SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES OF YESTERDAY: YOGA
First let me express my deepest thanks for the words from Mr. H. A. L.
Fisher which have just been read out. They give me great encouragement
in the task of the next few days.
I have been informed that there was something difficult to understand
in what I spoke about yesterday. In particular that difficulties had
arisen from my use of the words “Spiritual” and
“spiritual cognition.” This occasions me to depart somewhat
to-day from the subject I had set myself and to discuss the use of the
words “spirit” (Geist) and “spiritual life”
(spirituelles Leben). This will lead us somewhat away from the subject
of teaching and education. But from what I hear I gather we shall
understand each other better during the next few days if I give these
explanations of spirit, soul, and body to-day. During the next few
days I shall find an opportunity of saying what I intended saying
to-day.
Now such an exposition as that to be given to-day makes it necessary
to speak in a more theoretical way, to speak in ideas and concepts. I
beg you to acquiesce in this for to-day; in the following days things
will be better again and I shall not cruelly torment you with ideas
and concepts but shall hope to please you with concrete facts.
The word ‘Geist’ (Spirit) and also the word
‘Spirituell’ (Spiritual) as used from the point of view and
world outlook from which I now speak, is generally not understood
profoundly enough. When the word ‘Geist’ (spirit) is used,
people take it to mean something like ‘intellectual’ or to
mean much the same as the English word ‘mind.’ But what I
mean here by ‘spiritual’ and by ‘spirit’ (Geist)
is something quite different. It must definitely not be confused with
all these things designated as ‘spirit’ and
‘spiritual’ in mystical, fanatical, or superstitious sects
and movements: on the other hand it is quite distinct from what is
meant by intellect or mind.
If we can obtain an immediate concrete knowledge, a true insight, into
what is working in a small child up to the time of changing its teeth
— a working not directly perceptible, but observable in
expressions of the child's nature which may appear to us even
primitive that, then is “Spirit” (Geist), and that
then is “Soul.”
Nowhere in our observation of man and of nature are we confronted by
spirit and soul so immediately as when we contemplate the
manifestations of life in a tiny child. Here, as I said yesterday, in
the moulding of the brain, in the shaping of the whole organism,
spiritual forces are at work, soul essences are at work. What we see
are manifestations of life in the child; we perceive these with our
senses. But what works through from behind the veil of sense
perceptible things is spirit, is soul; — so to be apprehended as
nowhere else in life — unless we have accomplished an inner soul
development.
Thus we must say: to immediate ordinary perception, spirit is quite
unknown. At most, soul can manifest in ordinary percepts. But we must
feel and sense it through the percept.
If I may use an image to indicate what is meant — not to explain
it — I would say: When we speak, our speech comes from words,
sounds made up of consonants and vowels. Observe the great difference
between consonants and vowels in speech. Consonants round off a sound,
give it angularity, make it into a breath sound or a wave sound
[Usually called labials and dentals. But see Dr. Steiner's
classification of vowels and consonants in his Dramatic and Eurhythmy
courses.]
according as we form the sound with one organ or another — with
lips or teeth. Vowels arise in quite another way. Vowels arise while
guiding the breath stream through the vocal organs in a particular
manner. We do not give contour, we build the substance of the sound by
means of vowels. The vowels, as it were provide the substance, the
stuff. The consonants mould and sculpture the substance provided by
the vowels.
And now — using the terms spirit and soul in the sense we are
giving them here — we can say: In the consonants of speech there
is spirit, in the vowels there is soul.
When a child first begins to say A (AH) it is filled with a kind of
wonder, a marvelling — a soul content. This content of soul is
immediately present to us. It streams out in the A. When a child
expresses the sound E (EH) it has a kind of slight antipathy in its
soul. It withdraws, starts back from the thing affecting it. E (EH)
expresses something antipathetic in the soul. Wonder: A. Antipathy: E.
The vowels show soul content.
When I form a consonant of any kind I give contour, I surround and
shape the vowel substance. When a child says Ma Ma — A twice over
— the gesture shows the child's need to reach out to its mother
for help (The gesture of M is meant. See Eurhythmy.). A by itself
would be what the child feels and experiences about its mother. M is
that which it would like the mother to do. So that Ma-Ma contains the
whole relationship to the mother both according to spirit and soul.
Thus we hear language spoken, we hear its sense content, but we do not
attend to the way spirit and soul lie hidden in language. True we are
still occasionally aware of it in speech, but we fail to notice it in
the whole human being. We see the outer form of a man. Within are soul
and spirit as they are within speech. But this we no longer heed.
There was a time however, in ages past when men did heed it and they
said, not ‘In the beginning was the Spirit,’ — that
would have been too abstract — but ‘In the beginning was the
word,’ for men still felt livingly how spirit was carried on the
waves of speech. It is this spirit and what is characteristic of it
that we designate here when we use the word ‘spiritual’
— a thing not revealed in intellect, nor yet in what we call
mind. Mind and spirit are distinct from one another. They differ as
much as my personality differs from the reflection I see in the
looking-glass. When I stand there and hold a mirror and look at myself
in it: my reflection is in the mirror. This reflection makes the same
movements as I do, it looks like me, but it is not I; it differs from
me in that it is an image, whereas I am a reality. ‘Spirit’
holds sway in hidden depths. Intellect only has the image of spirit.
Mind is the reflected image of the spirit. Mind can show what spirit
does, Mind can make the motions of spirit. But mind is passive. If
someone gives me a blow mind can reflect it. Mind cannot itself give
the blow. Spirit is activity. Spirit is always doing. Spirit is
creative. Spirit is the essence of productivity, productivity itself.
Mind, Intellect, is copy, reflection, passivity itself: — that
thing within us which enables us, when we are older, to understand the
world. If intellect, if mind were active we should not be able to
understand the world. Mind has to be passive so that the
world may be understood through it. If it were active it would
continually alter and impinge upon the world. Mind is the passive
image of the spirit.
Thus: Just as we look away from the reflection to the man himself when
we seek reality, so when we seek the reality of spirit and soul we
must endeavour to pass from the unproductive passive to the productive
active.
This, men have endeavoured to do throughout all ages of human
development. And to-day I wish to speak to you of one way of this
seeking, so that we may agree upon the meaning of spirit and soul when
I speak to you here. Commonly as adult human beings we only perceive
spirit in its reflection as Intellect, Mind or Reason. We only
apprehend the soul in its manifestations, or expressions. We are
nearer to the soul than to the spirit but we do not perceive the full
inner activity even of the soul. We perceive revelations of the soul:
we perceive spirit in its reflection only. A reflection retains
nothing of the reality. — But we do perceive revelations of the
soul. What we know as feeling, our sympathies and antipathies, our
experience of desire and passion — these belong to the soul. But
we do not perceive what the soul is within us.
What is soul within us? Now I can perhaps indicate what soul is in us
if I distinguish between what we actually experience and what happens
within us in order that we may experience. When we walk over soft
ground we tread on it, our footprints remain in it. Now suppose
someone finds our footprints; will he say: “Beneath the earth,
below there, are certain forces which have shaped the earth so that it
shows these concave forms?” No-one would say such a thing. Any
person would say: Someone has walked here.
Materialism says: I find imprints in the brain, the brain has
impressions. — The earth too has impressions when I have gone
over it! — But now Materialism says: There are forces in the
brain, and these make the imprints. This is false. The soul makes the
imprints, just as it is I who make them on the ground; and only
because the imprints are there can I perceive the soul. I perceive a
sensation in the soul. To begin with the soul is hidden. It has made
the imprints in my body. If I make a very hard dent it hurts me, it is
painful. I do not immediately see what I have done — (I can do it
behind my back). But even if I do not see what I do I experience the
pain. In the same way the soul scores an impression upon my body,
itself hidden. I perceive the effect in passions, in sympathy, etc. I
perceive the effect of what the soul does in the manifestation. Thus:
Of the spirit we have an image; of the soul an expression.
We are closer to the soul. But let us keep in mind that spirit or soul
must be sought in profounder depths than mind, or intellect or reason.
This may perhaps contribute to an understanding of spirit and soul.
To make the concept of spirit and soul yet clearer let me now turn to
an historical aspect. And let me not here be misunderstood to-day, as
has too often happened. I do this expressly for the sake of
elucidation — not with any intention at all of maintaining that
in order to reach spirit and soul we must proceed to-day in the manner
used of old. But the present-day method of attaining to spirit and
soul will be easier to understand when we turn to history.
In order to attain to the spirit in the twentieth century it is quite
impossible to do the same as was done hundreds or thousands of years
ago in ancient India. Neither can we do as was done before the event
of the Mystery of Golgotha. We live within the development of
Christianity. But we shall be helped in our understanding of spirit
and soul if we look back to this older way and see, for example, how
the way to soul and spirit of the spiritual man differs completely
from the way of the merely intellectual man.
What do we do when to-day, in conformity with the general
consciousness of our age, we want to get clear about ourselves? We
reflect; we use our intellect. And what do we do when we want to get
clear about nature? We experiment and bring our intellect to bear upon
the experiments. Intellectual activity on all hands. In ancient times
men sought to reach spirit and soul in quite a different manner. To
take two examples from among many that I might cite: they sought to
reach the spirit and soul, for instance, in very ancient times in the
East by means of the so-called Yoga method, Now the mention of Yoga
produces a feeling of slight horror in many people to-day, for only
the later Yoga methods are known to history, methods based on human
egoism and which seek power in the external world. The older Yoga
methods (which can only be discovered to-day through spiritual
science, — not through external science,) were ways which men
took towards the spirit. They rested on the fact that men
instinctively said to themselves: we cannot attain to the spirit by
mere reflection, by mere thinking. We must do something which reveals
action, activity, in ourselves far more than mere reaction does.
Thinking goes on in us even when we stand aside from the world merely
as onlookers: we do not then bring about any perceptible change in
ourselves.
The Yogi was seeking out a far more real happening or process in
himself when he wanted to learn about the spirit. Suppose we ask
ourselves what takes place, according to our present-day physiological
knowledge, when we use our intellect? Well, something happens in our
nervous system, in our brain, and in those parts in the rest of our
organism which are connected with the brain through the nervous
system. But what takes place in the nerves could never come about if
an activity far more perceptible were not intermingled with the
processes of our brain. Unceasingly from our birth till our death we
breathe in, retain our breath, breathe out. When we breathe in, the
breath passes over our whole organ-ism. The thrust of the breath is
through the spinal cord into the brain. We do not only breathe with
our lungs, we breathe with our brain. But this means that our brain is
in constant motion. The breath — inbreathing, breath-holding and
out-breathing — surges and lives within our brain. This goes on
continuously — unconscious of it though we are to-day. The Yogi
used to say: Something is taking place in man of which I must be
conscious. Thus he did not breathe unconsciously in the usual way, he
breathed abnormally: he breathed in differently, held his breath
differently, breathed out differently. In this manner he became
conscious of the breath-process. And what takes place unconsciously
for us, took place for him in full consciousness, for he conceived and
experienced it. Thus he came to experience how in the brain, breath
unites with the material process which under-lies thinking, which
underlies intellectual activity. He searched into this union between
thinking and breathing and finally experienced how thought, which is
for us an abstract thing, pervades the whole body on the tide of the
breath. Thus thought was not only in the brain, not only in the lungs,
not only in the heart, thought was in the very finger tips. From real
experience of the breath pulsing through him he learned how Spirit
creates in man through the medium of the breath: “And God
breathed the living breath into Man and he became a Soul.” Not
only did He breathe the breath in “in the Beginning” but
continuously He breathes where breathing takes place. And it is in the
breath process, not in thinking, not in the intellectual process, that
we become soul. We feel our own being when we feel our thought pulsing
throughout the body on the tide of breathing. You see, spirit was here
no longer shut off, separated, as an intellectual and abstract thing;
hence it could be sensed and felt through-out the whole body. And
manhood could be felt as a creation of the Gods. You see, they had
active Spirit.
In intellectuality we have passive, not active spirit. Nowadays, since
we are differently organised, we cannot copy this Yoga process, nor
would it be right for us to do so. For what was the Yogi's aim? He
aimed at feeling how the thought process was bound up with the breath
process, and in the breath process, which was his mode of cognition,
he experienced his humanity. He united thought more intimately with
man's whole nature than we do to-day. But our human progress rests on
the fact that we have freed thought itself far more, have made it far
more intellectual than it was when Yoga nourished. Never could the
discoveries of Copernicus, Gallileo, Faraday, Darwin, etc., have been
made with a system of thought such as that produced by the ancient
Indians when they were Yogis. These achievements have required a
thinking reduced to the state of reflection, of image, of
intellectuality. And our whole civilisation is based on the fact that
we are no longer the same as those who developed the Yoga philosophy.
People generally misunderstand this when I describe these things. They
believe I wish to lead men back again to the Yoga philosophy. Not at
all. On the contrary I wish to treat matters as they have to be
treated in the age of Copernicus, Gallileo, Faraday. We must realise
that it is through intellectuality that our western civilisation has
achieved its greatness. But also we must feel differently from the way
the Ancient Indians felt; and feel differently too from the way those
who now practice Yoga, feel. To-day we must proceed in a way quite
different from that of Ancient Indian times, a more spiritual way. And
because it must be a more spiritual way, and because people do not
much like spirit nowadays it follows that people do not like the new
methods. It is easy, at least it seems easy, to perform Yoga-breathing
to-day in order to find entry into the world of spirit. But this is
not the means whereby men of to-day should come into spiritual realms.
No, modern man must first have had to experience at some time the
world of appearance (the unreality) which can be perceived by sheer
intellectualism, the image nature of things. Man must for once go
through all the suffering which goes with saying: “As long as I
am merely engaged in intellectual activity, or in observations of that
kind, I dwell in emptiness, in mere images. I am remote from
reality.”
What I am saying here seems a small thing; but it is great in terms of
inner experience. When one comes to experience that all thinking which
is intellectual is unreal, is a mere image, then in one's own soul one
experiences what in the body would be faintness: one experiences a
fainting of the soul where reality is concerned. Actually, knowledge
does not start by man's saying to himself: I can think, and can
therefore reflect upon all things. Rather knowledge proceeds from a
man's saying to himself: Even if I think about all things with the
image thinking that I possess I shall be nothing but a weak, impotent
being. The Yogi looked to find his manhood in the breath: we modern
men have to lose our manhood, we have become weak and faint in contact
with this intellectual image thought. And now we must be able to say
to ourselves: We must not now go inwards, as was done in Yoga, into
the breathing process. We must now go outwards, must look upon every
flower, look upon every animal, look upon every man, and live in the
outward environment.
In my book “Wie erlangt man Erkenntnis der hoheren Welten”
which has been translated into English here under the title
“Knowledge of the Higher Worlds,”
I have described how one does this.
How one looks upon the plant not merely externally, but how one
participates in all its processes, so that one's thinking is taken
right out of its image character and participates in the life of the
external world. Or one sinks into the plant until one feels how
gravity goes down through the root into the earth, how the formative
forces unfold above. One participates in the blooming, the fruiting of
the plant; one dives right into the external world. And then, O then
— one is taken up by the external world. One awakens as from a
swoon. But now one no longer receives abstract thoughts, now one
receives “Imaginations.” One gets pictures. And a
materialistic view would not recognise these pictures as knowledge.
Knowledge, it is said, proceeds in abstract, logical concepts. Yes,
but how if the world is not to be comprehended in the abstract
concepts of logic? How if the world be a work of art; then we must
apprehend it artistically, not logically. Then logic would be a means
of discipline only. We should not understand anything about the world
by logic. Thus we must enter into the objects themselves. Where Yoga
went inwards we must go outwards, and endeavour in this manner to
unite ourselves with all things. And thus actually we shall attain the
same thing, only in a more psychic, a more spiritual way. By
permeating with reality the endings of mere intellect, our concepts,
our ideas, we can feel anew how spirit works in us creatively.
And from this we must come to feel that reality which is working in a
child. It is not what we have called “mind” in us that is at
work. That in a little child would not be a creative thing. That would
only lead us astray. But it is what we come to know in the creative
way just described which is at work in a child: it is this which forms
the second teeth after the manner of the first, and reaches conclusion
in the seventh year.
Now you may perhaps say: Yes, but a teacher cannot immediately become
a seer, a clairvoyant. He cannot train himself in these methods! How
shall we manage schooling and education if we are confronted at the
outset with this complicated way of reaching spirit?
But one is not called upon to do this. A few people in the world can
develop this higher knowledge. The rest only need sound judgment and
sound observation. What the few discover these others will recognise
by means of their sound judgment and sound observation. Just as not
every person can observe the transits of Venus. — They are
visible far too rarely; astronomers can observe them on the rare
occasions when they are visible. — But would it on this account
be absurd to speak of the transits of Venus, just because they had not
been observed by everybody? What was observed, and how it was observed
can be comprehended. It is the same thing with the spiritual world. It
is only part of present day egoism to want to do everything oneself.
But there is another way of making spiritual things fruitful, of
making use of them. Once more, I will illustrate this by an example:
Suppose I am teaching a child of nine or ten years old. I want to tell
the child about immortality, the immortality of the human soul. If I
go into philosophic dissertations, however charming, the child at his
age will make nothing of it. He will be quite untouched by my
expositions. But if now I say to him: Dear child, see how the
butterfly comes out of the chrysalis — there you have an image
that you can apply to man. Look at the human body, it is like a
butterfly's cocoon. And just as the butterfly flies out of the
chrysalis, so after death does the soul fly out of the body. Only, the
butterfly is visible, the soul is invisible.
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