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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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Man: Hieroglyph of the Universe
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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Man: Hieroglyph of the Universe
Schmidt Number: S-4126
On-line since: 17th July, 2002
In the foregoing studies we have indicated how necessary it is to
study Man in his entirety if we would see how exact a copy he is in
all his nature of the Universe as a whole. It is specially important
to receive this knowledge not only into our intellect, but also into
our feeling and will; for only by regarding Man in his totality as
born out of the whole Universe, can a deeper understanding be gained
for that which Christianity wishes to be for the world. It might
easily be objected that if this is so, a complicated understanding of
the details of the Universe and of Man is demanded of modern humanity
in order that Man should become complete Man in his consciousness. Yet
just reflect that this demand, which now approaches humanity as a
cardinal demand, is not peculiar to Spiritual Science. In order to
indicate exactly what I mean, let me first put the question: What
demand did Christianity bring when it first came into the world? In
reality it claimed an understanding of the Universe which originally
belonged to the ancient heathen conceptions, but which has in course
of time been completely forgotten. Just consider what has been
gradually lost to Man in course of time of the fundamental views and
characteristics of Christianity. Christianity first appeared in such a
way that it could only be understood by comprehending e.g. the
Trinity: The Nature of God the Father, God the Son — that is,
Jesus Christ — and the Spirit. In the sense in which Christianity
understood these three aspects of the Divine Spiritual, the
understanding of them demanded no less than does the understanding of
such things as are given by Spiritual Science today. Only all that
leads to the comprehension of this idea of Father, Son and Spirit has
been gradually eliminated; it has been thrown out of the intelligible
and become empty words; empty husks of words have alone been retained.
For centuries man has had these empty word-husks. This has gone so far
that, after having first dogmatically rejected them, people have begun
to ridicule them. The best of men have ridiculed these empty husks.
Ridicule has been poured upon them. ‘Dogmatic Theology’, it
is said, ‘claims that One is Three and Three One!’ it is
indeed a terrible delusion, it is sheer deception to believe that the
Christian movement has ever demanded less understanding, less
self-sacrificing knowledge, than that demanded by modern Spiritual
Science — and demanded by it in order to regain Christianity. The
most important and basic facts have been cast out of Christianity, and
if we leave out of account that these live on in the different
confessions as words, we can ask: What really remains to man of the
fundamental ideas of Christ Himself? How does modern man discriminate
between Christ and the Universal Cosmic God who can be met with in the
ideas of Jahveh or Jehovah? I have drawn attention to the fact that
even theologians such as Harnack do not discriminate. How many people
today are clear as to what is to be understood by the Spirit? People
have become such ‘abstractlings’, satisfied with the mere
empty husks of words; either they remain in the churches and are
satisfied; or if they are — as they call it —
‘enlightened’, they turn all to ridicule. What is given in
empty husks of words can never have the power to bring light to the
individual activities of human knowledge.
Only reflect how far we have actually gone in this direction. All that
was comprised in the knowledge of ancient Greece was at the same time
a healing principle. The healer was a priest and at the same time the
teacher of the people. That the teacher and priest was also a healer
presupposes that something unhealthy was present in the whole process
of civilisation; otherwise there would be no ground for speaking of a
healer. They spoke of the healer because from an instinctive knowledge
they had still an understanding of the whole cosmic process, more
comprehensive and intense than we possess today. Today man pictures
the cosmic process as running its course in such a way that what comes
later is always the effect of what was earlier; but this is not so in
reality. The older instinctive knowledge was aware that this was not
so. Today men imagine, especially those who speak of progress in the
abstract, that evolution is bound continually to ascend. We find this
notion of an ascending evolution among the superficial philosophers of
modern times. A man who is simply carried along by the general
prejudices of the time, such as Wilhelm Wundt, the non-philosopher,
who became the philosopher of the hour for many, also spoke as an
alleged philosopher of such “Universal Progress”, without
the slightest knowledge of what really lies in the actual stream of
human development. We must realise that in the real stream of human
development there is always a tendency to degenerate. There is not a
tendency towards progress there, least of all in history. There is a
continual tendency towards degeneration, and only because what we call
teaching, or knowledge, works steadily against it, is that raised up
which would otherwise be drawn down into the depths. Only in this way
do we have progress.
Consider from this standpoint how the matter stands with the child.
The child is born. People speak of heredity, but we inherit only what
would lead to decline. If the child were not educated by his whole
environment and later by school and by life, he would degenerate.
Education is a preservative from degeneration, it brings healing. The
old instinctive knowledge of Man would still regard as a healing
process everything connected with knowledge, education or priesthood.
In olden times the office of the doctor could not be separated from
that of the priest, they were one and the same. Modern evolution has
separated natural science from the science of soul and spirit, as I
explained in yesterday's lecture. Thus man leaves to medical science
the healing of all that which, according to Julius Robert Mayer, has
nothing to do with human aims, but is concerned only with the use of
the forces of the horses and their transmutation to heat in the
horses, in the wagon-axles, in the streets on which the wheels ran,
and so forth. This is, roughly speaking, left to the physician; and
people like Rubner in Berlin, who is only a representative of this
mode of thought, calculate what is necessary to human life almost as
though Man were a kind of complicated stove.
But now draw the social-ethical conclusion of such a conception, and
recognise that if of all that takes place in the transmutation of
force the purposes and aims of Man are only a secondary effect, then
we are confronted with the possibility of believing that the world
could get on without these secondary effects. As a matter of fact that
is really the secret belief of modern man, that the real consists only
of the physical, and everything else is a side-stream, a secondary
effect.
In face of such a view it would be only consistent to reject
Christianity, as the materialists of the middle of the nineteenth
century did. They actually carried out to its logical conclusion the
materialistic cosmic conception, by saying: If naturalism is correct,
then there is nothing for it but to ridicule the idea of any
difference between a transgressor and a good man — for of course, just
the same amount of force is transmuted into heat in the one as in the
other! The questions that flash through the world at the present time
are really often questions of honesty, courage and consistency. At a
time when man certainly does not possess this honesty in respect of
the outer things of life, it is indeed not surprising to find that it
is not there in respect of these cardinal questions.
Thus it comes about that modern humanity still talks of Christ,
without really knowing that He must be distinguished from the
Universal God underlying all nature. If the Christ-Concept has been
gradually changed into the simple God-concept, that signifies a
retrogression of humanity, back to before the Mystery of
Golgotha. In order to understand Christianity rightly it is necessary
to take this principle of degeneration seriously, and place in
opposition to it the necessity of working out of something quite
different from what bears the germ of degeneration within it. The
attention of present-day man must be drawn to the fact that at that
time in the course of Earthly events when the Earth moved —
together with man, of course — through the Mystery of Golgotha,
something took place as a happening on Earth which had significance
not merely for humanity, but for the entire Earth-life.
To comprehend this, Nature and Spirit must of course be studied with
much greater earnestness than lies in the inclination of modern
humanity. In order to explain this, let me point back to something
which lived in the consciousness of man, perhaps up to the eighth
century before Christ. Man did not then perceive himself as an
isolated being, as he does today. Today he feels himself as a being
enclosed in his skin, but up to the seventh or eighth century BC. he
felt himself to be a member of the whole Universe, taking part in the
events of the whole Universe. Grotesque as it may seem today, it is a
fact that in those olden times man did not feel his head so strongly
shut off by his skull, he felt that that which lived in his head
extended into the Cosmos, and belonged to the whole starry heaven.
Strange as it seems today, he felt himself in the sphere of the stars,
for he felt his head in living connection with them. Thus he said to
himself: ‘When the night-sky arches over me, it is really I
myself, who live there in living communion of my head with the
stars.’ He said: ‘I follow the course of time further, when
after the night the day appears. Then the stars which rose on the one
side set on the other, and in their place the Sun rises. The
configuration of the stars then no longer works in my head, for the
Sun takes the place of the starry heavens and my eyes it is that are
co-ordinated with the Sun.’ And because he vividly felt: ‘My
eyes are co-ordinated with the Sun when I am busy on Earth during the
day,’ he said to himself: ‘Just as now there is an earthly
existence and my eyes are co-ordinated to the Sun, so in the existence
preceding the Earth (we call it the Moon existence) my whole head was
a kind of eye; not as now, perceiving the objects in a twofold way,
but, looking out into the Cosmos there were within me, in my brain, as
it were, as many little eyes as there are stars. Out of these little
eyes has grown all that lives now in my brain; and my sense-eyes are
but later products, co-ordinated to the Sun as was my brain to the
starry heavens. Therefore my brain is a later product of evolution of
an eye, or really of many separate eyes, as many in number as the
stars shining out there in the night. Thus my brain has grown out of a
sense; and what is now in Earth-existence, my eye, whereby I am in
communication with my Earth-environment, will be an inner organ, as is
now in my brain, when the Earth has been replaced by another planet
(which as you know we call the Jupiter-condition). What is now on my
outer surface will draw into my inner being. People will then look
different. What they now have as corresponding with their environment
will form an inner organ in future times.’ Ancient humanity felt
this instinctively and said: ‘Light penetrates; through the eye
of my senses, but in my inner being I preserve the light of olden
times. It works in me as thought. Thought was a sense-perception
before the Earth became Earth, when it was an earlier planet; and my
sense-perception will be thought in the future.’ In ancient times
man perceived all this as wisdom, which he felt
‘instinctively’ as we should say today. The ancients did not
throw about the word ‘instinctive’ as is done today, they
said: ‘It is the wisdom which the Gods in heaven have brought
down to us on Earth.’ Of what arose in them instinctively
concerning the past, present and future they said: ‘This was
brought to us by the Immortals.’ This they represented to
themselves in Pictures. What does the Isis-picture tell us?
‘I am the All; I am the Past, the Present and the Future. My Veil
has no mortal ever lifted.’ The modern interpretation of this is
really in truth a strange one! People today think in materialistic
terms about a saying containing the term ‘mortal’. They do
not think, in the case of this saying of Isis: ‘I am the Past, I
am the Present, I am the Future. My veil hath no Mortal yet
lifted;’ but they think of it as: ‘I am the Past, the
Present and the Future; my veil hath no man yet lifted.’
The people of today do not reflect how on the other hand they hold
themselves to be immortal and that therefore ‘My veil hath no
mortal ever lifted’ cannot be regarded as a final sentence.
Novalis said: ‘Well then, we must become immortal, so that we may
lift the veil of Isis.’
Let us reflect on the underlying thought brought forward by modern
materialists. It gives them pleasure to think: ‘I am the All. I
am the Past, the Present and the Future. My veil no man hath ever
raised.’ For they are thus spared the effort of lifting it, and
their philosophers can teach that man has now reached the boundaries
of knowledge. In reality they mean that man is too indolent to tread
the path of knowledge. They do not like to say this, so they say that
man has reached the boundaries of knowledge.
In our age, which wants to be independent of authority, these things
are accepted, but they must not be carried into the future, if man is
not to fall into decadence. It should not be overlooked that no one
has the right to call himself a Christian who believes only in a
general progress and does not realise that if the Earth had been left
to itself since the Mystery of Golgotha, it would have fallen into
decadence. Hence it is necessary for us to oppose to this decadence
something which we cannot obtain from the Earth, nor from that
from which the Earth is derived — the Father-God — but which
must be obtained from God the Son, and must be injected into the
continuous evolution of mankind. It is an absolute deviation of man
from his task of today if he continues unwilling to admit that the
Universe is to be brought into relation to the Christ-Event. Think
what it really means when, though stormed at by Catholic and
Evangelical confessions, Spiritual Science asserts that the
Christ-concept and the Cosmos-concept must be united, while against
that it is always said: ‘Spiritual Science has no idea that
Christ is only to be understood in an ethical sense, as something
inserted only into the moral order of the world.’ If man holds
the moral order of the world as a secondary effect of the
transmutation of forces, then the Christ-concept inserted only into
the moral order of the world, also appears as a mere secondary effect
in the cosmic system.
We have spoken of one thing whereto the old instinctive knowledge of
mankind pointed, namely that the human brain stands in relation to the
starry sphere, and that the human eyes are in a certain way
co-ordinated with the Sun-sphere. Going back into earlier periods,
when man still possessed a qualitative knowledge of astronomy and of
the earthly elements, we see that Light was brought into relation with
what is nearest our Earth, with Air. With their instinctive knowledge,
the ancients could not think of Light without Air. Modern thinkers
with their abstract knowledge do not bring what they explain as Light
into relation with Air. Certainly they describe it in a wonderful way
— as a vibratory movement of the ether; but in relation to Air,
the farthest they go is to regard the Air as a medium through which
the Light passes. It is really most remarkable how little people
reflect upon what is imposed upon them! Earth: Infinite Space: Stars.
Among these stars are some whose Light needs millions of years to
reach the Earth. Night falls. Here is a star whose Light needs a
shorter time to reach the Earth. Just imagine for a moment: What have
we in the rays of its Light? Certainly we do not see the star itself
when we look in the direction of the Light-rays. The Light-ray which
meets our eye, according to this theory, comes from something millions
of years back; it may even have perished long ago, but its Light is
still traveling hither. Nothing is told us of what is really out there
in the Cosmos. All we are told is how channels of Light are
approaching, which may perhaps lead back to some still existing star
but which may also lead to some star no longer there.
We must make ourselves acquainted with the thought of how for us the
Light-phenomena as such make themselves apparent in the phenomenon of
Air; for although the Light passes through the apparently airless
space, by us it is not seen in airless space, but in the Air-filled
space, for only in such can we exist. Thus for us Light and Air are
experienced together. In this way we can go more deeply into the human
constitution; we can go a step further. In the human head we can pass
from the eyes to the nose. The nose (and oriental philosophy knows a
great deal about this), the nose is the organ through which one
breathes in and breathes out. The eye is the receptive organ for
Light. The nose and eye are divided. The nose is adapted to the Air,
and all that is adapted to the Air extends to the world of the
planets. The Sun makes the beginning in working in our earthly part;
but the rest of the planets work on the rest of our constitution; and
as we come down from the starry world into that of the Sun and planets
we arrive, in the case of man, as it were, at the nose. Then we come
down quite to the earthly, passing from the nose to the mouth, to the
organ of taste, and, taking up the substances of the Earth through
that organ, we descend from the planetary into the Earth-world. We
have the rest of man as an appendage; the head as appendage of the
eyes, the breast as appendage of the nose, and all the rest of man,
the limb-man, the metabolic man as appendage of the organ of taste. We
have now apportioned man, taking him in his totality, to the starry
world, the solar and planetary world and the Earth-world. We have
placed him into the whole Universe and when we look at his brain
— inwardly, not outwardly; not by physical anatomy, but by inner
knowledge — we see in the human head, inasmuch as it is the
bearer of the brain, a direct copy of the starry world. We see in all
that extends from the nose to the lungs, a copy of the planetary
system with the Sun. If we then consider the remainder, we see that
part of man which is Earth-bound, as e.g. are animals. In this way
only do we arrive at the true parallel between man and the rest of the
world. Thus should man be understood, even in detail.
Consider for a moment the circulation of the blood. The blood,
transmuted by the outer air, enters the left auricle, passes into the
left ventricle, and from thence branches off through the aorta into
the organism. We can say: Blood passes from the lungs to the heart,
thence into the rest of the organism, but branching off also to the
head. The blood however in passing through the organism takes up the
nourishment. And into this is introduced all that is dependent on the
Earth. All that the digestive apparatus introduces into the
circulation of the blood is earthly. What is introduced through the
breathing, when we bring oxygen into the blood-course, is planetary.
And then we have the blood-circulation that goes to the head, which
includes all that composes the head. Just as the circulatory course of
the lungs with its absorption of oxygen, and giving out of carbonic
acid, belongs to the planetary system, just as what is introduced
through the digestive apparatus belongs to the Earth, so that part of
the circulatory course that branches off above, belongs to the starry
world. It is, as it were, drawn away from the aorta and then streams
back and unites with the blood streaming back from the rest of the
organism, so that they stream conjointly back to the heart. That which
branches off above says, as it were, to the whole of the rest of the
circulatory course: ‘I do not share either in the oxygenating
process nor in the digestive process, but I separate myself out. I
invert myself upwards.’ That it is that belongs to the starry
world. And the nervous system might be followed up in the same way.
One arrives at no perception of man by thinking that he can be studied
from his physical aspect only. In so doing we only find in the cranium
that pulp described by our physical anatomy! What it describes is
simply non-existent. It is in reality the confluence of forces of the
starry heavens. To describe the physical brain by itself, is like
describing a rose by itself. That has no sense, for a rose is no
entity for itself. It cannot be dissociated from its bush. It is
nothing apart from its bush. So too, the human brain is nothing apart
from the starry heavens.
Let us however here recall the true nature of the Sun. Again and again
I have emphasised how astonished the physicists would be if they could
fit out an airship (it actually forms part of their ideal to do so),
and could journey to the Sun, imagining they would find there a
glowing ball of gas. They would not find this, but a suction-sphere,
trying to absorb everything possible into itself, really an empty
space, nay even less than empty, a negation of matter. Within the
circumference of the Sun there is nothing comparable to our matter. It
is not merely empty, but less than empty; it is blank, just like a
hole, in comparison with the rest of matter. It is really important
that one should not, in these days, begin to speculate on things of
the world, without any accord with reality, but fill oneself with the
spirit of reality. I have recently said a good deal on the Theory of
Relativity. You will remember what I brought forward regarding the
Einstein box by means of which the theory of gravity is to be
overcome. Another affirmation of Einstein's is that even the dimension
of a body is merely relative, and depends on the rapidity of movement.
Thus, according to the Einstein theory, if a man moved through cosmic
space with a certain velocity, he would not retain his bulk from front
to back, but would become as thin as a sheet of paper. This is
discussed in all seriousness. Such dwelling in thoughts foreign to
reality forms the ‘science’ of today. And it is the opposite
pole to what we have on the other hand as faith.
The physician has been relegated to the purely physical, the priest to
what is purely of the soul. As for the Spiritual, it is abolished. But
when it comes to considering everything outside the physical as a
side-issue — horses, coach, these are real to the physical
senses; and the forces of the horses, these are transmuted into heat,
heat of the horses, heat of the axles, and heat of the furrows of the
road; and for the rest, well, we cannot even call the rest a
‘fifth wheel’ of the wagon, for it is less that that, it is
a mere side-issue, a secondary effect. As regards the priest, one
cannot even say that he is the fifth wheel of the wagon in the modern
conception — for what does he achieve if all the ‘rest’
is a side-issue? When physicians such as Julius Robert Mayer make
philosophy, they make physics; and when the adherents of
soul-substance, or whatever it is, make philosophy, it becomes
abstract concepts; and the two world-streams flow on side by side
quite foreign to one another, the materialistic physician of the
middle of the nineteenth century and the preaching pastor; they have
really neither understood nor even paid attention to one another, at
most perhaps they have contended politically. A time has assuredly now
come in which there is but little honesty or consistency, and this
state of things must be seriously combated and overcome.
We have not only to combat ill-will, but what perhaps has also to be
taken into account, namely all kinds of stupidity and ignorance. That
is how things are. — Let me draw your attention especially to the
fact that from a certain motive I intend at Whitsun to give three
lectures on the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. [*See The Redemption
of Thinking. English translation of these lectures by A. P.
Shepherd and Mildred Robertson Nicoll. Published by Hodder and
Stoughton (1956).] I do not know whether our opponents will deny us
the right to study Thomas Aquinas here. As you know, by an order of
Pope Leo XIII, the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas was declared the
official philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church and I wonder whether
this, which we are about to study here, will be described as an
unlawful propaganda issuing from Dornach! We will wait and see. Let
the wind whistle from whatever quarter, we will await it. But perhaps
it is well that we should once meet all the talk that comes from that
particular quarter with a serious study of the doctrine of Thomas
Aquinas.
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