III
Man's
Faculty of Cognition in the Etheric World
In the last few days I have been
speaking of man's place in the Universe. On the one side we
envisaged man's organisation as composed of physical
body, etheric body or body of formative forces,
astral body and the true ‘I’ which
passes from earthly life to earthly life. At the
same time I also tried to show how these members of the human
being are each connected in a different way with the
Universe. It can be said that the physical body is
connected with all that is the physical, earthly
world of the senses; man's physical body is part of that world.
But when we think of the etheric body or the body of formative
forces, we must understand that this belongs to quite a
different kind of world, to that world which is itself etheric
and of which I told you that man should experience it as coming
to him from the far spaces of the cosmos. If,
then, we imagine the forces of the earth spreading
out in all directions and man living within these
forces, which are those of the physical
world, we must conceive the etheric world as coming in on all
sides from the direction of the outer global shell of the
universe to meet the outstreaming physical forces,
and thus reaching man. It is obvious,
therefore, that man's etheric body is
subject to entirely different laws from those
governing the physical body. — And again,
when contemplating man's astral body, we perceive it to be
connected with worlds that are not to be found at all in
that cosmos which is contained in the Physical and the
etheric, and in which we find that with our
astral body we belong to the world we enter between death and a
new birth.
And finally with the ‘I’ itself
we belong to a world that flows as from
a quickening fount through worlds
which, as for instance our own world, are
threefold in character. The
three members of our world are the physical, the
etheric, the astral. The world of the ‘I’
passes through this world and through other
similarly threefold worlds. It is therefore a far more
embracing world, one that we must
regard as eternal as compared with
the temporal.
But we must also have regard to the fact that,
whenever we employ those human faculties of
perception and understanding which inform us
about the etheric body or the body of formative forces,
the astral body and the ‘I,’ we do in fact enter
into entirely different worlds. We
have to change over to the sphere of active,
living thinking in order to experience our
etheric body. What we then have to bear in mind is that
in that world everything is different from what we
experience while bound to the physical world of the
senses. In the first place the things and
happenings we know from the aspect of the
physical world appear in quite a different light in
these higher worlds. As it is, the things
and events encountered in the physical world are after
all only final manifestations. They have their source in the
higher worlds; so that we then see more into the primary
origins of our surroundings in the physical world. But apart
from that, when in the physical world we have, to begin with,
the world well known to ordinary consciousness, where man is
surrounded by the three kingdoms of nature besides his own. But
when we rise to those powers of cognition — in my books I
have used the expression ‘Imaginative Cognition’ —
which enable us to experience our own etheric body or the body
of formative forces, we enter the etheric world. And we have
sufficiently developed and strengthened our faculties when we
have kindled the inner light and can experience ourselves, as
it were, in the Second Man, in the body of formative forces; we
then enter the world which, at any rate to begin with, reveals
itself to us in images: the world of the Angeloi,
Archangeloi and Archai.
Having broken through, as it were, into the cosmic spheres
where the etheric body, the body of
formative forces, becomes perceptible to us, we
recognise on entering this world of flowing images that these
reveal manifestations of the Beings of the third
Hierarchy, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and
Archai. There we are among Beings who are
not with us in the physical world of the senses. The presence
of these Beings reveals itself to us
through the medium of qualities similar in kind to
those we perceive also through our senses in the
physical world.
But here, in the world of the
senses, we see for instance the colours spread
over the surface of things or in purely physical
configurations such as the rainbow. Sounds are
experienced as connected with specific objects
in the physical world. In the same way, warmth
and cold are felt as emanating from certain
objects in the physical world of the senses.
But when we regard the world in
which the third Hierarchy is revealed to us, we
do not have colours adhering to
things, sounds reverberating from
objects, and so on, but colours, sounds, warmth
and cold flowing and vibrating — one can
hardly say through space — but flowing and
vibrating in time. Colour is not
spread over the surface of things but it fluctuates and
moves in waves. And by applying the faculties which
enabled us to enter these worlds, we know that, just as in
the physical world colour-effect suggests a
material foundation, so in yonder world the
floating cloud of colour, a flowing organism of colour, is the
manifestation of the working and weaving of the spirit-and-soul
forces of the third Hierarchy. So that the
moment we behold the life-tableau of which I have
spoken, which gives a clear and
spontaneous picture of the whole of our life since birth, there
also appears within this stream of our own life's events
something of which one can. say: within the de-materialised
world of flowing colours and sounds lives the third
Hierarchy.
The
Connection of the various Members of Man's
Being with the corresponding Worlds of the Universe
When our faculties of cognition are strong enough to rise to
the level where we can observe our own astral
body, that is to say, that part of us which
existed before we descended into earthly life, and which we
shall again carry with us when we have passed through
the gate of death, then we know: this is a wider world,
a world we do not find in the cosmic ether but beyond the gates
of birth and death. Here we enter the wider
astral world.
Things do not tally exactly with descriptions given in my book,
“Theosophy,”
where they are presented from a different point of view.
But just as we meet the third Hierarchy
when we have attained experience of our body of formative
forces, so we encounter the second Hierarchy, the
Exusiai, Kyriotetes and Dynamis, in the world which
reveals to us our own astral body. And this
second Hierarchy does not become perceptible to us in flowing
colours and sounds, but it manifests itself to us by
heralding and proclaiming the import of revelations of the
Logos resounding and weaving through the Universe.
The second Hierarchy speaks to us.
If, after having attained the necessary powers of
cognition, one wants to give some Indication of
how one is related to these worlds, using words
which naturally no longer have meaning that is
applicable in the sense-world, and yet are
to some extent expressive in regard to the higher worlds, one
must say: For the etheric world the inner living thinking
becomes a kind of organ of
touch. With living
thinking we touch this world of flowing colours and
so on. We must not imagine that we see
the red as the eye sees the red of the senses,
spread out on the surface of things; instead we sense, we
‘touch’ red and yellow and so forth; we touch the
sounds, so that we can say: in the etheric world, living
thinking is the element of touch in relation to what
lives in the world of the third Hierarchy.
On entering that world to which in a sense our astral body
belongs, we cannot speak of experiencing this astral world
merely through the element of touch, but we must
say: we apprehend this world as the revelation of the Beings of
the second Hierarchy. Each separate manifestation presents
itself to us as a member, a part of the
World-Logos. Out of the deep silence
resounds the voice of the Spiritual Beings. Thus, after
touch: speech, communication.
And when, in the way I have indicated, sustained
effort rewards us with the experience of the
‘I’ which goes from earthly life to
earthly life and, between them, passes through the other lives
between each death and a new birth, then we enter
the spirit-world proper, the higher
spirit-world. What happens in
this world to begin with, is that we enter into a special
relationship to our true ‘I.’
The ‘I’ we experience inwardly
here in this life on earth between birth and death is, as we
know, bound to the physical corporeality. We are
aware of it as long as we experience ourselves in the physical
body and, in a way, we are forced to practise
selflessness when we rise into the etheric world and the astral
world. There we have at most something like a
recollection of this earthly
‘I.’
But now we find the true ‘I’ as
it passes from earthly life to earthly life. Our
first impression is that of an entirely different being. We say
to ourselves: Here I live through this earthly existence
between birth and death. Looking back I see
that strip of etheric world which takes me back
as far as my birth on earth. Then my vision opens
into world-wide realms existing only in time,
where to speak of space would be quite misleading; but in a
wide perspective the world appears to me in all its
fullness, as it lives and weaves between
death and a new birth. Looking
through and beyond the ether, the world of the
third Hierarchy, and through the astral, where I was between
death and a new birth as in a super-sensible world whose
life is revelation of the Logos manifesting as the
Cosmic Word — as my vision penetrates all
this, I finally behold a being at first
far remote, a being representing the essence of my previous
life on earth. First, then, I see myself here in
this earthly life with my present ghost-like ‘I,’ and
then, looking far back through all that has just been
described, I see what constitutes the essence of my previous
life on earth. But at the same time I perceive how the content
of the latter, as the gradually evolving ‘I,’ has been passing
through the worlds I have been observing in retrospective
perspective as far as my present life on earth.
To begin with I do, in fact, perceive my true
‘I’ as some strange, remote being. And in this
being, strange as it appears to me at first, I recognise
myself.
Every word in this passage should be
taken with absolute seriousness because every single word
is of significance. This whole experience
must culminate in the realisation that the true
‘I’ first taken to be some strange being, is indeed
one's own self; that there appeared what seemed to be
some other being which lived in the far distant past, but that
it is, in fact, you yourself.
And then one discovers how this self has flowed from the
previous existence on earth into the present earthly life,
but that now, in this life, it is covered up, as it
were, and could emerge only if all that befalls between going
to sleep and waking were to stand revealed before the soul. It
is there that all that which on its way through
the astral and etheric world has reached us from our previous
life on earth, continues to live and weave.
It is, you see, a world of earthly contradictions mingled
with chords of heavenly harmonies in this inner process of the
striving soul: earthly contradictions inasmuch as by means
which are designed to meet the needs of ordinary daily life on
earth, one cannot really reach one's own true
‘I.’ As it is, only the first rudiments
of love live in our earthly ‘I.’ And even so,
a glow is shed over life on earth through the
power of love which radiates into this earthly life.
But this love must grow stronger. It must gain sufficient
strength to enable man to behold the etheric world and the
astral world through the power of love and thus to overcome
what lives in him as his lower self, as egoism
— the opposite of love — to
gain mastery over that which, as the antithesis of love,
enables him to experience himself in earthly life
as an independent ‘I.’ Love must grow so strong
that one learns to ignore this earthly
‘I,’ to forget it, to disregard
it. Love is the identification of one's
own self with the other being. This impulse must
be so strong that one ceases to heed one's own ‘I’
as it lives in the earthly body. Here
then arises the contradiction, that it is
precisely through selflessness, through the highest capacity
for love, that one advances towards one's own
true ‘I’ beckoning as
it radiates through the cycles of time.
One has to lose one's earthly ‘I’
to behold one's true ‘I.’
And he who fails to accomplish this act of surrender has
simply no means of finding the true
‘I.’ One could say that the true
‘I’ does not want to be sought whenever
revelation of its presence is desired. If sought for, it
hides. For only in love will it be
found, and love is a surrender of self to the
other being. For that reason the true Self must be found as if
it were another being.
At the moment of coming face to face with one's
true ‘I,’ one also becomes aware of
what lives in a wider world, in the spiritual world
itself. One meets the beings of the first Hierarchy:
Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones.
And just as there one finds again one's
‘I’ — of which one has really
only a reflection in earthly life — so now
one finds the entire world of earthly environment in its true
spiritual form. Hence one must also
love this earthly world to find the world of
its primal origins, together with the true
‘I.’
So that we can say: What reveals itself in the
spiritual world is something remembered,
is touch, speech, memory; but remembrance of something
which formerly one had known only in reflections, in
images.
Thus, by experiencing one's human self, and with the
realisation of one's own humanity, one enters into the life of
the Universe in its totality. And to give a clear picture of
the various members of man's being, the physical body, the
etheric body, the astral body and the
‘I,’ each must also be
shown in its relationship to the corresponding worlds of
the Universe.
What I have now described must be well understood and taken
in its full meaning before any approach to the problem of the
four parts of man's nature can disclose their true
significance. Here is a case in point which shows
very clearly that man must not only turn his thoughts in other
directions, but think in a different
way if he is to rise to a true understanding
of the spiritual world. He must bring
to life what are really only dead images in
purely physical sense-perception: his attitude
of mind must change.
And here one can indeed come across some extraordinary
products of modern spiritual life, which show the difficulties
that have to be overcome if Anthroposophy is to enter into
the souls of men.
Anthroposophy
as Academic Philosophy (“Chair-Philosophy”) Sees It
When the book
“Occult Science:”
had been published, a well-known
modern philosopher took it upon himself to analyse
it. He first read the chapter about the four
members of man's constitution — physical
body, etheric body, astral body, ‘I’
— and so on. Now this book has also been read by
many quite simple people but people possessed of
healthy common sense. For them it had point and
meaning because with healthy common-sense one can
always follow a subject, just as one can understand a
picture without being a painter. But to one who
in these days is a much quoted philosopher, such understanding
presents considerably more difficulties than It does to a
naive, simple human being. As this renowned philosopher reads:
physical body, etheric body, astral body,
‘I,’ he is puzzled and wonders what
he can make of it all. What does it all mean? Physical
body, yes, of course. Etheric body? —
well, perhaps it exists. What is dense matter in the
physical body may here be of finer substance, but it is still
matter. He argues, therefore, that to distinguish between
physical and etheric body is to draw an arbitrary dividing line
between the two. — Astral body?
— We know something about
a soul, says this philosopher, but —
astral body? In the soul we have our thinking,
feeling and willing. These are functions of
the physical body. If one understands the physical body one has
also grasped the meaning of thinking, feeling and
willing. And the ‘I’ —
that is only the synthesis of all this. Such was
his way of arguing.
And now please observe how the renowned philosopher's
critical thought was formulated. — Having
taken account of what he could find in the
“Occult Science:”
much as one might
look at a chair, he said to himself: a
chair can also be divided into its parts —
legs, seat, back, first, second and third part
— and there is no reason why man could not be
divided in the same way as a
chair. Finally he grants that
this will serve well enough as a classification
of man's constitution, but there
is really nothing remarkably new in it, as
in his view the principle underlying the division of
man's constitution into its four
members applies equally to the chair.
When we turn to physical chemistry the matter already
becomes less difficult. There one could not
talk so glibly about simple division. The
chemist divides water into hydrogen and oxygen,
H2O; the natural scientist
will not simply divide water in an abstract sense into
two parts, hydrogen and oxygen.
He cannot leave it at that because he knows
that hydrogen will not only combine with oxygen, as in water,
but that it also combines, for instance in hydrochloric acid,
with chloride. It follows that hydrogen contained in
water is not only to be found there as part of water but is
capable, when not forming part of water, of entering into quite
different combinations. And likewise oxygen, when
not forming part of water, can enter into other
combinations and unite with quite different
substances, as for instance, calcium, in
lime. Hydrogen plus chloride can become hydrochloric
acid, oxygen plus calcium becomes
lime. Here one could not say: all you have
to do is to divide water into its parts in the
abstract, like a chair.
Man has to be considered on a still higher level.
Here we have not merely a division into physical body,
etheric body, astral body and ‘I,’ but man's
physical body must be conceived as belonging to the
earth. When a human being passes through the gate
of death and leaves his physical corpse behind, the physical
body turns to earth, but the etheric body rises
up into the ether. The astral body
leaves both and enters those worlds which are the domain
of the second Hierarchy. And the I belongs
to a different world again, the domain of the first
Hierarchy. These four members do
not merely represent a division for classification, they belong
to quite different spheres of the Universe. At the same
time the distinction illustrates
the nature of man's being. We have here, on a
much higher level, something for which one has to search
already when progressing from the comparison of the chair with
that of the water.
Naturally the level of mentality in our modern
civilisation again presents a considerable
obstacle, for the much-cited philosopher
could have learned already from chemistry that it
is not enough to go on talking only about abstract divisions,
that one can apply them to a chair but not to water.
However, in the case of this so-called philosopher, the
philosophy unfortunately did not get past the chair to
the water. It did not rise from the observation
of life's trivialities to natural science. On the other
hand, natural science does not concern itself with
philosophy, so that the chemist of to-day does not think
about such things at all.
It shows that in a philosophy which, from this point of
view, might be called a
‘chair-doctrine,’ thinking in terms of
natural science has as yet no part. Again, in chemistry, in
natural science, philosophy plays no pert. Therefore it
is precisely in the world of the scientist that those
conditions are wanting, which can pave the way to an
understanding of the deeper, inner truths of the Universe in
their relation to man.
The man who undertook this critical study did
in fact submit his article to me first, in manuscript. But what
could I do with it? One cannot enter into
a discussion with a man whose mind lacks the very
first pre-requisites. I did nothing about it, but
later found the article printed with all the mistakes and all
the nonsense contained in such
‘chair-philosophy.’ Such are the
trials of fate which Anthroposophy has to suffer on the
way. One must be clear about such
situations as they so often arise between Anthroposophy
and its critics. It is precisely in that quarter that for the
time being there is not the slightest possibility of an
understanding.
And this philosopher, much quoted among philosophers, even
makes certain concessions in line with ideas which are more or
less popular currency in modern civilisation. For
instance, he admits that there once existed a continent between
Europe and America called ‘Atlantis,’
inhabited by the ancient Atlanteans, a prehistoric humanity.
Then he asks the hypothetical question —
I am not quoting verbatim — how is it
possible that today, when we have a proper physiology and a
proper psychology, anyone could conceive the idea
of dividing man's being in such a way! Of course
in Anthroposophy one does not do it in the way it can be done
with a chair, but he thinks so. This philosopher
— in his own way he is
perfectly conscientious — was
honestly puzzled how anyone could make such a
division, or could hold such a primitive
conception as compared with the knowledge a modern
philosopher can command.
Well, as regards fundamental truths the modern
philosopher is not in a particularly favourable position,
but he thinks he is. Two days ago I explained to
those who attended the Teachers' Course what
modern so-called ‘psycho-analysis’
really is.
I should like to repeat that the peculiar thing about
psycho-analysis is that it arises on the one side from
dilettante physiology, in which the soul-forces do not reach
the sphere of the spirit but remain bound to the body, while on
the other hand it is based on dilettante psychology.
The two do not meet. As a result, grotesque
connections are being formulated when
dilettantism endeavours to establish links between research
work in psychology and research work in physiology. And the
dilettantism is of immense proportions, and equally great in
both cases. The psychiatrists' own psychological dilettantism
equals in magnitude that of physical dilettantism, but when
both are the same in volume and operate jointly,
they multiply each other. That, according
to simple arithmetic, makes the square of dilettantism. So
that, seen in the true light, psycho-analysis is
the square of dilettantism, because it is the
product of the multiplication of dilettantism
by dilettantism.
Now the problem for our much quoted
philosopher amounted to this: he
could not understand how anyone could conceive such a primitive
idea as to divide man's being into four members as
one divides a chair into three. So he advances
the hypothesis that I must be a re-incarnated Atlantean. Really
quite ingenious from the chair-philosophy point of
view!
The
Overcoming of Materialism by Knowledge attained
through living Thinking
One can be a materialist if lack of inner strength
makes it impossible for the soul-forces to seek
an opening for finding the way which leads into the world
of soul-and-spirit, to the archetypal
origins. Nothing can be gained by trying
to prove anything on crude evidence, because materialism can
certainly be proved as long as the evidence of proof is taken
from the physical world. That is the
crucial point. To find the way from the physical,
into the spiritual, inner activity is needed, not
abstract reasoning. The way to true
Anthroposophy is found through that inner activity in man which
stimulates the search for true knowledge. And all skirmishing
in attempts to prove anything is useless, because you
cannot argue with a man whose proofs are based entirely
on the physical world of the senses. To disprove to such a man
what to him is indisputable remains an impossibility as long as
he lacks that primal strength of the inner life
which alone could start him on the
way to finding the spiritual world.
This must be understood. One must realise that it
is given to man to rise of his own
free will from the physical to the spirituals that this rising
into the spiritual world is not an act of
sense-bound reasoning, but an act
of inner, conscious human experience. It
is only when one really has this vital inner
experience that one becomes capable of
appreciating Anthroposophy in the right
perspective, as seen against the merits of merely
physical methods of cognition.
Our time is sorely in need of this. — A
philosophy whose analytic powers of reasoning are
only applicable to such things as chairs, can
hardly be expected to have a ready understanding
for what are real human values. It
is, however, quite
competent when dealing with chair-values.
But what humanity needs today is what
leads man to man, to the real
man, not merely to his outward appearance. In its
outer aspect the appearance reflects all that is
inherent in the archetype of the
spiritual entity, but it does not reveal
that to inner experience. For in the experience
of self, man must first find and recognise
himself as a being of
soul-and-spirit. Thus in
the last resort the way to all knowledge is
bound up with knowing oneself as an
image of the true Self of man.
If with the growing strength of love
that level of knowledge is attained
by which one recognises as one's own
self what at first seems to be a strange being, and
again, if one rises to the height
where the earthly world is found again
in the archetypal world, then one is
no longer engaged in a
process of gaining abstract
knowledge, but in a process
of living cognition.
And it is in this living process of attaining
knowledge that the world reveals itself to man
through his own being, and that his own being
reveals itself in his experience of the outer world. Thus man
becomes a being who finds himself again in the entire Universe,
for knowing himself he learns to know the world
and, knowing the world, he learns to know himself. In this
inter-relationship between world and man there reveals itself
what unites man with the Divine-Spiritual, that
which makes his being aglow with the religious
mood of all real higher knowledge. And finally, when earnest
cognition blends with religious experience, then knowledge
radiates religious emotion, and the transparency of
knowledge is lifted to that sphere where faith becomes
knowledge through its own inner power of
cognition. The world is found in man and man in the
world on the path of knowledge
through the world.
(In
the etheric world: through living thinking: touch.
In the astral world: through the deep silence of the soul: speech.
In the spiritual world: through re-cognition: memory.)
Thus world and man become united in an all-embracing,
cosmic, spiritual-divine being, in which man finds himself and
the world and so for the first time rises to his true human
dignity which can then also enter his religious and moral
ethos and make him fully Man.
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