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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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Supersensible Man
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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Supersensible Man
Schmidt Number: S-5487
On-line since: 28th December, 2003
The Hague, 17th November, 1923.
(Evening).
In the lecture this afternoon the life between death and a new birth
was pictured as a journey, and we considered the sense in which the
positions of certain stars in the heavens can be taken as viewpoints
whence we may behold this journey of man through certain spiritual
regions. Before proceeding further, we will study in a little more
detail how we must picture this journey through regions indicated for
us by certain heavenly bodies.
It might seem that the super-sensible existence of man between two
earthly lives has been adequately presented in such a book as
Theosophy.
For the early stages of study, that is quite true, but you
will surely agree that knowledge must also progress and expand. As we
go further in our study we have constantly to bear in mind the oneness
of the Universe, we have to remember that there is an unbroken,
harmonious interplay between the super-sensible and the sensible
worlds. The conditions of existence in the different regions through
which man passes between death and a new birth express themselves
outwardly in the relationships of space and of time that exist between
the heavenly bodies concerned. When, therefore, we speak of these
spiritual regions in terms of heavenly bodies, we are using a correct
picture. There is a connection between the place of a visible star in
the heavens and some particular region of super-sensible life. As an
objection to this it could be said that the life which stretches
between death and a new birth cannot be conceived in terms of space or
at most only to a very limited degree. That is perfectly true, but
super-sensible existence is nevertheless reflected into space. The
world that is beyond space and beyond time, plays into space and into
time; and as man's thinking and ideation have necessarily to be in
terms of space and time, the imagery of the stars in the heavens is an
excellent one for giving a picture of the super-sensible. One thing,
however, we must not omit to make clear. We are taught in physics that
the processes we have in the physical world processes that are
subject to the force of gravity undergo a change, when we go
out into space. Physical science tells us the exact proportion in
which the force of gravity decreases. We are taught that the force of
gravity (and also the intensity of light) decreases in proportion to
the square of the distance. Science will not, however, admit that the
same is true in relation to all knowledge of material things
which has been acquired here on Earth. Science has derived this
knowledge from the Earth; and if the figures which apply to gravity
and light in the immediate environment of the Earth have to be
modified as we go out into space, it is not unreasonable to suppose
that only so long as we remain in the actual environment of the Earth
are we justified in applying the scientific knowledge of to-day. Just
as the power of gravity decreases in proportion to the square of the
distance, so does the truth of our conclusions decrease, the further
we are away from the Earth. When the astronomer or astro-physicist
tries with ordinary thinking to determine, for instance, what is
happening in some nebula out in cosmic space, it is just the same as
if one set out to calculate, according to the conditions prevailing on
the Earth, the weight of a stone in that nebula far away in the
heavens. It ought not therefore to surprise us when Spiritual Science
says: Here on Earth things present such and such an aspect, but out in
the cosmos they are in reality quite different. On Earth we see the
Moon as it appears in the sky. In reality the Moon is a cosmic colony
of many Beings I described it to you in the last lecture. It is
the same with all the stars and constellations. This fact must be
borne in mind throughout our present study.
The lectures so far have brought us to the point where, during his
life between death and a new birth, man passes into the Sun sphere. In
this region the spirit-form of the lower part of the human being is
transformed into the head of the next earthly life. It must of course
be remembered that man's path between death and new birth is such that
he passes through all these planetary spheres twice. After
death he passes, first of all, into the Moon sphere, then he goes on
into the Mercury sphere, the Venus sphere and the Sun sphere. That is
as far as we came in our description. In the Sun sphere the lower man
begins to be transformed into the upper man. The limb structures are
transformed spiritually, of course, at this stage into
the future head-system. This work of metamorphosis is a work of
infinite grandeur and sublimity. Those who study the human head merely
as a physical structure have no notion of all the manifold work that
has to be performed in the Cosmos in order to bring into being the
spirit-germ of the human head, which later on will unite with
the physical embryo. After this work has been begun in the Sun sphere,
man passes into the Mars sphere, then into the Jupiter sphere and into
the Saturn sphere. The Saturn sphere is really the last, for Uranus
and Neptune do not come into consideration here. During all this time,
work is proceeding upon the spirit-germ of the head. Man's path then
leads him still further out into the cosmic expanse, out into the wide
ocean of the cosmos, where the work of metamorphosis continues, until
the time comes for him to take the path of return. Then, going back
through the regions of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars to the region of the
Sun, he comes again at length to the sphere of the Moon. Of the path
of return we shall hear later on; at this point we will consider the
experiences through which the human being passes, after his time in
the region of the Sun is over.
Before he reaches the Sun sphere, man's experiences are for the most
part closely connected with himself. In the last lecture I told
you how man wears a physiognomy which expresses his good and bad
qualities and how this enables him to see other beings similar in
nature to himself. I told you how he gradually changes his spirit-form
and comes to resemble the beings who belong to the super-sensible
world, and how then he is able to behold the Beings of the Third
Hierarchy and the Beings also of the second Hierarchy. If we want to
describe the human being up to the stage of the Sun existence we must
fix our attention on his spirit-form or figure, and describe that. But
having entered the Sun region man undergoes an experience which I
called living his way into the Cosmic Music, the Music of the
Spheres. He hears, in cosmic harmony and cosmic melody, the meaning,
as it were, of all the interworking of the starry worlds. For this
working together of the stars, which is at the same time an expression
of the working together of the Spiritual Beings that are in these
regions this it is, ultimately, that comes to revelation in
cosmic harmony and cosmic melody. It is chiefly the life of feeling
in its spiritual metamorphosis that is quickened and stimulated
in the Sun existence. Every experience man has is like
cosmic melody and cosmic harmony vibrating through his entire being.
What we need at this stage of life between death and a new birth is
not anything of the nature of theory, nor indeed anything that lends
itself at all to expression in words. What we need is to feel
with a universal feeling that fills our being through and through
the harmonies and melodies born from the inter-workings of the
different orders of Beings in the Cosmos.
Then a further experience comes to us, an experience which reveals
unmistakably the connection between the physical world of sense and
the super-sensible, superphysical world. When we pass into the Sun
existence where the melodies and harmonies of the spheres the
whole Music of the Spheres sound to us from every direction of
the Cosmos, we are still aware of the last remnants of one of the
spiritual faculties we possessed during earthly existence, we can
still feel the last remnants of speech. At this stage of
existence between death and a new birth, our spirit-form has already
fallen away and we have come to resemble in form the cosmic sphere
itself; our form has undergone metamorphosis into what will become
head in the next incarnation. Everything about it that was still
reminiscent of the form we bore in earthly existence has by this time
fallen right away. But the faculty of soul that enabled us to speak,
to make our thought articulate in words, follows us, and being present
with us in memory brings a kind of discord into the Music of the
Spheres. Yes, discord is introduced into the Music of the Spheres, by
reason of the fact that man carries right up into Sun existence the
remnants of his faculty of speech. And this discordant element that is
brought by man into the Sun existence becomes the basis for the work
of certain higher Spirits whose task it is to help forward Earth
existence from the Cosmos. For it is when they see what comes to
expression in human speech and language as it is to-day, that they
take knowledge of how things have degenerated on the Earth and grown
corrupt. In none of its European or American forms to-day is speech a
faculty that emerges from the being of man with elemental power. It
may be that what speech once was will be able to come again on Earth
in the following way. Some of us are learning Eurythmy. What
happens when one learns Eurythmy? To-day we lightly utter words
without the faintest inkling of how the configuration of the words is
connected with the inner life and experience of the soul. To speak
words to-day is really nothing but an acquiescence in convention. It
never occurs to people that when they say a (ah) as
a sound, by itself they are expressing something which as pure
sound springs from astonishment or wonder in the soul. When we utter
the sound b, we mean that we are covering something,
enveloping it, wrapping it round. Consonantal sounds invariably
signify forms; vowel sounds express feelings, the inner
life and being of the soul. The b sound is primordially
connected with an act of covering. B is really the
house. If I say a (ah), this is an expression
of a wonder that is felt in the very depths of the soul. The
consonantal sound of t expresses a settling oneself down,
making a halt, staying there. D is the same, but has a
gentler shade of meaning, less abrupt. Suppose I utter the (German)
word Bad.* [* English bath.] If I were to go
back to the origin of the word, to the time when it was still
felt and seen, I would have to say: The water is around
me like an enveloping sheath: b. It is comfortably warm:
ah! (Now I am at the sound a.) I shall stay in it:
d. The whole experience is contained in the word itself.
To speak in such a way seems to us almost absurd, for nowadays no
actual experience is any longer connected with words. If we wanted to
experience the word B-a-d we should have to say: The
house in which I feel wonder, in which I sit. In reality speech
is filled through and through with soul; man's inner experience of
soul streams into and permeates it.
In days of yore this was felt and known. In the original, primitive
tongues, speech was born from perception of feeling and of form
feeling in the vowel, form in the consonant. To-day these elements are
no longer associated with speech; it has become a mere matter of
convention. In Eurythmy, however, the sounds b,
a, d are changed back again into the
gestures that correspond to them. In making the gestures, the
Eurythmist begins again to experience speech. One may cherish
the hope that if love for Eurythmy is born in ever widening circles,
humanity will be able to find its way back to what was contained in
primitive tongues, to a speech that is felt and seen. So will
Eurythmy in the future be something more than it is to-day; it will
be man's guide and show him how the life of soul and spirit can be
borne along on the surging waves of speech. To-day we have come to the
point when speech is so little articulated let alone, ensouled
that numbers of people cannot really be said to
speak at all. They spit the words out! Speech
as it is to-day is certainly not born from the life of soul! It is
enough to make one despair, when one has to listen to words that have
no longer any soul in them, any life, nay, are not even
articulated.
So it comes about that in our day a shrill discord sounds up from
Earth into the Cosmic Music when man enters the Sun existence after
death. And this quality that has crept into speech makes manifest to
certain Spiritual Beings the degeneration that earthly existence has
suffered, showing them too at the same time how the right forces and
impulses can be found that will lead once again to an ascent.
Man continues his wandering and comes into the Mars existence. What do
we mean when we say: Man conies into the Mars existence? It is now no
longer possible, you must remember, to speak of man in his
spirit-form, for by this time he is wholly changed; he has become a
spiritual image of the great cosmic sphere. On and on leads the path,
through the spheres of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, out into the surging
waves of the Cosmos. In the Mars region the human being lives among
the population of Mars if I may so express myself.
The inhabitants of Mars are discovered to be either discarnate human
souls or Beings of the Hierarchies, but above all those of the
Hierarchies from whose entire being Cosmic Speech sounds forth
into universal space. For man is now in the region where Cosmic Music
becomes Cosmic Speech. At first he hears it; then he is himself
interwoven into the Cosmic Speech. Instead of the imitative speech of
humanity, he hearkens to a speech that is creative, a speech out of
which things are born and have their being. During man's passage
through the sphere of Mars he acquires conscious knowledge of the
Beings who people this region. The spiritual population of Mars
consists of Beings who are the Knowers of the Cosmic Speech. There are
other Beings too, for example. Beings who are warlike in
nature. But so far as man is concerned, the most important Beings in
the Mars sphere are those who in their whole nature are Cosmic Word.
They are the Guardians of the Cosmic Speech.
Man's journey then leads him into the region of Jupiter where dwell
the Beings who are the guardians of the Cosmic Thoughts. These
Beings radiate thought-beings into our planetary system and its
environment. Through this region also man must pass, and he is
involved there in a process of metamorphosis which I can only describe
in a rather prosaic way.
Picture to yourselves that man becomes a kind of image of the cosmic
sphere; that is to say, his whole being is really the spirit-germ of
the head as it will be in his next life on Earth. In the Sun
existence, having experienced the shrill discord set up by earthly
speech, he learns to lay aside this earthly speech. During his passage
through Mars he becomes part of the Cosmic Speech, he grows one with
it, and begins also to lay the foundation for an understanding of
Cosmic Speech. For it is like this. The metamorphosis of the lower man
has begun the legs into the lower jaw, the arms into the upper
jaw, and so on. In community with the Beings of the Hierarchies the
human being builds the spirit-germ of his future head. But, to begin
with, this head is built for understanding the Cosmos
not the Earth! It learns first to understand Cosmic Speech, Cosmic
Thoughts. Cosmic Thoughts and Cosmic Speech find a home in the human
head; just as here on Earth man knows of minerals, plants and animals,
so, during his journey through the spheres of Mars and Jupiter, he is
made acquainted with the mysteries of the spiritual Universe. We shall
never have a true feeling or perception of the nature of man until we
realise in clear consciousness that between death and rebirth the
human being has learned to know the names of the wonderful and
majestic Beings of the higher Hierarchies, has learned to understand
the work and creative activities of these Beings in the Cosmos, has
learned to follow in his thought not little everyday problems
of personal life, such as, How am I to get back to Amsterdam?
but such a question as: How is one world-epoch born out of another
through the workings of the higher Hierarchies? So much for man's
experience in his passage through Jupiter.
Now comes the passage through the Saturn existence. Saturn bestows
upon the human being what I will call Cosmic Memory for
in the Saturn sphere dwell those Spiritual Beings who preserve the
memory of everything that has ever come to pass in our planetary
system. Saturn is the mighty bearer of the memory of all the
happenings of our planetary system. Just as in the Mars sphere man
learns the speech of the Gods, and in the Jupiter sphere the thoughts
of the Gods, so in his first passage through the Saturn existence he
learns to know all that lives in the memory of the Gods of our
planetary system. Hence it comes about that man's head in the
spiritual spheres which is the spirit-germ of his future
earthly head receives incorporated into it everything that
enables him to be a citizen of the Cosmos and to live in the Cosmos
among the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, even as he lives on earth
among the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms.
Then, having been so deeply enriched in his spirit-existence that he
has learned to understand the speech of the great world, the speech of
the Macrocosm in the widest sense of the word, man passes out of the
spheres of planetary activity and enters the sphere of activity of the
Fixed Stars. Here the work upon the primal germ of the human head, the
pre-figuring and shaping of it, is brought to completion by influences
pouring in from infinitudes of spiritual worlds.
The time has now come for man to take the path of return. He comes
again, first, into the Saturn sphere. The fact that during his earlier
sojourn in the Saturn sphere he received into himself the planetary
memories, enables the foundation to be laid now in his head for the
faculty of memory that will be necessary in his life on Earth. The
cosmic memory implanted into his being is, as it were, made
earthly. Cosmic memory is transformed again into the germ
of the faculty of human memory. And in the Jupiter sphere, all that
man acquired through having perceived the thoughts of the Gods, is
transformed on the path of return into the faculty to conceive human
thoughts which can then be reflected in ordinary consciousness when
the germ of the head unites with the physical embryo.
On the return path through the Saturn sphere the detailed elaboration
of the metamorphosis of the lower man into the various parts of the
head-organisation can also begin. This is a wonderful work, one
human being working upon another, in accord too with the Beings of the
higher Hierarchies. Verily, the work that is wrought here for the
forming of the human head is like the creation of a whole world. For
in the sphere of existence between death and rebirth of which I am now
speaking, each single human head is seen to be a wonderful world,
a world of infinite variety and detail; and the work upon it
calls for the devotion of human beings who are linked together by
destiny, with the co-operation also of Beings of the Hierarchies who,
knowing the mysteries of the Cosmos, understand how such a human head
must be built and formed.
Wonderful it is beyond all telling, to come in this way to a knowledge
of what is in man. Nor can such knowledge ever lead to pride or
conceit. Yonder, between death and a new birth, the world in which we
live sees to it that we do not succumb to pride! It would be, my dear
friends, an absurdity to fall victim to human pride and arrogance
among the Beings of the Hierarchies, among Seraphim, Cherubim and
Thrones! The human being must remain for ever little in comparison
with the Beings among whom he works. And when in this earthly
existence a man comes to learn of what he is in the great Macrocosm
between death and a new birth, he has good reason to say to himself:
You have not brought very much with you into earthly existence!
You have no great cause to pride yourself upon your present condition;
nor have you any occasion to be particularly proud of what you were
among the Gods! What can grow within us as the result of
looking upon the life of man between death and a new birth is a sense
of responsibility which makes us say: We must strive with all
our might to be worthy even here on earth, of being man. For
this is indeed what we feel, when we measure the significance of being
man by the work performed upon the human being by the Gods
in the period that lies between death and a new birth.
Going now further on his path of return, man comes again into the Mars
existence, where the work upon his being continues. It is here that
the spirit-germs for the new body are added for the breast
system and for the limb structures, as they will be in the next
earthly life. For it is really so, that the foundations of the limbs
of the previous earthly life come forth as the foundations of the head
in the new incarnation, and so now during man's passage through the
planetary world on the way to his next earthly life the germs for
breast system and limb structures have to be laid anew. It must of
course always be remembered that these germs are spiritual; the whole
process is a spiritual process. As man passes again through Mars
existence, the lofty spirituality with which he was imbued during his
first passage through the Mars sphere, and which enabled him to
experience the cosmic Word, is now transformed into spiritual
substance of a somewhat lower order into that spiritual
substance from out of which, later on, the human Ego manifests itself.
It is also during this return journey through the Mars sphere that the
spirit-germ of the larynx and lung formations are added.
Man comes then again to the Sun. The second passage through the Sun
sphere is significant in the highest degree. Since he completed his
first sojourn in the Sun existence, man has passed through the spheres
of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, to the world of the Stars, and then made
the return journey through Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. All this time his
whole being has been given over to the Cosmos; he has become one with
the Cosmos, one with the World-All. He has been living in the Cosmos;
he has learned cosmic speech, he has learned to weave cosmic thoughts
into his being, he has been living, not within his own life of
memory that only dawns for him later but within the
memory of the whole planetary system. He has felt himself one with the
Beings of the higher Hierarchies in his memory of the cosmic thoughts
and of the cosmic speech. Now however, when he returns once again to
the Sun, he begins to shut himself off more as an individual being.
Very faintly the feeling dawns that he is becoming separate from the
Cosmos. This is connected with the fact that the first foundations of
the heart are now being laid within him. The return journey continues.
For the second time man passes through the Venus sphere and the
Mercury sphere, where the spirit-germs of the other organs have to be
implanted within him.
At the moment of entrance for the second time into the Sun existence
all these happenings and processes take a very long time, and
long before man enters upon earthly existence he experiences, as we
shall see, what is for him a very significant turn of destiny
at the moment when, out in the Cosmos, the spirit-germ of the heart is
laid within our being on the return journey to the earth, there is of
course not yet a physical heart. True, there is already an indication
of a physical heart form, but it is surrounded and inter-woven with
all that constitutes the worth of the human being as the
outcome of his previous earthly lives. The fact that we receive into
ourselves in the Sun sphere the first germ of the physical heart is
less important than the fact that in this germ of the heart is
concentrated all that we are morally, all our qualities of soul and
spirit. Before the spirit-germ of the heart unites with the embryonic
germ of the future body, the heart in man is a spiritual being, a
moral being of soul and spirit out in the Cosmos; only later does this
moral being of spirit and soul which man now feels living
within him, which man has, as it were, acquired in the course of his
return journey to Earth unite with the embryo. This
concentration, in the germ of the heart, of his whole soul-and-spirit
being is experienced by man in communion with the sublime Sun Beings
those Sun Beings who rule over the creative forces of the
planetary system and therewith of earthly existence. Let me try to
describe it to you in a picture. The expressions may sound strange but
they are really appropriate.
At the time when this cosmic heart is bestowed upon man, he is living
among those Spiritual Beings of the Hierarchies in whose hand lies the
leadership of the whole planetary system in its connection with
earthly existence. The experience is one of infinite grandeur and
splendour. It is difficult to find words to describe what the human
being experiences in this phase of existence. In a certain respect his
feeling resembles a feeling he can have in physical existence. For
just as in physical existence he feels that he is bound up with his
heart-beat, with the whole activity of the heart, so, out in the
Macrocosm, through his macrocosmic spiritual heart, he feels himself
at one with his whole being of soul and spirit. The moral being of
soul and spirit which he has become at this moment of his experience
is, as it were, a spiritual heart-beat within him. His whole being
seems now to be in the Cosmos, in the same way as his heartbeat is
in him; he becomes aware also of a kind of circulation in connection
with this heart-beat. Just as on Earth we feel in the heart-beat the
blood circulation and breathing which give rise to it, so, when on the
return journey through the Sun existence we begin to be aware of the
beating of our spiritual, macrocosmic heart, it feels to us as though
streams or currents were uniting this spiritual heart-beat with the
Beings of the Second Hierarchy. Even as the blood flows to the heart
from the veins in the physical organism, so into our being of
spirit-and-soul pour the words of the Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis,
what they have to say concerning the World and the World's
judgement upon man. The words and sounds of the spirit of the
World-All are the circulation that now centres itself in this
spiritual, macrocosmic heart, in this human being of soul and spirit.
There, at the centre, beats the spiritual heart of man. And the beat
of the spiritual heart of man is the heart-beat of the world in which
he is living. The blood-stream of this world is the deeds of the
creative Beings of the Second Hierarchy, the forces which stream out
from them. And just as the blood-stream on Earth centres itself in the
heart where it is unconsciously experienced by man, so at this point
of time between death and a new birth it is given to man, as a grace
bestowed, to hold and cherish within him a cosmic heart one of
the organs of perception, one of the cosmic hearts, created out of the
pulse-beat of the Macrocosm, even the deeds of the Beings of the
Second Hierarchy. For let it be remembered that the physical heart is
a sense organ, which perceives the movement of the
blood, not a pump as the physiologists imagine. The
spirituality and vitality of the human being these it is that
cause the movement of the blood.
The return journey continues through the Mercury and the Venus
spheres. But before this, indeed in that cosmic moment when the human
being feels himself living in very truth within the spiritual heart of
the Cosmos, his gaze has already fallen upon the hue of generations,
at the end of which stand the parents who will give him birth. The
connection with the line of generations is, as you see, made
relatively soon. We are born of father and mother, our parents again
have each of them father and mother, and these too have their father
and mother. This takes us back about a hundred years. But we must go
further back, through many centuries; for long before a human being is
born on Earth, he has united himself with the line of generations
which culminates in the family into which he is born. It is quite
early that the connection with the line of generations is determined,
namely, when man is passing through the Sun existence for the
second time. And in his passage through the cosmic colonies of Venus
and Mercury he can, so to speak, arrange for his destiny to be brought
as closely as possible into line with the outer experiences that must
come to him through being born into a particular family and a
particular nation.
After this, man comes again into the sphere of the Moon. Let me
remind you how during his first passage through the Moon sphere man's
thoughts were directed, for good and also for ill, to the primeval
Teachers of the human race, to the starting-point of earthly
existence, when superhuman Teachers imparted superhuman wisdom to the
men of Earth. When he comes down into the Moon existence for the
second time, there is less inducement for him to turn his attention to
what was on Earth long ago. For now the period of time that man spends
above, in the Cosmos in this Moon existence, is the same
period of time as takes its course on Earth below between conception
and birth. Man's embryonic life runs hand in hand with a particular
cosmic development. Up there in the Moon sphere he is passing through
a definite phase of evolution while below, stage by stage, the physical
embryo is being prepared the physical embryo with which he then
gradually unites.
How does this macrocosmic life of the human being take its course
during this second period of evolution in the Moon sphere? What does
man accomplish there?
In all the experiences I have been describing, man's consciousness
is far clearer and more awake than the ordinary consciousness of
his life on Earth. It is most important to distinguish the various
degrees of human consciousness. Consciousness during dream-life is
dull, consciousness during waking life is clear, consciousness after
death still clearer. As a dream is to reality, so is all our life on
Earth in comparison with the clarity of our consciousness in the life
after death. Moreover, at each new stage in the life after death,
consciousness becomes still clearer, still more alert.
When we pass through the Moon existence on the upward journey,
consciousness grows clearer owing to the fact that in the Moon sphere
we come into the environment of the wise, primeval Teachers of
humanity. Clearer and ever clearer grows our consciousness as we pass
on through the spheres of Mercury and Venus; and its clarity continues
to be intensified every time we enter a new sphere of the heavens. But
when we are returning again and approaching a new life on Earth,
consciousness is dimmed and darkened stage by stage. During the phase
of Mercury existence on the return journey, we still have a
consciousness that is clearer than any consciousness can be in
ordinary earthly existence. But when we come to the Moon sphere, and
are in an environment that reveals to us what man was at the beginning
of earthly evolution, then our consciousness begins to be obliterated.
In the same sphere where, on the upward journey, the super-sensible
world first lit up for us in a clearer consciousness than was possible
on Earth, consciousness is now dimmed. We are returning to the Earth
and consciousness becomes ever dimmer and dimmer, until it remains in
us only as growth-force the power of growth that is present in
the little child, the dreaming little child. Consciousness has dimmed
into dream! This is the moment when the being of soul-and-spirit can
unite with the physical embryo. In order that this momentous event may
come to pass, in order that the human being at a certain point of his
development make connection with the physical embryo, he must pass
through a Moon evolution in communion with the primeval Teachers of
humanity, while the physical embryo down below is passing through its
ten lunar months in the body of the mother. And the Moon evolution
that he has to undergo consists in this that a whole host of
the Teachers of mankind are engaged in the task of dimming down the
cosmic consciousness which the human being still possessed during his
Mercury existence, toning it down to the dream consciousness in which
he lives at the beginning of his life on Earth.
Physical man, with all that we can see of him here on Earth, is, in
truth, only to be understood in the light of a knowledge of
super-sensible man. And super-sensible man can never be explained by the
facts of Earth, but only by the facts of the great World, the
Macrocosm. My object in these lectures has been to show you how
earthly man is born as Spirit-man out of the Spiritual Cosmos.
It remains for us in the lecture to-morrow to study in this connection
the significance of earthly life itself, in so far as the being who is
spiritual and superhuman passes over into this earthly life. We shall
come to understand the significance of the fact that when he passes
through the gate of death the human being carries out again into the
spiritual world what remains to him of all he has acquired and
experienced in earthly life. Having, therefore, learned to understand,
in some of its aspects, the spirit nature of man, his super-sensible
being, we will return to-morrow to the study of the connection between
super-sensible man and physical man.
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Last Modified: 07-Oct-2024
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