulate the ‘clock’, his astral body. And the great regulator is spiritual science, because it is in harmony with the great laws of the cosmos beheld by the seer. The future as created by man will have the same great numerical relationships as the cosmos had in the past, but on a higher level. Therefore men have to bring the future to birth out of number, like the gods created the cosmos out of number.

We can see how spiritual science is connected with the course of the macrocosm. When we grasp what is there in the spiritual world behind man, the number four and the number seven, we shall understand why we must look to the spiritual world to find the impulse to carry forward what we know to be the evolutionary course of humanity. And we shall understand why just in an age when men have reached the greatest chaos in their inner life of thought, feeling and will those individualities who have to interpret the signs of the times had to draw attention to the kind of wisdom that enables man to create his soul life in a regulated way from within outwards. We shall learn to think with inner rhythm in a way that is necessary for the future, when we think in accordance with these basic relationships. And man will take into himself more and more from the world of his origins. At present he is acquiring what we can see to be the ground plan of the cosmos. He will go further and feel himself filled with certain fundamental forces and ultimately with fundamental beings.

All this is just in its beginnings today. And we appreciate the importance and world significance of the anthroposophical mission when we regard it not as an arbitrary act of this or that individual, but rather set about understanding it with all the inner force of our very existence. Then we can reach the point of being able to say that it is not a matter of choice whether we take up the anthroposophical mission or not, for if we want to understand our times we must recognise and fill ourselves with the thoughts of the divine-spiritual worlds which are the basis of anthroposophy. And then we must let them flow out of us again into the world, so that our actions and our being acquire, in place of chaos, the stature of a cosmos, like the cosmos out of which we were born.

Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Places/Berlin/19090112p01.html

13 ways of looking at my guru. #2: The Great Good Fish

Rudolf Steiner

The Gospel of Thomas, Saying 8: 

And he said, "The one is like a wise fisher who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of small fish. Among them the wise fisher discovered a fine large fish. He threw all the small fish back into the sea, and with no hesitation picked the great good fish. Whoever has ears, listen!"

Rhythms in Human Nature

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, December 21, 1908:

The fact that we have the possibility of progressing to more and more advanced studies in this group is solely due to the arrangements we have made concerning the courses running parallel with the group lectures. Therefore I would like to ask you to give these courses all your support. It is necessary to have somewhere where we can progress with the lectures. Otherwise we would have to start from the beginning every year.

We will concern ourselves today with something that will again appear to be far removed from the previous lectures but which will nevertheless fit into our present train of thought. We want to take as our starting-point an observation made in one of the last public lectures; the one on ‘Superstition from the Spiritual Scientific Point of View’. An observation was made there that cannot be carried further in a public lecture because, for a deeper understanding of it, certain preliminary concepts would have to be presupposed that are less related to an intellectual understanding than to an understanding that lies in our whole soul constitution, and that we can only acquire after years of group work. Patient work of this kind brings us ultimately to the point where things that would have seemed absurd appear possible and probable, and we can see that life bears them out. The observation we want to start from is that it is an ordinary fact and no superstition that in the case of certain illnesses like, for instance, pneumonia, there is a crisis on the seventh day when the patient can easily die, and the doctor has to do everything in his power to bring the patient through this crisis which occurs without fail on the seventh day. This is recognised today by every sensible doctor, though doctors cannot investigate the causes because they have no idea of the spiritual foundation of things. First of all I will simply present you with the fact that pneumonia shows something quite remarkable that is connected with the mysterious number seven.

We must look at the human being in a way that makes it possible to understand this fact and many others besides. You know from the innumerable times we have referred to it that man can only be understood when we know that he has a fourfold structure of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. These four members of man's being are connected with and dependent on one another in the most manifold ways. Each member influences the other, and therefore they are in constant connection one with another. But this cooperation is very complicated. It takes a very long time for man to get to know these connections as well as the relationship of these members to certain forces, processes and beings in the cosmos as a whole. For man has a connection with the cosmos through each of his members; a connection which is continuous — and this again is very important — but which is also variable. What we know as the physical body, etheric body and so on are connected with one another but also with the cosmos, the whole world about us. For what we have within us is also to a certain extent outside us, and so we could say that we can best get to know these inner and outer connections if we observe man both in a waking and sleeping state.

When a man lies asleep, the physical and etheric bodies lie in bed and the astral body and the ego are to a certain extent outside these. But this is only roughly speaking. A rough idea is sufficient for a number of things, but we want to understand this situation a little more accurately today. The astral body and the ego are not active in the physical body now. But the physical body with its nerves and blood system and the etheric body cannot exist unless they are interpenetrated by an astral body and something resembling an ego. Nor could the etheric body exist without being interpenetrated by higher entities. When the human being's own astral body and ego depart, the activities of these two members have to be replaced. The human body cannot remain without there being an ego and an astral body active within it, so there also has to be an ego and an astral body active when the human being is asleep. To be exact, we would have to say that the ego and the astral body that are active in the human being's sleeping physical body are also within the human being during the day, but their activity is completely overpowered by the activity of the human being's own astral body and ego. If we want to imagine the ego as it is nowadays, in the waking state, we have to tell ourselves that this human ego is within the human body when man is awake, and because of its activity during this time it deprives a larger ego of its sphere of influence. What does our own limited ego actually do during sleep? We can in truth say fairly accurately that this ego that has freed itself in the daytime from the large cosmic ego and that has a free hand in the human body, descends into the cosmic ego during the night and foregoes its own activity. And because the day ego descends into the cosmic ego, the cosmic ego can work unhindered and get rid of all the exhaustion that has accumulated during the day. Because the day ego sinks down into the cosmic ego it is possible for the night ego to be active in an all-embracing way. If you want to imagine it pictorially, you can visualise the relationship of the day ego to the night ego as though the day ego described a circle, passing through the greater part of this circle outside the realm of the great ego and descending into the great ego at night. For sixteen hours on average it is outside the night ego and for eight hours it is within it.

You will only understand this correctly if you take what I have said quite literally, namely that your ego never stays the same for the whole sixteen hours — assuming that to be the normal time for being awake — and that the ego is changing all this while. It describes part of a circle and then sinks down, passing through more changes during the night, about which the ordinary human being knows nothing. These changes become more and more unconscious until a climax is reached, and then the ego becomes slowly more conscious again. We must say, then, that in the course of twenty-four hours the human being is continuously undergoing certain changes, the outer symbol of which we can imagine as a circle, as a hand of a clock describing a circle and disappearing from time to time into the large cosmic ego.

The human astral body goes through changes in a very similar way. This changes too in such a way that we can imagine it symbolically as describing a circle. With the astral body too the changes are such that we really have to speak of a kind of sinking down into a cosmic astral body. Only present-day man does not notice this descent into the cosmic astral body any more, whilst in earlier times man was very aware of it. Then man felt his own innate astral feelings that he had at one particular time alternating as it were with quite different feelings at another time. At one time he felt more alive in the world around him and at another time he was more aware of his own inner feelings. You could perceive quite different shades of feeling in the astral body because it underwent rhythmic changes in the course of seven days, that is seven times twenty-four hours, that can again be compared to a circle. The ego undergoes rhythmic changes over a period of twenty-four hours, still expressed today in the alternation between waking and sleeping, and the astral body in seven times twenty-four hours. In primeval man these rhythmic changes occurred very vividly. Thus in the astral body rhythmic changes run their course for seven days, and on the eighth day the rhythm begins again. The astral body actually does sink down into a universal cosmic astral body for part of the time that man undergoes this rhythm. For the remainder of the time it is more outside this cosmic astral body. This can give you a picture of how significant for man's life the universal astral body and ego are that are present in man when he is asleep. This I into which he plunges when he falls asleep and which keeps his blood flowing at night, is the same ego that works in his body during sleep. If he sleeps in the daytime he also goes into this universal ego, and this brings a certain irregularity into his rhythm which would have worked destructively in earlier times but which is not so destructive these days because in our times human life has changed considerably in this respect. During the course of the seven days, man's astral body actually goes into the same part of the universal cosmic astral body which interpenetrates the physical and etheric bodies during sleep. This brings about changes in man's inner feelings. This is hardly noticed today, though in earlier times it could not be ignored.

It is not only the ego and astral body that go through certain particular rhythmic changes but the etheric body does so too. These take place in such a way that in four times seven days the human etheric body, symbolically speaking, revolves on its own axis, and after four times seven days it comes back to the beginning again. A quite definite rhythm takes place in the course of the four times seven days. But now we are approaching a sphere about which we would have to speak in great detail if you are to understand it all. You will remember my saying that a man's etheric body is female and a woman's male. The two have a different rhythm, but we do not want to go into that today. We just want to emphasise that this rhythm occurs and, because of the difference in man and woman, we will just say it is approximately four times seven days.

This, however, does not bring us to the end of the matter. Quite definite processes are rhythmically repeated in the physical body too, however improbable this sounds to people today. Nowadays they have almost become obliterated, because man has had to become independent of certain processes, but they are still noticeable to occult observation. If the physical body were entirely left to itself this rhythm would take place over a period of ten times seven times four days in the woman and twelve times seven times four days in the man. That is how it would be if the human being were entirely left to the laws inherent in the rhythms. At one time it was really like this, but man has become more free of the cosmic influences around him. Thus we have a flow of rhythmic processes in the four members of man's being. If you like, you can imagine each of the four rhythms as a circling. The rhythms man would carry out in his physical body, for instance, if he were left entirely to himself, only approximate, of course, with the external physical, purely spatial processes that correspond to these rhythms. This is because man has been driven back upon himself in the cause of freedom, and his relationship to the cosmos has changed accordingly.

You will have noticed from the number ten times seven times four or twelve times seven times four that the rhythm of the physical body corresponds roughly to the course of the year. You can imagine an external symbol for these changes in the physical body if you think that in the course of a year the human being turns around as it were; at one time he is on one side of the sun and at another on the other. If we imagine that he always turns his face to the sun, then in the course of a year he has to revolve once on his own axis and once round the sun. Anyone who only looks at it superficially will think that it is of no consequence, but it happens to be very important. These rhythms occurring in the four bodies were implanted into man over long periods of time, and the hierarchies — entities we have often spoken about — have brought it about that the various bodies influence one another. We know that we are embedded in higher beings. It is due to the action of these spiritual beings, who fill both physical and spiritual space with their deeds, that these particular connections come about. If you consider what I have just said, however, you will find a new way of looking at a thought I often mentioned here last winter. The establishing of the rhythm of the physical body already began on ancient Saturn. The incorporating of the etheric body into the physical body, in such a way that the rhythm of the two bodies harmonise, is the work of other spirits, the spirits of the Sun. Through the working together of the various rhythms a relationship is brought about in the same way as the relationship of the two hands of a clock is determined by their rhythm. On ancient Moon another rhythm was incorporated, that of the astral body.

Now those spirits that regulated our whole cosmos — for everything of a physical nature is an expression of those beings — had to create the outer physical movement in accordance with their own inner relationships. That the sun is encircled by the earth in a year arises out of the rhythm that was implanted into the physical body long ages before the physical constellation existed. Thus the spatial relationships between these heavenly bodies were regulated from out of the spirit. The moon had to go round the earth because its rotation had to correspond to the rotation of the human etheric body in four times seven days because this rhythm was to find its expression in the movement of the moon. The changing illumination of the moon by the sun — the moon's four quarters — correspond to the different rhythms of the astral body, and the revolution of the earth in the course of a day corresponds to the ego rhythm. In connection with this ego rhythm in particular we can point out something that occultism has always taught, but which will appear to people nowadays as mere fantasy, although it is nevertheless true. In very ancient times the earth did not revolve around its axis; this axial rotation arose in the course of time. Whilst earth man was still in a different condition, this movement did not as yet exist. The first stimulus to movement did not occur in the earth but in man. The human ego was given this stimulus to turn by the spirits to whom it is subject, and the human ego actually took the earth with it and made it revolve round it. The revolution of the earth is the result of the ego rhythm. And this is true, however astonishing it sounds. The spiritual members of man that were developing their ego-hood had to receive the stimulus to turn first, and then they took the earth with them. Later on this was different. Man became free on the earth; conditions changed so that man was freed from the surrounding cosmic powers. But this is really what it was like originally. Thus you can see how everything that is physical around us is actually an outcome of the spiritual. Spirit is always there first. And it is the spirit that sets everything going.

And now think of the astral body that accomplishes its round in the course of seven days. Imagine how illnesses are connected with certain irregularities of the astral body because these irregularities are passed on through the etheric body to the physical body. Now we will suppose that the astral body has a certain defect. Through this defect it affects the etheric body and the defect is then passed on to the physical body. This also becomes defective. Then the organism starts revolting against the defect and applies protective measures. This revolt is usually in the form of a temperature, which summons man's forces of recovery. A temperature is not an illness; it is the human being calling together all the forces in his organism to put this defect right again. This revolt of the whole organism against the defect expresses itself as a rule in a feverish temperature. A temperature is the most beneficial, restorative part of an illness. The particular area that is defective cannot heal by itself, and it has to receive the forces from other places, and this is expressed in the temperature.

Now imagine this temperature occurring with pneumonia. The lungs have become defective through one or other cause. When it is the human lungs in particular that have suffered some damage, the astral body becomes defective first and then it passes through the etheric body to the physical body. With pneumonia the cause is always in the astral body; pneumonia can occur in no other way. Now think of the astral body's rhythm. The day pneumonia appears the astral body affects the physical body. Now the body begins to revolt with a temperature. Seven days later the astral and etheric bodies are in the same mutual relationship; parts of them meet again. But it is not the same part of the etheric body, because the etheric body has been going through its own rhythm. It meets the next part. This is also affected by the astral body, but this time in the opposite way. The fever is now suppressed. Through the fact that the particular part of the astral body that coincided with the previous quarter of the etheric body seven days earlier coincides with its next quarter, the opposite process from a week ago is produced, namely a reaction to the fever. The opposing rhythm of the body now suppresses the temperature. For the human body is meant to be healthy, and that is the purpose of the rhythm. Certain influences increase in the first seven days, and in the next seven days they have to decline. In a healthy person this increasing and decreasing alternates. When a person is ill, however, his life is endangered when the fever is suppressed. Whilst in a healthy person an ascending process is reversed on the seventh day, in an ill person the ascending process ought to continue. But a rapid ascent causes a rapid fall. This is the reason for the pneumonia crisis on the seventh day.

We can understand this if we consider that the lungs were developed at a time when the moon had already split off and was preparing to develop its own rhythm, and the rhythm of the days was also beginning to develop. This is why even today the lungs are still connected with the astral body and the rhythm of the etheric body.

You can see, then, that spiritual science helps us to form a judgment of just these abnormal conditions in human life, and that the whole nature of man can be understood only when we see these conditions. It will only become possible again for the sciences to achieve fruitful results when man is permeated with the great truths of spiritual science. In earlier times, up to about the middle of the earth evolution, all the rhythms in man were much more in harmony with the rhythms of outer nature. Since that time, that is, since the middle of Atlantean times, however, things have shifted. Man's inner life has emancipated itself from outer rhythm, but he has kept his inner rhythm. It is just because the rhythms do not harmonise that man has acquired his independence and freedom, otherwise the evolution of freedom in the history of mankind would not have been possible. Man's rhythm compared with the sun, or the earth's compared with the sun has shot ahead. A similar thing has happened with the other rhythms, for instance that of the astral body. In earlier times man experienced quite different shades of mood in the course of seven days. At one time everything outside him made a great impression on him, and at another time he lived more in his inner life. It is because the rhythms are no longer in harmony that the condition of inner experience remains, even when man has more joy from the outer world, and vice versa. They combine and balance one another and this makes the astral body even-tempered, as it were. By means of careful observation you can still notice these alternations of mood in people who live more in their astral body. The variations in the condition of the astral body can be established in the case of people who are psychologically or mentally ill.

The ego rhythm was the last to arise, but there too, things have already become displaced. Man can also sleep in the daytime, and stay awake at night. In earlier times this rhythm always coincided with the outer one. In Atlantis something very serious would have happened if man had wished to sleep in the daytime and stay awake at night. He would have brought his whole life into disorder. The rhythm is still there today to a certain extent, but it has become independent of outer circumstances. This is the same thing as setting a reliable clock exactly in time with the sun. You can then tell the exact solar time. But you could also turn the clock to midnight when it is seven o'clock in the evening. Then the rhythm of the clock will still remain correct but it would be displaced compared with that of the sun. This is what it is like with man. Man has kept the old rhythm that he used to share with the whole cosmos, but it has become displaced. If the clock were a living being it would be justified in dissociating its rhythm from the surrounding rhythms. In the far distant future man is to reach the point of projecting his rhythms out into the world again out of the strength of his own inner development. Just as there were once beings who, out of their own rhythms, made the sun, moon and earth move, man will at some future time transfer his rhythms to the world, when he has reached the stage of divinity. This is the meaning behind rhythm becoming independent. We can glimpse from this the deeper foundations of astrology. But we will not go into that just now. Today we only wanted to show that spiritual science is not a collection of abstract ideas for those egoistic people who take an interest in it, but something that can bring light into the most everyday things of life. One must have the will, however, to pass from external phenomena to the causes behind them. Rhythm has been implanted into matter by the spirit, and man, today, has these rhythms within him as a heritage of this spiritual origin. Nevertheless we can only understand what this rhythm signifies for man's being and also for the rest of natural creation if we go back to the original relationships. In the case of animals the various bodies — physical body, etheric body, astral body and group ego — have a quite different relationship to one another. There is a different rhythm for each animal species. It is roughly the same for the physical body, but the different animals have quite different rhythms in their etheric and astral bodies. In the same way as the animal world is classified nowadays according to external form, it can be classified in species according to the rhythms of the astral and etheric bodies.

Do not imagine that these rhythms have never been clearly recognised. We will be able to show that it is not so very long since people were at least dimly conscious of these rhythms. Whoever goes through the world with a consciousness for these things, will find in some calendars in use in country districts certain rules referring to definite relationships between the animals and the land. Farmers used to manage all their agriculture by observing the rules in such calendars. In the farmer's lore a consciousness of these rhythms lay hidden. These are things that can show us that since the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries an age of abstraction, of external science, has arisen, a science that is no longer in a position to go back to the causes. This is particularly the case in medicine. People only grope today, and the solid basis of pathology and of therapy goes back to ancient times. It was a torture for my intellect and my feelings when phenacetin was tested. This kind of testing, without any kind of guide, shows that at the same time as it lost the spirit science also lost its depth. Through spiritual knowledge this depth will be acquired again. It is absolutely necessary to distinguish between caricatures of science and real knowledge based on the spirit. If you take this to heart you will see how necessary it is to have spiritual scientific knowledge, and that it has to find its way into every realm of knowledge and life.

Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Dates/19081221p01.html

Love your enemies

"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." — Matthew 5:44

Related post: http://martyrion.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-surrendered-life-33-years-at.html

My yoke is easy: My dharma is penance

"The Return of the Prodigal Son" by Rembrandt



"I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go." — Abraham Lincoln

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Matthew 11:28-30

I'd always wondered why my dharma seemed to be penance, so 11 years ago, at the age of 56, I traveled to the School of Metaphysics in Windyville, Missouri, because they claimed to be able to tell you what your dharma actually is. Turns out they truly can do what they claim. Here's a transcript of the session in which they lay the light of my dharma on me.

September 13, 2003. You will search for the identity of the entity referred to as Lawrence Michael Clark. You will relate this one’s dharma from the past and past lifetimes in general in terms of incarnations.

This would be penance. There is a very strong urge within this one and a configuration of attitudes which promote the need for, as well as the capacity for, penance. This is the ability to assess and to give according to the assessment. We see that it is the obligation and the duty and the debt that this one has in any situation, and we see that it does manifest in ways that are appropriate to this. We see that there have been many incarnations in which this one has been somewhat negligent in this regard, inasmuch as this one either did not perceive or did not admit or did not assess accurately the people, places, and things in the life for this one to be able to understand how this one was accountable and how this one was responsible and what this one was responsible for. We see that this then left many situations in many lives where things were left undone, where there were opportunities that were pushed away, from the scattering of attention or the denial of the situation at hand. We see that this then built a considerable amount of energy toward that of penance, of being able to pay what this one owes, and we see that it is through this ability that this one has formed different understandings through subsequent lives, where the penance has become this one’s dharma. We see that this is very strong within this one and there is a constant awareness — even when it is unconscious it is still present, it is a force in this one’s consciousness and therefore in this one’s life — that this one is obligated, is how it is often seen, and we see that it is through this one accepting and moving beyond the limitations of obligation to be able to perceive the benefits of obeisance and generosity that this one will be able to come to a new level of understanding of the dharma itself. This is all.

Very well. What would be the relevance of this one’s dharma to the present lifetime?

In the present we see that this one tends to become distracted through the conscious configuration of obligation. We see that this one has different attitudes about this and we see that some of them are embracing, others are resistant, and we see that it is through this that the awareness is limited of the dharma itself. It would be helpful for this one to begin to develop an image of penance which is desirable. It would be helpful for this one in this to be able to see what it brings to the world personally as well as in this one being connected with living beings. We see that there is a sincere need within this one as well as many others to recognize the sense of duty, purpose, responsibility in order for there to be a greater or heightened sense of connectedness. The sense of duty comes from within the self, it does not pose itself externally; its origin is not apart from this one. And as this one will reconcile this thinking, then there will be a greater flow from within the self of what this one needs to do and why. There is also a need for this one to recognize that the sense of obligation does give this one the sense that there is a need for gratitude. And it is in the embracing of gratitude that this one will become free of the negative connotations to obligation, and these when they are no longer present will make space for there to be joy in the penance — the ability for recompense.

"It is the highest and holiest of the paradoxes that the man who really knows he cannot pay his debt will be forever paying it. He will be for ever giving back what he cannot give back, and what he cannot be expected to give back. He will be always throwing things away into a bottomless pit of unfathomable thanks."  — G. K. Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi

The recompense of penance is joy

At-one-ment 

Washed in the Blood of the Lamb are We

Awash in a Sunburst Sea

You—Love—and I—Love—and Love Divine:

We are the Trinity

You—Love—and I—We are One-Two-Three

Twining Eternally

Two—Yes—and One—Yes—and also Three:

One Dual Trinity

Radiant Calvary

Ultimate Mystery

Source: http://www.webcitation.org/5v2c3FetS

Related post: http://martyrion.blogspot.com/2009/07/13-ways-of-looking-at-my-guru-4.html



Were it not for the honor of the thing ...

Abraham Lincoln:  “I am like the man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. When they asked him how he felt about it, he said that if it were not for the honor of the thing, he would rather have walked.”

Related post: http://martyrion.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-surrendered-life-33-years-at.html