LECTURE 9
Something about the Moon in the Light of Spiritual Science
Berlin, 9th December 1909
The
lecture I am to give today puts me in a difficult position. I want to
make some remarks which fall outside the way of thinking now called
“scientific”. Since the views of most people are largely formed
by the ideas generally current in scientific and popular-scientific circles,
and since the subject-matter of this lecture will be far removed from any
such ideas, the public at large may be inclined to regard my statements as
mere fancies, derived from quite arbitrary cogitations, rather than for what
they really are: the outcome of spiritual-scientific research.
I would ask you,
therefore, to take this lecture as a sort of episode in our winter series,
intended to point in a direction to which I am not likely to return this
year, though it may occupy us further next year. The reason for touching on
it now, is to show that what we are dealing with this winter as a science of
the soul, branches out in many ways that lead from the immediate realm of
human soul-life to the great connections we find in the wide universe, the
whole cosmos.
Finally, I must
ask you to remember that this lecture will deal only with one short chapter
from a very large volume. It must be seen in strict relation to its title,
“Something about the Moon in the
Light of Spiritual Science”.
It will not attempt to be in any way exhaustive.
In all sorts of
popular books you will find this or that said about the moon from the
standpoint of science today. But all you can learn from these sources or from
the scientific literature will leave you quite unsatisfied as regards the
real questions concerning this strange companion of the earth. As the 19th
century advanced, the statements of science with regard to the moon became
more and more cautious, but also less frequent; but today they will occupy us
hardly at all. The picture of the moon's surface given by telescopes and
astronomical photography, the descriptions of its surface-markings as
crater-like formations, grooves, plains and valleys and suchlike, and the
consequent impressions one can gain of the purely spatial countenance of the
moon — all this will not concern us. The question for us today is a
truly spiritual-scientific one — whether the moon has any special
influence on or significance for human life on earth.
A significance
of this kind has been spoken of from various points of view in the course of
past centuries. And since everything that happens on earth, year in and year
out, is related to the changing position of the earth relative to the sun,
and is subject to the vast influence of the sun's light and heat, it was
natural to wonder whether that other heavenly luminary, the moon, might not
have some importance for life on earth, and especially for human life. In the
comparatively recent past, people were inclined to speak of the moon as
having a fairly powerful influence on earthly life. Quite apart from the fact
that it has long been customary to
attribute to the moon's attraction the so-called ebb and flow of the
sea, the moon has always been regarded as affecting weather conditions on
earth. Moreover, as late as the first half of the 19th century, serious
scientists and doctors collated observations of how the moon in its various
phases had a definite effect on certain illnesses, and even on the course of
human life as a whole. It was then by no means a mere popular superstition to
consider the influence of the moon in relation to the ups and downs of fever,
of asthma, of goitre and the like; there were still doctors who recorded such
cases because they felt compelled to believe that the phases of the moon had
some influence on the course of human life and on health and disease in
particular.
With
the rise of that scientific way of thinking which had its dawn
and sunrise in the middle of the 19th century, the inclination to allow the
moon any influence on human life diminished continuously. Only the belief
that the moon causes the tides of the sea survived. And there was one very
important scientist, Schleiden,
[ 65 ]
who poured out the vials of his wrath on
those who still believed in the influence of the moon, even if it were only
on the weather or on some other terrestrial phenomena. Schleiden, who had
done outstanding work in his own sphere by his discovery of the significance
of the plant-cell, launched a vehement attack on another German
natural scientist, Gustav Theodor Fechner,
[ 66 ]
notable especially for directing attention to certain subtle or frontier
aspects of research. Thus in his
Zend Avesta
Fechner tried to show that the life of
plants is endowed with soul, while in his
Introduction to Aesthetics
and his
Elements of Psychophysics
he achieved a great deal for the more
intimate aspects of natural science. It may be better not to discuss this
celebrated controversy about the moon without saying a little more about
Fechner himself.
Fechner was an
investigator who tried, with immense assiduity and great care and precision,
to bring together the external facts in various fields of research; but he
also used a method of analogies in order to show, for example, that all the
phenomena of plant-life, and not only of human life, are ensouled. Starting
with the phenomena of human life as it runs its course, he took similar facts
and phenomena as they appear to observation in, let us say, the life of the
earth, or of a whole solar system, or of the plant-world. When he
compared these phenomena with those of human life, he found one analogy after
another. Hence he concluded — to put it roughly — that in
studying human life, with its ensoulment, we observe the occurrence of
certain phenomena; and if in observing other phenomena we can establish
certain similarities with human life, why should we not recognise the other
phenomena as being also “ensouled”?
Anyone who
stands on the ground of Spiritual Science, and is used to examining
everything related to the spiritual in as strictly scientific a sense as the
natural scientist applies to his studies of external phenomena, will feel
that a good deal of what Fechner works out so cleverly is merely an ingenious
game; and however stimulating a game of this kind may be, the greatest care
must be taken in dealing with mere analogies. When a stimulating thinker such
as Fechner employs this method, his work may be very interesting. But there
are people of whom it can justly be said that they would like to solve the
riddles of the world with as little knowledge and as much comfort as
possible. And if they lean on Fechner and make his methods their own, we must
remember that an imitator or a copyist does not by any means call forth in us
the same feelings of satisfaction as does the man who was first in his own
field — a man who we recognise as gifted and stimulating, even though
we cannot credit him with anything more.
We have no need
to characterise Schleiden any further than by saying that he discovered the
significance of the plant-cell. Clearly such a man, who directed all
his perceptive and cognitive faculties towards the immediately real —
that is, towards what can be perceived with external instruments — will
have little sympathy for analogies or with anything else that Fechner spoke
of in his endeavours to show that plants are ensouled; for in Schleiden's
view they are made up of single cells, and this fact naturally seemed to him,
as its discoverer, a wonderful thing. So for Schleiden it was something of an
outrage that speculations, with this brilliant model available as a
starting-point, should prefer to deal with some even subtler relationships
in nature. It was particularly Fechner's method of analogies that aroused
Schleiden's wrath, and in this connection he touched on the question of the
moon. With reference not only to Fechner but to all those who clung to the
centuries-old tradition of attributing to the moon all sorts of influences on
the weather, etc., he said that for these people the moon was like a cat in
the house, held responsible for everything that cannot be otherwise
explained.
Fechner
naturally felt challenged as he was the main target of these attacks. He at
once embarked on a work which — whether or not we agree with it —
is highly stimulating. Although many details in it have since been corrected,
Fechner's pamphlet, “Schleiden and the Moon”, published in 1856,
is remarkably interesting. He had no need to go into the influence of the
moon on the ebb and flow of the tides, for this was admitted even by
Schleiden. It was the supposed connection of the moon with weather conditions
that made the moon, for him, the cat of scientific research. Fechner
therefore set out to investigate the very facts that his opponent brought
against him, and from this material he drew some notable conclusions. Anyone
who cares to check his procedure will find that in this investigation Fechner
was an exceptionally cautious worker with a thoroughly scientific approach.
His first conclusion from a mass of facts — which I need not repeat,
for anyone can read them for himself — was that the quantity and
frequency of rainfall were in many cases shown to be greater with a waxing
than with a waning moon: greater when the moon approached the earth, smaller
when it receded; and the proportion of rainfall during a waxing moon to that
during the wane was 107:100. The recorded observations he used did not cover
a few years only; some of them extended over many decades and concerned not a
single locality but many parts of Europe.
In order to
exclude chance effects, Fechner now assumed that some other condition,
excluding the moon, might have produced this proportion of 107:100. He then
studied weather conditions on the odd and even dates of the moon's phases,
for he said that if the waning and waxing were not the cause, the odd and
even days of the month would produce similar results. But that was not the
case. Quite different figures emerged: the relationship was not constant but
variable, so that here it could be attributed to chance.
Fechner himself
realised that he had not achieved any world-shattering result; he had
to recognise that the moon had no very great influence on the weather, but
the facts did point to some influence. And he had, as you will have seen,
proceeded quite scientifically, taking account only of observations carefully
recorded for definite places. He made similar researches in relation to
fevers and other bodily phenomena, and here too he obtained small positive
results. It could hardly be denied that phenomena of this kind may take a
different course under the waxing and under the waning moon. Thus the old
view of the moon fought its last fight in the middle of the 19th century
through the work of this highly gifted man, Fechner.
This example
shows very well how wrong it is to accept the increasingly common assertion
that science compels us to talk no more about the spiritual background of
things, for science — we are assured — is on the verge of
learning how to combine simple materials in such a way as to produce living
substance. It is agreed that we have far to go before we can make protein
from its constituents — carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and so on — but
the whole tendency of science is to make us admit that one day it will be
done. When it has been done, the only tenable outlook — so we are told
by those who make these assertions — will be a monistic one which holds
that a living, thinking being is made up of nothing but an assembly of
material elements.
Anyone who talks
in this vein will have drawn on the latest aims and achievements of science
to convince himself that we are not justified in postulating something
spiritual behind what we perceive with our senses or are told by external
science; for happily — he will feel — we are long past the days
when it could be claimed that some kind of vague life-wisdom lies behind the
sense-perceptible world.
At this point we
may well ask. Is it really science that compels us to reject spiritual
research? Is that a scientific conclusion? I want to remain entirely on the
ground of those who believe that in the not too distant future it will be
possible to produce living protein out of simple substances. Is there
anything in that which compels us to say that life is materially constituted
and that we must not look anywhere for the spirit?
An ordinary historical
observation will show how unnecessary this conclusion is. There was a time
when it was believed not only that carbon, hydrogen, etc., could be used
to produce living protein, but that a whole man could be built up from the
necessary ingredients in a retort. The worth of this belief need not concern
us — you can read a poetical treatment of it in the second part of
Faust.
The point is
that there were times when people really believed — however crazy it
may seem to us — that Homunculus could be put together out of separate
components. Yet in those times no-one doubted that behind the
sense-perceptible was the spirit. Hence you can prove historically that no
“science” can compel us to reject the spirit, for this depends on
something quite different — on whether or not a capacity to discern the
spirit is there. Neither the science of today nor the science of tomorrow can
ever compel us to reject the spirit. We can take a perfectly scientific
standpoint, but whether or not we reject the spirit does not depend on
science. It depends on whether or not we are able to discern the spirit, and
science cannot determine that.
So, without
agreeing from the spiritual-scientific point of view either with Schleiden or
with Fechner, we can understand that Schleiden, with his eyes fixed on the
sense-world, rejected everything that might be sought as soul or spirit
behind the phenomena. But it was not on scientific grounds that he took this
attitude; he was simply so inured to looking at visible things that he had no
sympathy for anything else. Fechner was a quite different sort of man; his
outlook embraced the spiritual, and though he made one error after another he
was a man of different quality, one who sought the spirit. Hence his tendency
was not to reject but to clarify the significance of the subtler influences
of the heavenly bodies on one another. He said to himself: When I look at the
moon, it is not for me merely the slag-heap it looks like through a
telescope; it is ensouled, as are all other bodies. Hence the moon-soul
must have effects on the earth-soul, and these come to expression below
the surface of ordinary life or in weather phenomena.
Now it is
noteworthy, and has often been pointed out here, that the method of
spiritual-scientific research is directed towards the practical, and that the
best proofs of what it has to say can be found in everyday life. And that is
just how Fechner set about defending his views. He suggested that the dispute
between Schleiden and himself over the moon could perhaps be best settled by
their wives. He said: “We both need rainwater for washing, and it could
be collected in relation to weather conditions. Since Schleiden and I live
under the same roof and can collect water at definite times, I suggest that
my wife collects it during the waxing moon and Schleiden's wife during the
wane. I am sure she will agree in order not to put her husband's theory to
shame, the more so as she sets no great store by it. The result will be that
my wife will have an extra can for every fourteen cans collected by Frau
Schleiden, but for the sake of overcoming a preconceived opinion she will
surely make this sacrifice.”
[ 67 ]
Here, then, we
have drawn on the history of thought to show how the moon and its influence
on the earth were regarded not very long ago. Nowadays one might say that
people are more advanced in their scientific outlook — as they would
call it — and so have gone a step beyond Schleiden in the sense that
they would treat as a superstitious dreamer anyone who clung to the belief
that the moon could have anything to do with weather conditions and the like.
Even among quite sensible people today you will find no other opinion than
that the moon has influence only on the tides; all other opinions having been
superseded.
If we take the
standpoint of Spiritual Science, we are of course not obliged to swear to
everything that was once part of popular belief. That would be to confuse
Spiritual Science with superstition. Quite often today we encounter a piece
of superstition — which is really a misunderstood popular belief and
are told it is part of Spiritual Science. A superstition about the moon can
indeed be seen at every street-corner, for it is well known that an emblem of
the moon is attached to our barbers' shops — why? Because it was once
generally believed that the sharpness of a razor was connected with a waxing
moon. In fact there were times when no-one would have cared to shear a sheep
during the wane, for he would have believed that the wool would then not grow
again. This is a superstition very easy to disprove, for anyone who shaves
knows that the beard grows again during the wane. In this realm it is just as
easy to mock as it is hard, on the other side, to see clearly. For we are
coming now to a particular question where at last we touch on Spiritual
Science. It concerns the ebb and flow of the tides, universally regarded as
coming under the influence of the moon.
The flood-tide
is thought to be obviously connected with the attractive force of the moon,
and is looked for when the moon reaches its meridian. When the moon leaves
the meridian, the flood is expected to change to ebb. But we need only remark
that in many places ebb and flow occur twice, while the moon stands at the
meridian only once during the same period. And there are other facts. You can
learn from travel-books that in many parts of the earth the flood by no means
coincides with the moon's meridian; in some places it occurs up to two and a
half hours later. Certainly, science has thought up excuses to account for
this: we are told that the flood is retarded. But there are also certain
springs which show an indubitable ebb and flow; in some cases the well ebbs
when the ocean tide is at flood, and
vice versa.
We are told that these cases, too, are
examples of retarded ebb or flow in some cases so retarded as to run into the
other phase. Of course this kind of explanation can explain almost
anything.
One question has
been rightly asked: whence does the moon get this power to attract the sea?
The moon is much smaller than the earth and has only about a seventieth of
the earth's attractive power, while to set the great masses of the sea into
motion would require millions of horse-power. Julius Robert Mayer
[ 68 ]
made some interesting calculations on this question and it leads on to
numerous other problems. Hence we can say: Here is something which is
regarded as scientifically irrefutable, and yet, although no objections to
it are heard, it is in fact highly vulnerable.
One very
significant fact, however, remains. Although the position and influence of
the moon are such that it is hard to speak of an immediate relation of cause
and effect, it holds true that a definite flood occurs every day — in
relation to the moon's meridian — about fifty minutes later than on the
previous day. The regular sequence of ebb and flow does therefore correspond
to the course of the moon, and that is the most significant fact of all. Thus
we cannot speak of the moon at its meridian as having an actual influence on
flow and ebb, but we can say that the course of the moon's orbit does stand
in a certain correspondence with the course of the tides.
Now, to go a
little way into the spiritual-scientific way of thinking, I would like to
refer to a similar fact which gave Goethe a great deal of trouble. Most
people know very little about the preoccupations of this great genius of
modern times, but anyone who, like myself, has spent many years in the study
of Goethe's scientific writings and has seen his manuscripts in the
Goethe-Schiller Archives at Weimar, makes some surprising discoveries. He
will, for example, come upon the preliminary notes which Goethe later
condensed into a few pages as his meteorology.
[ 69 ]
He pursued these
inquiries with enormous diligence and assiduity. Again and again he got his
friends to collect facts and figures for him to tabulate. The purpose of
these extensive studies was to show that the level of barometric pressure at
various places is not due to chance but varies in some quite regular way. And
Goethe did in fact assemble a great deal of evidence which indicated that in
all sorts of places the rise and fall of the barometer were subject to a law
which extended all round the globe. He hoped to disprove the assumption that
air pressure depends entirely on external influences. He knew, of course,
that densification and rarefaction of the air, resulting in pressure changes,
were generally attributed to the moon, sun and other cosmic factors. He
wanted to prove that whatever the positions of the constellations, whatever
the effects of sun and moon on the atmosphere, a constant regularity in the
rise and fall of air pressure prevails all round the globe. Hence he wished
to show that in the earth itself lay the causes of the rise and fall of the
barometer, for he believed that the earth is not the dead body it is usually
taken to be, but is permeated by invisible elements from which all life
flows, just as man has, in addition to his physical body, invisible elements
which permeate him. And just as man has his in-breathing and out-breathing,
where he draws in or releases air, so does the earth, as a living being,
breathe in and out. And this in-breathing and out-breathing of the earth, as
manifestations of its inner life, are registered externally in the rise and
fall of the mercury in the barometer. Thus we have in Goethe a man who was
convinced that the earth is a being imbued with soul and which behaves in
ways that are comparable to the breathing process in human beings. Moreover,
Goethe once said to Eckermann that he regarded the ebb and flow of the tides
as a further expression of the inner vitality, the life-process, of the
earth.
[ 70 ]
Goethe was by no
means the only great thinker who looked with a spiritual eye on such things
from this point of view. Materialistically minded people will of course find
all this laughable; but among men who have a feeling for life, be it on such
a particular level or more in general, there will always be those with ideas
similar to Goethe's — for example, Leonardo da Vinci. In his
outstanding book, where he sets out his comprehensive scientific views, the
height of achievement for those times, we find him saying — and not
meaning it merely as an analogy — that he really regarded the solid
rocks as the skeleton of the earth, and that the rivers, streams and
watercourses can truly be compared to the blood circulation in man.
[ 71 ]
There you will find it stated also that ebb and flow are connected with a
regular rhythm in the inner life of the earth. Kepler, too, spoke in a
similar vein when he said that the earth could be regarded in certain
respects as a gigantic whale and that ebb and flow were the in-breathing and
out-breathing of this huge creature.
[ 72 ]
Let us now
compare the facts mentioned earlier with such views as Goethe's on ebb and
flow. Let us use the findings of Spiritual Science and our previous
conclusions about the phases of the moon and the tides in relation, for
example, to Goethe's views on the earth's inner life and breathing. For this
we must build on the conclusions of Spiritual Science, which can be
established only if researches are pursued by spiritual-scientific methods.
Here we enter the highly dangerous realm where those who believe they have a
firm foothold in modern science, will talk about the fantasies of Spiritual
Science. Well, let them talk. It would be better if they were to take what is
given as a stimulus; then they would be able to find proofs through a more
intimate consideration of life.
In order to
approach in the right way what the spiritual scientist has to say, let us
consider man himself in relation to the world around him. As far as Spiritual
Science is concerned, man has his origins not in the sense-world, but also in
the spiritual foundations which lie behind the external physical world. Thus
it is only as a being of the senses that man is born, from out of the
sense-world. In so far as he is permeated with soul and spirit, he is born
from out of the soul and spirit of the cosmos. And it is only when we find
the way from man's soul and spirit to the soul and spirit of the cosmos that
we are enabled to see something of the connection between the two.
In previous
lectures we have discussed various phenomena of the inner soul-life of man.
We found the soul to be not merely the nebulous something that it is for
modern psychology. Among its members we distinguished, first, what we called
the Sentient Soul. In this soul the ego, though dimly and scarcely aware of
itself, experiences the impulses of pleasure and pain and everything that
comes to it from the outer world through the sentient body. The ego is
present within the life of the Sentient Soul, but as yet knows nothing of
itself. Then the ego develops further and the soul advances to the stage of
the Intellectual Soul or Mind Soul. And when the ego has carried still
further its work on the soul, the Intellectual Soul gives rise to the
Consciousness Soul. Thus in the structure of the human soul we distinguish
three members: Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Consciousness
Soul.
The ego
continues to work on these three members and brings man nearer and nearer to
the peak of his developments. But these three members, since they carry out
their work through man, have to live in his corporeal structure; in that way
only can they accomplish their tasks. The Sentient Soul uses as its
instrument the sentient body; the Intellectual Soul uses the etheric body.
The Consciousness Soul is the first to use the physical body as bearer and
instrument. Thus in man's corporeal structure we have first the physical
body, which he has in common with the minerals. Next we have in man a higher
part which he has in common with the plant world and everything that lives.
The functions of growth, nutrition and reproduction in the plant are active
also in man, but in man they are connected with the Intellectual Soul. The
plant's etheric body is not permeated by the Intellectual Soul, as is the
etheric body in man, just as the physical body is permeated by the
Consciousness Soul. That which forms crystals in the mineral realm is
permeated in man by the Consciousness Soul. In animals the astral body is the
bearer of impulses and emotions; in man the astral body is inwardly deepened
and is the bearer of the Sentient Soul. Thus the human soul, made up of
Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Consciousness Soul, dwells in his
threefold corporeality, in the sentient body, etheric body and physical body
respectively.
That is man's
condition while he is awake. During sleep it is different. Then, leaving his
physical and etheric bodies behind in bed, he goes out from them with his ego
and astral body, together with those parts of his soul which permeate his
etheric and physical bodies as Intellectual Soul and Consciousness Soul. Thus
during sleep he lives in a spiritual world which he cannot perceive, simply
because here on earth he is obliged to use his physical and etheric bodies as
instruments for perceiving the surrounding world. When in sleep he lays these
instruments aside, he is unable to perceive the spiritual world, since in
ordinary life today he lacks the organs for it.
Now there is
something else to say about these states of waking and sleeping. Our waking
life is directly connected with the course of the sun — though indeed
this is no longer quite true of people today, especially in towns. But if we
look at simple country life, where this relation between outer nature and
human living still largely prevails, we find that for most of the time people
are awake while the sun is up and asleep while the sun is down. This regular
alternation of waking and sleeping corresponds to the regular action of
sunlight on the earth and all that springs from it. And it is not merely a
picturesque way of speaking but deeply true to say that in the morning the
sun recalls into the physical body the astral body and ego, together with the
Sentient Soul, the Intellectual Soul and the Consciousness Soul; and while he
is awake man sees everything around him by means of the sun and its radiance.
And when man has once more united all the members of his being in daylight
consciousness, it is the sun which summons him to ordinary life. We shall now
easily recognise, if we are not taking a superficial view of these things,
how
the sun regulates the relationship of man to itself and to the earth. Let us
now look more closely at three aspects of this relationship.
With regard to
his threefold soul-nature, comprising Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and
Consciousness Soul, man is inwardly independent; but he is not with regard to
their bearers, the astral, etheric and physical bodies. These three sheaths
are built up from the outer universe, and in order that they may serve man in
his waking life, they are built up through the relationship between sun and
earth.
As we have seen,
the Sentient Soul lives in its instrument, the sentient body. The sentient
body owes its characteristics to the region which a man calls his home.
Everyone has a home somewhere, and it matters whether he is born in Europe or
America or Australia. For the physical and etheric bodies it makes no direct
difference, but it does matter directly for the sentient body. Although man
is gradually becoming more free from these effects on his sentient body, we
still have to say: human beings whose roots are in their native soil, human
beings in whom a feeling for their homeland is particularly strong, who have
not yet overcome by strength of soul the power of the physical and are drawn
to their place of birth — if such human beings have to move to another
region, they are not only apt to become bad-tempered and morose, but may
actually fall ill. Sometimes, then, the mere prospect of returning home is
enough to restore them to health, for the source of their illness is not in
the physical body or in the etheric body but in their sentient body, whose
moods, emotions and desires spring directly from the environment of their
native land.
Through higher
development, which enhances his freedom, man will overcome the influences
which bind him to his native soil; but a comprehensive view shows that a
man's situation on earth varies in accordance with the relation of the place
where he lives to the sun; for the angle at which the sun's rays strike the
earth varies from place to place. We can indeed trace in certain instinctive
activities, which then become culturally assimilated, that they derive
partially from the homeland of the people concerned.
Let us take two
examples: the use of iron and the milking of animals for food. We shall find
that it is only in certain areas of Europe, Asia and Africa that these two
practices developed. In other areas they were unknown in early times. And
where they came into use later on, they were introduced by emigrants from
Europe. We can trace exactly how throughout Siberia the milking of animals
dates from remote antiquity, and extends only as far as the Behring Sea;
there is no record of it among the original inhabitants of America. It is
similar with iron.
Thus we can see
how certain instincts which exist in the sentient body are connected with a
particular region where people live, and how they are therefore dependent in
the first place on the relation of sun to earth.
A second
dependence concerns the etheric body. As the bearer of the Intellectual Soul,
the etheric body shows itself to be dependent in its activity on the seasons
of the year; hence on the relation of sun to earth expressed in the course of
the seasons. A direct proof of this can of course come only through Spiritual
Science, but you can convince yourselves by external facts that this
statement is correct. For example, it is only in regions where a balanced
alternation of seasons occurs that the inner activity of the soul as
Intellectual Soul can develop; this means that only in such regions can a
necessary bearer or instrument of the Intellectual Soul evolve in the etheric
body of man. In the far north we find that when elements of culture are
brought in from elsewhere, the soul has great difficulty in struggling with
the etheric body, which is having to live under conditions characterised by
excessively long winters and short summers. The Intellectual Soul will then
find it impossible to forge out of the etheric body an instrument it can
easily handle.
If we go to the
tropics, we find that the lack of regular seasons produces a kind of apathy.
Just as the forces of plant life vary in the course of the year, so do the
forces in man's etheric body: they find expression in the joy of spring, the
longing for summer, the melancholy of autumn, the desolation of winter. These
regular changes are necessary if a proper instrument for the Intellectual
Soul is to be created in the human etheric body. Thus we see again how the
sun affects human beings through its changing relation to the
earth.
Now let us take
the physical body. If the Consciousness Soul is to work right into the
physical body, we must follow in ordinary life a rhythm similar to the
alternation of day and night. Anyone who never slept would soon notice that
he was unable to control effectively his thoughts about the world around him.
A regular alternation of waking and sleeping builds up our physical body in a
way that can provide an instrument for the Consciousness Soul. Thus we have
now seen how man's three bodies, astral, etheric and physical, are built up
by the sun.
But what
external influences play into the human being while he is asleep, while he is
living in the spiritual world and has left his physical and etheric bodies
behind?
While we are
asleep we get something from the spiritual world to replace the forces that
have been used up by our activities during the preceding day. Is it possible
in this case also to point to an external influence as we did with regard to
the daytime waking hours? Yes, it is, and what we find is in remarkable
accord with the length of the phases of the moon. I am not maintaining that
this external influence coincides exactly with the moon's phases, or that the
phases themselves produce corresponding effects, but only that the course of
these effects is comparable with the course of the phases of the moon. I will
give two examples to show what I mean.
You will be well
aware that people who are given to creative thoughts and the free play of
imagination are not equally productive at all times. Poets, for example, if
they are honest with themselves, have to admit now and then that they are out
of tune, unable to write anything. People who observe this in themselves know
that the productive periods, for which a certain imaginative frame of mind
and a warmth of feeling are necessary, alternate in a remarkable way with
periods when nothing can be accomplished. They know, too, that the soul has a
fourteen day period of productivity, after which anyone who has to do with
creative thinking goes through an empty period, when the soul is like a
squeezed out lemon. During this empty period, however, he can apply himself
to working over what he has done. If artists and authors would take note of
this, they would soon see how true it is.
This alternation
of periods is influenced not by daytime conditions, but by the times when the
soul and the ego are outside the physical and etheric bodies. And so, for a
fourteen-day period, productive forces are, as it were, poured into the human
being while he is independent of his physical and etheric bodies, and then,
during the next fourteen days, no such forces are poured in. That is the
rhythm. It applies to all human beings, but is more clearly evident in the
sort of people we have just mentioned.
Much clearer
still is the evidence from genuine spiritual research. This is not the kind
of research that can be undertaken whenever one chooses, but it is dependent
on a rhythmical pattern. This point has hardly ever been mentioned anywhere,
but it is so. During spiritual research one is not sleeping — the
world-spirit does not bestow its gifts in sleep! The physical body is
inactive with regard to the outer world, yet one is not asleep, although the
physical and etheric bodies have been left behind; Meditation, concentration
and so on have strengthened the researcher's faculties to such a degree that
consciousness is not blotted out when it goes forth from the physical body.
Sleep does not supervene and the spiritual world can be perceived. For the
modern spiritual researcher there are two periods: one of fourteen days when
he can make observations: he feels particularly strong and communications
from the spiritual world press in on him from all sides. Then comes a period
during which he is particularly well able, thanks to the forces just
received, to penetrate with his thinking the illuminations, the imaginations
and inspirations that have come to him from the spiritual world, to work over
them so that they may acquire a strictly scientific form. Inspiration and the
technique of thinking follow a rhythmical course. The spiritual researcher
does not need to bring about a co-ordination with external facts; he simply
sees how these periods occur in alternation, as do full moon and new moon,
with their intervening quarters. But it is only their rhythmical course that
has a parallel in the alternation of full and new moon. The period of
inspiration does not coincide with full moon or the working over period with
new moon. All we can say is that a comparison is possible between the two
periods and full and new moon. Why should this be so?
When we study
our earth, we find that it has evolved out of an earlier state. Just as each
one of us has come in soul and spirit from a former incarnation, so has the
earth emerged from a former planetary incarnation. But our earth retains
relics of events which occurred under earlier conditions during its previous
incarnation. And these relics are to be found in the course of the moon round
the earth, as we see it today. From a spiritual-scientific point of view the
moon is reckoned as part of the earth. For what is it that keeps the moon
circling round the earth? It is the earth itself, and here spiritual science
and external science are in complete agreement. External science, too,
regards the moon as having been split off from the earth, and having gained
the force which keeps it in orbit through having once formed part of the
earth. Thus the orbiting moon represents simply an earlier condition of the
earth. The earth itself has retained in its satellite these earlier
conditions because it needs to have them shining into the present. Can we
find any reason for this need?
Let us take man
himself and observe how he lives as a soul in his body and how he is exposed
to the course of the sun. We then must say: For normal consciousness today,
everything associated with the sun is restricted to the life between birth
and death. This is something you can test — ask yourselves whether what
normal consciousness experiences during waking hours, in its threefold
dependence on native place, the changing seasons and the alternation of day
and night, is not restricted to the life between birth and death. Man would
have nothing else in his consciousness, nothing more would illuminate it, if
there were only this action of the sun on the earth and only this relation
between earth and sun. That which plays over from one incarnation to the next
and appears again in a new life, must be sought in the soul-spiritual
element which permeates man's outer body and during sleep passes as astral
body and ego out of the physical and etheric bodies. At death also it leaves
the body, and reappears in a new form at the next incarnation. Here there is
a rhythm which directs our attention to a similar rhythm associated with the
moon.
If now we
consider human evolution, we see that the work of the ego on the Sentient
Soul, Intellectual Soul and Consciousness Soul has developed only on earth
under the conditions that prevail between earth and sun. But the earth's
relation to the moon reflects a former condition in its own evolution. Man's
present phase of evolution, through Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and
Consciousness Soul, points to a period during which the bearers of the above
soul-members, the astral, etheric and physical bodies, were being prepared.
Then, just as the action of the sun is now still necessary for the proper
development of these three bearers, the moon forces were at work in preparing
them. Today the moon forces were once in harmony with man and prepared him to
be what he is today; likewise the earth during its moon condition prepared
our present earth. Thus we can say that the lower nature of man, on which are
built the Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Consciousness Soul, points
back to earlier conditions which the earth has preserved in the orbit of the
moon as we see it today.
We can see, too,
how man's inner being, as he passes from one incarnation to the next, must
have a rhythm corresponding to the moon's. During earlier stages of the
earth's evolution, it was not the transitory physical that was associated
with the moon, but the inner activity which was working on this physical,
just as the external physical is today being worked on by the sun. The earth
has preserved in the moon something of its earlier conditions, and so has man
in his inner, eternal being. In this inner being he is now evolving those
higher qualities which were formerly an external influence and which are now
to be developed by his own inner capacities.
An essential
point we must emphasise is that man grows out of these external influences.
He becomes more independent all the time — e.g. he can sleep by day and
stay awake at night. But he still has to order his waking and sleeping in
accordance with the rhythm of the sun; he has to maintain the rhythm within
himself. In earlier times, inner day and night corresponded closely to the
sun's day and night; man was then more closely bound to his native soil. He
becomes free and independent precisely by inwardly liberating the rhythm
under which he lives; by retaining it as a rhythm, but no longer dependent on
the outer world. It is as if we had a clock marked for 24 hours but set in
such a way that it does not correspond with external time; e.g., when the
clock says it is 12 o'clock, it is not 12 o'clock by the sun. Thus although
the clock follows a 24-hour rhythm, the time it shows is its own, not
that of the sun.
Thus man frees
himself inwardly by making the external rhythm into an inner one. He has long
since freed himself from the rhythm which connected his inner being with the
moon. Hence we have emphasised that man lives through the phases of the moon
inwardly, but these experiences are not caused by the moon in the sky. The
course of the moon shows a similar rhythm because man has retained the rhythm
inwardly, though outwardly he has made himself free and independent of
it.
We are led in
this way to regard the earth as a living being, but since it shows us only
its physical body, with no evident signs of life or feeling or knowledge, its
condition is nearer to that of the moon. Now we can understand why it is
wrong, even taking only the external facts, to speak of a direct influence of
the moon on the tides, and why we can say only that the ebb and flow of the
tides corresponds to the phases of the moon. The tides, as well as the course
of the moon are caused by deeper spiritual forces in the living
earth.
Thus we see how Spiritual
Science helps us to clarify external facts in a wonderful way. The tides
correspond to an inner process in the living earth, which produces them and
also the orbit of the moon.
[ 73 ]
If you take the findings of Spiritual
Science and then go through all the books where the phases of moon and earth
and tides are recorded, you will understand the true relations between moon
and earth and moon and man.
You can easily
see that if a man loses his independence and sinks from a fully conscious
into a less conscious or unconscious condition, he will regress to earlier
stages of evolution. Man advanced from unconsciousness to his present state
of consciousness, from his earlier dependence on the moon and its influence
to his present independence from the moon and his dependence on the
sun.
Because man was
once directly dependent on the moon, it follows that if his consciousness is
damped down, its functioning will be ordered by the course of the moon. This
is an atavistic effect which brings out man's old connection with the moon's
phases. A characteristic of mediums is that their consciousness is so far
lowered that they revert to an earlier stage of evolution, and the old
influence of the moon makes itself felt in them. It is similar in certain
cases of illness where the consciousness is lowered. If you bear in mind the
principles of Spiritual Science, you will be well able to understand these
phenomena. The evidence for what Spiritual Science has to say can be found in
all aspects of life.
One thing more.
When someone is to be born again on earth after his sojourn in the spiritual
world between death and a new birth, then, during the embryonic period, he
passes through conditions which recall an earlier state of the earth. The
embryonic period is still reckoned by science as covering ten lunar months;
thus we have here a rhythm which runs its course through ten successive moon
periods. We find also that each week in the ten-month period — that is,
each phase of the moon — corresponds to a particular condition in the
development of the embryo. Here, too, man has retained in himself the moon
rhythm, as we may call it.
We could indeed
mention a whole series of other phenomena connected with man's embryonic
existence, before he emerges from the depths of nature into the light of day;
they are of course not caused by the moon and do not coincide with the moon's
phases but reflect the same rhythm, because they go back to primary causes
which were present while the earth was passing through earlier conditions of
existence.
Now I have
thrown light on a subject which cannot be further illuminated in public.
Thoughtful people will see that here a perspective is opened up into realms
of life where Spiritual Science can indeed point the way to a great
clarification of much in man that is hidden from external sunlight, that lies
behind it. They are realms which have to be explored by a light different
from the light of knowledge we have acquired through the light of the sun;
namely by faculties which are not dependent on the service rendered by the
sentient, etheric and physical bodies under the influence of the sun. A
clairvoyant faculty makes itself independent of these three bodies; it can
sink itself in inwardness and see into the spiritual world, and thus can open
up a capacity for knowledge of what lies behind external sunlight and yet is
full of light and clarity. But I must again emphasise that on the question of
the moon an even more intimate light is needed if we are to get to the heart
of it.
In conclusion, I
am reminded of some verses by the German lyrical poet Wilhelm Muller: we are
here concerned only with the last stanza. The moon is addressed and all sorts
of intimate words pass between man and moon; and then, because the soul has
spoken to the moon in a wonderful way:
This little song, an evening round,
A wanderer sings in full moonshine;
Those who read it by candlelight
Will always fail to get it right,
Childishly simple though it is.
[ 74 ]
That is rather
how we should take what Spiritual Science has to say, as shown in our
treatment of the moon and its significance for human life. The song of
Spiritual Science about the moon can indeed be sung only if we have some
understanding of the more intimate ideas of Spiritual Science. People who try
to read the song by candlelight, by which I mean the telescope, and employ
photographs of the moon, for so-called research — these people will
hardly understand our song. But those who are ready to go even a little way
into what life can tell us in all its aspects will say to themselves: It is
really not so difficult! Anyone who seeks to understand the song that
Spiritual Science sings about the moon — not by the candlelight of the
telescope, but by the living light of the spirit, which shines even when all
sense-impressions are absent — he will find that this song about the
moon, and therefore about an important aspect of life, is truly quite easy,
even if not childishly easy!
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