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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-4128
On-line since: 17th July, 2002
When we try to ascertain man's position in the Universe as a whole, it
is a question of turning our attention not only to Space but to Time.
Anyone who follows the history of human evolution at all, will find
that it is a peculiarity of the Oriental conception of the Universe to
set Space in the foreground, not leaving Time wholly disregarded, but
placing everything pertaining to Space in the foreground. The
peculiarity of the Western conception of the Universe is to reckon to
a very special degree with Time, and it is precisely this regard for
the temporal in human evolution and the Universe which must have
primary consideration in a right view of the Christ-Force. To
recognise the full significance of the Christ-Force in human evolution
on Earth, we must be able to place Man himself correctly in the whole
Universe, in a temporal sense. The customary belief in the law of the
conservation of force, and especially that of the conservation of
substance, hinders this. The law of the conservation of force is one
which would so place Man in the Universe that he stands there as a
mere product of nature. Attempts have been made to discover the
procedure of the transformation through combustion of what man takes
in as nourishment, and to find out how the heat of combustion is set
up and how other forces arise in man as transformed forces of the
food. Such attempts have already been made in modern times by
students. They are like thoughts which find expression somewhat in the
following way. A man sees a building, he hears that it is a Bank, and
endeavours by some method to calculate how much money is put into the
Bank and how much taken out; and finding that the amounts are the
same, draws the conclusion that the money has either transformed
itself in there or has remained the same, but that there are no
officials there in the Bank at all. This is approximately the logic of
the thought that whatever a man has eaten may be found again in the
transformed forces of his calefaction, his activity. Here too courage
is lacking actually to put to the test the depth of thought underlying
these modern principles. One might indeed arrive at many things by
testing what we find in modern science; one has only to test
its logic and more especially its reality.
Now the point is that on account of a mass of unreality and of
illogical methods of thought, man is placed in the dilemma in which,
as I have already pointed out, on the one hand stand ideals, as
secondary effects, and on the other, natural occurrences; and we can
find no means of building a bridge between them. At most an attempt is
made today by chatterers in the sphere of philosophy to talk of
natural occurrences in a way which flatters the primitive thought of
man; this kind of talk has no desire to go into anything concrete, but
prefers to acquiesce in such nonsense as that of Eucken or Bergson.
What is of real consequence is, first of all, that one should ask
oneself: What it is that man bears within him out of the whole compass
of the Universe? What enables him as a member of the Universe so to
work with his Ego, that one can see that what results from his
activity is his own? Now of all things of the Universe, of all
properties of being in the Universe, one such property is easier to
study than others, if one only sets aside the prejudices of modern
science, and that is the element of heat.
Certainly it must be said in the first place that even the animal
world, and perhaps to some extent the plant world, have heat of their
own; but the heat of the higher animal world and of man can be
distinguished from other kinds of individual heat. And it is necessary
to enquire now into what may be called the heat peculiar to man. For
in this particular heat (leaving aside for the moment that of the
animal, although what I am saying does not contradict the facts in the
animal world; but it would lead us too far to include it in our
present observations), in what man possesses as his own heat — in
this he has his inmost corporeality, his inmost bodily field of
activity. Our attention is not drawn to this, only because it escapes
ordinary observation that the element of soul and spirit
dwelling in man finds its immediate continuation in the effect it has
on the heat within him. In speaking of man's bodily nature pure
and simple, one should really speak of his heat-body. When we see a
man before us, we are also confronted by an enclosed heat-space, which
is at a higher temperature than its environment. In this increased
temperature lives the soul and spirit element of man, and the soul and
spirit in him is indirectly conveyed by means of the heat, to his
other organs. In this way too, man's Will comes into existence.
The Will comes into being through the fact that in the first instance
man's heat is acted upon, then his lung-organisation, thence his
fluid-organisation, and thence only what is mineral or solid in his
organism. Thus the human organisation must be represented as follows:
The first part to be acted upon is the heat, then through heat the air
is worked upon; thence an influence acts upon the water — the
fluid-organism — and thence upon the solid organisation. (I have
drawn attention to the fact that the solid part of man's organisation
is the smallest, for he is more than 75% water-body.) This fact, that
we really live and move in our heat element, is one of the
physiological facts which we must keep carefully in mind, for we must
not simply regard what forms an isolated heat-space as though it were
just a space of pure uniform heat, having a higher temperature than
the environment — no, we must regard it as having
differentiated parts, warmer and colder. Just as our liver,
lungs and so forth, differ from each other, so do the parts of our
heat-organism; and this differentiation is continually changing
inwardly. It is a constantly moving differentiation, and that which in
the first instance unites with the activity of the soul and spirit has
its being in this inner heat-organisation.
Philosophers today say that the effect of the soul and spirit upon the
body cannot be perceived, because they imagine an arm as a sort of
solid lever appliance; and of course they cannot see how the activity
of the soul and spirit, which is conceived of as abstractly as
possible, is to be transmitted to this solid lever-appliance. But one
need only fix one's attention on the transition, and we find there
that which has been organised for man out of the whole Universe. If we
really study human thought, we find that the thought which
asserts itself in our head has very much to do with this inner work
that goes on within the heat-relationships. (This is not quite exactly
spoken, but the inaccuracy can perhaps only be corrected in the course
of time. We must try to get a complete picture, therefore I will begin
with a more cursory description.) If we observe this inter-working of
thoughts in the heat-space, in the isolated heat-space, it is evident
that something like a co-operation of thought-activity and
heat-activity takes place. In what does this consist? Here we come to
something which demands very careful consideration.
Taking first the whole of the rest of man, and then his head, we can
of course, trace a transmutation of matter (metabolism) from the
former to the latter; and the fact that ultimately the head has to do
with thought — that we perceive as a direct experience. Yet what really
happens? We will lead up to this gradually by way of appropriate
imagery. Let us suppose we have some fluid substance; we bring it to
boiling point, then it evaporates, and changes into a more rarefied
substance. This same process takes place far more intensely with human
thought. All that plays its part as transmutation of substances in the
human head, brings it about that all substance falls away like a
sediment, it is precipitated, and nothing remains of it but the mere
picture.
I will now use another example. Suppose you have a vessel containing a
solution. This you cool down, which is again a heat-process. A
sediment collects below, and above remains finer liquid. This is also
the case with the human head; only here no substance whatever is
collected above, nothing but pictures, all matter is expelled. This
is the activity of the human head; it forms what are mere pictures,
and expels the matter.
This process, as a matter of fact, takes place in everything that may
be called the transition to pure thinking. All the material substance
which has co-operated in the human inner life falls back into the
organism, and pictures alone remain. It is a fact that when we rise to
pure thought, we live in pictures. Our soul lives in pictures; and
these pictures are the remains of all that has gone before. Not the
substance, but the pictures remain.
What has just been presented can be followed into the thoughts
themselves, for this process only takes place at the moment when
thoughts change into mere pictures. At first thoughts live, as it
were, embodied. They are permeated by substance; but as
pictures they separate themselves out from this substance. If
however, we go to work in a truly spiritually scientific way, we can
quite easily distinguish pure thought, sense-free thought that has
separated itself out from the material process, from all thoughts
belonging to what I have called in these lectures the
“instinctive wisdom of the ancients.”
This instinctive wisdom of the ancients, as we learn it today, bears
in it, quite literally and exactly, the character of not being brought
to such filtration of thought that all material substance fell away.
Such falling away of all matter is a result of human development.
Although not observed by external physiology, it is a fact that
virtually — of course virtually and approximately — the
thoughts of earthly humanity before the Mystery of Golgotha
were always united with matter, and that at the time of the
intervention of the Mystery of Golgotha in Earth-life, humanity had
arrived at the point in evolution of being able to dissociate itself
from matter in the inner process of thought; matter-free thought
became possible.
This is not to be regarded as unimportant! It is indeed of the utmost
importance that we should observe this development in earthly life
— that man in his evolution has become free from the embodiment
of thoughts; that they have changed to pure pictures. Thus we may say
that up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, embodied
pictures lived in man; but after the Mystery of Golgotha,
matter-free pictures lived in man. Before the Mystery of
Golgotha, the Universe worked upon man in such a way that he could not
attain to pictures free of the body, free of matter. Since the
Mystery of Golgotha, the Universe has, as it were, withdrawn. Man has
been transposed to an existence which only takes place in pictures.
What man felt before the Mystery of Golgotha as his connection with
the Universe, that he related also to the Universe. He related human
life on Earth to Heaven. This we can observe quite exactly. The Hebrew
of old was clearly and distinctly conscious that the twelve tribes of
old Israel were projections on Earth of the constellations of the
Zodiac. The twelve-foldness of the Universe comes to expression in the
life of man; and we may say that in those days the life of man was
pictured as a result of the twelve-foldness of the Heavens, of the
Zodiac. Every man felt the starry Heaven streaming into him; and above
all a group of men felt themselves as a group into which the starry
Heaven rayed. In the evolution of Hebrew antiquity we must go back to
the time when we are told of the twelve sons of Jacob as the
projection on Earth of the twelve regions of Heaven. Just as there was
this in-streaming of the heavenly forces upon Earth-man in gray
antiquity, so also, since in the different parts of the Earth's
surface evolution came about at different times, in Europe we find a
similar thing at a later time. We must go back to the Middle Ages and
study the legends of King Arthur and his Round Table, those
significant Celtic legends. For Mid-Europe developed later to the
stage reached by the old Hebrews thousands of years before. Mid-Europe
was only so far on at the time to which the Legends of Arthur and his
Round Table are assigned. There was however, a difference. Hebrew
antiquity evolved to the point where the in-streaming from the
Universe still yielded embodied pictures. Then came the point of time
when the body was withdrawn from the pictures, when the pictures had
to be given a new substance. There was indeed a danger that, as
regards his soul-life, man would pass completely into a
picture-existence. This danger man did not at once recognise. Even
Descartes was still floundering, and instead of saying: ‘I think,
therefore I am not’, he said the opposite of the truth: ‘I
think, therefore I am’. For when we live in pictures, we really
are not! When we live in mere thoughts, it is the surest sign
that we are not. Thoughts must be filled with substance. In order that
man might not continue to live in mere pictures, in order that inner
substance might once more be in the human being, that Being intervened
who entered through the Mystery of Golgotha. Hebrew antiquity was the
first to meet with this intervention of the central force, which was
now to give back reality to the human soul that had become
picture. This, however, was not at once understood. In the Middle Ages
we have the last ramifications in the twelve around King Arthur's
Table; but this was soon replaced by something else — the
Parsifal Legend, which places One man over against the twelve,
One man, who develops the twelve-foldness from out of his own inner
centre. Thus, over against that picture which was essentially the
Grail picture, must be the Parsifal picture, in which what man now
possesses within him, rays out from the centre. The endeavour of those
in the Middle Ages who wished to understand the Parsifal picture, who
wished to make the Parsifal striving active in the human soul, was to
bring into the picture-existence that could crystallise out in man
after all the materiality had filtered away — to bring into it
true substance, inwardness of being. Whereas the Grail legend shows
still the in-streaming from without, the Parsifal figure is now set
over against it, raying out from the pictures that which can restore
reality to them.
Inasmuch as the Parsifal Legend appeared in this form, it represented
the striving of humanity in the Middle Ages to find the way to the
Christ within. It represents an instinctive striving to
understand that which lives as the Christ in the evolution of
humanity. If one studies inwardly what was experienced in the form of
this figure of Parsifal, and compares it with what is to be found in
the modern creeds, one receives a strong impulse towards that which
must happen today. People are now satisfied with the mere husk of the
word ‘Christ’ and believe that they thus possess Christ,
whereas even the theologians themselves do not possess Him but hold to
the outer interpretation of the word. In the Middle Ages there was
still so much direct consciousness left, that by comprehending the
representative of humanity, Parsifal, men were able to wrest their way
upwards to the form of Christ. If we reflect on this we receive the
impression of man's place in the whole Universe. Throughout the world
of Nature, conversion of forces prevails. In man alone matter
is thrown out by pure thought. That matter which is actually cast out
of the human being by pure thought is also annihilated, it passes
into nothingness.
If we reflect upon this, we must think of all Earth-existence as
follows: Here is the Earth, and on the Earth, man; into man passes
matter. Everywhere else it is transmuted. In man it is
annihilated. The material Earth will pass away in proportion as
matter is destroyed by man. When, some day, all the substance of the
Earth will have passed through the human organism, being used there
for thinking, the Earth will cease to be a cosmic body. And what man
will have gained from this cosmic Earth will be pictures. These
however, will have a new reality, they will have preserved an original
reality. This reality is that which proceeds from the force which, as
central force, makes itself felt through the Mystery of Golgotha.
Thus, when we look to the end of the Earth, what do we see? The end of
the Earth will come when all its substance is destroyed as described
above. Man will then possess pictures of all that has taken place in
earthly evolution. At the end of the earthly period the Earth will
have sunk into the Universe, and there would remain merely
pictures, without reality. What gives them reality however, is the
fact of the Mystery of Golgotha having been there in humanity; that
gives these pictures inner reality for the life to come. Through the
Mystery of Golgotha, a new beginning is set for the future existence
of the Earth.
From this we can see that what is contained in our stream of evolution
is not to be regarded merely as a continuous stream, where one thing
is always related to another as effect to cause, but we must so
consider the Earth-evolution that we recognise in the first place a
pre-Christian evolution, out of which came all that men were
able to think at that time, for what they were able then to think was
contained in the Father-God, was imparted to the Earth through Him.
The nature and work of the Father-God however, was such that what He
created as Earth-evolution was given over to that part of
Earth-evolution that tends to pass away. A new beginning was made
with the Mystery of Golgotha. Of all that went before only
pictures were to remain, as it were descriptive paintings of the
world. These pictures were, however, to receive new reality through
that which entered as Being into the evolution of the Earth through
the Mystery of Golgotha. That is the cosmic significance of the
Mystery of Golgotha; that is what I meant years ago, when I said:
Christianity will not be understood until it has penetrated even
into the physics of our Earth, until we understand how, even in
physical things, the Christian substance works in the world-existence.
We have not grasped Christianity until we can say to ourselves:
Precisely in the domain of heat such a change is taking place
in man that through it matter is being destroyed and a purely
picture-existence comes forth out of the matter; but through the union
of the human soul with the Christ-substance this picture-existence is
made into a new reality.
If we compare this thought, showing us the interweaving of what man
has transformed into soul and spirit with physical existence, if we
compare this whole thought with the cheerless scientific thoughts of
modern times which can lead only to a blind alley, we shall see its
great and deep significance, and we shall see how we are to regard
thoughts like those of Julius Robert Mayer, which are in reality that
which falls away from cosmic existence, even as ice and snow melt
before the Sun. Man however, retains these pictures, and they derive a
reality for the future because a new substance has laid hold of
them, the substance which has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha.
And through this, the thought of freedom is established for man and is
united with scientific thinking. This comes about because man says:
Not ‘conservation of matter and of energy’; but,
‘matter and energy have a temporal life allotted to them.’
We take part not in the developing material Universe, but in its
decay, and we have now to raise ourselves out of it to mere
picture-existence and permeate ourselves with That to which we can
only devote ourselves with our free-will, to the Christ-Being. For He
so stands in human evolution that man's connection with Him can only
be a free one. Anyone who seeks to be constrained to recognise
Christ cannot find His Kingdom, he can rise only to the Universal
Father-God, who however, in our world, has now only a share in a
decaying world, and precisely on account of the decay of His own
world, has sent the Son. Spiritual cosmogony must unite with natural
cosmogony, but they must unite in man — and that by a free act. Hence we
can only say of one who wishes to prove freedom that he is
still at an ancient heathen standpoint. All proofs of freedom fail;
our task is not to prove freedom, but to take hold of it. It is
grasped when one understands the nature of sense-free thinking.
Sense-free thinking however needs again the connection with the world,
and this connection it does not find unless it unites with what has
been introduced into the evolution of the world as new substance
through the Mystery of Golgotha.
Thus the bridge between natural and moral cosmogony lies in a right
understanding of Christianity. It might at first appear very strange
that just those who uphold the modern creeds — as well as ancient
creeds that extend their influence into modern life — do not
desire a science leading towards Christianity, but desire a science as
materialistic as possible, so that an unscientific faith may hold its
own alongside of it.
In this connection we might say: Modern materialism and reactionary
Christianity are very closely related, for the latter has driven
mankind into the conception that things spiritual must not be
penetrated by true knowledge. Knowledge must be kept free from the
Spiritual, must be kept away from it, must extend only to the
material. Thus on the one hand stands the advocate of one or other
creed, who says: Science extends only to what is sense-perceptible;
all else must be grasped by faith alone. On the other side stands the
materialist, who says: science extends only to what is
sense-perceptible; and faith I have given up.
Spiritual Science is not related to materialism. Modern creeds are
indeed very closely related to it; that is to say, old creeds as
introduced into modern life are indeed closely related to materialism.
I think I have now shown how the possibility of permeating the moral
law with what we can know of nature, and conversely, of permeating
nature-knowledge with moral law — is bound up with Spiritual
Science. For the phantom which figures today in external science as
Man, that delusive picture which shows Man as a configuration of
mineral substance, simply does not exist. Man is just as much
organised into the Fluid element as into the Solid; he is organised
also into the element of Air, and above all, into that of Heat. When
we come as far as Heat, we find the transition to the soul-and-spirit
nature, for in Heat we have already the transition from Space to Time;
and that which is of the soul flows in the temporal. Beyond Heat we
pass more and more out of Space into Time, and it becomes possible, by
the roundabout way here indicated, to seek the moral in the physical.
Indeed it might be said that one who thinks short-sightedly will
scarcely arrive at the connection of the moral with the physical in
human nature — for one might certainly go to meet death as a
miscreant without dislocating a limb, but remaining a well-formed man.
The heat condition in the man is however not examined. The heat
condition is changed far more subtly and delicately than is supposed,
and works back upon what man carries through death. Today the method
of study is such that we look up into abstraction, we have our
thoughts up there; and we look down into the physical-material.
We do not make the transition unless we pass over to the inwardly
stirring heat lying between these, which has, at least for
human instinct, still a physical as well as a soul aspect. We can
develop warmth for our fellows morally — soul-warmth, which is
the counterpart of physical warmth. This soul-warmth however, does not
arise through a physical change in the sense of Julius Robert Mayer's
theory; it arises — but how does it arise? I might say that here
it gives palpable evidence of itself. Why do we speak of
‘warm’ feelings? Because we feel, we experience that the
feeling we call ‘warm’ gives the picture of outer, physical
warmth. The warmth percolates into the picture. What today is only
soul-warmth will in a future cosmic existence play a physical part,
for the Christ-Impulse will live therein. What today is simply
picture-warmth in our world of Feeling — will live on, that it may
become physical when the Earth-warmth has disappeared, for it is what
the Christ-Substance, the Christ-Nature is. Let us try to find that
delicate connection between external physical warmth and that which
we instinctively call warmth of feeling; let us try to find it. Let us
go to what Goethe said in his book called ‘The Material-Moral
effects of Colours’, let us see how in his colour-perception he
places the cooling colours on one side, and the warming colours on the
other; how he unites the material-moral with the physical
conditions which can to a certain extent be measured with a
thermoscope, and shows how the element of soul interplays with the
external and physical. Then we arrive at one aspect of how a moral
cosmogony can be found in the study of Goethe.
The Jesuits of course hate this alliance. Therefore the best book on
Goethe written out of the Jesuit thought is a poisonous book, a
terrible book, though much more ingenious and effective than anything
written about him elsewhere, because written with inner Jesuitical
rhetoric. I refer to the three-volumed work on Goethe by Father
Baumgartner. It is full of spite and malice, but it is both powerful
and effective. We may be very sure that in that world, of which many
people have no conception, a world which opposes us too, Goethe is
better known than he is among more cultured circles. Those who
appreciate Goethe and understand him from the positive standpoint,
form but a small community. There is a large community of those who
hate him; we do not conceive it half large enough. Some time ago I
pointed out how little people are awake to what lives among us —
I once said I would have liked counts to be taken at the door of all
those who knew the German work, Weber's Thirteen Limetrees, a
work that was truly Roman Catholic in the most positive sense. I
should like to know how many it would be! The result would have been
deplorable. Yet soon after publication this work ran through hundreds
of editions. Have those who bring humanity forward any idea in their
waking consciousness of how widespread these things are? That they
have a widespread effect is certain; so too have those things from
which the conflict with us proceeds. Whereas we have a small community
which holds to Goethe, but is yet never able to point to anything of
importance from Goethe's wisdom, the Jesuit book on Goethe is written
with great cleverness and acumen — and that is precisely what we
need, that we may be filled with spirit that is awake.
Spiritual Science will surely succeed if a wakeful spiritual life
really takes root in us.
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Last Modified: 02-Nov-2024
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