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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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The Waking of the Human Soul and the Forming of Destiny
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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The Waking of the Human Soul and the Forming of Destiny
Schmidt Number: S-5265
On-line since: 2nd February, 2004
The Waking of the Human Soul and the
Forming of Destiny
When, out of that existence which is called the pre-earthly, the human
being first grows through the germinal state into the physical-earthly
life, we then see how in his physical existence the spiritual nature,
which is at first hidden, begins to assert itself Out of the physical
body; how the child sleeps, as it were, into the physical-earthly
world. We see that the life of the child in its relation with the
surrounding world is still a kind of dreaming; that it only gradually
awakes. Threefold, however, do we find is that which the child
manifests at especially conspicuous points in the stages of this
awaking. Indeed, something of this threefoldness is observed with that
intimate joy, that devoted love, with which one who is in the full
sense a human being always observes a child. But the full significance
of this threefoldness really becomes clear to one only when it is
possible through spiritual science to observe the spiritual life in
the physical-corporeal existence. This threefoldness is the learning
to walk, learning to speak, learning to think. You know that the human
being passes through this threefoldness in an age like the springtime
of life. Such is this meaningful order of occurrence. We shall soon
see why it must be this meaningful succession. It can, as a matter of
fact, be different, but the succession according to nature is just
this.
Learning to walk is something which, in an utterly one-sided manner,
points to a series of things that the child achieves at the same time.
The child enters into the world in such a way that it is in a state of
equilibrium utterly unlike that in which it later moves about in the
world. There is associated with this at the same time the right use of
the arms and the right placing of the human organism in a posture
suitable for man in his relation with the world, in the capacity for
movement in relation with the world suitable for the human being, in
the capacity for movement suited to the human being in the earthly
existence. This is what the child must first learn. Out of what the
human being acquires in the mobility of his organism there proceeds
what adapts him to the equilibrium of the solid, the fluid, the
gaseous. In all of this lies the basis for something else. While the
human being is undertaking all this activity learning to walk,
learning balance, learning to use the arms and hands and fingers
these movements, which take place in his entire system, are
working upward into the system which is the basis for human speech.
This tenses the muscles, causes the blood to flow, exercises an
influence upon the etheric body, works over into those physical,
etheric, astral organs of breathing, proceeds further exerting a
certain plastic activity in the brain. One might say that it passes
beyond into those organs which, out of the inner human being, bring
about speaking through imitation of the surroundings. Language is the
transposition of movement and transposition of balance. One who can
bring reality into cognition through beholding the actuality of the
soul-spiritual sees how dexterity not the achieved, but the
striving that the child must exercise in order to gain the dexterity
practiced by the hand in grasping works onward into the
melodious element of language. What is rhythm in language comes to
expression in the manner in which the feet are set down in the
movement of walking. It is of much significance to observe whether the
child, in learning to walk, steps on the heel, the ball of the foot,
or the toes. Out of speech there grows what darts forth out of the
human being as childish thinking. Walking, speaking, thinking,
all of this evolves out of that dim, dreamy state of consciousness.
When the human being is born, and is not yet able to do these things,
the force is none the less within the child in the last after-effects
of its presence in the pre-earthly existence. Spiritual science can
show us how this exists in the pre-earthly life. The earliest sounds
of language are not such as manifest thinking, but proceed out of
bodily comfort or discomfort.
How did walking, speaking, thinking appear in the pre-earthly life?
Thinking, as it flows out of the child, one who observes the
manifestation of this thinking, as he traces it backward, finds that
it disappears in an indefinite darkness. It emerges again in the very
last period before the earthly birth. There one sees the human
spirit-soul being in spiritual intercourse with that host of Beings
described in my
Occult Science
as Angels. This is an intercourse which
may be described by saying that thoughts are not being conceived and
expressed abstractly, but that a living stream of thought is flowing
here and there from one Being to another: there is living intercourse
with the Angels. Out of what has flowed into the human soul in the
form of a force, there develops something which is slept through, as
it were, during the germinal life but later becomes manifest as the
force of thinking, conceiving. This we possess in order to enter
rightly into intercourse with human beings. Just think what we should
be if we were not thinking beings, what we should be as human beings
together! All that we are as human beings together results from the
fact that we are thinking beings. Here on this earth we mutually
understand one another in the relation of man to man by means of the
thinking which we express in speech. This manner in which we
understand one another here by means of thinking, this we have
acquired out of the pre-earthly intercourse with the Angels. This
intercourse which we there practice with the Angels can be practiced
also with other human beings who are there in the pre-earthly
existence. This takes the form of direct speaking in thoughts.
Loftier, however, is the intercourse with the hierarchy of the Angels,
since this affords not only satisfaction for the soul but a force
which reappears in the thinking that the child acquires in the third
stage of his earthly life.
Let us consider now the second stage, that of language. This is not so
completely bound up with the sense-nerve system as is thinking.
Speaking is bound up with the breast system, man's rhythmic system,
with that which comes to expression in breathing, in blood
circulation. When that which there struggles out of the child,
imitating in language the outer world, is traced back to the
pre-earthly life, we find that these forces are acquired out of
intercourse he is permitted to experience during the pre-earthly
existence with the second hierarchy, that of the Archangels, those
Beings who rule over peoples, Beings with this responsibility for the
very reason that they have the relation with human beings which we
have just described. These forces acquired by the human being in
relation with the Archangels sink down into night and come again to
manifestation in the forces of the earthly life of speech, by means of
which we have mutual understanding with other human beings. Without
language, what should we be as human beings in mutual association if
we could not pour forth in the coarser vibration of the air, which
manifest speech, the ether vibrations of thought? That our rhythmic
system becomes the bearer of a denser manifestation, this force
we receive from the Hierarchy of the Archangels. And thus can we
follow this process as we go back to the pre-earthly existence; we can
say not only in abstract ways that man lives there among spiritual
Beings, but can declare in an entirely specific manner what this or
that class of Beings has bestowed upon us for the life on earth. We
thank these spiritual Beings that is, we place ourselves in a
right relation with these Beings when we say: For my thinking,
I thank the Angels; for language, I thank the Archangels.
Let us go back now to the first thing that the child learns: to walk,
learning a balanced posture. There is more connected with this than is
usually thought. Connected with it is the bringing about by the ego of
a specific physical process which changes man from a creeping to a
walking being. It is the ego that erects the human being; the astral
body that is at work within the feeling for speech in the erect being;
the etheric body that permeates all of this with the force of
thinking. But all of these work into the physical body. When we
consider the animal, which has its back parallel with the surface of
the earth, its action, its walking, its behavior everything
that proceeds out of the astral is utterly unlike these things
in man, who is a being with volition acting out of his upright,
vertical nature. What comes about in man, taking place in the ego,
astral body, etheric body, all of this is in the physical body
a sort of combustion process. Here is a point where our physical
science, if it was desirous of fulfilling itself, would be able to
discover its union with Anthroposophy. It must be said that the
combustion processes in man are altogether different from those in the
animal. When the flame of the organic being works horizontally, it
destroys what comes out of conscience; there cannot work into this
what is derived from the moral out of conscience. The fact that, in
the case of the human being, these processes are streamed through by
the conscience is due to the fact that the flame of volition in man is
perpendicular to the earth. Within this striking in of the moral, of
the nature of conscience, the child places himself just as into the
external posture of balance. Together with the learning to walk, there
darts into man the moral human nature indeed, the religious
permeation of the nature of man. These are truly lofty forces which
are there at work when the child passes over from the creeping to the
walking movement. These forces, if we follow them back through the
darkness of the child's consciousness, lead us to a still loftier
association of man with the Beings whom we call the Primal Forces, the
Archai. Everything through which the human being has passed in the
pre-earthly life is here reactivated. If to the prayer-like formula,
for my thinking I thank the Angels, for language I thank the
Archangels, we wish to attach a third unit, we must say: For my being
placed within the earthly existence according to physical and moral
forces, I thank the Archai who have been endowed with this
power by still loftier Beings.
And now we can answer the question for ourselves: How is it that the
human being, who possessed a brilliant consciousness before birth,
brings with him here a dull consciousness? Indeed, into this
consciousness there dips down what we can combine under the concepts
of walking capacity, speaking capacity, thinking capacity, which we
have received into ourselves from the higher Hierarchies to be
transformed by us. We see thus that what makes us human beings, that
through which we are human beings among human beings, manifests our
connection with the loftier divine-spiritual worlds. Into these
divine-spiritual worlds we enter again and again in a certain way
during our earthly existence. The truth is that we must say to
ourselves: For the real nature of man, the state of sleep, out of
which dreams come into play, is at least just as significant as the
waking state. When man passes over from the waking state to the state
of sleep, these three capacities that have been acquired in the manner
described begin to grow silent: conceiving, speaking, action all grow
silent. But we see then that, as thinking grows silent when we fall
asleep, the human being, in the same degree in which thought
disappears from his consciousness, comes near to the Angels, and, as
his speaking capacity comes to an end, he approaches the Archangelic
Beings. In the degree to which the human being has entered into
complete stillness, he passes through the quieting of his activity
into proximity with the Primal Beings, the Archai.
What is important, however, is that we should enter during the
sleeping state in a worthy manner into proximity with these three
hierarchies: that we come close to the Angels, Archangels, Archai in a
worthy way during the state of sleep. Here is the point at which one
would have to speak in a special manner to the human beings of the
present time; for the manner in which we enter into proximity with the
Angels depends very much upon the manner of one's thinking during the
waking state. The manner in which man uses worthily his speaking
forces determines whether he comes worthily near to the Archangels;
the way in which man uses rightly his capacity for movement and his
moral sense determines whether he comes worthily near to the Archai.
We are living in a time when the human being is no longer willing to
have in his thinking anything extending beyond the physical world,
when he desires to be stimulated by the external world. A pure,
self-sustained thinking, such as I recommended more than thirty years
ago in my
Philosophy of Freedom
[Also published in English as
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity.]
as the foundation for moral intuition, such thinking,
unfortunately, is sought but little at present and but little
cultivated in children. But through such thinking, which Goethe and
Schiller would still have called idealistic thinking, through
such thinking one breaks free from the mere waking world in earthly
existence and retains something for the sleeping state. So much power
do we possess for approaching the Angels during sleep as there is
idealism in our thinking. And just as helpless are we for the steps we
must take toward the Angels as materialism is at work in our thinking.
In the same sense it is to be observed that those persons fall victims
to Ahrimanic elemental spirits to which then their thinking is
forced to turn who do not, through idealism developed during
the waking state, find the forces for drawing near to the Angelic
Beings. It is so very beautiful when the child has learned to think so
directly, in a manner of which human beings no longer form any
conception! The thinking of the child just after it has learned to
think is filled with spirituality. It is wonderful to see how
up to the time when they have been nibbled at by materialism
children upon sleeping move immediately as if on wings toward their
Angelic Being, how united they become during sleep with the Angelic
Beings. Thus we may say that we seek during sleep but only
through idealism, through spiritualizing the realm of thoughts
those worlds out of which we have evolved in order to learn to think
here as human beings together with human beings.
And when we consider language, idealism in one's disposition has the
same significance for intercourse during sleep with the Archangels as
idealism in thinking has for association with the Angels. The person
who is able, when addressing his words to another person, to stream
good will into these words, a good mood that passes over into the soul
of the other person, which does not pass by the other person but
penetrates into him with the interest that one may have for a human
being, that mood which may be called an idealistic mood of good
will, it is this that, when astral body and ego have passed over into
sleep, gives to language the melodious sound. This gives to astral
body and ego, which also share in language, the capacity to come near
to the Archangelic Beings, whereas it is the unsocial, egotistic
attitude of mind which scatters these forces in the realm of the
Ahrimanic elemental beings. Thus the human being, when he falls
asleep, and has not used language in the right, idealistic manner,
really dehumanizes himself.
Such is the situation likewise when our actions, our conduct is such
as to be humanly friendly, but is also fully aware that the human
being is not only that entity living in flesh, but in his inner nature
is a spiritual being, for out of this awareness arises respect for the
other person likewise as a spiritual being. It is out of action based
upon this attitude that we gain for the sleeping state the power that
brings us in the right manner close to the Archai, whereas, if we are
not in a condition to perform humanly kind actions, if we are aware of
our own nature only as bodily, the corresponding forces are then
scattered in the realm of Ahrimanic elemental Beings: we alienate
ourselves from the very nature of man.
Thus the human being brings three kinds of gifts out of the
pre-earthly existence, but it is in this way that he connects these
again in a threefold manner with his primordial form between sleeping
and waking, while he remains unconscious, but returns again and again
into proximity with these Beings. This, then, is just as we here on
earth have to form our association with other human beings out of
three sources: the source of thought, of speech, of action. Thus are
we during sleep in a threefold relation with the spiritual world: with
the Angels, with the Archangels, with the Primal Forces.
The nature of our link in association with these Beings is of
determinative significance when we pass through the portal of death.
For it is possible to know through spiritual vision that one is able
to draw ever nearer to the Angels, the Archangels, the Beings of the
Archai. But it is something which may become extremely bad for future
human beings if they surrender themselves wholly to the Ahrimanic
elemental Beings, if materialistic thinking, speaking, action become
ever more habitual. Thanks to the spiritual world, however, human
souls of the present time at least as to most persons
have such an inheritance of a good mood in thinking, speaking and
action that the materialism of the present time cannot degrade
everything. Very materialistic persons do not possess out of the
contemporary life on earth much that can render possible approach to
the hierarchies, yet out of the life of the past there flows forth
what brings them there. Yet humanity may very easily meet with a
different reward if a spiritual conception of life is not acquired.
The idealizing of thinking, speaking and action provides man with the
possibility of creating in a certain way new connections with the
three classes of divine-spiritual Beings the Angels, the
Archangels, the Archai and this man needs for the time between
death and a new birth. Otherwise, in a far future time, if he has not
had a connection in the present time with the Angels, he must be born
as a being crippled in thinking; if he has not entered into a union
with the Archangels, as a man without language; if he has not had a
connection with the Archai, as a being crippled in limbs and in moral
impulses. It is within the power of mankind on earth, through
materialism in civilization and culture, to drag the whole of earthly
humanity down to ruin, or through spiritualizing to lift humanity to a
loftier height, such as I described in my
Occult Science
as the
Jupiter existence of the earthly beings.
It is simply true that Anthroposophy is not a theory: every word,
every thought passes over into our whole spiritual human nature. We
cannot do otherwise than to possess the thought: you are truly a
crippled person if you do not possess the right relation with the
Higher Beings. This gives us the right sense of responsibility in a
moral relation with the spiritual world, and it is out of this that
there comes about in man a right sense of responsibility in relation
also with the physical world. Only thus does it arise. When you
consider what thus occurs to the human being, how through idealism in
his thinking he enters into proximity with the Angels, how through his
words, through the idealistic attitude expressed in his speaking, he
enters into proximity with the Archangels, how through the idealism
embodied in his actions he draws near to the Archai how during
sleep he struggles upward to the three Hierarchies you will
then find intelligible what anthroposophical research discloses to us:
that the constitution of human destiny is woven in this way. All of
this we carry through the portal of death, and it later becomes
conscious. After death we must form our thoughts in association with
the Angels; it is through the disposition of mind we possess that we
must acquire our concepts after death. The manner in which we take our
place through language in the midst of mankind gives us the capacity,
the power, to enter into association with the Archangels. Through the
manner in which we use our limbs must we gain the possibility of
possessing self-consciousness after death through association with the
Archai. Thus do we enter livingly within and thus is that woven which
develops into a clearer power of consciousness between death and a new
birth.
If we now observe the child during the earliest years of life, we
behold the preceding earthly existence in its after effects. We see
not only into the preceding pre-earthly life, but also the preceding
life on earth, and thus only does one gain a view for the entire life
on earth. One observes the child, how it learns to walk, to use its
arms; one observes whether it steps on the ball of the foot or on the
heel. Not only does one notice how it directs its physical look, but
how still earlier actions are carried out with delicacy, with
tenderness, with a pitying heart, how this gives to the child in this
life a firm tread, how an insecure, wavering step is the outcome of
brutish, pitiless action in the previous life. Every step taken by the
child, the striving for this or that forming of the tread, reveals to
us how this forming is the outcome of the previous life on earth. We
learn to recognize the physical as the image of what is living in the
child as a moral impulse out of the previous life on earth. The most
impressive thing that can be observed is the learning to walk. Human
freedom comes about through the fact that man is born with his destiny
as little interfered with as whether he has light or dark hair.
The primary measure of destiny is expressed in the learning to walk.
In learning to speak, something else is really indicated. This also is
in relation with the pre-earthly existence, but it is difficult to
describe. Since it is difficult to characterize, I shall express this
in popular language. When the human being passes through the portal of
death, he has in a certain way formed his nature morally. Always
during the sleeping state he has been weaving his own being, and what
he has then woven he himself begins to see. What a person is, comes to
manifestation in his learning to walk. When he has passed through the
portal of death, he enters in the right manner into association with
the Angels, Archangels, Archai, but something further is added to this
which the person receives from the second group of the hierarchies.
These stream into this person, as an additional, more impersonal
karma, that which places him in his next life within a specific
language, integrates him within a certain body of people. Individual
destiny is connected with what the person is in relation with the
Archai. Capacity for speaking we receive from the Archangels. But what
language we learn, this is received from far loftier Beings:
the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes.
When we consider thinking, conceiving, this is in relation, as I have
shown, with the Angels; these Beings can bestow upon man the gift of
thinking. This capacity, however, man achieved first in the earth
period of evolution; he did not possess it during the Moon period. In
this way there comes about a development for the Angels themselves;
they enter thus into relation with the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones.
They have gained in this way the capacity for a direct association
with the Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim, and these do not bestow a
capacity which is to be shared only within a single human group, but
one to be shared by the whole of humanity. Thinking is really
something belonging in common to the whole of humanity. For this
reason is logic identical over the whole earth. Walking, in which
personal destiny is expressed, we receive from the Archai, out of
their own forces. The capacity for speaking is received by the human
being from the Archangels, but these are directed in this by the
second group of the hierarchies. It is from the Angels that the human
being receives the gift of thinking, but these bestow this upon man
under the influence of the highest hierarchies.
Thus are things woven in the cosmic order, and man is understood only
when he is clearly seen in this relation of being interwoven with the
cosmic order. In this way one understands, not only the single person,
but also the nature of a living or dying branch of language, a
deficient or a perfect capacity for thinking. Man exists on earth in a
certain dualistic relation. He sees entities and sees them in a
certain dependency under natural laws. In relation with these, man
comes to a consciousness of his own relation with the Godhead. Here on
this earth there is no relation between the physical and the moral
cosmic order. But, when we look back into the life before birth and
that after death, we then enter into a world where these two realms
are merged into one. Moreover, a human being cannot determine rightly
what he himself is unless he is in a position to see truly into
himself as a spiritual being. Man does not acquire a unitary world
view unless he can see beyond birth and death, if he does not look
into the higher worlds. In order to understand his entire, total
being, man needs a consciousness permeated by knowledge of his
connection with the spiritual world.
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