LECTURE THREE
Because other
matters have still to be discussed, I will add only a brief
episode today to the subjects of which we have been hearing
during the last few days. Still more specific details will
have to be given tomorrow in connection with the Occult
Movement in the nineteenth century and its relation to
civilisation and culture. I must, however, insert into the
course of our studies a subject that is very important. You
will remember certain things I have said in connection with
von Wrangell's brochure,
Science and Theosophy,
and when I repeat them you will realise that
from the point of view of Spiritual Science great
significance must be attached to the advent of materialism
and the materialistic world-conception in the nineteenth
century; simply to adopt an attitude of criticism would be
quite wrong.
A critical
attitude is always the easiest when something confronts one.
It is therefore essential to realise that the current in the
evolution of humanity which may be called the materialistic
view of the world arose in the nineteenth century quite
inevitably. It has already been amply characterised, but two
aspects may be described which will make its whole
significance doubly clear to us.
In the form
in which it appeared in the nineteenth century, as an actual
view of the world, materialism had never hitherto existed.
True, there had been individual materialistic philosophers
such as Democritus and others — you can read
about them in my book
Riddles of Philosophy
— who were, so to speak, the forerunners of theoretical
materialism. But if we compare the view of the world they
actually held with what comes to expression in the
materialism of the nineteenth century, it will be quite
evident that materialism had never previously existed in that
form. Least of all could it have existed, let us say, in the
Middle Ages, or in the centuries immediately preceding the
dawn of modern thought, because in those days the souls of
men were still too closely connected with the impulses of the
spiritual world. To conceive that the whole universe is
nothing more than a sum-total of self-moving atoms in space
and that these atoms, conglomerating into molecules, give
rise to all the phenomena of life and of the spirit —
such a conception was reserved for the nineteenth
century.
Now it can be
said that there is, and always will be, something that can be
detected like a scarlet thread, even in the most baleful
conceptions of the world. And if we follow this scarlet
thread which runs through the evolution of humanity, we shall
be bound to recognise at very least the inconsistency of the
materialistic view of the world. This scarlet thread consists
in the simple fact that human beings think. Without
thinking, man could not possibly arrive even at a
materialistic view of the world. After all, he has thought
out such a view, only he has forgotten to practise this one
particle of self-knowledge: You yourself think, and
the atoms cannot think! If only this one particle of
self-knowledge is practised, there is something to hold to;
and by holding to it one will always find that it is not
compatible with materialism.
But to
discover the truth of this, materialism must be recognised as
what it really is. As long as man had, as it were, a
counterfeit idea of materialism, an idea in which spiritual
impulses were still included, he could hold fast to the
fragment of spirit he still sought to find in the phenomena
of nature, and so forth. Not until he had cast out all spirit
through the spirit — for thinking is possible only for
the spirit — not until through the spirit he had cast
out spirit from the structure of the universe could the
materialistic view of the world confront him in all its
barrenness. It was necessary that at some time man should be
faced with the whole barrenness of materialism. But what is
also essential here is to reflect about thinking.
That is absolutely indispensable. As soon as we do so, we
shall realise that the barren vista presented by materialism
had necessarily to appear at some point in evolution in order
that men might become aware of what actually confronts them
there.
That is one
aspect of the matter, but it cannot be rightly understood
unless its other aspect is presented. Materialistic picture
of the world — space — in space atoms, which are
in movement — and this is the All. Fundamentally, it is
an outer consequence, a mirage of one side of space and the
atoms moving within it, that is to say, those minute
particles of which, as we have shown in earlier lectures,
genuine thinking will not admit the existence. But ever and
again men come to these atoms. How are they found? How does
man come to assume their existence?
Nobody can
ever have seen atoms, for they are conjectures, inventions of
the mind. Apart from the reality, therefore, there must be
some instigation which prompts man to think out an atomistic
world. Something must instigate the proclivity in him to
think out an atomistic world—nature herself most
assuredly does not lead him to form an atomistic picture of
her! With a trained physicist — and I am not speaking
hypothetically here for I have actually discussed such
matters with physicists — with a trained physicist one
can speak about these things because he has knowledge of
external physics. He could never have hit upon atomism! He
would have to say — as indeed was the conclusion
reached by shrewder physicists in the eighties of last
century: Atomism is an assumption, a working hypothesis which
affords a basis for calculation; but let us be quite clear
that we are not dealing with any reality. —
Thoughtful physicists would prefer to keep to what they
perceive with the senses, but again and again, like a cat
falling on its feet, they come back to atomism.
Mention has
often been made of these things since I gave the lectures on the
Theosophy of the Rosicrucian
in Munich
[note 1],
and if you have studied what has been
elaborated through the years, you will know that the
rudiments of the physical body were imparted to man on Old
Saturn, that he then passed through the Old Sun and Old Moon
evolutions, and then, during the Old Moon period received
into his organism, into what existed of his physical organism
at that time, his nerve-system.
It would,
however, be quite erroneous to imagine that during the Old
Moon epoch the nerve-system was similar to what presents
itself today to an anatomist or physiologist. In the Old Moon
epoch the nerve-system was present as archetype only, as
Imagination. It did not become physical, or better said,
mineral in the chemical sense, until the Earth-period. The
whole ramified nerve-system we now have in our body, is a
product of the Earth. During the Earth's development,
mineral matter was incorporated into the imaginative
archetypes of our nerve-system, as well as into the other
archetypes. That is how our present nerve-system came into
being.
The
materialist says: With this nerve-system I think, or I
perceive. We know that this is nonsense. To get a correct
idea of the process, let us picture the course of some nerve
in the organism (see diagram). But now let us follow
different nerves which run through the organism and send out
ramifications, like branches. A nerve has, as it were, a stem
from which branches spread out; these branches come into the
neighbourhood of others and then still another filament
continues on its way. (The diagram is, of course, only a very
rough sketch.)
Now how does
man's life of soul take its course within this
nerve-system? That is the question of primary importance. We
can form no true conception here if we consider the
day-waking consciousness only; but if a man thinks of the
moment when, together with his ego and astral body, he slips
out of the body and therefore also out of the nerve-system,
and especially of the moment when he slips into the body
again on waking, he will have a peculiar experience. During
sleep, in his ego and astral body he has been outside his
nerves; he slips into the nerves again and is actually within
them during his waking life; in the act of waking he feels
himself streaming, as it were, from outside into the
nerves.
The process
of waking is much more complicated than can be conveyed in a
diagram. — Through the day, together with his soul, man
is within his body, filling it to the uttermost limits of the
nerves. It is not as though the physical body were filled
with a kind of undifferentiated mist; the organs and various
organic structures are pervaded individually. As he passes
into the different organs, man also slips into the sensory
nerve-filaments, right to the very outermost ramifications of
the nerves.
Let us try to
picture it vividly. — Again I will make a sketch but
can draw it only as a kind of mirrored reflection. I can draw
it only from the outside, whereas in reality it ought to be
drawn from within. Suppose here (diagram, p. 56) is the
astral body and here the sensory “antennae”
extending from it. — What I am drawing is all astral
body.—It sketches certain antennae into the nerve
fibres.
Now suppose
the sleeves of my coat were sewn up and I were to slip my arm
into the coat—suppose I had a hundred arms and were to
slip them in this way into what would amount to sacks. With
these hundred arms I should come up against the places where
the sleeves are sewn up. In the same way I slip into the
physical body, right to the ends of the nerve-fibres. As long
as I am in the act of slipping in, I feel nothing; it is only
when I reach the point where the sleeves are sewn up that I
feel anything. It is the same with the nerves; we feel the
nerve only at the point where it ends. Throughout the day we
are within the nerve-substance, touching our nerve-ends all
the time. Man does not realise this consciously but it
expresses itself in his consciousness willy nilly. Now man
thinks with his ego and astral body and we may therefore say:
Thinking is an activity that is carried over by the ego and
astral body to the etheric body. Something from the etheric
body also plays a part—its movement at any rate. The
cause of consciousness is that in acts of thinking I
continually come to a point where an impact occurs. I make an
impact at an infinite number of points but I am not conscious
of this. It comes into consciousness only in the case of one
who consciously experiences the process of waking; when he
passes consciously into the mantle of his nerves he feels as
if he were being pricked all over.
I once knew
an interesting man who had become conscious of this in an
abnormal way. He was a distinguished mathematician,
conversant with the whole range of higher mathematics at that
time. He was also, of course, much occupied with the
differential and integral calculus. The
“differential” in mathematics is the atomic, the
very smallest unit that can be conceived — I cannot say
more about it today. Although it was not a fully conscious
experience, this man had the sensation of being pricked all
over when he was engrossed in the study of the differential
calculus. Now if this experience is not lifted into
consciousness in the proper way, by such exercises as are
given in the book
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. How is it achieved?
— very strange things may occur. This
man believed that he was feeling the differentials all over
him. “I am crammed full of differentials”, he
said. “I have nothing integral in me.” And
moreover he demonstrated in a very ingenious way that he was
full of differentials!
Now try to
envisage these “pricks” vividly. What does a man
do with them if they do not reach his consciousness?
He projects them into space, fills space
with them — and they are then the atoms. That,
in truth, is the origin of atomism. If there is a mirror in
front of you and you have no idea that it is a mirror, you
will certainly believe that there, outside, is
another collection of people. In the same way man conceives
that the whole of space is filled with what he himself
projects into it. This entire nerve-process is reflected back
into man owing to the fact that he comes up against it (as a
kind of barrier). But he is not conscious of this and so he
conceives of the whole of surrounding space as being filled
with atoms: the atoms are ostensibly the pricks made by his
nerve-endings. Nature herself nowhere obliges us to assume
the existence of atoms, but the human constitution
does. At the moment of waking man dives down into
his own being and becomes inwardly aware of an infinite
number of spatial points within him. At this moment he is in
exactly the same position as when he walks up to a mirror,
knocks up against it — and realises then that he cannot
get behind it. Similarly, at the moment of waking a man comes
up against his nerve-endings and knows that he cannot get
beyond them. The whole atomic picture is like a
reflecting-screen. The moment a man realises that he cannot
get behind it, he knows how things are.
And now think
of a saying of Saint-Martin which I have quoted on
previous occasions. What does a natural scientist say? He
says: Analyse the phenomena of nature and you find the atomic
world! We, however, know that the atomic world is simply not
there; the truth is that our nerve-ends alone are there. What
then, is there where the atomic world is conjectured to be?
Nothing is there! We must remain at the mirror, at the
nerve-ends. Man is there; and man is a reflecting
apparatus. When this is not recognised, all kinds of things
are conjectured to lie behind him. The materialistic view of
the world arises, whereas in reality, it is man who must be
discovered. But this cannot happen as long as it is said:
Analyse the phenomena of nature — for this results in
atomism. It should rather be said: Try to get beyond what is
mere semblance, try to see through semblance! And then it
will not be said: ... and you find the atomic world, but
rather, and you find man! And now call to mind what
Saint-Martin said as a kind of prophecy without fully
understanding it himself: “Dissipez vos
ténèbres materiels et vous trouverez
l'homme.” This is exactly the same thing, but it
can only be understood with the help of what we have here
been considering.
Through the
way in which we are bringing Spiritual Science into
connection both with Natural Science and also with its
errors, we are fulfilling a longing that has existed ever
since there were men who had some inkling of the
fallaciousness of the modern materialistic view of the world.
— When we think of the intrinsic character of our own
conception of the world, the fact of untold significance that
strikes us is this: Spiritual Science is there because it has
been longed for by those who have had a feeling for the True,
for the Truth which alone can bring that of which modern
humanity stands in need.
In the
lecture tomorrow I shall show you why error was bound to
arise when the attempt with Spiritualism was made in the
nineteenth century. I have indicated to you in many ways that
it was a matter of suggestions exercised by living men,
whereas it was believed that influences were coming from the
dead. The dead can be reached only by withdrawing into those
members of man's psychic being which can be lifted out
of the physical body. The life of the human being between
death and a new birth can be known only through what can be
experienced outside the physical body; therefore mediums
— using the word in its real meaning — cannot be
used for this purpose. More about this tomorrow, when what is
said will also be connected with the subject of the life
after death.
Notes:
Note 1.
In 1907.
|