V
The Relation of Man
to the Three Worlds
Dreams, of
which I have already said something, pointing out that they should not be
given too much importance in ordinary life on earth, are nevertheless
of immeasurable significance to those wishing to gain knowledge
of man's relation to the super-sensible world. They do indeed lead to
that realm of experience where a man comes in contact with the
super-sensible world, and the laws of nature cease to hold good. Thus
the world of dream-pictures is really like a veil concealing
the spiritual world, and we can say: Here we have a man, and there a
dream-veil behind which lies the spiritual world. It makes a great
difference, however, whether we enter the spiritual world
unconsciously, as we do in dreams, or consciously through Imagination
and Inspiration. For if we enter it consciously, everything there
appears different from the physical world of nature. Behind the veil
of the dream, behind what the Greeks called “chaos”, the
moral world is found to be just as real as is the world of nature
here in the sense-world, where the laws of nature rule. But the
chaotic quality of the dream, its whirling confusion, show that its
connection with the world lying behind the veil of chaos is a
very special one.
It is really
possible to speak of this world only when one's studies have reached the
point to which these lectures have brought us. All that in his ordinary
state of consciousness a man sees of the external world is merely its
outward manifestation; in reality this is a great illusion. For
behind it all is that spiritual reality which is active in it. When a
man dreams, he actually sinks down into this spiritual reality,
though without being properly prepared, so that what he meets appears
to him in this whirling confusion. Thus, to begin with, our chief
task is to learn why in dreams a man enters a world which,
compared with that of nature, is so disorganised, so
chaotic.
To help us
on, therefore, in our study of dreams, I must now tell you something of
what Imagination and Inspiration can perceive in the spiritual
world.
We find above
all that when through Imagination and Inspiration we enter the spiritual
world in full consciousness, it immediately appears to us to be
threefold. Hence we can speak of the world, and of our theme, the
evolution of the world and of man, only when we have come to the
point we have now reached. Only now can I speak of how a man,
confronted by the external world, by all that manifests itself to the
senses, is really facing the spiritual world in its threefold
nature — facing actually three worlds. Once the veil has been
lifted which creates the chaos, we no longer have one world only
before us, but three worlds, and each of the three has its definite
connection with the human being.
When we succeed
in penetrating this veil of chaos — later I shall be showing how
we can also describe this as crossing the threshold of the spiritual
world — we perceive the three worlds. The first of the three is
really the world we have just left, somewhat transformed but still
there for spiritual existence. When the veil of chaos has been
thrust aside, this world appears as though it were a memory. We have
passed over into the spiritual world; and just as here we remember
certain things, so in the spiritual world we remember what
constitutes the physical world of the senses. Here, then, is
the first of the three worlds.
The second
world we encounter is the one I have called in my book,
Theosophy,
the soul-world.
And the third
world, the highest of the three, is the true spiritual world, the world of
the spirit.
To begin with,
I shall give you only a schematic account of all this, but from the way
these three worlds are related to man you will gather many things about
them. To these three worlds as they appear in three ascending stages
— the lowest, the middle one, and the highest — I will
then relate man's three members — the head; then the
breast-organisation embracing all that is rhythmical, the
breathing system and blood circulation; thirdly, the metabolic-limb
system, which includes nutrition, digestion and the
distribution throughout the body of the products of digestion, all of
which engender movement. All this has to do with the
metabolic-limb system. If this scheme were drawn, there would have to
be a closed circle for the breast; for the head a circle left open,
and open also for the limb system. When perceived physically, man's
head appears to be closed above and would have to be drawn so, but
perceived spiritually, it is open. The part of a man which does not
belong at all to the realm of the spirit is the bony system, which is
entirely of a physical nature; and when spiritually you study the
human head, its thick skull is not seen. Only the skin is visible
where the hair grows.
When this is
looked at spiritually, however, something else appears. Ordinary hair is
not there at all, but purely spiritual hair; in other words, rays which
penetrate into the human organism and are held back, to some extent,
only by the physical hair. But it is just where there is bone
in the organism that the spirit can enter most easily, and this it
does in the form of rays. So, on first looking at a man with your
physical eyes, you see his physical form with the head above, and on
his head — if he is not already bald — there is hair. But
then, where the dome of the skull comes, spiritually you see nothing
of the physical man; you see rays, sun-like rays, pouring into him
from the spiritual worlds.
Thus the reason
for the circle not being closed for the head is that the surrounding bony
vault of the skull enables the spirit to have continual access there.
Nothing in a
man is without purpose. By deliberate intent of the ruling powers —
one might say — he has been given a head thus closed above, for
here the spirit has the easiest access to his inner being because of
the very thickness of the bone.
When we are
in a position to observe man spiritually, we are astonished to discover
how empty his head is of anything drawn from his own inner being. As
regards the spiritual, he has almost nothing in him to fill the
hollow globe sitting on his shoulders. Everything spiritual has to
enter it from outside.
It is not thus
with the other members of the human organism; as we shall soon hear,
these are by their very nature spiritual. We can distinguish in man
three members — head, or nerves and senses system, rhythmic
system, metabolic-limb system, and they have a quite definite
relation to the three worlds: the physical world, the soul-world, and
the spiritual world. I will now go further into this.
First of all,
it will be well to distinguish, in each of the three worlds, substance
from activity. In reality, substance and activity are one, but
they work in different ways in the world. You gain a clear idea of
this from the substance of your own being. You have substance in your
arm, and when this substance is out of order you will feel pain of
some kind; it is obvious that something within the substance of the
arm has gone wrong. If the activity of the arm is not properly
controlled, you may perhaps hit your neighbour and he feels
pain. This shows that the activity is out of gear. Nevertheless,
though manifesting outwardly in different ways, the substance
and activity in your arm are one.
If now we turn
to the human head, we find its substance derived entirely from the physical
world. During the formation of the human embryo the substance of the
head comes from the parents; and the subsequent development of the
head, and of the whole head and nerve-senses system, depends for its
substance entirely on the earthly-material world. On the other hand,
all the activity that has to do with the plastic forming of a man's
head, the activity by means of which its substance is given
shape, comes entirely from the spiritual world. So that in
respect of activity, the head is entirely a spiritual formation.
Therefore the head has to be left open — in a spiritual sense
— so that activity can play into it.
At any time of
life you can thus say: The substance of my head comes entirely from the
Earth, but it is put together and plastically formed in such a
way that it cannot be the work of earthly forces. The forms of this
human head are shaped entirely from the spiritual world; they might
be called a heavenly creation. Anyone who contemplates spiritually
the human head, in relation to the world, has to go far and
deep.
Now in the
same way he turns his gaze to a plant. He says to himself: The plant has
a definite form. Its substance is drawn from the earth, but its form
comes from the etheric world — hence still from the spatial
world.
Then he looks
at an animal. The animal — he will say to himself — derives
the substance of its head entirely from the world of space, but something
spiritual certainly flows into its activity.
When we come
to the human head, however, we find for the first time that something of
the highest spirituality, something that can be called heavenly, is
playing in. We see that the human head could never arise from earthly
forces, though its substance is taken from earthly materials. So in
the human head, which is itself a kind of miniature Cosmos, the
spiritual world builds up a form out of earthly substance.
It is precisely
the reverse with the metabolic-limb system, which embraces the organs for
external movement — legs, arms — and the extension of
these within the body — the digestive system.
For the present
I am leaving out the middle system — the rhythmical system which
embraces breathing and the circulation of the blood. I will
deal now with the system which brings together the processes of
digestion and nourishment, and the inner combustion which enables a
man to move.
Now the
substance of this metabolic-limb system is not derived from the Earth.
Improbable as it may sound, you bear within your metabolic-limb man
something which is not of earthly origin but consists wholly of substance
from the third world, the world of the spirit. You may say: But I can
see my legs; they are physically perceptible, which they would not be
if they consisted of spiritual substance. This objection is quite
justified, but there is something more to be considered.
Your real legs
are indeed spiritual throughout; your real arms too; but the material for
them is provided by your head. The head is the organ which fills
spirit arms, spirit hands, spirit legs, spirit feet, with substance;
and this substance penetrates into the spirituality of the limbs and
of the digestive organs. So that something which in reality
belongs entirely to the spiritual world is permeated, flooded,
with physical matter by the head. That is why it is so
difficult to grasp with the ideas of physical science that a man
consists of head-breast-limbs-digestive organs. People think of
the head as being there at the top, and they assume that when a
man is decapitated he has no head left. It is not so, however; a man
is substantially head all over. Even right to the end of his big toe
he is head, for his head sends down its substance there. It is only
the substance of the head that is earthly in origin, and the head
gives its earthly-material character to the other substances; while
the substance of the metabolic-limb organs comes from the spiritual
world.
If through
vigorous auto-suggestion of a negative kind we can suggest away the head
of a man, so that in appearance he is headless, and if we can do this not
only in thought but so that we really see the man as headless, then
the rest of his organism also disappears; with the head goes the
whole of the man as a being perceptible to the senses. And if the
head is then to be there for us at all, the rest of the man has to be
perceived spiritually. For in reality we go about under the imprint
of higher worlds, with spirit legs, spirit arms, and it is only the
head that fills them with physical matter.
On the other
hand the forces, the activity, for all that makes up the metabolic-limb
man are drawn from the physical world. If you make a step forward
or lift an arm, the mechanism involved, and even the chemical
processes that take place in moving an arm or leg, or the chemical
processes in the digestive organs — all this activity is
earthly. So that in your limbs you bear invisible substance, but
forces drawn from earthly life. Hence we are built up as regards our
head and its substance out of the Earth, but this same head is
permeated with heavenly forces. In our limbs we are built up entirely
from heavenly substance; but the forces playing into this heavenly
substance during our life on Earth are earthly forces —
gravitation and other physical and chemical forces all belonging to
the Earth.
You see,
therefore, that head and limbs are opposites. The head consists of earthly
matter and is given plastic form by heavenly activity. The limbs and
the digestive system are formed wholly of heavenly substance, and
would not be visible were they not saturated with earthly substance
by the head. But when anyone walks, or grasps something, or digests
food, the heavenly substance makes use of earthly forces in order
that life on Earth, from birth to death, may be carried
on.
In this
complicated way does a man stand in relation to the three worlds. The
spiritual world participates with its activity in the head; with its
substance it participates in a man's third organisation, his metabolic-limb
system. The lowest world, the world most dominated by the senses,
participates through its activity in the metabolism and the
movement of the limbs, and through its substance in the head; whereas
the substance in a man's third system is wholly spiritual.
In the middle
system, which embraces the breathing and the circulation of the blood,
spiritual activity and material substance work into each other. The
spiritual activity, flowing through the movement of our breathing and
the beating of our heart, is always accompanied to some extent by
substantiality. And, in the same way, the substantiality of
earthly existence, inasmuch as oxygen streams into the breathing, is
to some extent accompanied by earthly activity. So you see that in
the middle man, in man's second system, everything flows together
— heavenly substance and activity flow in here; earthly
activity and substance flow in there. By this means we are made
receptive both to the activity of the middle world and to its
substantiality.
So in this
middle man there is a great deal of intermingling and for this reason we
need our wonderfully perfect rhythmical system — the rhythm of
the heart, the rhythm of the lungs in breathing. All the
intermingling of activity and substance is balanced, harmonised,
melodised, through these rhythms, and this can happen because man is
organised for it.
In the head
system and the limb system, activity and substantiality come from quite
different sources, but in the middle system they come from all three
worlds and in a variety of ways — at one place activity
accompanied by substance, in another place substance accompanied by
activity; here pure activity, there pure substance — all these
variations flow through the middle man. If as a doctor you take a
man's pulse, you can really feel there the balancing of the heavenly
nature of the soul against earthly activity and substantiality.
Again, if you observe the breathing, you can feel a man's inner
striving for balance between the various agencies which relate him to
the middle world.
All this is
very complicated, you will say. It is true that a lecture-course is
generally easy to understand up to a certain stage, but when it comes
to the point where man's relation to the world has to be grasped,
people often say: “This is becoming very difficult — we
can't keep up with it.”
But look —
with really flexible thinking, free from prejudice, you will be able to
keep up. And for anyone who thinks in this way, with healthy human
understanding, there is a certain consolation. As I said before, the
actual thrusting aside of the veil of chaos and the entry into the
threefold world, which sends its activity and substance into the
physical world in so vastly complicated a way — this experience
is so bewildering that full warning of it is given before the
threshold is crossed. I will put it pictorially, but in full accord
with the facts. The warning is: “If you are not willing to
forgo what you have regarded as ordinary naturalistic logic and as
the customary connections between things, if you are reluctant to
leave behind this physical cloak, it is better that you should
not enter the spiritual world, for there you will be obliged to make
use of other associations of ideas, other orderings, and a
completely different logic. If you want to take anything of
your physical logic with you into the spiritual world, you will quite
certainly get confused.” And among the matters that have to do
with preparing ourselves for meditation and concentration, we have to
remember the warning never to carry over the logic of the sense-world
into the logic of the spiritual world.
This is the
important warning given by that power we may call the Guardian of the
Threshold — of whom we shall hear more in later lectures —
to those who wish to pierce behind the veil.
But when we
wish to return to the physical world, we receive from the Guardian
another warning, clear and forcible. So long as we are men of Earth
we return, or we should never get away from happenings in the
spiritual world, and our deserted physical body would die. We
must always return. In accordance with naturalistic logic we have to
eat, drink, and adapt ourselves every day to customary activities. We
are obliged to re-enter the world where things follow a naturalistic
course — where, for example, we are called to meals at the
usual hours. So, when we are returning from the spiritual world to
the physical world, we must — to avoid an impossible situation
— pay heed to the second warning given by the Guardian who
stands where the veil of chaos separates the physical sense-world
from the spiritual world. This, then, is the warning: “During
your life on Earth, never for a moment forget that you have been in
the spiritual world; then and only then, during the times you have to
spend in the physical world, will you be able to guide your steps
with certainty.”
Thus at the
threshold of this threefold spiritual world, to which a man is related
through his three members in the way described, he is warned to lay aside
all naturalistic logic, to leave behind this cloak of the senses and to
go forward prepared to adapt himself to a spiritual logic,
spiritual thinking and the spiritual association of ideas. On his
return he is given a second warning, just as stern, even sterner than
the first: never for a moment to forget his experience in the
spiritual world — in other words, not to confine himself in
ordinary consciousness merely to the impulses of the sense-world, and
so on, but always to be conscious that to his physical world he has
to be a bearer of the spiritual.
You will see
that the two warnings differ considerably from one another. At the entrance
to the spiritual world the Guardian of the Threshold says: Forget the
physical world of the senses while here you are acquiring knowledge
of the spiritual. But on your return to the physical world the
Guardian's warning is: Never forget, even in the physical world on
Earth, your experiences in the heavenly world of the spirit; keep
your memory of them alive.
With reference
to what I said last time, there is another considerable difference between
the men of an older evolutionary epoch and those of the present
time. In the case of those I pictured coming to the Mystery centres
as inspired pupils, or just as ordinary folk, the transition from
sleeping to waking and from waking to sleeping was not made without
their being instinctively aware of the Guardian of the
Threshold. Three or four thousand years ago, as men were
entering sleep, there arose in their souls like a dream a picture of
the Guardian. They passed him by. And as they were returning from
sleep to ordinary life, once again this picture appeared. The
warnings they received on entering and leaving the spiritual world
were not so clear as the warnings which I have said are given to
those entering the spiritual world through Inspiration and
Imagination. But as they fell asleep, and again as they awoke, they
had a dreamlike experience of passing the Guardian of the Threshold,
not unlike their other instinctive perceptions of the spiritual
world. Further progress in the evolution of humanity — as we
shall see in later lectures — required that man should gain his
freedom by losing his spiritual vision, and he had to forfeit that
half-sleeping, half-waking state during which he was able to behold,
at least in a kind of dream, the majestic figure of the Guardian of
the Threshold.
Nowadays,
between going to sleep and waking, a man passes the Guardian but does
not know it. He is blind and deaf to the Guardian, and that is why he
finds himself in a dream-world which is so completely disorganised.
Now consider
quite impartially the different way in which the people of older epochs
knew how to speak of their dreams. Because of ignoring the Guardian
every morning, every evening, and twice every time he takes an
afternoon nap, a man to-day experiences this utter disorder and chaos
in his dream-world. This can be seen in the form taken by any dream.
Only think:
when we cross the Threshold — and we do so each time we go to sleep
— there stands the majestic Guardian. He cannot be ignored
without everything we meet in the spiritual world becoming
disordered. How this happens is best seen in the metamorphosis
undergone by the orderly thinking proper to the physical,
naturalistic world when this passes into the imagery of dreams.
Individual dreams can show this very clearly.
In the
physical, naturalistic world people behave as they learn to do in
accordance with its conditions. We will take a case in point. Someone
goes for a walk. Now in a town to-day, you will agree, certain walks are
taken particularly for the experiences they offer. For example, during a
walk people meet friends; they can show off their clothes if so
inclined, both to those they know and to strangers. All this can be
experienced during a walk and the point of it is that it gives
occasion for us to have thoughts, ideas, so that we are able —
only our head-organisation is here concerned — to say: “I
think.” By virtue of this “I think” it is possible
to experience in the outside world the kind of thing I have just been
describing. One meets other people, and it is an experience for them
too. One displays one's clothes, perhaps a pretty face into the
bargain. What matters is the experience. In this seeing other people,
however, in this exhibiting to them our outward appearance, feeling
also plays its part. One thing pleases us, another does not.
Sympathies and antipathies are aroused. We like it when the people we
meet say what is agreeable to us, and we don't like it when they say
the opposite. Hence what is experienced on such walks is closely
connected with what the head conceives by means of this “I
think.” It is connected through the “I feel” of the
rhythmical man — that is, with feelings of sympathy and
antipathy. Because with this second member of our being we can say
“I feel”, we are able to enlarge the experiences
that come to us in thought during a walk.
But the third
member of man also plays a part on this walk, if we are fully awake. Here
we must turn to certain intimate details of human experience. There is a
general feeling that civilised people to-day do not show themselves
in public without clothes, do not go for walks without them;
there is a general antipathy towards nudity and sympathy towards
being properly clad. This goes right into our impulses of will. We
clothe ourselves — even doing so in a specified way. Here the
will comes into its own, the third member of the human organisation.
Clothing ourselves is thus connected with the part of us that enables
us to say “I will”.
So, through
being able to say “I will,” we go for our walks clothed. When
we are awake in the physical world, all this is regulated by the logic of
this world. Either we are brought up to it, or we learn to conform to
the outer conditions prescribed by the physical world and its
logic. If we do not conform, but go for a walk without our
clothes, then something within us is out of order. The ordering of
the physical world, the logic of the physical world, go together in
all this. It never occurs to us on a walk to wish to meet people
without clothes. Here, our soul-experience is determined by the
ordering of the world. And this shows how the three — I think,
I feel, I will — are all connected with one another. It is the
world that does this; the external world leads us to form this
connection between thinking, feeling and willing.
When, ignoring
the Guardian, we cross the Threshold, we confront three worlds, and we
can make nothing of them because we partly carry over into the
world of spirit the outlook we are familiar with in the waking
world. The spiritual world, however, asserts its own order to a
certain extent. Then the following may come about. Imagine you are
asleep in bed. At first with your feeling, with the middle part of
your being, you are entirely under the influence of sleep. Then the
coverlet slips; part of your body gets chilled, and it enters your
dream consciousness that some part of you is unclothed. Now, because
you are all at sea in the spiritual world and do not connect the
sensation with any particular part of yourself, this feeling spreads,
and you fancy you are without any clothes at all. It may be only a
bit of your body that is exposed, but that bit becoming cold makes
you feel bare all over.
Now in your
dream you are still concerned with an impulse of will holding good when
you are awake — which is to put on clothes when bare. In your sleep,
however, you feel: I cannot put them on, something is preventing me.
You are unable to move your limbs and you become conscious of this in
your dream.
You see how
it is. These two things, I feel I've nothing on, and I cannot put on my
clothes — the physical world being no longer there to combine
the two, one of which belongs to world II, the other to world I
— are wrongly combined in your dream. And because in that same
night you had thought about going for a walk, this also enters the
course of the dream. Three separate conditions arise: I am going for
a walk; I am horrified to find I have nothing on; I cannot put my
clothes on.
Now just think.
These three things, which in our ordinary materialistic life can be
logically combined, fall asunder when, in passing by, you ignore the
Guardian of the Threshold.
In world I:
the walk
In world II:
being without clothes
In world III:
the experience of not being able to put on clothes. In this situation you
feel yourself in three parts, among strangers, exposed to view on all
sides without clothes and without power to put them on. That is your
dream experience. What is connected for you in ordinary life
through natural logic is separated in your dream and connected,
chaotically, in conformity with the custom you take with you across
the Threshold. You connect it as if in the spiritual world, too, one
has to concern oneself with garments. Because of ignoring the
Guardian of the Threshold, you carry over into the spiritual world a
custom suited to the physical world. You connect the three worlds
chaotically, according to the laws of the physical world, and you
feel yourself to be in this situation.
In countless
dreams the essential thing is that when we pass the Threshold without
heeding the Guardian's warning, what we perceive here in the
physical, naturalistic world as a harmonious unity falls apart,
and we are confronted by three different worlds. By faithfully
observing the warning given by the Guardian of the Threshold, we must
find the way to unite these three worlds. To-day, a man in his dreams
finds himself faced by these three worlds — it was not so to
the same extent for anyone in older epochs, as can be seen from the
dreams recorded in the Old Testament — and he then tries to
connect the three worlds in accordance with laws valid in physical
life. That is the reason for the chaotic connections in the three
worlds, as they are experienced by a man of to-day.
You will
see, therefore, that dreams can show us this serious fact — that
when we cross the Threshold to the spiritual world we are at once
faced with three worlds, and that we have both to enter them and to
leave them in the right way. Dreams can teach us a very great deal
about the physical world of the senses, as it is to-day, and also
about that other world — the world of soul and
spirit.
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