SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES OF YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY
To-day I have to add to what I said yesterday concerning old ways to
spiritual knowledge yet a further example, namely the way of
asceticism as practised in former ages, asceticism in the widest sense
of the word. And here I shall be describing a way that is even less
practicable in our own times than the way described yesterday. For in
our time, in our civilisation, men's thoughts and customs are
different from those of the days when men sought high spiritual
knowledge by means of asceticism. Hence just as we must replace the
way of Yoga to-day by something more purely spiritual and psychic, so
must we replace the way of asceticism by a modern way. But we shall
more easily apprehend the modern way into spiritual life if we train
our ideas in grasping the way of asceticism.
Asceticism essentially is a matter of certain exercises. These
exercises can extend to spiritual and psychic things, I wish, for the
moment, to deal with the use made of these exercises for eliminating
the human body in a special way, at certain times, from the sum of
human experience. It is just by eliminating the body that experience
of spiritual worlds is called up. These exercises consisted in
training the body by means of pain and suffering, by mortification,
until it was capable of enduring pain without causing too much
disturbance to the mind; until the ascetic could bear physical
suffering without his whole mind and soul being overwhelmed in the
suffering. Mortification and enhanced en-durance were pursued because
it was a matter of experience that as the physical was repressed so
the spiritual nature emerged, got free and brought about immediate
spiritual perception, direct experience.
Now it is a matter of experience — notwithstanding that these
methods are not to be recommended today — it is yet a matter of
experience that in whatever measure the physical body is suppressed in
the same measure man is enabled to receive into himself psychic and
spiritual being. It is simply a fact that spirit becomes perceptible
when the activity of the physical is suppressed.
Let me make my meaning clear by an example: Suppose we observe the
human eye. This human eye is there for the purpose of transmitting
impressions of light to the human being. What is the sole means
whereby the eye can make light perceptible to man? Imaginatively
expressed: by wanting nothing for itself. The moment the eye wants
something for itself — so to speak — the moment the organic
activity, the vital activity of the eye loses its own vitality, (if
some opacity or hardening of the lens or eyeball sets in) —
namely, as soon as the eye departs from selflessness and becomes
self-seeking, in that moment it ceases to be a servant of human
nature. The eye must make no claim to be anything for its own sake.
This is meant relatively of course, but things must be stated in a
somewhat absolute manner when they have to be expressed. Life itself
will make it relative. Thus we can say: The eye owes its transparency
to light to the fact that it shuts itself off from the being of man,
that it is selfless.
When we want to see into the spiritual world — this seeing is
meant of course in a spiritual-psychic sense — then we must, as
it were, make our whole organism into an eye. We must now make our
whole organism transparent — not physically as in the case of the
eye, — but spiritually. It must no longer be an obstacle to our
intercourse with the world.
Certainly I do not mean to say that our physical organism as it stands
to-day would become diseased — as the eye would be diseased
— if it claimed life on its own account. For ordinary life our
physical organism is quite right as it is, it is quite normal. It has
to be opaque. In the lectures that follow we shall see how it is that
our organism cannot be an “eye” in ordinary life, how it
must be non-transparent. Our normal soul-life can repose in our
organism just because it is non-transparent, and because we do not
perpetually have the whole spiritual world of the universe about us
when we gaze around. Thus, for ordinary life, it is right, it is
normal for our organism to be non-transparent. But one can know
nothing of the spiritual world by means of it, — just as one can
know nothing of light by means of an eye that has cataract. And when
the body is mortified by suffering and pain, and by self-conquests, it
becomes trans-parent. And just as it is possible to perceive the world
of light when the eye lets the light show through it — so it is
possible for the whole organism to perceive the spiritual world
surrounding it when we make the organism transparent in this way.
What I have just described is what took place in ancient times, the
times which gave rise to those mighty religious visions which have
come down to our age in tradition, not through the independent
discovery of modern men; and it is this that led up to that bodily
asceticism that I have been attempting to elucidate.
Nowadays we cannot imitate this asceticism. In earlier ages it was an
accepted thing that if one sought enlightenment, if one wanted tidings
of the super-sensible, the spiritual world, one should betake oneself
to solitary men, to hermits — to such as had withdrawn from life.
It was a universal belief that one could learn nothing from those who
lived the ordinary life of the world; but that knowledge of spiritual
worlds could only be won in solitude, and that one who sought such
knowledge must become different from other men.
It would not be possible to think like this from our modern
standpoint. Our tendency is to believe only in a man who can stand
firmly on his feet, who can use his hands to help his fellow men, one
who counts for something in life, who can work and trade and is at
home in the world, That solitude which former ages regarded as the
pre-requisite of higher knowledge has now no place in our view of
life. If we are to believe in a man to-day he must be a man of action,
one who enters into life, not one who retires from it. Hence it is
impossible for us to acquire the state of mind of the ascetic in
relation to knowledge, and we cannot learn of spiritual worlds in his
way.
Now this makes it necessary for us to-day to win to clairvoyance by
psychic-spiritual means without damaging our bodies' fitness by
ascetic practices. And this we can do. And we can do it because
through our century-old natural-scientific development we have
acquired exact concepts, exact ideas. We can discipline our thinking
by means of this natural-scientific development. What I am now
describing is not something antagonistic to the intellect.
Intellectuality must be at the basis of it all, there must be a
foundation of clear thinking. But upon the basis of this
intellectuality, of this clear thought, there must be built what can
lead into the spiritual world.
To-day it is exceptionally easy to fulfil the demand that man shall
think clearly. This is no slight on clear thinking. But in an age
which comes several centuries after the work of Copernicus and of
Galileo clear thinking is almost a matter of course. — The pity
is that it is not yet a matter of course among the majority of people.
— But in point of fact it is easy to have clear thought when this
clear thought is attained at the expense of the fullness, of the rich
content of thought. Empty thoughts can easily be clear. But the
foundation of our whole future development must be clear thoughts
which have fullness, clear thoughts rich in content.
Now, what the ascetic attained by mortification and suppression of the
physical organism we can attain by taking in hand our own soul's
development. By asking ourselves, for instance, at some definite stage
of our life “What habits have I got? What characteristics? What
faults? What sympathies and antipathies?” And when one has
reviewed all this clearly in one's mind, one can try imagining —
in the case of some very simple thing to start with — what one
would be like if one were to evolve a different kind of sympathy or
antipathy, a different content of soul.
These things do not come as a matter of course. It often takes years
of inward work to do what otherwise life would do for us. If we look
at ourselves honestly for once we shall concede: “What I am
to-day I was not ten years ago.” The inner content of the soul,
and the inner formation of the soul also, have become quite different.
Now what has brought this about? Life itself. Unconsciously we have
given ourselves up to life. We have plunged into the stream of life.
And now: can we ourselves do what otherwise life does? Can we look
ahead, for example, to what we shall be in ten years' time, and set'
it before us as an aim, and proceed with iron will to bring it about?
If we can compass all life within the confines of our own ego —
that vast life which otherwise works on us, — if we can thus
intensify in our own will
[Literally — “in the will of our own
ego.”] the power which is usually spread abroad
like a sea of life, — if we can work at our own progress and make
something out of ourselves: — then we shall achieve inwardly what
the ascetic of old achieved by external means.
[By Translator — It is interesting to read Kipling's
“If” in the light of this knowledge.]
He rendered the body
weak so that will and cognition should arise out of the weakened body,
and the body should be translucent to the spiritual world. We must
make our will strong, and make strong our powers of thought, so that
they may be stronger than the body, which goes on its own way; and
thus we shall constrain the body to be transparent to the world of
spirit. We do the precise opposite of the ascetics of old.
You see, I have treated of these things in my book
“Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.”
And what is there described, which differs
completely from the old ascetic way, has been confused by many people
with asceticism, has been taken to be the old asceticism in a new
form. But anyone who reads it carefully will see that it differs in
every respect from the way of asceticism in the past. Now this new
“asceticism” which does not require that we should withdraw
from life and become hermits, but keeps us active in the world —
this new way can only be achieved by looking away from the passing
moment to Time itself.
One has to consider, for instance, what one will be like in ten years'
time. And this means that one has to take into consideration the whole
span of a man's life between birth and death. Man is prone to live in
the moment. But here the aim is: To learn to live in time, within the
whole span of life. Then the world of spirit will become visible to
us. We do indeed see a spiritual world around us when our body has
thus become transparent.
For instance, everything described in my
“Occult Science,”
rests entirely on knowledge such as this I obtained
when the body is as transparent to spirit as the eye is to light.
Now you will say: Yes, but we cannot require every teacher to attain
such spiritual cognition before he can become an educator or
instructor. But, as I said yesterday in the case of Yoga, let me
repeat: This is not in the least necessary. For the body of the child
itself is living witness of spiritual worlds and it is here that our
higher knowledge can begin. And thus a teacher with right instinct can
grow naturally into a spiritual treatment of the child. But our
intellectual age has departed very much from such a spiritual
treatment and treats everything rationally. So much so that we have
reached the stage of saying: You must so educate as to make everything
immediately comprehensible to the child at whatever stage he may be.
Now this lends itself to triviality — no doubt an extremely
convenient thing to those engaged in teaching. We get a lot done in a
given time when we put as many things as possible before the child in
a trivial and rudimentary form, addressed to its comprehension. But a
man who thinks like this, on rational grounds, is not concerning
himself with the whole course of man's life. He is not concerned with
what becomes of the sensation I have aroused in the child when the
child has grown into an older man or woman, or attained old age. He is
not taking life into consideration; for instance, he is not
considering the following: suppose it is evident knowledge to me that
it is advisable for a child between the change of teeth and puberty to
rely mainly on authority; and that for him to trust to an example he
needs to have an example set: In that case I shall tell the child
something that he must take on trust, for I am the mediator of the
divine, spiritual world to the child. He believes me; and accepts what
I say, although he does not yet understand it. So much of what we
receive in childhood unconsciously we do not understand. If in
childhood we could only accept what we understood we should receive
little of value for our later life. And Jean Paul, the German poet and
thinker, would never have said that more is learned in the first three
years of life than in the three years at the university.
But just consider what it means when, say, in my thirty-fifth year
some event or other brings about the feeling: “Something is
swimming up into your mind. Long ago you heard this from your teacher.
You were only nine or ten years old, may-be, at the time, and you did
not understand it at all. Now it comes back. And now, in the light of
your own life, it makes sense. You appreciate it.”
A man who in later life can thus fetch from the depths of his' memory
what he now understands for the first time has within him a
well-spring of life. A refreshing stream of power continually flows
within him. Such a thing — this swimming up into the soul of what
was once accepted on trust and is only now understood — such a
thing as this can show us that to educate rightly we must not merely
consider the immediate moment, but the whole of life. In all that we
teach the child this must be kept in view.
Now I have just been told that exception was taken to the image used
for showing the child how man partakes of immortality. I was not
speaking of “eternity,” but of “immortality.” I
said “The image of the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis is
there to be seen.” This image was only taken to represent the
sensation we can have of the soul leaving the physical body.
The image itself refutes this objection; it was expressly used to meet
the objection that the emerging of the butterfly is not a right
concept of immortality. In the logical sense, naturally, it is not a
right concept. But we are considering what kind of concept we are to
give the child, what image we are to place before his soul so as to
avoid confronting him with logic prematurely. What is thus given in
picture form to a child of eight or nine years, (for it was of
children we were speaking, and not of introducing things in this way
to a philosopher) — what is thus given can grow into the right
concept of immortality.
Thus it all depends on the what (on what is given)
— on having a living grasp of existence. It is this that is so
terribly hard for our rationalistic age to grasp. It is surely obvious
that the thing we tell the child is different from that into which it
is transformed in later years — what would be the sense of
calling a child unskilled, immature, “childish” (zappelig)
if we were simply speaking of a grown man? An observer of life finds
not only younger and more grown-up children, but childish and grown-up
ideas and concepts. And to a true teacher or educator it is life we
must look to, not adulthood.
It seems to me a good fate that not before 1919 did it fall to me to
take on the direction of the Waldorf School — founded that year
by Emil Molt in Stuttgart. I had been concerned with education
professionally before that time; nevertheless, I should not have felt
in a position to master so great an educational enterprise earlier to
the extent that we can master it now, with the college of teachers of
the Waldorf School — (master it, that is, relatively speaking
— to a certain extent). And the reason is this: before that time
I should not have dared to form a college of teachers consisting so
largely of men and women with a knowledge of human nature — and
therefore of child nature — as I was able to do that year. For,
as I have already said, all true teaching, all true pedagogy must be
based on knowledge of human nature. But before one can do this one
must possess the means of penetrating into human nature in the proper
way. Now, — if I may say so — the first perceptions of this
entering into human nature came to me more than 35 years ago.
These were spiritual perceptions of the nature of man. Spiritual, I
say, not intellectual. Now spiritual truths behave in a different
manner from intellectual truths. What one perceives intellectually,
what one has proved, — as it is called, one can also communicate
to other men, for the matter is ready when the logic is ready.
Spiritual truths are not ready when the logic is ready. It is in the
nature of spiritual truths that they must be carried with a man on his
way through life, they must be lived with before they can fully
develop. Thus I should never have dared to utter to other men certain
truths about the nature of man in the form in which they came to me
more than 35 years ago. Not until a few years back, in my book
“Von Seelen Ratzeln”
(Riddles of the Soul)
did I venture to
speak of these things for the erst time. A period of thirty years lay
between the first conception and the giving out of these things to the
world. Why? Because it is necessary to contemplate such truths at
different stages of one's life, they have to accompany one throughout
different periods of life. The spiritual truths conceived when one was
a young man of 23 or 24 are experienced quite differently when one is
35 or 36, or again at 45 or 46. And as a matter of fact it was not
until I had passed my fiftieth year that I ventured to publish these
outlines of a Knowledge of Man in a book. And only then could I tell
these things to a college of teachers; and give them so the elements
of education which every teacher must make his own and use with every
single child.
Thus I may say: when my little booklet
“The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy”
appeared, I was speaking on
education there as one who disagrees with much in modern education,
who would like to see this or the other treated more fundamentally,
and so on. But at the time this little book was written I should not
have been able to undertake such a thing as directing the Waldorf
School. For it was essential for such a task to have a college of
teachers with a knowledge of man originating in a spiritual world.
This knowledge of man is exceedingly hard to come by to-day; in
comparison it is easy for us to study natural science. It is
comparatively easy to come to see what the final member of organic
evolution is. We begin with the simplest organism and see how it has
evolved up to man. And man stands at the summit of evolution, the
final member of organic development. But we know man only as the end
product of organic development. We do not see into man himself. We do
not look into his very being. Natural science has attained great
perfection and we have every admiration for it and intend no
disparagement — but when we have mastered this natural science we
only know man as the highest animal, we do not know what man is in his
essential nature. Yet our life is dominated by this same natural
science. Now in order to educate we need a human science, — and a
practical human science at that — a human science that applies to
every individual child. And for this we need a, general human science.
To-day I will only indicate a few of the principles which became
apparent to me more than thirty years ago, and which have been made
the basis for the actual training of the staff of the Waldorf School.
Now it must be borne in mind that in dealing with children of
elementary school age (7-14) we have to do with the life of the soul
in these children. In the next few days I shall have to speak also of
quite little children. But, much though it grieves me, we have as yet
no nursery school preliminary to the Waldorf School because we have
not the money for it, and so we can only take children of 6 and 7
years old. But naturally the ideal thing is for children to receive
education as early as possible.
When we receive them into the primary school, the elementary school,
it is their souls that concern us; — that is to say their
essentially physical education has been accomplished — or has
failed of accomplishment — according to the lights of parents and
educators. Thus we can say: The most essential part of physical
education (which will, of course, be continuous as we shall see when I
describe the particular phases of education), the most essential part
belongs to the period ending with the change of teeth. From that time
on it is the soul of the child we have to deal with, and we must
conduct the development of his soul in a way that strengthens physical
development.
And when the child has passed the age of puberty he enters upon the
age in which we must no longer speak of him as a child — the age
in which young ladies and gentlemen come into full possession of their
own minds, their own spirits. Thus man progresses from what is of the
body, by way of the soul, into the spiritual. But, as we shall see, we
cannot teach what is of the spirit. It has to be freely absorbed from
the world. Man can only learn of spiritual things from life.
Where we have children of primary school age we have to deal with the
child's soul. Now soul manifests, roughly speaking, through thinking,
feeling and willing. And if one can thoroughly understand the play of
thinking, feeling and will — the soul's life — within man's
whole nature, one has the basis for the whole of education.
To be sure the multiplication table is not the whole of mathematics,
but we must learn the multiplication table before we can advance as
far as the differential and integral calculus. In education the matter
is somewhat different; it is not a wonderfully advanced science that I
am now about to set forth, but the elements, the fundamentals. The
advanced science here, however, cannot be built up as the differential
and integral calculus is built up on elementary mathematics, — it
must be founded on the practical use made of these elementary
principles by the teachers and educators.
Now when people speak of the nature of the human soul to-day, in this
materialistic age — if they allow the existence of the soul at
all (and one even hears of a psychology, a science of the soul, devoid
of soul), but if they allow the existence of the soul, they commonly
say: The soul, now, is a thing experienced inwardly, psychically, and
it is connected somehow — I will not enter into the philosophical
aspect — with the body. Indeed, if one surveys the field of our
exceptionally intelligent psychology one finds the life of the soul
— thought, feeling and will — related, for the most part, to
the human nervous system — in the broadest sense of the word. It
is the nervous system which brings the soul to physical manifestation
— which is the bodily foundation of the soul's life.
It is this that I realised 35 years ago to be wrong. For the only part
of our soul life as adult human beings (and I expressly emphasize
this, since we cannot consider the child until we understand the man),
the only part of our soul life bound up with the nervous system is our
thinking, our power of ideation. The nervous system is only
connected with ideation.
Feeling is not directly bound up with the nervous system, but
with what may be called the Rhythmic system in the human being:
it is bound up with rhythm, the rhythm of breathing, the rhythm of blood
circulation, in their marvellous relation-ship to one another. The ratio
is only approximate, since it naturally varies with every individual,
but practically speaking every adult human being has four times as many
pulse beats as he has breaths. It is this inner interplay and relationship
of pulse rhythm and breath rhythm, and its connection in turn with the
more extended rhythmic life of the human being, that constitutes the
rhythmic nature of man, — a second nature over against the head
or nerve nature. The rhythmic system includes the rhythm we experience
when we sleep and awaken. This is a rhythm which we often turn into
non-rhythm nowadays — but it is a rhythm. And there are many other
such rhythms in human life. Human life is not merely built up on the
life of nerves, on the nervous system, it is also founded in this rhythmic
life. And just as thinking and the power of thought is bound up with the
nervous system, so the power of feeling is connected immediately
with the rhythmic system.
It is not the case that feeling finds its direct expression in the
nervous life; feeling finds its direct expression in the rhythmic
system. Only when we begin to conceive of our rhythmic system, when we
make concepts of our feelings, we then perceive our feelings as ideas
by means of the nerves, just as we perceive light or colour outwardly.
Thus the connection of feeling with the nerve life is an indirect one.
Its direct connection is with the rhythmic life. And one simply cannot
understand man unless one knows how man breathes, how breathing is
related to blood-circulation, how this whole rhythm is apparent, for
instance, in a child's quick flushing or paling; one must know all
that is connected with the rhythmic life. And on the other hand one
must know what processes accompany children's passions, children's
feelings and the loves and affections of children. If one does not
know what lives immediately in the rhythmic life, and how this is
merely projected into the nerve life, to become idea (concept) one
does not understand man. One does not understand man if one says:
“The soul's nature is dependent on the nerve-nature”, for of
the soul's nature it is only the life of thought, thinking,
that is dependent on the nerves.
What I say here I say from out of direct observation such as can be
made by spiritual perception. There are no proofs of the validity of
this spiritual observation as there are proofs for the findings of
intellectualistic thinking. But everyone who can entertain these views
without prejudice can prove them retrospectively by normal human
understanding, and, moreover, by what external science has to say on
these matters.
I may add to what I have already said that a great part of the work I
had to do 35 years ago, when I was engaged in verifying the original
conception of this membering of man's nature which I am now
expounding, was to find out from all domains of physiology, biology
and other natural sciences whether these things could be verified
externally. I would not expound these things to-day if I had not got
this support. And it can be stated in general with certainty that much
of what I am saying to-day can also be demonstrated scientifically by
modern means.
Now, in the third place, over against thinking and feeling, we have
willing, — the life of will. And willing does not depend
directly on the nervous system, willing is directly connected with
human metabolism and with human movement. —
Metabolism is very intimately connected with movement. You can
regard all the metabolism which goes on in man, apart from movement
proper, as his limb system. The ‘movement system’ and
‘metabolic system’ I hold to be the third member of the
human organism. And with this the will is immediately bound up. Every
will impulse in man is accompanied by a particular form of the
metabolic process which has a different mode of operation from that of
the nerve processes which accompany the activity of thinking.
Naturally a man must have a healthy metabolism if he wants to think
soundly. But thinking is bound up directly with an activity in the
nervous system quite other than the metabolic activity; whereas man's
willing is immediately bound up with his metabolism. And it is this
dependence of the will on the metabolism that one must recognise.
Now when we conceive ideas about our own willing, when we think about
the will, then the metabolic activity is projected into the nervous
system. It is only mediately, indirectly, that the will works in the
nervous system. What transpires in the nervous system in connection
with the will is the faculty of apprehending our own will activity.
Thus, when we can penetrate the human being with our vision we
discover the relationships between the psychic and the physical nature
of man. The ACTIVITY OF THOUGHT in the soul manifests physically as
NERVOUS ACTIVITY; the FEELING NATURE in the soul manifests physically
as the rhythm of the BREATHING SYSTEM and the BLOOD SYSTEM, and this
it does directly, not indirectly by the way of the nervous system, not
through the nervous system. THE ACTIVITY OF WILL manifests in man's
physical nature as a fine METABOLISM. It is essential to know the fine
metabolic processes which accompany the exercise of the activity of
the will, a form of combustion process in the human being.
Once one has acquired these concepts, of which I can here only
indicate to you the general outline — they will become clear in
the next few days in all their detail, when I show their application,
— once you have these elementary principles, then your eyes will
be opened also to everything which confronts you in child-nature. For
things are not as yet in the same state in child nature. For instance
the child is entirely Sense Organ, namely, entirely Head; as I have
already explained the child is entirely SENSE ORGAN. (Note by
Translator: i.e. a baby, or child under 7.)
It is of particular interest to see by means of a scientific spiritual
observation how a child tastes in a different manner from an adult. An
adult, who has brought taste into the sphere of consciousness; tastes
with his tongue and decides what the taste is. A child — that is
to say a baby in its earliest weeks — tastes with its whole body.
The organ of taste is diffused throughout the organism. It tastes with
its stomach, and it continues to taste when the nourishing juices have
been taken up by the lymph vessels and transmitted to the whole
organism. The child at its mother's breast is wholly permeated by
taste. And here we can see how the child is — as it were —
illuminated and transfused with taste, with something of a soul
nature, (Note by Translator: i.e. the sensation of taste.)
which later we do not have in our whole body, which later we have only
in our head.
And thus we learn how to watch a tiny child, and how to watch an older
child, knowing that one child will blush easily for one thing or
another and another child will easily turn pale for this or that
cause, one child is quick to get excited, or quick to move his limbs;
one child has a firm tread, another will trip lightly, etc. Once we
have these principles and can recognise the seat in the metabolic
system of what comes to psychic expression as will, or in the rhythmic
system of what comes to psychic expression as feeling, or in the
nervous system of what manifests in the soul as thought, then we shall
know how to observe a child, for we shall know whither to direct our
gaze.
You all know that there are people who investigate certain things
under the microscope. They see wonderful things under the microscope;
but there are also people who have not learned how to look through a
microscope; they look into it and no matter how they manipulate it
they see nothing. First one must learn to see by learning how to
manipulate the instrument through which one sees. When one has learned
how to look through a microscope one will be able to see what is
requisite. One sees nothing of man until one has learned to fix the
gaze of one's soul, of one's spirit, upon what corresponds to
thinking, to feeling and to willing. The aim was to develop in the
staff of the Waldorf School a right orientation of vision. For the
teachers must first of all know what goes on in the children, then
they achieve the right state of mind — and only from a right
attitude of mind can right education come.
It was necessary at the outset to give some account of the three-fold
organisation of man so that the details of the actual educational
measures and educational methods might be more readily comprehensible
to you.
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