The fundamental nature and construction of the Universe cannot be
conceived in its reality without continual reference to Man. Again and
again we must try to find in the Universe outside, what exists in one
way or another in Man. We will use these next three lectures for the
purpose of obtaining, from just this point of view, a kind of
plastically formed picture of the world, which can then lead on to the
answer of the question: What is the relation between morality and
natural law in Man?
When we study Man (I am here only repeating things that have already
been spoken and written of from various standpoints) we find him first
of all organised into what we may call higher Man and lower Man; and
then we have what forms the connection between the two — the
rhythmic Man, equalising or balancing the other two parts.
We have to observe first of all that a complete difference exists in
the laws governing the upper and lower parts of man. We can realise
this difference when we consider the fact that the ‘upper
man’, who is regulated by the head, is in its origin the outcome
of entirely different laws, belonging as it does to a different world
from the world of the senses.
That part of us which in our last incarnation was a result of forces
of the sense world, namely the limb man, has become what it now is,
the head man, through a metamorphosis which takes place between
death and a new birth — not in relation, of course, to the
outer form, but in regard to the forces of formation. What is now the
limb man becomes entirely transformed in its forces — transmuted
in its super-sensible constitution between death and a new birth, and
appears in our new Earth-life incorporated out of the Universe into
our constitution. On to this is suspended, as it were, the rest of man
— formed out of the world of sense. This fact we can find already
proved clearly from Embryology, if we would only think rationally
about embryonic facts. And thereby we have in our head organisation a
system of laws not belonging to this world at all, save only at its
origin — that is, in so far as it was present in a previous
incarnation. But all that which has caused the transformation of limb
man to head man is active in an entirely different world — the
world wherein we live, in the interval between death and a new birth.
Here, then, another world penetrates the world of the senses. Another
world is manifested in the head organism of Man. In a certain sense
the external world is brought into correspondence with this other
world, in that the head projects the principal sense-organs outwards.
The world that is extended in space and that runs its course in time,
is perceived by man through his senses; it penetrates into man through
his senses, and so it too belongs in a certain sense to the head
organism. In relation to our limb man on the other hand, we are in a
state of sleep. I have often spoken of this sleep-state of man in
relation to his Will nature, in relation to all that exists in the
limb man. We do not know how we move our limbs, how the
will causes the movement; we only examine the movement afterwards as
an outer phenomenon through our senses. We are asleep in our limb
organisation, in the same sense as we are asleep in the Universe
between going to sleep and awaking.
So here we have before us an entirely different world. We can say: we
have a world which outwardly manifests all that speaks to our senses
— all that we perceive through eyes, ears, etc. To this world we
belong through that portion of ourselves which we have called the
head man. Our connection with the world that lies behind
this one is brought about by the limb man, but in it we are
unconscious; we sleep into this world, whether we do so in the domain
of our Will, or whether we sleep into the Universe between our going
to sleep and our waking.
These two worlds are actually so constituted that the one is turned
towards us, and the other away from us, as it were; it lies behind the
world of sense although we have our origin in it. Man felt in olden
times — and the East still feels it — that a reconciliation
between the two is possible. As you know, we in the West search for
the reconciliation in a different way; but the Easterns, even today, a
line (sketch) still attempt to find it in a relatively conscious way,
although their methods are already antiquated for the present
humanity. The act of eating is symbolised by a line (sketch), for when
we take food, the process following takes place in the sphere of sleep
(unconsciously). We are not aware of what is really happening when we
eat an egg or a cabbage; it takes place in the unconscious like the
happenings of sleep. The cabbage and the egg manifest their exterior
to our sense-perception. But the eating really belongs to the
completely different world. The reconciliation however, is to be found
in our breathing.
Although the latter is to a certain extent unconscious, it is not so
in so great a degree as our eating. In spite of the fact that our
breathing is not so conscious as our hearing and seeing, it is more
conscious than the process of digestion for example; and while in the
East today, the attempt to make the digestive process a conscious one
has, as a rule, ceased (this used to be done in olden times), the
breathing process is still in a certain sense brought up into
consciousness. (The snake raises the process of digestion into
consciousness, but the consciousness of the snake is of course not to
be compared with human consciousness). There is a certain training of
the breathing, where the inhaling and exhaling are regulated in such a
way that the process is transformed into a sense-perception. Thus we
find respiration inserted, as it were, between conscious
sense-perception and the complete unconsciousness of assimilation and
transmutation of physical matter. Man in fact dwells in three worlds;
the one sensible to his consciousness, the other of which he remains
entirely unconscious, and the third (breathing) acting as a connecting
link or mediator between the two.
Now it is a fact that the process of breathing is also a kind of
assimilation; at all events, it is a material process, though taking
place in a more rarefied manner; it is an intermediate state between
actual transmutation of matter assimilation and the process of
sense-perception, the completely conscious experience of the external
world.
In the state in which we find ourselves between falling asleep and
awaking, we experience in the environment which then surrounds us,
events which only enter into our every-day consciousness as dreams.
Here man steps across into the world which is marked in our sketch,
and the dreams reveal through their very nature how Man steps across.
Consider for a moment how nearly related are dreams to the process of
respiration — the rhythm of breathing — how often you can
trace this rhythm in its after-workings when you dream. Man steps
across the border, as it were, of the world of consciousness, when he
dips ever so slightly into this other world in which he is when he
sleeps or when he dreams. There lies also the world of
‘Imaginations’. In ‘Imaginations’ it is for us a
fully conscious world, we have conscious perception in that world,
which we merely sip, as it were, in our dreams.
We shall now have to consider a correspondence that is found to exist,
an absolute correspondence, in respect of Number. I have already often
drawn your attention to this correspondence between Man and the world
in which he evolves. I have pointed to the fact that Man, in his
rhythm of breathing — 18 per minute — manifests something
that is in remarkable accord with other processes of the Universe. We
make 18 respirations per minute, which gives when calculated for the
day, 25,920 respirations. And we arrive at the same number when we
calculate how many days are contained in a normal life term of 72
years. That also gives about 25,920 days; so that something may be
said to exhale our astral body and Ego, on falling asleep and inhale
them again upon waking — always in conformity with the same
number rhythm.
And again, when we consider how the Sun moves — whether
apparently or really, does not matter — advancing a little each
year in what we call the precession of the equinoxes, when we consider
the number of years it takes the Sun to make this journey round the
whole Zodiac, once more we get 25,920 years — the Platonic year.
The fact is, this human life of ours, within the boundaries set by
birth and death, is indeed fashioned, down to its most infinitesimal
processes — as we have seen in the breathing — in accordance with
the laws of the Universe. But in the correspondence we have observed
up to now between the Macrocosm and Man the Microcosm, we have made
our observations in a realm where the correspondence is obvious and
evident. There are however, other very important correspondences. For
example, consider the following. I want to lead you through Number to
something else I have to bring before you. Take the 18 respirations
per minute, making 1,080 per hour and in 24 hours 25,920 respirations;
that is, we must multiply: 18 X 60 X 24 in order to arrive at 25,920.
Taking this as the cycle of the precession of the equinoxes, and
dividing it by 6o and again by 24, we would naturally get 18
years. And what do these 18 years really mean? Consider — these
25,920 respirations correspond to a human day of 24 hours; in other
words, this 24 hour day is the day of the Microcosm. 18 respirations
may serve as the unit of rhythm.
And now take the complete circle described by the precession of the
equinoxes, and call it, not a Platonic year, but a great Day of the
Heavens, a Macrocosmic day. How long would one respiration on this
scale have to occupy to correspond with the human respiration? Its
duration would have to be 18 years — a respiration made by the
Being corresponding to the Macrocosm.
If we take the statements of modern astronomy — we need not
interpret them here, we shall speak of their meaning later — we
shall find that it is a matter of indifference whether we assume that
the motion of the Sun is apparent, or the motion of the Earth; that
does not concern us — but let us now take that which the
Astronomer of today calls Nutation of the Earth's Axis.
You are aware that the Earth's axis lies obliquely upon the Ecliptic,
and that the Astronomers speak of an oscillation of the Earth's axis
around this point and they call this ‘Nutation’. The axis
completes one revolution around this point in just about 18 years (it
is really 18 years, 7 months, but we need not consider the fraction,
although it is quite possible to calculate this too with exactitude.)
But with these 18 years something else is intimately connected. For it
is not merely on the fact of ‘Nutation’ — this
‘trembling’, this rotation of the Earth's axis in a double
cone around the Earth's centre, and the period of 18 years for its
completion — it is not only on this fact that we have to fix our
minds, but we find that simultaneously with it another process takes
place. The Moon appears each year in a different position because,
like the Sun, she ascends and descends from the ecliptic, proceeding
in a kind of oscillating motion again and again towards the Equator
ecliptic. And every 18 years she appears once more in the same
position she occupied 18 years before. You see there is a connection
between this Nutation and the path of the Moon. Nutation in truth
indicates nothing else than the Moon's path. It is the projection of
the motion of the Moon. So that we can in actual reality observe the
“breathing” of the Macrocosm. We only need notice the path
of the Moon in 18 years or, in other words, the Nutation of the
Earth's axis. The Earth dances, and she dances in such a manner as to
describe a cone, a double cone, in 18 years, and this dancing is a
reflection of the macrocosmic breathing. This takes place just as many
times in the macrocosmic year as the 18 human respirations during the
microcosmic day of 24 hours.
So we really have one macrocosmic respiration per minute in this
Nutation movement. In other words, we look into this breathing of the
Macrocosm through this Nutation movement of the Moon, and we have
before us what corresponds to respiration in man. And now, what is the
purport of all this? The meaning of it is that as we pass from waking
to sleep, or only from the wholly conscious to the dream state, we
enter another world, and over against the ordinary laws of day, years,
etc., and also the Platonic year, we find in this insertion of a
Moon rhythm, something that has the same relationship in the
Macrocosm, as breathing, the semiconscious process of respiration, has
to our full consciousness. We have therefore not only to consider a
world which is spread out before us, but another world which projects
into, and permeates our own.
Just as we have before us a second part of the human organism, when
observing the breathing process, namely the rhythmic man, as opposed
to the perceptive or head man, so we have in what appears as the
yearly Moon motion, or rather the 18-year motion of the Moon, the
identity between one year and one human respiration; we have this
second world interpenetrating our own.
There can therefore be no question of having only one world in our
environment. We have that world that we can follow as the world of the
senses; but then we have a world, whose foundations are laid within
the laws of another, and which stands in exactly the same relationship
to the world of the senses, as our breathing does to our
consciousness; and this other world is revealed to us as soon as we
interpret in the right way this Moon movement, this Nutation of the
Earth's axis.
These considerations should enable you to realise the impossibility of
investigating in a one-sided way the laws manifesting in the world.
The modern materialistic thinker is in quest of a single system of
natural laws. In this he deludes himself; what he should say is rather
as follows. “The world of the senses is certainly a world in
which I find myself embedded and to which I belong; it is that world
which is explained by natural science in terms of Cause and Effect.
But another world interpenetrates this one, and is regulated by
different laws. Each world is subject to its own system of laws.”
As long as we are of the opinion that one kind of system of laws could
suffice for our world, and that all hangs upon the thread of Cause and
Effect, so long shall we remain victims of complete illusions.
Only when we can perceive from facts such as the Moon's motion and
nutation of the Earth's axis that another world extends into this one
— only then are we upon the right path.
And now, you see, these are the things in which the spiritual and
material (so-called) touch each other, or let us say the psychical and
material. He who can faithfully observe what is contained within his
own self will find the following. These things must gradually be
brought to the attention of humanity. There are many among you, who
have already passed the 18 years and about 7 months period in age.
That was an important period. Others will have passed twice that
number of years — 37 years and 2 months — again an important
time. After that we have a third very momentous period 18 years and
seven months later, at the age of 55 years and 9 months. Few can
notice as yet, not having been trained to do so, the effects and
important changes taking place within the individual soul at these
times. The nights passed during these periods are the most important
nights in the life of the individual. It is here where the Macrocosm
completes its 18 respirations, completes one minute — and Man as
it were, opens a window facing quite another world. But as I said, man
cannot yet watch for these points in his life. Everyone, however,
could try to let his mental eye look back over the years he has
passed, and if he is over 55 years old to recognise three such
important epochs; others two, and most of you at any rate one! In
these epochs events take place, which rush up into this world of ours
out of quite a different one. Our world opens at these moments to
another world.
If we wish to describe this happening more clearly, we can say that
our world is at these times penetrated anew by astral streams; they
flow in and out. Of course this really happens every year, but we are
here concerned with the 18 years, as they correspond to the 18
respirations per minute. In short, our attention is drawn through the
cosmic clock to the breathing of the Macrocosm, in which we are
embedded. This correspondence with another world, which is manifested
through the motion of the Moon, is exceptionally important. Because,
you see, the world which at these times projects into our own, is the
very world into which we pass during our sleep, when the Ego and the
astral body leave our physical and etheric bodies. It must not be
thought that the world composing our every-day environment is merely
permeated in an abstract way by the astral world; rather should we
say, it breathes in the astral world, and we can observe the
astral in this breathing process through the Moon's motion or
nutation. You will realise that we have here come to something of
great significance. If you remember what I said recently, we may put
it in the following way. We have, on the one hand, our world as it is
generally observed; and we have in addition, the materialistic
superstition that, for instance, if we gaze upwards, we see the Sun, a
ball of gas, as it is described in books. This is nonsense. The Sun is
not a ball of gas; but in that place where the Sun is, there is
something less than empty space — a sucking, absorbing body, in fact,
while all around it is that which exerts pressure. Consequently in
that which comes to us from the Sun we have not to do with anything
constituting a product of combustion in the Sun; but all that has been
transmitted to the Sun from the Universe is rayed back.
Where the Sun is, is emptier than empty space. This can be said of all
parts of the Universe where we find Ether. For this reason it is so
difficult for the physicist to speak of Ether, for he thinks that
Ether is also matter, though more rarefied than ordinary matter.
Materialism is still very busy with this perpetual
‘rarefying’, both the materialism of natural science as well
as the materialism of Theosophy. It distinguishes first, dense matter;
then etheric matter — more rarefied; then astral matter —
still more rarefied; and then there is the ‘mental’ and I do
not know what else — always more and more rarefied!
The only difference (in this theory of rarefying) between the two
forms of materialism is that the one recognises more degrees of
rarefaction than the other. But in the transition from ponderable
matter to Ether we have nothing to do with rarefaction. Anyone who
believes that in Ether we have to do merely with a
‘rarefying’ process is like a man who says: ‘I have
here a purse full of money; I repeatedly take from it and the money
becomes less and less. I take away still more till at last none
remains.’ Nothing is left — but yet he can go on! The
‘nothing’ can become less still; for if he gets into debt,
his money becomes less than nothing. In the same way not only does
matter become empty space, but it becomes negative, less than
nothing — emptier than emptiness; it assumes a
‘sucking’ nature. Ether is sucking, absorbing. Matter
presses. Ether absorbs. The Sun is an absorbing, sucking
ball, and wherever Ether is present we have this absorbent force.
Here we step over into the other side, the other aspect of
three-dimensional space — we pass from pressure to suction. That
which immediately surrounds us in this world, that of which we are
constituted as physical man and ether man, is both pressing and
sucking or absorbing. We are a combination of both; whereas the Sun
possesses the power of suction only, being nothing but ether,
nothing but suction. It is the undulating wave of pressure and
suction, ponderable matter and ether, that forms in its alternation a
living organisation. And the living organism continually breathes in
the astral; the breathing expresses itself through the Moon's
motion or nutation. And here we begin to divine a second member or
principle of the world's construction; the one member — pressure
and suction, physical and etheric; the other, the second —
astral. The astral is neither physical nor etheric but is continually
inhaled and exhaled; and the nutation demonstrates this process.
Now a certain astronomical fact was observed even in the most ancient
times. Many thousands of years before the Christian era, the Egyptians
knew that after a period of 72 years the fixed stars in their apparent
course gain one day on the Sun. It seems to us, does it not, that the
fixed stars revolve and the Sun too revolves, but that the latter
revolves more slowly, so that after 72 years the stars are appreciably
ahead. This is the reason of the movement of the Vernal Point (the
Spring Equinoctial point); namely, that the stars go faster. The
Spring Equinox moves further and further away, the fixed star has
altered its place in relation to the Sun. Briefly, the facts are that
if we notice the path of a fixed star and notice the point where the
Sun stands over it, we find that at the end of 72 years the star
occupies the same position on the 30th December, while the Sun only
reaches that point again on the 31st December. The Sun has lost a day.
After a lapse of 25,920 years this loss is so great, that the Sun has
described a complete revolution and once again is back upon the place
we noted. We see therefore that in 72 years the Sun is one day
behind the fixed stars. Now these 72 years are approximately the
normal life period of Man, and they are composed of 25,920 days.
Thus when we multiply 72 years by 360, and consider the human span of
life as one day, we have the human life as one day of the
Macrocosm. Man is breathed out, as it were, from the Macrocosm; his
life is one day in the macrocosmic year.
So that this revolution, this circle described by the precession of
the Equinoxes, indicating the macrocosmic year, as already known to
the Egyptians thousands of years ago (for they looked upon this period
of 72 years as very important), this apparent revolution of the Vernal
point is connected with the life and death of Man in the
Universe — with the life and death, that is, of the Macrocosm.
And the laws of the life and death of Man are something that we are
compelled to follow. We have already found how nutation points to
another world; as our sense-perception world points to one world, so
nutation points to another, the breathing world. And now through what
present-day astronomy calls ‘precession’, we have something
we may again call a transition, a transition this time to a state of
deep sleep, a transition to still another, a third world. We have thus
three worlds, interpenetrating one another, inter-related; but we must
not attempt simply to combine these worlds from the point of view of
causality. Three worlds, a three-fold world, as Man is a three-fold
being; one, the world of sense surrounding us, the world we perceive;
a second world whose presence is indicated by the motions of the Moon;
and a third which makes itself known to us by the motion of the
equinoctial point, or we might say, by the path of the Sun. This third
world indeed remains about as unknown to us as the world of our own
Will is unknown to our ordinary consciousness.
It is important therefore to search everywhere for correspondences
between the human Microcosm and the Macrocosm. And when today the
Oriental, if only in a decadent way, seeks to acquire breathing
consciousness, as was done in the ancient Oriental wisdom, it is the
manifestation of the desire to stray across into this other world
which otherwise he could only recognise through what the Moon, so to
speak, wills in our world. But in those times when there was still an
ancient wisdom coming to man in a different way from that by which we
have today to seek wisdom — in those times man also knew how to
see this working of inner law in other connections and
correspondences.
In the Old Testament the Initiates, who were familiar with these
matters, used always a certain image or picture — the picture, namely,
of the relation between Moon-light and Sun-light. This we can find
also in a certain sense in the Gospels, as I have recently shown you.
We generally speak of the Moon-light being reflected Sunlight. I am
speaking now in the sense of physics, and I shall have to show later
on that these expressions are really very inaccurate. The Moon-light
represented in the Old Testament the Jahve or Jehovah power. This
power was conceived as a reflected power, and the
Initiates — though not of course the orthodox Rabbis of the Old
Testament — knew: The Messiah, the Christ will come, and He will be the
direct Sun-light. Jahve is only His advance reflection. Jahve
is the Sun-light, but not the direct Sun-light. Of
course, here we are speaking not of physical sunlight, but of the
spiritual reality.
Christ entered into human evolution, He who had been present
previously only in reflection, in an indirect way in the form of
Jehovah. And there arose the necessity to think of the Christ, who
lived in Jesus, as the result of a different set of laws from
those appertaining to ordinary natural science. But if we do not admit
this other set of laws, if we believe that the world exists only as
the result of cause and effect, then there is no place for That which
is the Christ. His place must be prepared for Him by our recognition
of three interpenetrating worlds. Then there is created the
possibility of being able to say: It may be that in this world of
sense everything is related through the law of cause and effect as
maintained by natural science, but another world permeates this one,
and to this other world belongs everything that has happened in the
world that has connection with the Mystery of Golgotha.
In our times, when the desire for an understanding of these matters is
becoming more and more manifest, it is important to realise that this
understanding must be sought through the recognition of these three
interpenetrating worlds, which exist simultaneously and are entirely
different one from another. This means that we must seek not for one
system of laws only, but for three; and we must seek for them
within Man himself.
If you consider well what I have just said, you will see that it will
not do to adopt the methods of the Copernican system, and simply draw
ellipses intended to show the path of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth,
Venus and Mercury and lastly of the Sun. That is not what is wanted at
all. What is wanted is rather to look at the laws that are active in
the worlds that are physically perceptible and see how these laws are
cut across by an altogether different set of laws; and that especially
the present Moon, in her motion, presents something that is in no way
causally connected with the rest of the Stellar System, such as would
be the case were the Moon a member of that System, like the other
planets. The Moon however is to be referred to quite another world,
which is, as it were, inserted into ours, and which indicates the
breathing process of our Universe, as the Sun indicates the
interpenetration of our Universe by the Ether.
Before one engages in Astronomy, one must educate oneself in a
qualitative sense concerning that which moves in space, concerning the
things that are interdependent in space. For one must be quite clear
that Sun matter and any other matter — Earth matter for instance
— can under no circumstances be brought into a simple
relationship; because the matter of the Sun is, in comparison with the
matter of the Earth, something absorbing and sucking, while the latter
exerts pressure. The motions which express themselves in nutation are
motions proceeding from the astral world, and not from anything that
can be found in Newton's principles. It is just this Newtonism that
has driven us so far into materialism, because it seizes on the
uttermost abstractions. It speaks of a force of gravitation. The Sun,
it says, attracts the Earth, or the Earth attracts the Moon; a force
of attraction exists between these bodies, like some invisible cable.
But if really nothing but this force of attraction existed, there
would be no cause for the Moon to revolve round the Earth, or the
Earth round the Sun; the Moon would simply fall on to the Earth. This
would indeed have happened ages ago, if gravitation alone were acting;
or the Earth would have fallen into the Sun. It is therefore quite
impossible for us to look to gravitation alone for the means of
explaining the imagined or actual motions of celestial bodies. So what
do they do? Let us see! Here we have a Planet imbued with a constant
desire to fall into the Sun — supposing we were to have the law
of gravitation alone. But now we will suppose that this planet has at
some time or other been given another force, a tangential force. This
impetus acts with such and such a power, and the force of gravitation
acts at the same time with such and such a power, so that eventually
the planet does not fall into the Sun, but has to move along a line
resulting from both forces.
You see that Newton's theory finds it necessary to assume some kind of
original impetus, some kind of first push in the case of each planet,
of each moving celestial body. There must always be some extra-mundane
God somewhere, who gives this impetus, who imparts this tangential
force. This is always presupposed; and remember, this assumption was
made at a time when we had lost all idea of bringing the material and
the spiritual into any kind of connection, when we were incapable of
conceiving of anything but a perfectly external ‘push’.
Here we have an instance of the inability of materialism to understand
matter. I have repeatedly drawn your attention to this of late. It
follows, that therefore materialism is also unable to understand the
motions of matter, and is compelled to give quite an
anthropomorphic explanation of them, picturing God as a being with
wholly human attributes, who simply gives the Moon a push and the
Earth a push. The Earth and Moon then ‘attract’ each other
— and behold, from these two forces, the push and the attraction,
we have their movements in the heavens.
It is from ideas of this kind that the Solar system is constructed
today. But to get a real understanding of the Universe it is
absolutely necessary to look for the connection between that which
lives in Man, and that which lives in the Macrocosm. For Man is an
actual Microcosm in the Macrocosm. Of this we will speak further
tomorrow.
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