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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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Macrocosm and Microcosm
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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Macrocosm and Microcosm
Schmidt Number: S-2198
On-line since: 7th July, 2002
THE WORLD BEHIND THE TAPESTRY OF SENSE-PERCEPTIONS.
ECSTASY AND MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE
The purpose of these lectures is to give a survey of findings of
spiritual-scientific research which enable us to grapple with the most
significant riddles of human life as far as this is possible
within the limits to which understanding of the higher worlds is
subject in our time. We shall start today from more familiar phenomena
and then endeavour to reach higher and higher spheres of existence, to
penetrate into deeply hidden riddles of man's life. We shall not start
from any concepts or ideas so firmly established as to resemble
dogmas, but refer, quite simply at first, to matters which everybody
will feel to be connected with everyday life.
All Spiritual Science is based upon the assumption that underlying the
world normally known to us, there is another the spiritual
world. It is in this spiritual world underlying the world of the
senses, and in a certain respect also the world of soul, that we have
to look for the actual causes and conditions of what takes place in
those other worlds.
It will certainly be known to everyone here that there are definite
methods which a man may apply to his life of soul and which enable him
to awaken certain inner faculties slumbering in normal daily life, so
that he is finally able to experience the moment of Initiation. He
then has around him a new world, the world of spiritual causes and
conditions underlying the world of the senses and the world of soul.
It is as when, after an operation, a man hitherto blind finds around
him the world of colours and light. In normal life today man is shut
off from this world of spiritual realities and beings, and it is upon
this world that we shall endeavour to shed light in these lectures.
On two sides the outer and the inner sides as we may call them
man is shut off from the spiritual world. When he directs his
gaze to the outer world, he perceives in the first place what is there
presented to his senses. He sees colours and light, hears sounds, is
aware of warmth and cold, smells, tastes, and so on. This is the world
immediately around him. In contemplating this world we become aware,
to begin with, of a kind of boundary. Through direct perception,
direct experience, man is unable today to look behind the boundary
presented to him by colours and light, sounds, scents and so forth. A
trivial illustration will make this clear. Suppose we are looking at a
surface painted blue. Under ordinary conditions, of course, we cannot
see what is behind this surface. A shallow thinker might object that
it is only a matter of looking behind the surface! But this is not so
in respect of the world outspread around us, for it is precisely by
what we perceive that an outer spiritual world is concealed from us
and at most we can feel that colour and light, warmth, cold, and so
on, are external manifestations of a world lying behind. But we
cannot, at a given moment, penetrate through the colours, lights and
sounds, and experience what lies behind them. We have to experience
the whole outer spiritual world through these manifestations. But
after a little reflection we shall be able, consistently with the most
elementary logic, to say: Even if modern physics or other branches of
science declare that behind the colours there is vibrating etheric
substance, it soon becomes obvious that what is thus assumed to lie
behind the colours is something added by thought. Nobody can actually
perceive what physics declares to be vibrations, movements, of which
colour is merely an effect; nor can anybody say with certainty whether
there is reality in what is alleged to lie behind the
sense-impressions. It is, at first, mere conjecture. The external
world of the senses is spread out before us like a tapestry and we
have the feeling that behind this tapestry there is something into
which our faculty of perception cannot penetrate.
There, then, is the first boundary. We find the second when we look
into our own being. Within ourselves we find a world of joy and
sorrow, of happiness and suffering, of passions, impulses, desires,
and so forth-in brief, everything that we call our life of soul. We
usually sum this up by saying: I feel this pleasure or that
pain; I have these impulses, desires, or passions. But surely we
also have the feeling that behind this inner life of soul something is
hidden, something that is concealed by our soul-experiences just as
something belonging to the outer world is concealed by our
sense-perceptions. For who can fail to recognise that when we wake in
the morning, joy, sorrow, happiness, suffering and other such
experiences, rise up as if out of an unknown realm, and that in a
certain respect man is given up to them? And is there anyone who, if
he reviews his whole life of soul, could deny that there must be
within him something deeper, something at first hidden from himself,
out of which his joy, suffering, happiness, grief, and all his
soul-experiences, stream forth and that these, no less than the
external sense-perceptions, must be manifestations of an unknown
world?
And now let us ask: If two such boundaries are actually there, or may
at least be presumed to be there, have we not, as human beings,
certain possibilities of penetrating through them? Is there something
in a man's experiences which enables him to break through this
tapestry of sense-perceptions, just as he would break through a
membrane covering something lying behind it? And is there something
that leads into greater depths of our inner nature, behind our
sufferings, behind our joys, behind our passions? Are we able to make
a further move into the outer world and also into the inner world?
There are two experiences which actually enable us to break through
the film covering the outer world and the resistance in the inner
world. Something like a membrane is pierced and we are able to enter
the world hidden behind the veil of the sense-perceptions. This world
can reveal itself to us when in the course of certain normal processes
of life there come entirely new experiences-experiences giving rise to
the feeling that external perceptions through the senses are
disappearing, that the tapestry of the outer world is being broken
through; then we may say that we are penetrating a little way into the
world lying behind sense-perceptions.
This experience is one that is decidedly not beneficial for human life
as a whole; it is the state usually known as ecstasy
when this term is used in the original sense. It causes a man
momentarily to become oblivious to the impressions of the sense-world,
so that for a time he is not aware of the colours, sounds, scents, and
so forth, around him and is insensitive to ordinary sense-impressions.
Under certain circumstances this experience of ecstasy can lead a man
to a point where he actually has new experiences, experiences by no
means of everyday occurrence. Let it again be emphasised that ecstasy
in this form should not be regarded as a desirable state; it is being
described here simply as a condition that is possible. The not unusual
state of being out of oneself as the saying goes, should
not be called ecstasy. In one of two possible conditions a man becomes
impervious to the impressions conveyed by the senses; he simply falls
into a swoon in which, instead of sense-impressions, black darkness
spreads around him. For a normal man that is really the safer
condition of the two.
There is also a form of ecstasy in which a man is not only surrounded
by dense darkness, but this darkness becomes filled with a world
hitherto quite unknown to him. Do not say at once that this may be a
world of illusion, of deception ... or, if you like, let it stand at
that for the moment ... we will not assume that this world has any
real meaning, but call it a world of apparitions, of phantasms. The
actual point here is that what is seen may indeed be a worldwhether
of pictures or illusionswhich has not previously been known. A
man must then ask himself: Am I able, with all my capacities, to
construct such a world for myself out of my ordinary
consciousness? If this world of pictures is such that he can say
to himself: I am incapable of constructing such a world of
pictures out of my own experiences then obviously the
pictures must come to him from somewhere. We will decide later whether
this world has been magically conjured up before him as delusion, or
whether it is reality. The point is that there are states in
which a man sees worlds hitherto unknown to him.
Now this state of ecstasy is bound up with a quite special drawback
for normal human beings. It is evident from the experience itself that
this ecstatic condition can be induced by natural means only if what
the man in question calls his Ego, his strong, inner self, through
which he holds all his separate experiences together, is, as it were,
extinguished. His Ego is entirely suppressed; it is as though he were
outside himself, poured out into the new world which fills the
darkness around him. Countless human beings have already had the
experience I am describing, or at least are capable of having it.
More will be said about this in later lectures.
There are two aspects to be noted in connection with this experience
of ecstasy. The one is that the actual sense-impressions vanish, also
the experiences a man has when he feels and can say: I
see that colour, I hear these sounds, and so on. In the
state of ecstasy he is never aware of his Ego, he does not distinguish
himself from the objects around him. Fundamentally speaking, it is
only the Ego that can distinguish itself from surrounding objects.
Therefore in ecstasy a man cannot distinguish whether he is having to
do with mirage or reality for on that the Ego alone can decide.
In ecstasy there is a loss or at least a considerable diminution of
Ego-consciousness and a fading of sense-perception; these two
experiences run parallel. The tapestry of the sense-world seems to
crumble, to dissolve it is as if the Ego which otherwise seems
to encounter a barrier constituted by the tapestry of the sense-world
were flowing right through the sense-perceptions and living in
a world of pictures which presents something entirely new. In the
state of ecstasy a man becomes aware of beings and happenings hitherto
unknown to him, which he finds nowhere in the physical world, no
matter what comparisons he makes. The essential point is that he
experiences something entirely new.
Something happens in ecstasy that is like a breaking through of the
external boundaries around man. Whether this new world is illusion or
reality will become evident at a later stage.
Let us now ask ourselves whether we are also able to get behind our
inner world, behind the world of our passions, impulses and
desires, of our joys and sufferings, sorrows, and so on. This too is
possible. Again, there are experiences which lead out beyond the realm
of ordinary soul-life, if we deepen this soul-life inwardly. This is
the path taken by many of those who are called mystics. In this
process of mystical deepening a man first turns his attention away
from the world of the senses and concentrates it upon his own inner
experiences. Mystics who resolve not to enquire into the external
causes of their interests, their sympathies and antipathies, their
sorrows, joys, and so forth, but who are attentive only to the
experiences ebbing and flowing in their souls, penetrate even more
deeply into their soul-life and have quite definite experiences,
differing from those ordinarily known.
Again I am describing a condition known and accessible to countless
human beings. I am speaking, to begin with, of experiences that arise
when normal conditions have been transcended to a very slight degree
only. The essence of such experiences is that the mystic who sinks
more and more deeply into himself transforms certain feelings into
something quite different. If, for example, a normal man one
who is utterly alien to any kind of mystical experience suffers
a painful blow from another man, his resentment will be directed
against him. That is the natural reaction. But one who practices
mystical deepening will have a quite different feeling. Such a man
feels: You would never have had to suffer this blow if at some time
you had not brought it upon yourself. Otherwise this man would not
have crossed your path. You cannot therefore justifiably turn your
resentment against one who was brought into contact with you through
happenings in the world in order to give you the blow you have
deserved. Such persons, if they deepen their different
experiences, acquire a certain feeling about their soul-life as a
whole. They say to themselves: I have known much grief, much
suffering, but at some time or other I was myself the cause of it. I
must have done certain things, even though I cannot remember them. If
I have not deserved these sufferings in my present life, then
obviously there must have been another life when I did the things for
which I am now making compensation.
Through this inner deepening of experience the soul changes its former
attitude, focuses more upon itself, seeks within itself what it
previously sought in the outer world. This is obviously the case when
someone says to himself: The man who gave me the blow was led to
me precisely because I myself was the cause of it. Such people
pay more and more attention to their own inner nature, to their own
inner life. In other words, just as an individual in a state of
ecstasy looks through the outer veil of sense-perceptions into a world
of beings and realities hitherto unknown to him, so does the mystic
penetrate below his ordinary Ego. It is the ordinary Ego that rebels
against the blow which comes from outside; but the mystic penetrates
to what is below this Ego, to something that actually caused the blow.
In this way the mystic reaches a stage where he gradually loses sight
altogether of the outer world. Little by little, any concept of the
outer world vanishes and his own Ego expands as it were into a whole
world. But just as we will not decide at the moment whether the world
revealed in ecstasy is mirage, reality or phantasy, neither will we
decide whether what the mystic feels as compared with the ordinary
life of soul is reality or whether it is he himself who is the cause
of his sorrow and suffering. It may all be so much dreaming, but it is
nevertheless an experience that may actually come to a man. The point
of importance is that on two sides outwards and inwards
he penetrates into a world hitherto unknown to him.
If we now reflect that in a condition of ecstasy a man loses grasp of
his Ego, we shall realise that this is not a state to be striven for
by one who is leading an ordinary life, for the possibility of
achieving something in the world, our whole power of orientation in
the world, depends upon the fact that in our Ego we have a firm centre
of our being. If ecstasy deprives us of the possibility of
experiencing the Ego, then for the time being we have lost our very
selves. And on the other side, when the mystic attributes everything
to the Ego, makes himself the culprit for whatever he has to
experience, this has the detrimental effect of making him look within
himself for the ultimate cause of everything that happens in the
world. But thereby he loses the faculty of healthy orientation in
life, burdens himself with guilt and is unable to establish any right
relationship with the outer world.
Thus in both directions, in ordinary ecstasy and in ordinary mystical
experience, the power of orientation in the world is lost. It is
therefore a good thing that man encounters barriers in two directions.
If he brings his Ego to expression in the outward direction, he
encounters the barrier of sense-perceptions; they do not let him
through to what lies behind the veil of the sense-world and that is
beneficial for him because he is normally able to keep full possession
of his Ego. And in the other direction the inner experiences in the
life of soul do not let him through below the Ego, below those
feelings which lead to the faculty of orientation. He is enclosed
between two barriers in the outer world and in the inner world of soul
and in normal circumstances cannot penetrate beyond the point where
orientation in life is possible for him.
In what has been described a comparison has been made between the
normal state of life and the abnormal states of ecstasy and
uncontrolled mystical experience. Ecstasy and mystical experience are
abnormal states, but in everyday life there is something which helps
us to be aware of the barriers referred to very much more
clearly-namely, the alternating states of waking and sleeping through
which we pass within 24 hours.
What is it that we do in sleep? In sleep we do exactly the same, in a
certain respect, as we do in the abnormal state of ecstasy described
above. The inner man in us spreads into the outer world.
That is what actually happens. Just as in ecstasy we pour out our Ego,
lose hold of our Ego, in sleep we lose not only our Ego-consciousness
but we lose even more which is beneficial. In ecstasy we lose
only our Ego-consciousness, but still have around us a world of
hitherto unknown pictures, a world of spiritual realities and beings.
In sleep there is no such world around us, for everything in the way
of perception has gone. Thus sleep differs from ecstasy in this
respect: in sleep, together with the extinction of the Ego, a man's
faculty of perception-whether physical or spiritual-is also
extinguished. Whereas in ecstasy the Ego alone is extinguished, in
sleep the faculty of perception and the consciousness too, are
obliterated. Man has not only poured his Ego into the world, but he
has also surrendered his consciousness to this world. What remains
behind of man during sleep is what there is in him apart from the Ego
and apart from consciousness. In the normal sleeping man we have
before us a being in the physical world who has discarded both his
consciousness and his Ego. And whither has the consciousness, whither
has the Ego, gone? Having had an explanation of the state of ecstasy,
we are able to answer this question too. In the state of ecstasy we
have around us a world of spiritual realities and spiritual beings.
But if we also relinquish consciousness, then at that same moment
dense darkness surrounds us we sleep. Thus in sleep, as in
ecstasy, we have surrendered the Ego, and further this is the
characteristic of sleep the bearer of our consciousness and its
manifestations. This is our astral body; it is poured out into the
world of spiritual beings and facts revealed in the state of ecstasy.
We may therefore say that man's sleep is a kind of ecstasy a
condition in which he is outside his body not merely in respect of his
Ego, but also in respect of his consciousness. In the state of
ecstasy, the Ego, which is one member of the human being, has been
abandoned; and in sleep another member too is abandoned, for the
astral body goes out of the physical body as well, and with this
departure of the astral body the possibility of consciousness is
eliminated.
We have, then, to picture man in sleep as consisting on the one side
of the members still lying in the bed the physical body and the
etheric body and on the other side, of the members outside the
sleeper which have been given over to a world that is to begin with an
unknown realm; these members are the Ego, which in ecstasy is also
surrendered, and a second member as well, which in ecstasy is not
surrendered: the astral body.
Sleep represents a kind of division of man's being. Consciousness and
Ego separate from the outer sheaths and what happens in sleep is that
man passes into a state in which he no longer knows anything about the
experiences of waking life, in which he has no consciousness at all of
what outer impressions have brought to him. His inner self is given
over to a world of which he has no consciousness, of which he knows
nothing. Now for a certain reason of which we shall hear a great deal,
this world to which man's inner self is given over, into which his Ego
and his astral body have passed and in which he has forgotten all the
impressions of waking life, is called the Macrocosm, the Great World.
While he is asleep man is given over to the Macrocosm, poured out into
the Macrocosm.
During ecstasy he is likewise given over to the Macrocosm, but then he
knows something of it. It is characteristic of ecstasy that a man
experiences something whether pictures or realities of
what is spread around him in a vast domain of space in which he
believes himself lost. He experiences something like a loss of his Ego
but as though he were in a realm hitherto unknown to him. This
identification with a world which differs from that of everyday life
when we feel, subject only to our bodies, justifies us from the outset
in speaking of a Macrocosm, a Great World in contrast to the
little world of our ordinary waking life, when we feel
ourselves enclosed within our skin. That is only the most superficial
view of the matter. In the state of ecstasy we have grown into the
Macrocosm, where we see fantastic forms, fantastic because there is no
resemblance with anything in the physical world. We cannot distinguish
ourselves from them. We feel our whole being as it were expanded into
the Macrocosm. That is what happens in ecstasy. With this conception
of the state of ecstasy we are able by analogy it
least-to form an idea of why we lose hold of the Ego in that state.
Let us picture the Ego of man as a drop of coloured liquid. Assuming
that we had a very tiny vessel just able to contain this drop, the
drop would be visible by its colour. But if the drop were put in a
large vessel, let us say in a basin of water, the drop would no longer
be perceptible. Apply this analogy to the Ego which in the state of
ecstasy expands over the Macrocosm, and you will be able to conceive
that the Ego feels itself becoming weaker and weaker as it expands.
When the Ego spreads over the Macrocosm, it loses the faculty of
self-awareness, rather as a drop loses its identity in a large vessel
of water. So we can understand that when man surrenders himself to the
Macrocosm, the Ego is lost. It is still there, only being outpoured in
the Macrocosm it knows nothing of itself.
But in sleep there is another factor of importance. As long as a man
has consciousness, he acts. In the state of ecstasy he has a kind of
consciousness, but not the guiding Ego. He does not control his
actions; he surrenders himself entirely to impressions made upon him.
It is an essential feature of ecstasy that the man concerned is
actually capable of actions. Watched from outside, however, it is as
though he had entirely changed. It is really not he himself who is
acting; he acts as if under quite different influences. For many
beings appear and exert influence upon him. There lies the danger of
ecstasy. Because what man sees is a multiplicity, he comes under the
control now of one being, now of another, and seems to be
disintegrating. This is the danger of the state of ecstasy. Man is
indeed given over to a spiritual world but it is a world which tears
him asunder inwardly.
If we think of sleep, we must admit that the world we there enter has
a certain reality. The existence of a world can be denied only as long
as no effects of it are observed. If it is insisted that there is
someone behind a wall, this can be denied as long as no knocking can
be heard; if there is knocking, commonsense can no longer deny it.
When effects of a world are perceived it is not possible to regard
that world as pure fancy.
Are there, then, any perceptible effects of the world which we see in
ecstasy but not in normal sleep? Of the effects of the world in which
we are during sleep we can all convince ourselves when we wake in the
morning. Our condition then is different from what it was the previous
evening. In the evening we are tired, our forces are exhausted and
must be replenished; but in the morning we wake with fresh forces
which have been gathered during sleep. When with his Ego and astral
body a man is given up to another world, he draws from that
world-which in ecstasy is perceived but in normal sleep is
obliterated-the forces he needs for the life of day. How this actually
happens need not concern us now; what is important is that this world
brings us forces which banish fatigue. The world out of which stream
forces which get rid of fatigue is the same as the world we see in
ecstasy. Every morning we become aware of the effects of the world we
perceive in ecstasy but not in sleep. When there is a world which
produces effects we can no longer speak of a non-reality.
Out of the same world into which we gaze in the state of ecstasy, and
which in sleep is obliterated, we draw the forces strengthening us for
the life of day. We do this under quite special circumstances. During
this process of drawing forces from that spiritual world we do not
perceive ourselves. The essential feature of sleep is that we achieve
something but have no awareness of ourselves during this activity. If
we had any such awareness the process would be carried out far less
efficiently than it is when we are not conscious of it. In daily life
too there are matters where we do well to say to many a man:
Hands off! Everything would go wrong if they interfered
with it. If a man were to play a part in this difficult operation of
restoring the forces exhausted during the previous day, he would ruin
everything because he is not yet capable of being a conscious
participant. It is providential that consciousness of his own
existence is snatched away from man at the moment when he might do
harm to his own development.
Thus through forgetting his own existence on going to sleep man passes
out into the Macrocosm. Every night he passes over from his
microcosmic existence into the Macrocosm and becomes one with the
latter inasmuch as he pours into it his Ego and his astral body. But
because in the present course of his life he is capable of working
only in the world of waking life, his consciousness ceases the moment
he passes into the Macrocosm. That is why it has always been said in
occult science that between life in the Microcosm and in the Macrocosm
lies the stream of forgetfulness. On this stream of
forgetfulness man passes into the Great World, when on going to sleep
he passes out of the Microcosm into the Macrocosm. So we can say that
during every period of sleep, man surrenders two members of his being
the astral body and the Ego to the Macrocosm.
And now let us think of the moment of waking. At the moment of waking
a man begins again to feel pleasure, pain, and whatever urges and
desires he has recently experienced. That is the first experience. The
second experience is that his Ego-consciousness returns. Out of the
vague darkness of sleep the soul-experiences and the Ego re-emerge. We
have therefore to say that if man consisted only of those members
which remained lying in bed through the night, he would not, on
waking, be able to be aware of past experiences in the life of soul
such as pleasure, suffering and so on, for what has been lying there
is in the truest sense in the same condition as a plant. It has no
soul-experiences. But neither has the inner man during
sleep, although this inner man is the bearer of such experiences. From
this we can realise that in ordinary life, before suffering, pleasure,
sympathy, antipathy, and so forth, can actually be experienced,
the astral body must dive down into the sheaths of man which remain
lying in bed; otherwise he cannot become aware of any such
experiences. We can therefore say: The part of our being
consisting of astral body and Ego which at night is poured out
into the Macrocosm and gives rise to our inner experiences, becomes
perceptible to us in normal life only through the fact that on waking
we descend into the sheaths which have remained lying in bed.
What lies there is again twofold. One part of it is what we experience
on waking as our inner life. In the Macrocosm during sleep we cannot
be conscious of the play of our feelings, or, in brief, of our
soul-experiences. But when on waking we penetrate once again into the
members of our being which have remained lying in the bed, we can
experience not only our inner feelings but also the outer world of
sense-impressions. We perceive the red of the rose; delight in the
rose is an inner experience; perception of the red colour is an outer
experience. Therefore what is lying there in bed must be twofold: one
part must mirror to us what we experience inwardly, and the other part
perceives an outer world. If there were only the one without the
other, we should simply experience on waking either an inner world
alone or an external world alone. A panorama of outer; impressions
would be before us and we should not feel pleasure or pain; or
conversely, we should feel only pleasure and pain and have no
perception of anything in the external world. We dive down on waking,
not into a unity, but into a duality. In sleep, a duality of being has
poured into the Macrocosm, and on waking we dive down into the
Microcosm, another duality. What enables us to experience an outer
picture of the sense-world is the physical body, and what enables us
in waking life to have an inner life of soul, is the etheric body. If,
on waking, we were to penetrate into the physical body only, we should
confront outer pictures, but we should remain inwardly empty, cold and
apathetic, having no interest in anything around us or presented in
the pictures. If we were to penetrate into the etheric body only, we
should have no outer world, but only a world of feelings, surging up
and ebbing away. And so on waking we enter a twofold being we
enter into the etheric body which acts as a mirror of the inner world,
and into the physical body, the medium for the impressions of the
outer world of the senses.
Actual experiences therefore justify us in speaking of man as a
fourfold being. Two of his members Ego and astral body
belong, during sleep, to the Macrocosm. In waking life the Ego and
astral body belong to the Microcosm that is enclosed within the skin.
This little world is the medium for everything we have
before us in the normal waking state, for it is the physical body
which enables us to have an external world before us, and the etheric
body which enables us to have an inner life.
Thus man lives alternately in the Microcosm and in the Macrocosm.
Every morning he enters into the Microcosm. The fact that in sleep he
is poured out, like a drop in a large vessel of water, into the
Macrocosm, means that at the moment of passing out of the Microcosm
into the Macrocosm, he must pass through the stream of forgetfulness.
By what means, then, can man, provided he deepens himself inwardly, to
a certain extent induce those conditions that were described at the
beginning of the lecture? In ecstasy, the Ego is poured into the
Macrocosm, while the astral body has remained in the Microcosm. In
what does the mystical state consist? Our life by day in the physical
and etheric bodies, in the Microcosm, is remarkable in the extreme. We
do not actually descend into these bodies in such a way that we become
aware of their inner nature. These two sheaths make possible our life
of soul and our sense-perceptions. Why is it that on waking we become
aware of our life of soul? It is because the etheric body does not
allow us actually to look within it, any more than a mirror allows us
to see what is behind it and for that very reason enables us to see
ourselves in it. The etheric bodies mirrors our soul-life back
to us; and because it does so, it appears to us as if it were the
actual cause of our soul-life. The etheric body itself, however,
proves to be impenetrable. We do not penetrate into it, but it throws
back to us an image of our life of soul. That is its peculiarity. The
mystic, however, through intensifying the life of soul, succeeds in
penetrating to a certain extent into the etheric body; he sees more
than the mirrored image. By working his way into this part of the
Microcosm he experiences within himself what in the normal state man
experiences poured over the outer world. Thus the mystic, through
inner deepening, penetrates to some extent into his etheric body; he
penetrates below that threshold where the soul-life is in other
circumstances reflected in joy, suffering, and so on, into the
interior of the etheric body. What the mystic experiences in passing
the threshold are processes in his own etheric body. He then
experiences something that is somewhat comparable with the loss of the
Ego in the state of ecstasy. In the latter case the Ego becomes
evanescent, as it were, having been poured into the Macrocosm, and in
mystical experience the Ego is densified. The mystic
becomes aware of this through the fact that the principle adopted by
the ordinary Ego of acting in accordance with the brain-bound
intelligence and the dictates of the senses, is ignored, and the
impulses for his actions arise from inner feelings issuing
directly from his etheric body and not, as in the case of other
people, merely reflected by it. The intensely strong inner experiences
of the mystic are due to the fact that he penetrates right into his
own etheric body.
Whereas in the state of ecstasy a man expands his being into the
Macrocosm, the mystic compresses himself within the Microcosm. Both
experiences, whether that of perceiving in ecstasy certain happenings
and beings in the Macrocosm, or that of undergoing unusual inner
experiences as a mystic, are related to each other, and this relation
may be characterised quite simply in the following way. The world we
see with our eyes and hear with our ears arouses in us certain
feelings of pleasure, pain, and so on. We feel that in normal life all
this is interconnected. The joy in the outer world felt by one person
may be more intense than that felt by another, but these are
differences of degree only. The intense sufferings and raptures of the
mystic are vastly different in quality. There are also great
differences in quality between what the eyes see and the ears hear and
what is experienced by a person in ecstasy, when he is given over to a
world that is not like the world of the senses. But if we could have
from someone in ecstasy a description of his raptures and torments, we
should be able to say that the person in ecstasy may derive from his
vision of beings and events experiences such as those of the mystic.
And if, on the other hand, we were to hear the mystic describing his
emotions and feelings, we should say that something of the kind may
equally well be experienced in ecstasy.
The world of the mystic is a real world. Similarly the beings
encountered in the state of ecstasy are subjectively real, in the
sense that they are actually seen. Whether the experiences are
illusions or realities is at the moment beside the point. The person
in question sees a world that is different from the sense-world; the
mystic experiences joys, emotions and torments which are not
comparable with anything known in everyday life. The mystic does not,
however, see the world that is revealed to one in the state of
ecstasy, and the latter has no experience of the world of the mystic.
Both worlds are independent of each other. It is a strange
relationship, but an explanation of the world of the one may be found
in the light of the experiences of the other. If a normal person were
actually to experience the world described by one in the state of
ecstasy, the shattering effect would be comparable with the intensity
of the experiences undergone by the mystic.
We have thus pointed to a certain connection between the worlds of
mystical and ecstatic experience. Both inwardly and outwardly, man
encounters the world of the spirit.
What has been described today will seem to many of you to be airy
hypothesis, but we shall try in the next lectures to answer the
questions: To what extent are we able to penetrate into a real world
by working our way through the tapestry of the outer world of sense?
How far is it possible to get beyond the world experienced by a man in
the state of ecstasy and penetrate into a real outer world, and to
penetrate below the inner world of the mystic into a realm that lies
below the human Ego but in which there is also reality? The next
lectures will speak in greater and greater detail of the paths leading
into the spiritual world through the Macrocosm and through the
Microcosm.
Last Modified: 02-Nov-2024
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