Lecture III
Dornach, September 30, 1921
Today we will
go somewhat further into what we considered here last Friday
and Saturday, and I would like to draw your attention
particularly to the life of the soul and what we discover
when this soul life is viewed from the viewpoint of
Imaginative cognition. You are familiar with Imaginative
cognition from my book,
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment.
You know that we distinguish four
stages of cognition, ascending from our ordinary
consciousness, the stage of cognition that is adapted to our
daily normal life, to ordinary modern science, and that
constitutes the actual consciousness of the time. This stage
of consciousness is called “objective cognition”
in the sense of what is described in
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.
Then one comes into the realm of the
super-sensible through the stages of Imagination, Inspiration,
and Intuition. With ordinary objective cognition it is
impossible to observe the soul element. What pertains to the
soul must be experienced, and in experiencing it one develops
objective cognition. Real cognition can be gained, however,
only when one can place the thing to be known objectively
before one. It is impossible to do this with the soul life in
ordinary consciousness; to understand the life of the soul,
one must draw back a stage, as it were,so that the life of
the soul comes to stand outside one; then it can be observed.
This is precisely what is brought about through Imaginative
cognition, and today I would like simply to describe for you
what is then brought into view.
You know that
if we survey the human being, confining ourselves to what
exists in the human being today, we distinguish the physical
body, the etheric body or body of formative forces, which is
really a sum of activities, the astral body, and the I or
ego. If we now bring the soul experience not into cognition
but into consciousness, we distinguish in its fluctuating
life thinking, feeling, and willing. It is true that
thinking, feeling, and willing play into one another in the
ordinary life of the soul; you can picture no train of
thought without picturing the role played in this train of
thought by the will. How we combine one thought with another,
how we separate a thought from another, is most definitely an
act of will striving into the life of thought .Though the
process may at first remain shrouded, as I have often
explained, we nevertheless know that when we as human beings
use our will, our thoughts play into our will as impulses. In
the ordinary soul life, therefore, our will is not isolated
in itself but is permeated by thought. Even more do thoughts,
will impulses, and the actual feelings flow into feeling.
Thus we have throughout the soul life a flowing together, yet
by reason of things we cannot go into today we must
distinguish, within this flowing life of soul,thinking,
feeling, and willing. If you refer to my
Philosophy of Freedom,
you will see how one is obliged to loosen
thinking purely from feeling and willing, because one comes
to a vis ion of human freedom only by means of such a
loosened thinking.
Inasmuch as we
livingly grasp thinking, feeling, and willing we grasp at the
same time the flowing, weaving life of soul. Then, when we
compare what we grasp there in immediate vitality with what
an anthroposophical spiritual science teaches us of the
connection among the individual members of the human being
— physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I
— what presents itself to Imaginative cognition is the
following.
We know that
during waking life the physical, etheric,astral bodies, and
the I are in a certain intimate connection. We know further
that in the sleeping state we have a separation of the
physical and etheric bodies on the one hand from the astral
body and I on the other. Although it is only approximately
correct to say that the I and astral body separate from the
physical body and etheric body, one arrives there by at a
valid mental image. The I with the astral body is outside the
physical and etheric bodies from the time we fall asleep to
the moment of awakening.
As soon as the
human being advances to Imaginative cognition he becomes more
and more able to apprehend exactly in inner vision, with the
eye of the soul, what is experienced as transitory, in
status nascendi. The transitory is there, and one
must seize it quickly, but it can be seized. One has
something before one that can be observed most clearly at the
moments of awaking and falling asleep. These moments of
falling asleep and awaking can be observed by Imaginative
cognition. Among the preparations necessary to attain higher
levels of cognition you will remember that mention was made
in the books already referred to of the cultivation of a
certain presence of mind
[Geistesgegenwart].
One hears so little said in ordinary life of the observations
that may be made of the spiritual world, because people lack
this presence of mind. Were this presence of mind actively
cultivated among human beings, all people would be able to
talk of spiritual, super-sensible impressions, for such
impressions actually crowd in upon us to the greatest extent
as we fall asleep or awake, particularly as we awake. It is
only because this presence of mind is cultivated so little
that people do not notice these impressions. At the moment of
awaking a whole world appears before the soul. As quickly as
it arises, however, it fades again, and before people think
to grasp it, it is gone. Hence they can speak little of this
whole world that appears before the soul and that is indeed
of particular significance in comprehending the inner being
of man.
When one is
actually able to grasp the moment of awaking with this
presence of mind, what confronts the soul is a whole world of
flowing thoughts. There need be nothing of fantasy; one can
observe this world with the same calm and self-possession
with which one observes in a chemical laboratory.
Nevertheless, this flowing thought world is there and is
quite distinct from mere dreams. The mere dream is filled
with reminiscences of life, whereas what takes place at the
moment of awaking is not concerned with reminiscences. These
flowing thoughts are clearly to be distinguished from
reminiscences. One can translate them into the language of
ordinary consciousness, but fundamentally they are foreign
thoughts, thoughts we cannot experience if we do not grasp
them in the moment made possible for us by spiritual
scientific training, or even in the moment of awaking.
What is it that
we actually grasp at such a moment? We have penetrated into
the etheric body and physical body with our I and astral
body. What is experienced in the etheric body is experienced,
however, as dreamlike. One learns, in observing this subtly
in presence of mind, to distinguish clearly between this
passing through the etheric body, when life reminiscences
appear dreamlike, and the state — before fully awaking,
before the impressions that the senses have after awaking
— of being placed in a world that is thoroughly a world
of weaving thoughts. These thoughts are not experienced,
however, as dream thoughts, such as one knows are in oneself
subjectively. The thoughts that I mean now confront the
penetrating I and astral body of man entirely objectively;
one realizes distinctly that one must pass right through the
etheric body, for as long as one is passing through the
etheric body, everything remains dreamlike. One must also
pass through the abyss, the intermediate space — to
express myself figuratively and perhaps therefore more
clearly — the space between etheric body and physical
body. Then one slips fully into the etheric-physical on
awaking and receives the outer physical impressions of the
senses. As soon as one has slipped into the physical body,
the outer physical sense impressions are simply there. What
we experience as a thought-weaving of an objective nature
takes place completely between the etheric body and the
physical body. We must therefore see in it an interplay of
the etheric and physical bodies. If we present this
pictorially (see drawing), we can say
that if this represents the physical body (orange) and this
the etheric body (green), we have the living weaving of
physical body and etheric body in the thoughts that we grasp
there. Through this observation one comes to know that
whether we are asleep or awake processes are always taking
place between our physical body and etheric body, processes
that actually consist of the weaving thought-existence
between our physical and etheric bodies (yellow). We have now
grasped objectively the first element of the life of the
soul; we see in it a weaving between the etheric body and the
physical body.
This weaving
life of thought does not actually come into our consciousness
as it is in the waking state. It must be grasped in the way I
have described. When we awake we slip with our I and astral
body into our physical body. I and astral body within our
physical body, permeated by the etheric body, take part in
the life of sense perception. By having within you the life
of sense perception, you become permeated with the thoughts
of the outer world, which can form in you from the sense
perceptions and have then the strength to drown this
objective thought-weaving. In the place where otherwise the
objective thoughts are weaving, we form out of the substance
of this thought-weaving, as it were, our everyday thoughts,
which we develop in our association with the sense world. I
can say that into this objective weaving of thought there
plays the subjective thought-weaving (bright) that drowns the
other and that also takes place between the etheric body and
the physical body. In fact, when we weave thoughts with the
soul itself we live in what I have called the space between
the etheric and physical bodies — as I said, this
expression is figurative, but to make this understandable I
must designate it as the space between the etheric and
physical bodies. We drown the objective thoughts, which are
always present in the sleeping and waking states, with our
subjective weaving of thought. Both, however, are present in
the same region, as it were, of our human nature: the
objective weaving of thought and the subjective
thought-weaving.
What is the
significance of the objective thought-weaving? When the
objective thought-weaving is perceived, when the moment of
awaking is actually grasped with the presence of mind I have
described, it is grasped not merely as being of the nature of
thought but as what lives in us as forces of growth, as
forces of life in general. These life forces are united with
the thought-weaving; they permeate the etheric or life body
inwardly and shape the physical body outwardly. What we
perceive as objective weaving of thought when we can seize
the moment of awaking with presence of mind, we perceive as
thought-weaving on the one hand and as activity of growth and
nutrition on the other. What is within us in this way we
perceive as an inner weaving, but one that is fully living.
Thinking loses its picture-nature and abstractness, it loses
all that had been sharp contours. It becomes a fluctuating
thinking but is clearly recognizable as thinking
nevertheless. Cosmic thinking weaves in us, and we experience
how this cosmic thinking weaves in us and how we plunge into
this cosmic thinking with our subjective thinking. We have
thus grasped the soul element in a certain realm.
When we now go
further in grasping the waking moment in presence of mind we
find the following. When we are able to experience the
dreamlike element in passing through the etheric body with
the I and astral body, we can bring to mind pictorially the
dreamlike element in us. These dream pictures must cease the
moment we awake, however, for otherwise we would take the
dream into the ordinary, conscious waking life and be
daydreamers, thus losing our self-possession. Dreams as such
must cease. The usual experience of the dream is an
experience of reminiscing, is actually a later memory of the
dream; the ordinary experiencing of the dream is actually
first grasped as a reminiscence after the dream departs. It
may be grasped while it exists, however, while it actually
is, if one carries the presence of mind right back
to the experience of the dream. If it is thus grasped
directly, during the actual penetration of the etheric body,
then the dream is revealed as something mobile, something
that one experiences as substantial, within which one feels
oneself. The picture-nature ceases to be merely pictorial;
one has the experience that one is within the picture.
Through this feeling that one is within the picture, one is
in movement with the soul element; as in waking life one's
body is in movement through various movements of the legs and
hand, so actually does the dream become active. It is thus
experienced in the same way as one experiences the movement
of an arm, leg, or head; when one experiences the grasping of
the dream as something substantial, then in the further
progress toward awakening yet another experience is added.
One feels that the activity experienced in the dream, when
one stands as if within something real, dives down into our
bodily nature. Just as in thinking we feel that we penetrate
to the boundary of our physical body, where the sense organs
are, and perceive the sense impressions with the thinking, so
we now feel that we plunge into ourselves with what we
experience in the dream as inner activity. What is
experienced at the moment of awaking, or rather just before
the moment of awaking, when one is within the dream, still
completely outside the physical body but already within the
etheric body, or passing through it — is submerged into
our organization. And if one is so advanced that one has this
submerging as an experience, then one knows, too, what
becomes of what has been submerged — it radiates back
into our waking consciousness, and it radiates back as a
feeling, as feeling. The feelings are dreams that have been
submerged into our organization.
When we
perceive what is weaving in the outer world in this dreamlike
state, it is in the form of dreams. When dreams dive down
into our organization and become conscious from within
outward, we experience them as feelings. We thus experience
feeling through the fact that what is in our astral body
dives down into our etheric body and then further into our
physical organization, not as far as the senses and therefore
not to the periphery, but only into the inner organization.
Then, when one has grasped this, has beheld it first through
Imaginative cognition, particularly clearly at the moment of
awaking, one also receives the inner strength to behold it
continuously. We do indeed dream continuously throughout
waking life. It is only that we overpower the dream with the
light of our thinking consciousness, our conceptual life
[Vorstellungsleben].
One who can gaze beneath the
surface of the conceptual life — and one trains oneself
for this by grasping the moment of the dream itself with
presence of mind — whoever has so trained himself that
on awaking he can grasp what I have described, can then also,
beneath the surface of the light-filled conceptual life,
experience the dreaming that continues throughout the day.
This is not experienced as dreams, however, for it
immediately dives down into our organization and rays back as
the world of feeling. What feeling is takes place between the
astral body (bright in last drawing)
and the etheric body. This naturally expresses itself in the
physical body. The actual source of feeling, however, lies
between the astral body and the etheric body (red). Just as
for the thought life the physical and etheric bodies must
cooperate in a living interplay, so must etheric body and
astral body be in living interplay for the life of feeling.
When we are awake we experience this living interplay of our
mingled etheric and astral bodies as our feeling. When we are
asleep we experience what takes place in the astral body, now
living outside the etheric body, as the pictures of the
dream. These dream pictures now are present throughout the
period of sleep but are not perceptible to the ordinary
consciousness; they are remembered in those fragments that
form the ordinary life of dream.
You see from
this that if we wish to grasp the life of the soul we must
look between the members of the human organization. We think
of the life of the soul as flowing thinking, feeling, and
willing. We grasp it objectively, however, by looking into
the spaces between these four members, between the physical
body and the etheric body and between the etheric body and
the astral body.
I have often
explained here from other viewpoints how what is expressed in
willing is withdrawn entirely from ordinary waking
consciousness. This ordinary consciousness is aware of the
mental images by which we direct our willing. It is also
aware of the feelings that we develop in reference to the
mental images as motives for our willing and of how what lies
clear in our consciousness as the conceptual content of our
willing plays downward when I move an arm in obedience to my
will. What actually goes on to produce the movement does not
come into ordinary consciousness. As soon as the spiritual
investigator makes use of Imagination and discovers the
nature of thinking and feeling he can also come to a
consciousness of man's experiences between falling asleep and
awaking. By the exercises leading to Imagination, the I and
astral body are strengthened; they become stronger in
themselves and learn to experience themselves. In ordinary
consciousness one does not have the true I. What do we have
as the I in our ordinary consciousness? This must be
explained by a comparison I have made repeatedly. You see,
when one looks back upon life in the memory, it appears as a
continuous stream, but it is definitely not that. We look
back over the day to the moment of awaking, then we have an
empty space, then the memory of the events of the previous
day links itself on, and so forth. What we observe in this
reminiscence bears in itself also those states that we have
not lived through consciously, that are therefore not within
the present content of our consciousness. They are there,
however, in another form. The reminiscing of a person who
never slept at all — if I may cite such a hypothetical
case — would be completely destroyed. The reminiscence
would in a way blind him. All that he would bring to his
consciousness in reminiscence would seem quite foreign to
him, dazzling and blinding him. He would be overpowered by it
and would have to eliminate himself entirely. He would not be
able to feel himself within himself at all. Only because of
the intervals of sleep is reminiscence dimmed so that we are
able to endure it. Then it becomes possible to assert our own
self in our remembering. We owe it solely to the intervals of
sleep that we have our self-assertion in memory. What I am
now saying could well be, confirmed through a comparative
observation of the course of different human lives.
In the same way
that we feel the inner activity in reminiscence, we actually
feel our I from our entire organism. We feel it in the way we
perceive the sleeping conditions as the darkest spaces in the
progress of memory. We do not perceive the I directly in
ordinary consciousness; we perceive it only as we perceive
the sleeping condition. When we attain Imaginative cognition,
however, this I really appears, and it is of the nature of
will. We notice that what creates a feeling inclining us to
feel sympathy or antipathy with the world, or whatever
activates willing in us, then comes about in a process
similar to that taking place between being awake and falling
asleep. This again can be observed with presence of mind if
one develops the same capacities for observation of the
process of going to sleep as those I have described for
awaking. Then one notices that on going to sleep one carries
into the sleeping condition what streams as activity out of
our feeling life, streaming into the outer world. One then
learns to recognize how every time one actually brings one's
will into action one dives into a state similar to the
sleeping state. One dives into an inner sleep. What takes
place once when one falls asleep, when the I and astral body
draw themselves out of the physical body and the etheric
body, goes on inwardly every time we use our will.
You must be
clear, of course, that what I am now describing is far more
difficult to grasp than what I described before, for the
moment of going to sleep is generally still harder to grasp
with presence of mind than that of awaking. After awaking we
are awake and have at least the support of reminiscing. If we
wish to observe the moment of falling asleep we must continue
the waking state right into sleep. A person generally goes
straight to sleep, however; he does not bring the activity of
feeling into the sleeping state. If he can continue it,
however — and this is actually possible through
training — then in Imaginative cognition one notices
that in willing there is in fact a diving into the same
element into which we dive when we fall asleep. In willing we
actually become free of our organization; we unite ourselves
with real objectivity. In waking we enter our etheric and
physical bodies and pass right up to the region of the
senses, thus coming to the periphery of the body, taking
possession of it, saturating it entirely. Similarly, in
feeling we send our dreams back into the body, inasmuch as we
immerse ourselves inwardly; the dreams, in fact, become
feelings. If now we do not remain in the body but instead,
without going to the periphery of the body, leave the body
inwardly, spiritually, then we come to willing. Willing,
therefore, is actually accomplished independently of the
body. I know that much is implied in saying this, but I must
present it, because it is a reality. In grasping it we come
to see that — if we have the I here (see last drawing, blue) — willing takes
place between the astral body and the I (lilac).
We can therefore say that
we divide the human being into physical body, etheric body or body of
formative forces, astral body, and I. Between the physical body and
the etheric body thinking takes place in the soul element. Between the
etheric body and the astral body feeling takes place in the soul element,
and between the astral body and the I, willing takes place in the soul
element. When we come to the periphery of the physical body we have
sense perception. Inasmuch as by way of our I we emerge out of ourselves,
placing our whole organization into the outer world, willing becomes
action, the other pole of sense perception (see last
drawing).
In this way one
comes to an objective grasp of what is experienced
subjectively in flowing thinking, feeling, and willing.
Experience metamorphoses into cognition. Any psychology that
tries to grasp the flowing thinking, feeling, and willing in
another way remains formal, because it does not penetrate to
reality. Only Imaginative cognition can penetrate to reality
in the experience of the soul.
Let us now turn
our gaze to a phenomenon that has accompanied us, as it were,
in our whole study. We said that through observation with
presence of mind at the moment of awaking, when one has
slipped through the etheric body, one can see a weaving of
thoughts that is objective. One at first perceives this
objective thought-weaving. I said that it can be
distinguished clearly from dreams and also from the everyday
life of thought, from the subjective life of thought, for it
is connected with growth, with becoming. It is actually a
real organization. If one grasps what is weaving there,
however, what, if one penetrates it, one perceives as
thought-weaving; if one inwardly feels it, touches it, I
would like to say, then one is aware of it as force of
growth, as force of nutrition, as the human being in the
process of becoming. It seems at first something foreign, but
it is a world of thought. If one can study it more accurately
it is seen to be the inner weaving of thoughts in ourselves.
We grasp it at the periphery of our physical body; before we
arrive at sense perception we grasp it. When we learn to
understand it more exactly, when we have accustomed ourselves
to its foreignness compared with our subjective thinking,
then we recognize it. We recognize it as what we have brought
with us through our birth from earlier experiences, from
experiences lying before birth or conception. For us it
becomes something of the spiritual, objectively present, that
brings our whole organism together. Pre-existent thought
gains objectivity, becomes objectively visible. We can say
with an inner grasp that we are woven out of the world of
spirit through thought. The subjective thoughts that we add
stand in the sphere of our freedom. Those thoughts that we
behold there form us, they build up our body from the weaving
of thought. They are our past karma (see
next diagram). Before we arrive at sense perceptions,
therefore, we perceive our past karma.
When we go to
sleep, one who lives in objective cognition sees something in
this process of falling asleep that is akin to willing. When
willing is brought to complete consciousness one notices
quite clearly that one sleeps in one's own organism. Just as
dreams sink down, so do the motives of the will pass into our
organization. One sleeps into the organism. One learns to
distinguish this sleeping into the organism, which first
comes to life in our ordinary actions. These indeed are
accomplished outwardly; we accomplish them between awaking
and going to sleep, but not everything that lives within our
life of feeling lives into these actions. We go through life
also between falling asleep and awaking. What we would
otherwise press into the actions, we press out of ourselves
through the same process in going to sleep. We press a whole
sum of will impulses out into the purely spiritual world in
which we find ourselves between going to sleep and awaking.
If through Imaginative cognition we learn to observe the will
impulses that pass over into our spiritual being, which we
shelter only between falling asleep and awaking, we perceive
in them the tendency to action that exists beyond death, that
passes over with us beyond death.
Willing is
developed between the astral body and the I. Willing becomes
deed when it goes far enough toward the outer world to come
to the place to which otherwise the sense impressions come.
In going to sleep, however, a large quantity goes out that
would like to become deed but in fact does not become deed,
remaining bound to the I and passing with it through death
into the spiritual world.
You see, we
experience, here on the other side (see diagram below) our
future karma. Our future karma is experienced between willing
and the deed. In Imaginative consciousness both are united,
past and future karma, what weaves and lives within us,
weaving on beneath the threshold above which lie the free
deeds we can accomplish between birth and death. Between
birth and death we live in freedom. Below this region of free
willing, however, which actually has an existence only
between birth and death, there weaves and lives karma. We
perceive its effects out of the past if we can maintain our
consciousness in our I and astral body in penetrating through
the etheric body as far as to the physical body. On the other
hand, we perceive our future karma if we can maintain
ourselves in the region that lies between willing and the
deed, if we can develop so much self-discipline through
exercises that inwardly we can be as active in a feeling as,
with the help of the body, we can be in a deed, if we can be
active in spirit in feeling, if we therefore hold fast to the
deed in the I.
Picture this
vividly; one can be as enthusiastic, as inwardly enamored by
something that springs from feeling as that which otherwise
passes over into action; but one must withhold it: then it
lights up in Imagination as future karma.
What I have
described to you here is of course always present in the
human being. Every morning on awaking man passes the region
of his past karma; every evening on falling asleep he passes
that of his future karma. Through a certain attentive
awareness and without special training, the human being can
grasp with presence of mind the past objectively, without, it
is true, recognizing it as plainly as I have now described
it. He can perceive it, however; it is there. There, too, is
all that he bears within him as moral impulses of good and
evil. Through this the human being actually learns to know
himself better than when he becomes aware in the moment of
awaking of the weaving of thought that forms him.
More difficult
to grasp, however, is the perception of what lies between
willing and the deed, of what one can withhold. There one
learns to know oneself insofar as one has made oneself during
his life. One learns to know the inner formation that one
carries through death as future karma.
I wished to
show you today how these things can be spoken about out of a
living comprehension, how anthroposophy is not in the least
exhausted in its images. Things can be described in a living
way, and tomorrow I will go further in this study, going on
to a still deeper grasp of the human being on the basis of
what we have studied today.
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