Ancient Spiritual Exercises 27

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Modern and Ancient Spiritual Exercises

Advice on Meditation

A lecture by

Rudolf Steiner

Dornach, May 27, 1922

GA 212

The lecture presented here was given in Dornach on May 27, 1922, and is the 7th of 9 lectures in the series entitled: TheHuman Soul in Relation to World Evolution. It appears in the original German inMenschliches Seelenleben und

Geistesstreben im Zusammenhange mit der Welt- und Erdentwicklung, Bibliographic Nr.212, Dornach 1978. It is also knownas: The Change in the Path to Supersensible Knowledge, orAncient Yoga and Modern Initiation. The translator is Rita

Stebbing.

This English edition is published in agreement with, and the kind permission of theRudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung,Dornach, Switzerland.

Copyright 1984This e.Text edition is provided with the cooperation of:

The Anthroposophic Press

Modern and Ancient Spiritual Exercises

Advice on Meditation

[Abridged from The Human Soul in Relation to World Evolution, published by Anthroposophic Press, 1984.]

Dornach, 27 May 1922

The paths by which in very remote times men acquired supersensible knowledge were very different from those appropriate

today. I have often drawn attention to the fact that in ancient times man possessed a faculty of instinctive clairvoyance. Thisclairvoyance went through many different phases to become what may be described as modern man's consciousness of the world, aconsciousness out of which a higher one can be developed. In my books Occult Science: An OutlineandKnowledge of the HigherWorlds: How is it Achieved? and other writings is described how man at present, when he understands his own times, can attainhigher knowledge.

When we look back to the spiritual strivings of man in a very distant past we find among others the one practised in the Orientwithin the culture known later as the Ancient Indian civilization. Many people nowadays are returning to what was practised then

because they cannot rouse themselves to the realization that, in order to penetrate in to supersensible worlds, every epoch mustfollow its own appropriate path.

On previous occasions I have mentioned that, from the masses of human beings who lived during the period described in myOccult Science as the Ancient Indian epoch, certain individuals developed, in a manner suited to that age, inner forces which led

them upwards into supersensible worlds. One of the methods followed is known as the path of yoga; I have spoken about this pathon other occasions.

The path of yoga can best be understood if we first consider the people in general from among whom the yogi emerged thatis to say, the one who sets out to attain higher knowledge by this path. In those remote ages of mankind's evolution, humanconsciousness in general was very different from what it is today. In the present age we look out into the world and through oursenses perceive colours, sounds and so on. We seek for laws of nature prevailing in the physical world and we are conscious that ifwe attempt to experience a spirit-soul content in the external world then we add something to it in our imagination. It was differentin the remote past for then, as we know, man saw more in the external world than ordinary man sees today. In lightning andthunder, in every star, in the beings of the different kingdoms of nature, the men of those times beheld spirit and soul. They

perceived spiritual beings even if of a lower kind, in all solid matter, in everything fluid or aeriform. Today's intellectual outlookdeclares that these men of old, through their fantasy, dreamed all kinds of spiritual and psychical qualities into the world aroundthem. This is known as animism.

We little understand the nature of man, especially that of man in ancient times, if we believe that the spiritual beingsmanifesting in lightning and thunder, in springs and rivers, in wind and weather, were dream-creations woven into nature byfantasy. This was by no means the case. Just as we perceive red or blue and hear C sharp or G, so those men of old beheld realitiesof spirit and soul in external objects. For them it was as natural to see spirit-soul entities as it is for us to see colours and so on.

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However, there was another aspect to this way of experiencing the world, namely, that man in those days had no clearconsciousness of self.

The clear self-consciousness which permeates the normal human being today did not yet exist. Though he did not express it,man did not, as it were, distinguish himself from the external world. He felt as my hand would feel were it conscious: that it is notindependent, but an integral part of the organism. Men felt themselves to be members of the whole universe. They had no definiteconsciousness of their own being as separate from the surrounding world. Suppose a man of that time was walking along a river

bank. If someone today walks along a river bank downstream he, as modern, clever man, feels his legs stepping out in thatdirection and this has nothing whatever to do with the river. In general, the man of old did not feel like that. When he walked alonga river downstream, as was natural for him to do, he was conscious of the spiritual beings connected with the water of the river

flowing in that direction. Just as a swimmer today feels himself carried along by the water that is, by something material sothe man of old felt himself guided downstream by something spiritual. That is only an example chosen at random. In all hisexperiences of the external world man felt himself to be supported and impelled by gods of wind, river and all surrounding nature.He felt the elements of nature within himself. Today this feeling of being at one with nature is lost. In its place man has acquired astrong feeling of his independence, of his individual I.

The yogi rose above the level of the masses whose experiences were as described. He carried out certain exercises of which Ishall speak. These exercises were good and suitable for the nature of humanity in ancient times; they have later fallen intodecadence and have mainly been used for harmful ends. I have often referred to these yoga breathing exercises. Therefore, what Iam now describing was a method for the attainment of higher worlds that was suitable and right only for man in a very ancientoriental civilization.In ordinary life breathing functions unconsciously. We breathe in, hold the breath and exhale; this becomes aconscious process only if in some way we are not in good health. In ordinary life, breathing remains for the most part an

unconscious process. But during certain periods of his exercises the yogi transformed his breathing into a conscious innerexperience. This he did by timing the inhaling, holding and exhaling of the breath differently, and so altered the whole rhythm ofthe normal breathing. In this way the breathing process became conscious. The yogi projected himself, as it were, into his

breathing. He felt himself one with the indrawn breath, with the spreading of the breath through the body and with the exhaled Ibreath. In this way he was drawn with his whole soul into the breath.

In order to understand what is achieved by this let us look at what happens when we breathe. When we inhale, the breath isdriven into the organism, up through the spinal cord, into the brain; from there it spreads out into the system of nerves and senses.Therefore, when we think, we by no means depend only on our senses and nervous system as instruments of thinking. The

breathing process pulsates and beats through them with its perpetual rhythm. We never think without this whole process takingplace, of which we are normally unaware because the breathing remains unconscious.

The yogi, by altering the rhythm of the breath, drew it consciously into the process of nerves and senses. Because the altered

breathing caused the air to billow and whirl through the brain and nerve-sense system, the result was an inner experience of theirfunction when combined with the air. As a consequence, he also experienced a soul element in his thinking within the rhythm of

breathing.

Something extraordinary happened to the yogi by this means. The process of thinking, which he had hardly felt as a functionof the head at all, streamed into his whole organism. He did not merely think, but felt the thought as a little live creature that ranthrough the whole process of breathing, which he had artificially induced.

Thus, the yogi did not feel thinking to be merely a shadowy, logical process; he rather felt how thinking followed the breath.When he inhaled he felt he was taking something from the external world into himself which he then let flow with the breath intohis thinking. With his thoughts he took hold, as it were, of that which he had inhaled with the air and spread through his wholeorganism. The result of this was that there arose in the yogi an enhanced feeling of his own I, an intensified feeling of self. He felt

his thinking pervading his whole being. This made him aware of his thinking particularly in the rhythmic air-current within him.

This had a very definite effect upon the yogi. When man today is aware of himself within the physical world he quite rightlydoes not pay attention to his thinking as such. His senses inform him about the external world and when he looks back uponhimself he perceives at least a portion of his own being. This gives him a picture of how man is placed within the world between

birth and death. The yogi radiated the ensouled thoughts into the breath. This soul-filled thinking pulsated through his inner beingwith the result that there arose in him an enhanced feeling of selfhood. But in this experience he did not feel himself living between

birth and death in the physical world surrounded by nature. He felt carried back in memory to the time before he descended to theearth, that is, to the time when he was a spiritual-soul being in a spiritual-soul world.

In normal consciousness today man can reawaken experiences of the past. He may, for instance, have a vivid recollection ofsome event that took place ten years ago in a wood perhaps; he distinctly remembers all the details, the whole mood and setting. In

just the same way did the yogi, through his changed breathing, feel himself drawn back into the wood and atmosphere, into thewhole setting of a spiritual-soul world in which he had been as a spiritual-soul being. There he felt quite differently about the worldthan he felt in his normal consciousness. The result of the changed relationship of the now awakened selfhood to the wholeuniverse gave rise to the wonderful poems of which theBhagavadgita is a beautiful example.

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In theBhagavadgita we read wonderful descriptions of how the human soul, immersed in the phenomena of nature, partakesof every secret, steeping itself in the mysteries of the world. These descriptions are all reproductions of memories, called up bymeans of yoga breathing, of the soul when it was as yet only soul and lived within a spiritual universe. In order to read theancient writings such as theBhagavadgita with understanding one must be conscious of what speaks through them. The soul, withenhanced feeling of selfhood, is transported into its past in the spiritual world and is relating what Krishna and other ancientinitiates had experienced there through their heightened self-consciousness.

Thus, it can be said that those sages of old rose to a higher level of consciousness than that of the masses of people. Theinitiates strictly isolated the self from the external world. This came about, not for any egotistical reason, but as a result of thechanged process of breathing in which the soul, as it were, dived down into the rhythm of the inner air current. By this method a

path into the spiritual world was sought in ancient times.

Later this path underwent modifications. In very ancient times the yogi felt how in the transformed breathing his thoughts weresubmerged in the currents of breath, running through them like little snakes. He felt himself to be part of a weaving cosmic life andthis feeling expressed itself in certain words and sayings. It was noticeable that one spoke differently when these experiences wererevealed through speech. What I have described was gradually felt less intensely within the breath; it no longer remained within the

breathing process itself. Rather were the words breathed out, and formed of themselves rhythmic speech. Thus the changedbreathing led, through the words carried by the breath, to the creation of mantras; whereas, formerly, the process and experience ofbreathing was the most essential, now these poetic sayings assumed primary importance. They passed over into tradition, into thehistorical consciousness of man and subsequently gave birth later to rhythm, metre, and so on, in poetry.

The basic laws of speech, which are to be seen, for instance, in the pentameter and hexameter as used in ancient Greece, point

back to what had once long before been an experience of the breathing process an experience which transported man from theworld in which he was living between birth and death into a world of spirit and soul.

This is not the path modern man should seek into the spiritual world. He must rise into higher worlds, not by the detour of thebreath, but along the more inward path of thinking itself. The right path for man today is to transform, in meditation andconcentration, the otherwise merely logical connection between thoughts into something of a musical nature. Meditation today is to

begin always with an experience in thought, an experience of the transition from one thought into another, from one mental pictureinto another. While the yogi in ancient India passed from one kind of breathing into another, man today must attempt to projecthimself into a living experience of, for example, the colour red. Thus he remains within the realm of thought. He must then do thesame with blue and experience the rhythm: red-blue, blue-red, red-blue and so on, which is a thought-rhythm. But it is not a rhythmthat can be found in a logical thought sequence; it is a thinking that is much more alive.

If one perseveres for a sufficiently long time with exercises of this kind (the yogi, too, was obliged to carry out his exercisesfor a very long time) and really experience the inner qualitative change, and the swing and rhythm of red-blue, blue-red, light-dark,dark-light in short, if indications such as those given in my bookKnowledge of the Higher Worlds are followed the exactopposite is achieved to that of the yogi in ancient times. He blended thinking with breathing, thus turning the two processes intoone. The aim today is to dissolve the last connection between the two, which, in any case, is unconscious. The process by which, inordinary consciousness, we think and form concepts of our natural environment is not only connected with nerves and senses; astream of breath is always flowing through this process. While we think, the breath continually pulsates through the nerves andsenses.

All modern exercises in meditation aim at entirely separating thinking from breathing. Thinking is not on this account torn outof rhythm, because as thinking becomes separated from the inner rhythm of breath it is gradually linked to an external rhythm. Bysetting thinking free from the breath we let it stream, as it were, into the rhythm of the external world. The yogi turned back into hisown rhythm. Today man must return to the rhythm of the external world. InKnowledge of the Higher Worlds you will find that one

of the first exercises shows how to contemplate the germination and growth of a plant. This meditation works towards separatingthinking from the breath and letting it dive down into the growth forces of the plant itself.

Thinking must pass over into the rhythm pervading the external world. The moment thinking really becomes free of the bodilyfunctions, the moment it has torn itself away from breathing and gradually united with the external rhythm, it dives down not intothe physical qualities of things but into the spiritual within individual objects.

We look at a plant: it is green and its blossoms are red. This our eyes tell us and our intellect confirms the fact. This is thereaction of ordinary consciousness. We develop a different consciousness when we separate thinking from breathing and connect itwith what exists outside. This thinking yearns to vibrate with the plant as it grows and unfolds its blossoms. This thinking followshow in a rose, for example, green passes over into red. Thinking vibrates within the spiritual, which lies at the foundation of eachsingle object in the external world.

This is how modern meditation differs from the yoga exercises practised in very ancient times. There are naturally manyintermediate stages; I chose these two extremes. The yogi sank down, as it were, into his own breathing process; he sank into hisown self. This caused him to experience this self as if in memory; he remembered what he had been before he came down to earth.We, on the other hand, pass out of the physical body with our soul and unite ourselves with what lives spiritually in the rhythms of

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the external world. In this way we behold directly what we were before we descended to the earth. This is the consequence ofgradually entering into the external rhythm.

To illustrate the difference I will draw it schematically. Let this be the yogi (first drawing, white lines). He developed a strongfeeling of his I (red). This enabled him to remember what he was, within a soul-spiritual environment, before he descended toearth (blue). He went back on the stream of memory.

Let this be the modern man who has attained supersensible knowledge (second drawing, white lines). He develops a processthat enables him to go out of his body (blue) and live within the rhythm of the external world and behold directly, as an external

object (red), what he was before he descended to earth.

Thus, knowledge of one's existence before birth was in ancient times in the nature of memory, whereas at the present time a

rightly developed cognition of pre-birth existence is a direct beholding of what one was (red). That is the difference.

That was one of the methods by which the yogi attained insight into the spiritual world. Another was by adopting certainpositions of the body. One exercise was to hold the arms outstretched for a long time; or he took up a certain position by crossinghis legs and sitting on them and so on. What was attained by this?

He attained the possibility to perceive what can be perceived with those senses, which today are not even recognized as senses.We know that man has not just five senses but twelve. I have often spoken about this for example, apart from the usual five hehas a sense of balance through which he perceives the equilibrium of his body so that he does not fall to the right or left, or

backwards or forwards. Just as we perceive colours, so we must perceive our own balance or we should slip and fall in alldirections. Someone who is intoxicated or feels faint loses his balance just because he fails to perceive his equilibrium. In order tomake himself conscious of this sense of balance, the yogi adopted certain bodily postures. This developed in him a strong, subtlesense of direction. We speak of above and below, of right and left, of back and front as if they were all the same. The yogi becameintensely conscious of their differences by keeping his body for lengthy periods in certain postures. In this way he developed asubtle awareness of the other senses of which I have spoken. When these are experienced they are found to have a much morespiritual character than the five familiar senses. Through them the yogi attained perception of the directions of space.

This faculty must be regained but along a different path. For reasons, which I will explain more fully on another occasion, theold yoga exercises are unsuitable today. However, we can attain an experience of the qualitative differences within the directions ofspace by undertaking such exercises in thinking as I have described. They separate thinking from breathing and bring it into therhythm of the external world. We then experience, for instance, what it signifies that the spine of animals lies in the horizontaldirection whereas in man it is vertical. It is well known that the magnetic needle always points north-south. Therefore, on earth thenorth-south direction means something special, for the manifestation of magnetic forces, since the magnetic needle, which isotherwise neutral, reacts to it. Thus, the north-south direction has a special quality. By penetrating into the external rhythm with ourthoughts we learn to recognize what it means when the spine is horizontal or vertical. We remain in the realm of thought and learn

through thinking itself. The Indian yogi learned it, too, but by crossing his legs and sitting on them and by keeping his arms raisedfor a long time. Thus, he learned from the bodily postures the significance of the invisible directions of space. Space is nothaphazard, but organized in such a way that the various directions have different values.

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The exercises that have been described, which lead man into higher worlds are mainly exercises in the realm of thought. Thereare exercises of an opposite kind; among them are the various methods employed in asceticism. One such method is thesuppression of the normal function of the physical body through inflicting pain and all kinds of deprivations. It is practicallyimpossible for modern man to form an adequate idea of the extremes to which such exercises were carried by ascetics in formertimes. Modern man prefers to be as firmly as possible within his physical body. But whenever the ascetic suppressed some functionof the body by means of physical pain, his spirit-soul nature drew out of his organism.

In normal life the soul and spirit of man are connected with the physical organism between birth and death in accordance withthe human organization as a whole. When the bodily functions are suppressed, through ascetic practices, something occurs which issimilar to when someone today sustains an injury. When one knows how modern man generally reacts to some slight hurt, then it is

clear that there is a great difference between that and what the ascetic endured just to make his soul organism free. The asceticexperienced the spiritual world with the soul organism that had been driven out through such practices. Nearly all of the earliergreat religious revelations originated in this way.

Those concerned with modern religious life make light of these things. They declare the great religious revelations to be poeticfiction, maintaining that whatever insight man acquires should not cause pain. The seekers of religious truths in former times didnot take this view. They were quite clear about the fact that when man is completely bound up with his organism, as of necessity hemust be for his earthly tasks the aim was not to portray unworldliness as an ideal then he cannot have spiritual experiences.The ascetics in former times sought spiritual experiences by suppressing bodily life and even inflicting pain. Whenever pain droveout spirit and soul from a bodily member, that part which was driven out experienced the spiritual world. The great religions havenot been attained without pain but rather through great suffering.

These fruits of human strivings are today accepted through faith. Faith and knowledge are neatly separated. Knowledge of theexternal world, in the form of natural science, is acquired through the head. As the head has a thick skull, this causes no pain,especially as this knowledge consists of extremely abstract concepts. On the other hand, those concepts handed down as venerabletraditions are accepted simply through faith. It must be said though, that basically, knowledge and faith have in common the factthat today one is willing to accept only knowledge that can be acquired painlessly, and faith does not hurt any more than science,though its knowledge was originally attained through great pain and suffering.

Despite all that has been said, the way of the ascetic cannot be the way for present-day man. In our time it is perfectly possible,through inner self-discipline and training of the will, to take in hand one's development which is otherwise left to education and theexperiences of life. One's personality can be strengthened by training the will. One can, for example, say to oneself: Within fiveyears I shall acquire a new habit and during that time I shall concentrate my whole will-power upon achieving it. When the will istrained in this way, for the sake of inner perfection, then one loosens, without ascetic practices, the soul-spiritual from the bodilynature. The first discovery, when such training of the will is undertaken for the sake of self-improvement, is that a continuous effort

is needed. Every day something must be achieved inwardly. Often it is only a slight accomplishment but it must be pursued withiron determination and unwavering will. It is often the case that if, for example, such an exercise as concentration each morningupon a certain thought is recommended, people will embark upon it with burning enthusiasm. But it does not last, the will slackensand the exercise becomes mechanical because the strong energy, which is increasingly required, is not forthcoming. The firstresistance to be overcome is one's own lethargy; then comes the other resistance, which is of an objective nature, and it is as if onehad to fight one's way through a dense thicket. After that, one reaches the experience that hurts because thinking, which hasgradually become strong and alive, has found its way into the rhythm of the external world and begins to perceive the direction ofspace in fact, perceive what is alive. One discovers that higher knowledge is attainable only through pain.

I can well picture people today who want to embark upon the path leading to higher worlds. They make a start and the firstdelicate spiritual cognition appears. This causes pain so they say they are ill; when something causes pain one must be ill.However, the attainment of higher knowledge will often be accompanied by great pain, yet one is not ill. No doubt it is more

comfortable to seek a cure than continue the path. Attempts must be made to overcome this pain of the soul, which becomes evergreater as one advances. While it is easier to have something prescribed than continue the exercises, no higher knowledge isattained that way. Provided the body is robust and fit for dealing with external life, as is normally the case at the present time, thisimmersion in pain and suffering becomes purely an inner soul path in which the body does not participate. When man allowsknowledge to approach him in this way, then the pain he endures signifies that he is attaining those regions of spiritual life out ofwhich the great religions were born. The great religious truths which fill our soul with awe, conveying as they do those loftyregions in which, for example, our immortality is rooted, cannot be reached without painful inner experiences. The great truths doindeed demand an inner courage of soul which enables it to say to itself: If you could experience these things you must be preparedto attain knowledge of them through deprivation and suffering. I am not saying this to discourage anyone, but because it is thetruth. It may be discouraging for many, but what good would it do to tell people that they can enter higher worlds in perfectcomfort when it is not the case. The attainment of higher worlds demands the overcoming of suffering.

I have tried today, my dear friends, to describe to you how it is possible to advance to man's true being. The human soul and

spirit lie deeply hidden within him and must be attained. Even if someone does not set out himself on that conquest he must knowabout what lies hidden within him. He must know about such things as those described yesterday [Lecture of26 May, 1922 in The HumanSoul in Relation to World Evolution] and how they run their course. This knowledge is a demand of our age. These things can bediscovered only along such paths as those I have indicated again today by describing how they were trodden in former times andhow they must be trodden now.

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Meditation and Concentration

Three Kinds of Clairvoyance

Schmidt Number: S-3045

By Rudolf Steiner

GA 161

On-line since: 23rd January, 2013

This lecture is the sixth of thirteen lectures in the lecture series entitled, Ways of Spiritual Cognition and the Rejuvenation of the Artistic Lifestyle, published inGerman as, Wege der Geistigen Erkenntnis und der Erneurung Kuenstlerischer Weltanschauung.

This lecture was translated from shorthand reports, unrevised by the lecturer, by an unknown translator. And, it was transcribed by an unknown typist! It ispresented here with the kind permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland. From GA 161.

The Path of Spiritual Knowledge

Meditation and Concentration

Three Kinds of Clairvoyance

Dornach 27th March, 1915

As the last time we were able to meet together here, we put forward certain considerations connected mainly with specialexperiences, (footnote The Problem of Death in Connection with the Artistic grasp of Life February 57, 1915) we will turn ourattention today to a more general outlook of spiritual science. I should like to start from something which you have all knownfundamentally for a long time: that all spiritual-scientific observation is won by acquiring knowledge, not with the help of theinstrument of the Physical body, but by liberating the soul and spirit from the physical instrument, so that, as soul and spirit they

enter into direct union with the spiritual worlds.

Direct union with the spiritual worlds is broken in ordinary life and knowledge, because we must always employ theinstrument of our physical body in the waking state whenever we wish to enter into relationship with the world, and in the sleepingstate all our will is concentrated on our connection with the body, so that desire for the body spreads like a cloud in our soul andspirit during sleep, and hinders us in this state, and in ordinary life - from experiencing anything in the spiritual worlds, in whichwe indeed are.

Now it is essential that anyone occupying himself with spiritual science should recognise exactly the value of spiritualscientific activity as such, and its relation to the personal strivings, which through meditation and concentration of thought, feeling,and will-impulses, or in any other manner, lead man into the spiritual world. We must be clear about this above all for it is a deepand significant truth: that the unity which surrounds us in the ordinary world, does not exist in the same way in the spiritual world.

I have already pointed out that this unity is founded within the whole structure of the psycho-spiritual human being. How mostpeople strive again and again after this, asking: What is the unity of the world? How they only find satisfaction when they can leadeverything back to one Principle!

As a matter of fact, the external world meets us most eminently as a whole, as a unified formation; and those people who to acertain degree are dominated by the craze for unity, arrive at all possible abstractions in thought, while seeking the unitary

principle of the world.

Such personalities are typical, they are like an old gentleman who met me one evening, and told me with the intense pleasureof a discoverer: At last he had found a unitary principle by which he could explain all the phenomena in the world. He was of theopinion, in his pleasure, that this unitary principle could be uttered in ten to twelve words, and he was so joyful over the matter,that he said: Now I can explain the whole cosmos. He would explain heaven, earth, and hell out of this unitary principle.

A little while ago, I was forced to recall this episode which occurred many years ago, when someone wrote to me urgentlyrequesting a talk with me, because he had made the acquaintance of a man who was able to bring forward another such completelysatisfactory view of the world in five minutes. I need hardly mention that a really earnest spiritual movement can have no time forsuch talks. But people who are thus possessed by this Unity-Demon, which is at the same time a kind of Easy-going Demon, areespecially numerous in our day.

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Because of this, we must put first, and take in the deepest sense, what is expressed in my bookKnowledge of the HigherWorlds: that as soon as we cross the threshold of the spiritual world, we are really led into a threefold experience. I haveespecially emphasised in this book, that the soul is as if split into three, and when the soul crosses the threshold of the spiritualworld, nothing is left which makes it possible for one to believe in this Unity-demon, this comfort-loving Unity-demon.

Indeed, we feel, as soon as the threshold of the spiritual world is crossed, that we really enter with the whole of our being intothree worlds. And we must not lose sight of the fact that after crossing this threshold, we have distinctly the experience of threeworlds. In reality, we already belong to three worlds through the whole formation of our physical body. I might say that the co-

operation of three worlds, which are relatively strongly independent of one another, is necessary for this wonderful structure manwhich we encounter in the physical world. And if we consider the formation of our head, the formation of everything that belongsto the head, we must, even if we are merely speaking of the physical head, be clear that the formative forces of our head, and alsothe beings active and creative in these formative forces, belong to suite another world from that of the formative forces of our

breast, for instance, and the formative forces of everything belonging to our heart, inclusive of the arms and hands. It is to a certainextent as if the formative forces of these material parts of man belonged to quite another world than the formative forces of hishead. And again, the organs of the lower body and the legs belong to quite another world than the two other members we havenamed.

Now you can ask: What significance has all this? It has a great significance, for fundamentally speaking, in our present cycleof humanity, one only gets the pure, true and real results from spiritual science if the soul and spirit-nature is raised out of the head.So that this (c.f. diagram) is to some extent the clairvoyant aspect of a man, which, seen from the spiritual-scientific point of viewhas to be so regarded, that the spirit-soul part is here seen to be especially lifted out, and is at the same time, joined to the forces ofthe cosmos, as if by a spiritual electric attraction.

Thus all the parts a man the ego and astral body down to the etheric body, must be drawn out. This withdrawal is of courseconnected with the evolution of the so-called Lotus-flowers. But the forces which set the lotus-flowers in motion lie in this part ofthe spirit-soul nature of man which is, or can be withdrawn.

The clairvoyance thus attained is a HEAD-CLAIRVOYANCE, and this can be a result of spiritual science in our time, for therevelations of head-clairvoyance are of service to humanity. Of a quite other kind is the clairvoyant results attained by raising thespirit-soul nature of the organ of the heart, arms and hands. This raising or up-lifting of these organs distinguishes itself inwardlyand significantly from what takes place through what I might call HEAD-CLAIRVOYANCE. The up-lifting of the materialheart-organ is brought about more through meditation which is related to the life of will; it is effected through humble surrender tothe march of events. Whereas head-clairvoyance is effected more through thoughts, but also through ideas having an imaginativecharacter, tinged with feeling.

It is generally the case that with reference to these two kinds of clairvoyance, the heart or breast-clairvoyance developsalong with head-clairvoyance in the degree to which it should. Breast-clairvoyance leads more to the development of the will, to a

connection with the actions of spiritual beings of the lower hierarchies, such as those incorporated in the various kingdoms of theearth; whereas head-clairvoyance leads more to vision, knowledge, perception in those higher worlds, in the sense that knowledgeof these higher powers is necessary for the satisfaction of certain needs of knowledge, which must appear ever more and more in

present humanity. The more we approach the future of our evolution on earth, the less will humanity be able to live, without theirsoul-life drying up, if they do not receive into their cognition the results of this clairvoyance.

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(Perhaps Etheric Head was meant?)
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Again a third kind of clairvoyance is that which arises, when what we call the spiritual-psychic part of man is loosened, andthus raised out of the rest of his being. Here in the lower part of the diagram I indicate the outward thrusting tendency. Even if theexpression is not altogether aesthetic, yet I may perhaps venture to call this kind of clairvoyance, Stomach clairvoyance.

Whereas head-clairvoyance, for our cycle of humanity, leads in the most eminent sense to the attainment of resultsindependent of man, stomach-clairvoyance leads to results connected especially with What transpires in man himself. That whichtakes place in man himself must naturally also be an object of investigation. In the sphere of physical investigation, there are alsomen who occupy themselves with anatomy and physiology. We should not think that this stomach-clairvoyance has not a certainvalue, in the highest sense of the word. It naturally has a value. But one must realize, that stomach clairvoyance can inform man

but little of that which occurs impersonally in cosmic events; but that it informs him essentially about what man is, of what goes on

I might say inside his skin.

With reference to what is moral and ethical, head-clairvoyance is relatively the most important. Hence I must ever speak of itsopposites. Between the two stands breast-clairvoyance; between that of the head and of the stomach. As regards what is ethical,these two can be inwardly quite well distinguished. People who strive to come to a perception of higher worlds, in an impersonalway, as indicated in my bookKnowledge of the Higher Worlds, those who are not daunted at traveling this uncomfortable butsecure path, will develop something impersonal in themselves, with reference to their clairvoyance, above all they will develop ahigh interest for objective world-knowledge, for what occurs in the world of cosmic and of historical events.

This head-clairvoyance speaks preferably of man himself, especially in that it draws attention to how he is placed within theprocess of cosmic and historical development, it notes what man himself is in the entirety of this cosmic process: What arises ashead-clairvoyance will always have what I must call a universal scientific character; it will contain information which has

importance I beg you to note this word for all mankind, not merely for one man or another.

Stomach-clairvoyance will be permeated especially with all kinds of human egoism, and will very easily mislead theclairvoyant in question to occupy himself much with the occult bases of his own destiny, of his personal worth and character. Thisresults as a self-understood tendency from what is called stomach-clairvoyance.

Now a clear distinction has to be made between these two kinds of clairvoyance with reference to their intuitive nature.Whoever strives in the sense of what is given in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds to become free in soul and spirit from the

perceptive-apparatus of the head, who can thus to a certain extent loosen the spiritual-psychic part of the head from the physicalinstrument, and is able to place himself with this spiritual-psychic head-part in the spiritual world, will have extreme difficulty ingetting beyond shadowy-clairvoyant experiences. Such a passing out from the head is at first bound up with experiences whichreally have not even the colour, the substantiality of vivid memories, therefore they seem inwardly to be very colourless, and onlyafter one goes ever further and further in the efforts which lie on this path, does the shadowy character of these experiencesdisappear, and their colourless, shadowy experiences become tinged with colour and sound, for the process carried out is this, thatwe first move out of our head, and are then really in a world which we have difficulty in perceiving.

For while we gradually and slowly acquire the possibility of living outside our head, these inner forces of life grow stronger,and the consequence is, that the forces streaming in from the whole orbit of the cosmos are drawn together. Picture to yourselvesthat forces must be drawn together from out the whole orbit of the cosmos and when we draw together all the forces from theentirety of the orbit of the cosmos, we get that tinging with colour and sound I have mentioned. Think how we might picture this.You have here a surface (a), highly coloured, a spherical surface. Now think of this spherical surface as extended over a largersurface (b.c.). The colour will then become paler and if we extend it still further, the colour will become ever paler and paler, ifwe contract this surface, then supposing it to be a pale yellow here (at the extremity,) it would become a strong, saturated yellow,

because the colour is then more concentrated.

Now head-clairvoyance confronts the whole cosmos. And, spread out over the whole cosmos is that which man mast firstconcentrate and unite by means of his life-forces into what he himself is clairvoyantly, as being; so that only by a laborious processof inner development he gradually gives a tinge of colour to the shadowy nature of his experiences. And when for a long, long timehe has taken the trouble to experience that general experience which only gives him the sensation of being outside the body; andwhen he has been aware of this general experience for a long time, and has gained the feeling more and more of a more intense,though not yet a coloured and resounding inner experience, then the regions of the cosmos gradually draw near to this head-clairvoyance.

This is a matter for slow, selfless development. It must be especially stated, that a STUDY OF SPIRITUAL SCIENCE isindispensable to this development. It must be emphasised again and again, that when it is given out, spiritual science, can indeed beunderstood. It cannot be emphasised often enough that one need not be a clairvoyant to understand spiritual science. One must ofcourse be clairvoyant to arrive at results, but once they are there, one need not be clairvoyant. UNDERSTANDING of spiritualscience must precede personal vision. Here one can say: the opposite path is correct to that which is correct in the physical-sensibleworld. In the physical-sensible world, we first have correct perceptions, then we pass over to a thoughtful consideration of these,and we then form our scientific judgments. This must be reversed in the ascent to the spiritual world. There, we must first developideas we must make every effort to live into spiritual science objectively; otherwise we can never be certain that anyobservation we make in the spiritual world is interpreted by us in the right sense. Hence knowledge must precede vision, and this iswhat is so infinitely disagreeable to many; the fact that they have to study spiritual science. Many consider this an

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incomprehensible demand. For it is relatively easy to have perceptions; but to interpret them aright for this it is necessary thatone enters rightly, objectively, selflessly into spiritual science.

Now just the opposite is the case in what we have called: stomach-clairvoyance. In this, we start from that spiritual-psychicprinciple which first worked on the bodily, physical nature; for spirit lies at the basis of everything that exists in the world. If wehave eaten let us say a piece of cabbage we are mostly vegetarians here and it is then worked over in our organism, one hasthen not merely to do with the physical-chemical process, carried out by the stomach with its forces and juices, but behind all thesethe etheric body, astral body, and ego are active. All these processes have spiritual processes behind them. It would be quite false to

believe that any material processes exist which have not a spiritual process behind them. Picture this to yourselves: Suppose you liedown after a more or less opulent mid-day meal, and become clairvoyant, but clairvoyant in such a way, that the spiritual-psychic

part of the digestive organs rise up especially out of the organs of digestion. Then, while your stomach and the other organs digestcorrectly, you live with your spiritual-psychic nature in the spiritual-psychic realm, and whereas you usually remain unconscious ofthe spiritual process carried out in your etheric body, astral body, and ego, this enters your consciousness if you are clairvoyant andthen, because you experience yourself in this spiritual-psychic realm, you can see all this working, constructing, and creating of thespiritual-psychic force during digestion; you see it as it projects itself out into the world, and it appears to you reflected in picturesin the external ether. Then you get the most beautiful clairvoyant forms, because you have not now to draw the colours so much outof the cosmos, but because you have the whole process concentrated within your own skin. So that something wonderful takes

place around you in the most glorious most magnificent sequences of colour and form, which need be nothing else than the processof digestion or some other bodily process transpiring in the spiritual organs of man.

This kind of clairvoyance is distinguished from the other, especially through the fact, that whereas the other clairvoyance startsfrom shadow forms, and only laboriously acquires a tinge of colour and tone, this starts off with the most magnificent grandeur

possible. One can equally well express it as a law: if clairvoyance begins with magnificent forms, especially with coloured forms,then it is a clairvoyance that relates to processes which transpire within the personality. I emphasise this, because it can be of valuefor the investigation of the spiritual world. Just as anatomy and physiology investigate the digestive and other processes, soclairvoyance is also of great value to investigate in this way the spiritual nature standing behind human processes. But it would be

bad, if one gave oneself up to any deceptions, if one cherished illusions, and did not interpret things in a right manner.

If one believed that such a clairvoyance, appearing without the necessary preparation, could give more than what takes place inman and is projected into the objective world, if one believed that through such a clairvoyance, one could approach the creativeworld-powers, the dominant spiritual forces, one would greatly err. Just as little as the riddles of the world can be solved by theinvestigation of human digestion, just so little can the riddles and secrets of the cosmos be approached by developing this stomachclairvoyance.

Thus you see how much belongs necessarily to our gaining a really right orientation to the world we enter through the freeing

of our spiritual-psychic powers. No one need have any aversion to stomach-clairvoyance through the observations which have beenmade. But each one should be quite clear how such clairvoyance is related to what real spiritual clairvoyance can become, and howone should hold oneself far removed from any over valuation of what is gained through a clairvoyance that can only have a

personal content. Only when in things which have a personal content, we look away from what is personal, and observe them in theway the anatomist or physiologist considers, the objects he studies with the help of the microscope, or learns through hisinvestigations, only then have these things a special value. In any case no religious feelings should be connected with thesethings even in the remotest degree; they can only be connected with the results of head-clairvoyance. Man becomes ever morecorrect in regard to the other clairvoyance, the more he fulfills the demand, that it should be dealt with in every case only in anobjectively scientific sense, as are the results of anatomy or physiology.

Not everything which is found along the path of clairvoyance, is I venture to use this radical expression worthy ofveneration; but all is worthy of being learnt. That is what we must keep in mind. I have already said: that for our cycle, it is

especially important to incorporate the results of head-clairvoyance with the general spiritual civilisation of man; this is reallyimportant. Today, I will mention one side of the matter with reference to this. We are living at a time, in which humanity mustprepare gradually to transcend mere philosophical Idealism, and pass on to a true consciousness of the spiritual worlds, of thegeneral spiritual world in which we live just as we live in the physical world.

Now let us start from an experience of head-clairvoyance, which we shall easily understand if we have entered but a little intothe things said in the Munich Cycle (footnote, Secrets of the Threshold) held recently and which were dealt with further in my

book The Threshold of the Spiritual World. I especially mentioned there, that our thinking undergoes a transformation themoment we make ourselves free; especially when with reference to our thoughts we free ourselves from the physical instrument ofthe head. I expressed it grotesquely at the time by saying, if we became free in this manner, our thoughts have no longer thecharacter which they have in ordinary, everyday life. In ordinary, everyday life we must have the feeling unless we aredemented that we are Master of our thought-world, that if we have two thoughts, it is WE OURSELVES who unite or separatethese thoughts.

When we remember something, we are conscious: we pass over with our inner life from a present experience to a pastexperience. We always have the feeling; it is we ourselves who stand behind the web and woof of our thoughts. ... This ceases themoment we make the spiritual psychic principle free in our head, when we develop a thinking freed from the body. On thatoccasion, I put it as follows, I said: It is as if we put our head in an ant's nest, and a peculiar whirling then arises. This is how

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thoughts begin to play one into the other. If in ordinary life, we have two thoughts, and unite them, as for example, the thoughtsrose and red, we know that we are master in our own thought-world, able to unite the two ideas: the rose is red. This is not thecase when we are outside our bodies. Life enters our thoughts, the thought's own life. Each thought becomes a being. One thoughtruns towards another, the other runs away from it.

So the thought-world acquires a life of its own. Why does it acquire a life of its own? What we experience in the ordinarythoughts of the everyday are only images, shadows of thoughts. You can read this in my book Theosophy. As soon as we develop

body free thoughts, each thought becomes like a husk, and an elemental being slips into the husk. The thought is no longer in ourpower; we put it out, like a feeler, it goes forth into the world, and an elemental being slips into it ... Our thoughts are filled in thisway with elemental beings ... and these whirl and struggle in us. So that we can say: If we stretch the spiritual-psychic part of our

head into the spiritual world, (it is outside us only, because we are situated within the physical head), if we thus stretch it into thespiritual world, we no longer experience such thoughts as we experience in the physical world, but we experience the LIFE OFBEINGS. We plunge our head just as I have said into an ant's nest We experience the life of beings.

This is fundamentally the case right up to the highest hierarchies, and if we wish to experience angel, archangel, or evenarchai, it must be the same, we must live in our thoughts in the way described and in the beings in them. We send our thoughts out,and a being slips in, and is active in them. If we perceive the beings of Venus, or Saturn, it is as I have said, we let our thoughts slipour, and the Venus, and Saturn beings slip in. We ought not to be the least afraid of having thoughts of the Hierarchies in us, buttwist accustom ourselves to live with our heads in the higher Hierarchies. We must say to ourselves: Our thinking ceases, and ourhead becomes the stage for the activities of the higher hierarchies.

Now, in the philosophy of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel thought has been developed up to the purest thought-clarity. In this

philosophy is really contained that to which thought could rise at the beginning of the 19th Century. The task of raising thought tothis height was then fulfilled. The next task is however that man should go beyond this, and really enter into this whirling, weavinglife of thought. We are living at a time when man is called to do this: to perceive the higher Hierarchies. We have to be taken up bythe world of the higher Hierarchies, and we must strip off the fear of thus living and weaving in the higher Hierarchies.

The life of the 19th Century was quite filled by this fear, this horror of life in the higher Hierarchies. Human beings carried thisso far, they did not know it, but fundamentally they carried it so far, that they prayed: O, my dear Ahriman, guard me lest my life inthought is claimed by the activity and life of the higher Hierarchies; otherwise, some devilish Saturn or Sun-being might enter intothem: You say: Surely no one thought like this in the 19th Century; but I can prove to you that people did think like this.

Ludwig Feuerbach, a philosopher of the 19th Century who especially combated the idea of immortality, opposed all belief in asuper-sensible world, because he held this to be the belief of phantastic, mystical dreamers, and considered it harmful for the wholeof mankind. Ludwig Feuerbach wrote the following sentences; I beg you to inscribe them particularly well in your souls;

The active man, busy with the affairs of human life, has no time to think of death, and hence, no need for immortality; if hethinks of death, he only sees in it the warning to arrange wisely his allotted span of life, not to waste precious time on unworthyobjects, but to apply it to the fulfillment of the tasks he has set himself to do.

If far from the earth in heaven, on Uranus, or Saturn, or elsewhere, man first found his fulfillment, then there would be noscience, or philosophy at all. Instead of what is generally deduced, abstract truths and beings would form the content of our spirit,instead of thoughts, cognitions and ideas, these pure spiritual entities and objects which would then inhabit our head would be ourheavenly brothers, Saturn and Uranus-beings would then be the inhabitants of our head. Instead of mathematics, logic metaphysics,we should have in us the most exact likeness of these heavenly inhabitants. These heavenly beings would insert themselvesespecially between us and the subjects of our knowledge and thought, they would obstruct our vision of every object, and bringabout an eternal, complete eclipse of the sun in our spirit.

The Sun for Feuerbach is: his thought.

Thus he has a complete picture of what would happen. He has however such an unholy horror of it, that he prays to the goodAhriman to reserve him from Saturn and Uranus dwellers becoming inhabitants of his head.

They would be nearer and more closely related to us than thoughts, ideas, and concepts, for they are not purely spiritual orabstract entities like these, but sense-like spiritual beings, beings who merely express the nature of the force of imagination. Ourwhole spirit would then be but a dream, a vision of a more beautiful future. Therefore those whom the gravity of understandinghinders from floating around on the surface of the unlimited ocean of imagination will realise that in the depths of our spirit, theliving light of the Angels and of all similar heavenly beings is extinguished, as in an atmosphere, un breathable by them.

If these beings then were to enter into our thoughts, our spirit would be a dream thus writes Feuerbach. He only feels securewhen in the region of thoughts, and if the life of the Angels, or other heavenly Entities were to enter these thoughts, he would feelinsecure. This is the prayer to Ahriman: that he might guard man from a knowledge of the spiritual worlds. This happened in theforties of the nineteenth century through Ludwig Feuerbach, the enemy of any spiritual view of the world. What does this signify?It signifies nothing else than that the time is ripe for us to raise ourselves to the spiritual worlds; we have but to take in earnest what

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this man puts before us, we have then found the way into the spiritual worlds. We only need not fight it by a union with Ahriman.Thus you see: It is not the fault of heaven that spiritual science has not penetrated the culture of our time, for it has penetrated theheads of its opponents. Spiritual science wants to enter the world; The fault therefore does not lie with the heavens. The Gods aregiving wisdom to man: Spiritual science has come. As human beings under the leadership of Ahriman has resisted it, it is now upto us not to resist any longer, but to have the courage to accept spiritual science, with full, true, earnestness.

One must say this to oneself as regards this development of the 19th Century; One must say: It is as if laid down afore time inthe spiritual world, that a spiritual age would come after a materialistic age, and it is for humanity now to open its mind, and itsfeeling, to receive this spiritual world into itself. That point of view which is so eminent a materialistic view and found in LudwigFeuerbach, its characteristic, clever, and infinitely philosophically-endowed advocate, is like an attack, a revolt against what is to

enter humanity. Spiritual forces come down from above, the forces of understanding, of knowledge have really to rise up frombelow. The expression which Ludwig Feuerbach discovered for himself is a most characteristic one, that: the solar eclipse of thesoul would have to follow, if thoughts ceased to be thoughts, if the beings of Uranus, Venus and Saturn, and so on, played intothem ... that is if the higher Hierarchies played into them. A solar-eclipse of the spirit would then take place; these people have anunholy fear of this. This solar eclipse of the spirit is not brought about however by heavenly Beings, who desire especially to bringtheir light to man. The darkness has been caused by human beings, by their uniting with Ahriman; and because they have spread acloud of fear around them like an aura, they have sought to bring off their attacks against the penetration of the spiritual world. It isclear from this, that the darkening has proceeded from man, and we must acknowledge that darkness has laid hold of humanitymore and more a darkening of a free knowledge, an opposition to the light of the spirit.

This is something humanity has itself prepared, and one can see how in the course of the 19th Century, a certain love of allshort-sighted, inconsequent thoughts appeared, and a love for everything that did not have to be thought out to an end. A preference

and sympathy arose for all those things for which man will not have finally to give account. People loved ever less and less anunprejudiced, impartial, knowledge and thinking, and it is therefore not surprising when this love of the nebulous, of the unclear, ofthe unfinished in thought gradually assumed an ever more morally assailable character in public life. In so far as this character wascountenanced, sympathy for the life of thought became dull; and then passed over into a general attitude. Through this an opposingforce in chief was installed more especially against a spiritual science which strove for clarity on all sides.

Spiritual science has true sympathy and love above all for consequent, finished, thoughts, not for half-thoughts; it never holdswith what is unclear and dark, but must ever reach out to that which spreads light widely, not to that which sends an apparent lightinto narrow places only. In this connection, we have still to fight our way through many things.

These are points I wished to bring forward in our studies today, in order to show how in the course of the century, thoughtsthrough Ahriman gave occasion for the denial of the spiritual worlds, but how these worlds have themselves worked within thethoughts of him who denied them because the time had come The time has come: this saying from Goethe's Fairy Tale is here

in its right place.

It must be substantiated in the near future.

Man and Nature

Intellect in Man and Nature Bereft of the Gods

Schmidt Number: S-4169

By Rudolf Steiner

Translatod by Rick Mansell

GA 198

On-line since: 8th May, 2013

This lecture was given by Rudolf Steiner in July of 1920 at Dornach, Switzerland. It is lecture number 17 of 17 from the lecture series entitled,Healing of theSocial Organism, published in German as,Heilfaktoren Fuer den Sozialen Organismus. This lecture is also known as,Man's Inner Being and the Earth's Future.

It is presented here with the kind permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwalting, Dornach, Switzerland. From GA 198.

This e.Text edition is provided through the wonderful work of:

Various e.Text Transcribers

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Man and Nature

Intellect in Man and Nature Bereft of the Gods

Dornach, July 18th, 1920

In the lecture yesterday which dealt with Spengler's Decline of the West, I tried to bring home to you the significance ofanthroposophical Spiritual Science by emphasising the difference between merely abstract concepts and that which also arises inthe soul in the form of ideas and concepts but is, nevertheless, reality. Let us realise once for all that with his materialistic frame ofmind, and his tendency to reject spiritual conceptions and occupy himself only with ideas concerning the natural world, man ismaking himself more and more akin to the material, is descending so deeply into the material world that he is no longer speakingfalsely when he declares that it is the material substance of his body which thinks, that his brain actually does the thinking. Man is

becoming a kind of automaton in the universe, and as the result of his denial of the soul and Spirit he is losing the soul and Spirit. Isaid before that this thought is by no means popular; people will not accept it because they cherish the belief that the soul-and-spiritwill be saved to man for all eternity without any action being necessary an his part. By no means is it so. A man may give himselfup to material life to such an extent that he severs himself from the soul-and-spirit altogether, sinks into the realm of the AhrimanicPowers and passes with them into a cosmic stream which does not belong to our world. But thereby he loses his own Ego, for theEgo does not belong to the world of Ahriman and can only find its true path of development when a human being pursues thenormal course of progressive evolution; that is to say, when he unites with the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha and when herealises that in the pr sent age he must find a link with all that spiritual research can contribute to the civilised life of mankind.Since the middle of the fifteenth century man has been living through the phase of evolution in which, as he looks out into his

environment, he sees nothing but the material world. And as he looks into his own being he intellectualizes the inner experiences ofhis life of soul; these become abstract and shadowy. This has been the tendency since the middle of the fifteenth century.

The thoughts and concepts with which we build up our picture of the world to-day, drawn as they are from the dicta oforthodox science, have no connection with existence as it actually is. Neither can they lead to the heart of reality. It is merely aconvention to imagine that man's life of soul is fundamentally involved in the forming of abstract thought. These abstract thoughtsare quite remote from reality; they are nothing but a series of pictures. We may say, therefore, that externally man perceives thematerial world and inwardly a world of pictures having no essential connection with existence. This has been the lot of mankindsince the middle of the fifteenth century and we shall presently see what effect it has upon a conception of the universe to see,externally, nothing but the material world and, inwardly, to have experiences that have become a mere series of pictures. We mayask: Why is it that since the middle of the fifteenth century man's life of soul has gradually come to the point of having no morereality than a picture? The reason is that only in this way is it possible for man to attain his real freedom.

In order to understand this let us consider the world as it lies before us to-day and our own place in the world. To begin withwe will think of the world, leaving aside the human being altogether. Locking at clouds, mountains, rivers, at the minerals, plantsand animals, we ask: What is there, in reality, in the whole wide world, when we leave the human being out of the picture? In otherwords, we think of all that surrounds us in the mineral and plant kingdoms, and to a certain extent also, in the animal kingdom, butapart altogether from man. In reality, of course, this is quite impossible, but we will assume hypothetically a Nature divested of thehuman being. In this Nature that is divested of the human being, there are no Gods. That is what we must bring home to ourselves.In this Nature that is divested of the human being there are no Gods, any more than an oyster is there within an empty oyster-shellor a snail in an empty snail-shell. This whole world which we assume hypothetically, a world without the human being, issomething which the Gods have separated off from themselves in the course of evolution, just as the oyster sheds its shell. But theGods the spiritual Beings are no longer within it. The world that surrounds us, is a world of the Past. When we look at Naturewe are looking at something which represents the spiritual Past, we are looking at a residue of the Spiritual. And that is whyreligious consciousness in the real sense can never arise from contemplation of the external world alone. Let us not imagine for amoment that any element of the life of the divine-spiritual Beings who work creatively in mankind, is contained in this externalworld. Elementary beings, spiritual beings of a lower order, are there, of course; but the creative spiritual Beings who should live inour religious consciousness belong to this external world only inasmuch as represents their shell, being a residue of spiritualevolution in the Past.

Certain outstanding personalities have felt the truth of these things. In the spiritual life of the nineteenth century the man whofelt most deeply of all that the Nature surrounding man is a residue of divine-spiritual evolution was Philip Mainlnder whose

philosophy of self-destruction was born from the gravity of this knowledge and who finally put an end to his own life. It is oftenthe destiny of human beings to steep themselves in one-sided truths of this kind and the inevitable consequence is that this destinyitself becomes one-sided and difficult to bear. Philip Mainlnder, the unfortunate German Philosopher, is an outstanding exampleof this.

Having realised what has been put forward hypothetically in connection with external Nature, you may ask: Where then, are

the Gods; where are the creative spiritual Beings? If I were to make a drawing, It should have to draw the Gods within the humanbeing. The truly creative Gods have their habitat in the realm that is bounded by the human skin, within the organs if I may usethis expression. The being of man is now the bearer of the Divine-Spiritual. The Divine-Spiritual, the truly creative principles iswithin the human being. Try to picture to ourselves external Nature as it is to-day, and then a future lying thousands of years ahead

in this future there will be no clouds, no minerals, no plants, even no animals. There will be nothing left of all that now lives in

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external Nature outside the bounds of the human skin. What will continue its evolution is the soul and Spirit permeating the innerorganisation of man. This will constitute the future. The Nature by which man is now surrounded will pass away, and the Human-Divine principle now within his being will become his outer environment.

Insight into the truth that the Divine-Spiritual the only truly creative principle in our time lives inside the bounds of thehuman skin, must be taken in deepest seriousness, for it lays upon man a responsibility in regard to the whole universe. It enableshim to understand the words of Christ: Heaven and Earth the world of external Nature will pass away but my words willnot pass away. And when in the individual human being the saying of St. Paul, Not I but Christ in me, is fulfilled, then thewords of Christ will live in the individual human being. Heaven and Earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away orMy words in the individual human being, namely all that lies inside the human skin and is received into Christ, this will not pass

away.

All this is an indication of the fact that since the middle of the fifteenth century, through his abstract, intellectual concepts, manhas been making his inner being empty and void. And to what end has he been making himself empty? It is in order to receive theChrist Impulse, the Divine Spiritual, into his inner being. I said that as we look into the external world, we see only the material. Itis the divine Past. (In this residue of a divine Past there are, of course, the Elemental Spirits who have remained at lower stages ofevolution.) As we look into our inner being, we see, to begin with, nothing but abstract concepts which can only become concreteand real when we receive the impulse of the Spirit into our being through Spiritual Science and unite the impulse of the Spirit withour inner life. Man has the choice a choice which has become a matter of greater and greater seriousness since the middle of thefifteenth century either to remain at a standstill with his abstract intellectual concepts or to receive into himself the livingsubstance of Spiritual Science. Abstract intellectuality enables him to evolve a brilliant science of Nature, for intellectual conceptsare dead and by their means he can unfold an admirable understanding of dead Nature. But all this mummifies him, makes him

akin to matter, and leads him ultimately into the clutches of the Ahrimanic world. To further the Progress of earthly existence andthe whole evolution of the earth, he must receive the Spiritual into his being, and in our time the Spiritual does not draw near toman by way of atavistic instinct. It must be reached by his own efforts. The assimilation of Spiritual Science is not, therefore, theassimilation of a theory but the development of something absolutely real, an impulse that will fill the otherwise empty recesses ofthe soul with spiritual substance.

In the mass to-day, men prefer to have this emptiness inwardly and the Past outwardly manifest before them. They will onlyadmit the validity of thought when it has been proved by experiment and they resist the quickening impulses of spiritual life. Thedanger confronting the world to-day is not so much the spread of false theories but the loss of the very Mission of the Earth.

Only those who have really thought through and perceived the task of the human rate will realise how much depends upon theassimilation of Spiritual Science. These souls will never lose sight of the importance of knowledge of the being of man, but inmodern natural science and in the ancient religious tradition this knowledge simply does not exist. What is the trend of ancient

religious tradition? It directs the minds of men to unworldly abstractions and is silent an the subject of the Gods indwelling thebeing of man, indwelling his very organism. This thought would he condemned by religious tradition as out-and out heresy. If anyattempt were made to bring home to the traditional religions in Europe and America to-day the truth of the ancient saying that theBody of man is the Temple of the Gods, they would indignantly refuse to countenance such heresy.

And an the other hand we have a materialistic natural science which precisely because it is materialistic has no realunderstanding of matter. What does science really know about the functioning of the human brain, of the human heart? I have oftentold you, and I have also said in public, that one of the views held by modern science is that the human heart is a kind of pumpwhich drives the blood through the body. This dictum of academic science is universally accepted but it is simply a piece ofnonsense pure nonsense. We shall never understand the essential nature of the heart we imagine that it pumps the blood in everydirection and then lets it flow back again. The circulating blood itself is the living force. The driving force in the humanorganisation is contained in the blood, in the circulating blood, and the heart is the outward expression of this; the movement

reveals itself in the heart. To say in accordance with modern science that the heart drives the blood into the Body, is rather likesaying: At ten minutes to nine one hand of the clock pointed to nine, and the other a little past ten, and these hands, in conjunctionwith the mechanism of the clock, drove me to the speaker's desk and left a great many still outside (because in theAnthroposophical Society people have a habit of unpunctuality). In reality, it is not so at all. Obviously the clock is simply anexpression of what is happening it is the expression and nothing more. The heart is not the pumping machine by means of whichthe blood is driven through the body; the heart is inserted into and is the expression of this whole system of movement.

Natural Science, as it is to-day, never leads into the inner being of man. All that science does is to make the inner into the outerby the dissection of dead bodies. But dissection of the dead body merely takes the inner and transfers it to the outer world. Imention this in order to bring home to you that in the spiritual life of to-day there is no inclination whatever to penetrate into theinner being and inner nature of man, and it devolves upon Spiritual Science to bring that real knowledge of man's being whichscares the great majority of our contemporaries. Why are they scared? It is because religious traditions through the centuries haveutterly hood-winked mankind so far as striving for real knowledge is concerned. Just think of the way in which the traditional

creeds mystify human beings with apocryphal utterances culminating in a warning that it is not meet for man to know theSupersensible, that he may only have faith in it and feel its existence darkly. This is all done with the object of playing upon man's

pride and self-conceit and also upon his inherent laziness. He must be led to believe that it is not necessary for him to think aboutthe Divine, that his conception of the Divine must be a matter of instinct and dim feeling. But ideas that arise from this region of

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man's being are merely emanations from the organs emanations which become illusions, and these illusions are distorted into allkinds of nebulous ideas by theologians and others who know quite well how much they can count an man's inherent love of ease.

The instinct for knowledge which alone can promote the earthly evolution of man and also lead him to the path of spiritualdevelopment, has been stifled and suppressed for many long centuries. People to-day are frightened at the very thought ofdeveloping knowledgE of realities or of experiencing the spiritual world. But to the extent to which they are frightened to thatextent do they sever themselves from the Spirit and soul and make themselves akin to the material.

It is so indeed; people are scared when the gravity of these things dawns upon them, because everything to-day is regarded

from the external point of view. And here, in parenthesis, let me repeat certain remarks made a short time ago. In Stuttgart we havethe Waldorf School. The Waldorf School was founded out of the very spirit of anthroposophical Spiritual Science; that is to say,fundamental principles of education and of teaching were laid before those who were specially Chosen to work in the School.Everything is a question of the Spirit in this art of education. Yet we are finding to-day, a sensation, that people visit the school andactually think that in a couple of hours or so they can inform themselves about the essentials of education there given. But it is ofcourse only through Spiritual Science that one can gain insight into the spirit of the Waldorf School; it cannot be done by short

brief visits which only disturb the teaching.

To assimilate anthroposophical Spiritual Science, however, is much more difficult and much less sensational than visiting theSchool as an outsider. As I have often said, the education at the Waldorf School takes account of the existence of the spiritualworld, and, above all, of the pre-earthly existence of the human being. What is there to be said about this pre-earthly existence? Wemay take the year of our birth and say that this is the time when we descended to physical life on the Earth. Children born laterhave been living in the spiritual world while we were already on the Earth. These children have just descended to the physical

world, whereas we ourselves have been living through our earthly existence for a considerable length of time. And they bring withthem something of what they were experiencing in the spiritual world while we were already living in the physical world.

One can realise this quite clearly among children who are taught according to the principles of Waldorf School education. Togive this kind of education is to prepare for the application in everyday life of thoughts and ideas which are the natural outcome ofSpiritual Science. But it is precisely here that people are kept back by traditional religions, for the last thing these religions want isthe development of inner activity in human beings. Inner activity leads to a real knowledge of the being of man and brings homethe truth that the dwelling place of the Gods is inside the bounds of the human skin.

Suppose we see a planet in the sky. There is nothing of the Divine-Spiritual in anything upon that planet except in SpiritualBeings whose nature in some way resembles the nature of man. From these Beings the Divine pours its radiance upon us. Why,then, should this radiance be any the less because it shines from the bodies of men? You will begin to feel at home with thisthought if you dissociate it from earthly life and relate it to conditions as they are upon another planet. Living an the Earth as youdo, you will find that there is something oppressive, something rather coercive in the thought that you and your fellow men are

bearers of the Divine-Spiritual. But if you turn the gaze of your soul to one of the other planets it will be much easier for you tograsp the fact that the Beings who there constitute the highest kingdom of Nature are the point from which the Divine Spiritualshines down upon you.

In a certain respect the thought we have been considering to-day amplifies the thought which occupied our minds in the lastlecture, namely that something is unfolding in the inner being of man upon which the future evolution of the Earth essentiallydepends, but also that it lies within the powers of the human will to hinder the Earth's evolution, to receive the stream of Ahrimanicforces only. And to-day we added the other thought, namely, that Nature around is transient and external, for it already representsnothing more than a residue of Divine Spiritual creation. The process of Divine-Spiritual creation which dominates the present andwill dominate the future, lies inside the bounds of the human skin. Strange as it may seem, it is therefore quite true to say thateverything our eyes can see and our ears hear will all pass away with the Earth. Only that which is contained in the regions

enclosed by the human skin lives over to the Jupiter stage of evolution, bearing existence as it is an the Earth into future conditionsof planetary evolution.

When it is once realised that a knowledge of the nature of man is a burning necessity, the urge to understand the connection ofthe human being with the universe will again make itself felt. You know that man really lives between two extremes, the Lucifericand the Ahrimanic as we are accustomed to call them. We can also understand the nature of these two extremes from a moreelementary point of view. Philosophers have declared again and again that Being in itself eludes the grasp of thought. This is quitetrue, for whence comes the sense of being, the feeling of existence which there is in man? The human being exists before he entersearthly existence through conception and birth; he exists in supersensible worlds. From supersensible worlds he descends into hisearthly, material existence. Here he experiences something quite new, something he did not experience in the supersensible worlds.He is encompassed by it as soon as he has descended to earthly existence. It is the attractive force of the Earth, gravity, to haveweight, as we say, but only by way of illustration. As you know, the expression to have weight is drawn from the most palpable

phenomenon of all. The fatigue of which we become aware is similar to having weight, and what we feel in our limbs when they

move is also akin to this. But because the fact of having weight is merely the representative phenomenon, we can say: The humanbeing places himself within gravity. And in a hidden way man always enters, a little more into this element of gravity when heapproaches a thing of Earth and calls it real.

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It is exactly the reverse when the human being is passing through his life between death and rebirth. Just as here on the Earthhe is allied with gravity, in the life between death and rebirth he is allied with light, for light too is used in a representative sense.Because we receive most of our higher sense-perceptions through the eye, we speak of the light. But what lives as light in thesense-perception of the eye is the same element that sounds in the sense-perception of the ear and reveals itself in different tones,

just as the light reveals itself in different colours. And it is the same with the other senses. fundamentally speaking, the element wespeak of in a representative sense as the light, just as we speak of gravity in a representative sense, is the tincture of all the senses.We are received into the extreme pole of gravity when we descend to the Earth. We are received into the extreme pole of lightwhen we are living in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. are, in reality, always in the middle condition betweenlight and gravity; and every sense-perception, as we experience it here on Earth, is half light and half gravity. When, as the result ofsome pathological condition, or in dream, we experience without the element of our own gravity, we are experiencing only the

Spiritual, as for instance in a dream or in delirium. Psychologically, delirium is a state in which the human being has experience:,but his own gravity is no factor in them. This state of balance between gravity and light into which we are placed, is something thatis intimately connected with the riddle of the world, inasmuch as it is bound up with many of the experiences we have as beings ofsoul and Spirit in the world.

It will surely be obvious to you from what has been said that neither the traditional creeds nor the fantasies of natural sciencesucceed in finding their way from merely abstract concepts into the light nor from sense perception down into gravity. People have

become blind and deaf to these things. Man is bound to the Earth by gravity. He experiences gravity as the element which drawshim to the Earth. Think of a crystal. A crystal gives itself its form. Within the crystal there is the same force which the human beingfeels drawing him downwards the force which gives the whole Earth form. And now think of the oceans and seas. Here theEarth can give form, or rather the element of gravity gives the form. This very same force also gives the crystal its form but in thiscase it works from within. According to science, nobody knows what is behind matter or within matter. This is said to be a world-riddle. But inasmuch as we experience our own gravity, we experience what is behind the surface of matter; for in relation to thewhole Earth we are placed within the same forces which are active in small bodies (as, for instance, the crystal) and by which thevarious parts are held together. We must reach the point of being able to recognise the small in the great, the great in the small andnot to lose ourselves in speculation as to what presumably lies behind matter.

Knowledge of the Divine-Spiritual which transcends matter must be kindled by those forces in man's inner being which enablehim to understand ideas such as that of the Temple represented in ancient tradition by the human being himself.

I have said many times that the sayings of ancient atavistic wisd

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Ancient Spiritual Exercises 27