VIII
Concerning the Soul Life in the Breathing Process
Gentlemen, I said last time that we have several matters still
to discuss. I would like to consider them today. Maybe during
the Christmas holidays you could confer among yourselves and
decide what should be brought up during the next lecture hour.
The
human being has his senses for perceiving the world. We have
examined the eye and the ear, considered the sense of touch,
which is spread out over the whole organism, and have discussed
the senses of taste and smell. All these senses are significant
only for man's becoming acquainted with his surroundings and,
as I have already explained, for enabling him to shape his
body. But man does not live by virtue of the senses; he lives
through the process of breathing. If you ask why he is an erect
being, why his nose is in the middle of his face, for example,
you have to answer that it is because of his senses. But if you
look for the reason why he is alive, you have to consider his
breathing, because the breath is related to all aspects of
life. In one respect, human beings breathe just as the higher
animals do, although many animals do breathe differently. A
fish, for instance, breathes while swimming and living under
water.
If we
now look at human breathing we have first to consider the
process of inhalation. The breathing process is initially
one of inhalation. From the air around us we inhale the oxygen
that is required for our existence. This then permeates
our whole body, in which carbon in minute particles is
deposited; or rather, in which it swims or floats. The carbon
that we contain in our bodies is also found elsewhere in
nature. As a matter of fact, carbon exists in a great many
forms. For instance, carbon is found in coal and in every
plant, which consists of carbon, mixed with water and so on,
but carbon is the main component of the plant. The graphite in
a pencil contains carbon, and the diamond, which is a valuable
gem, is also carbon. The diamond is transparent carbon; hard
coal is opaque carbon. It is rather interesting that something
like coal exists in nature. It is certainly not elegant or
attractive, yet is of the same substance as a valuable gem,
which, depending on its size, for example, is fit for a crown.
Coal and diamonds have the same substance in different forms.
We, too, have in ourselves carbon of various forms.
When
we breathe in oxygen it spreads out everywhere in our body and
combines with the carbon. When oxygen combines with solid
coal, a new gas, carbon dioxide, arises. This is a combination
of oxygen and carbon, and it is this gas that we then exhale.
Our life involves incorporating our body into the rest of the
world by inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide.
If we
inhaled only pure oxygen, however, we would have to contain an
immense amount of carbon, and the carbon dioxide would have to
remain in us. Yes, we would be forever expanding, finally
becoming gigantic, as big as the earth itself. Then we could
always be inhaling. But we do not possess that much carbon; it
must be constantly renewed. We could not survive if we only
inhaled. We have to exhale to acquire carbon anew, and the
carbon dioxide we produce is lethal. Indeed, if oxygen is life
for us, carbon dioxide is death. If this room were now filled
with carbon dioxide, we would all perish. Our life alternates
between the life-giving air of inhalation and the deadly air of
exhalation. Life and death are constantly within us, and it is
interesting to see how they initially enter into the human
being.
To
comprehend this you must realize that bacteria and bacilli
— microscopically small living beings — exist
everywhere in nature. Whenever we move, multitudes of
these little bacteria fly about us in the air. Countless tiny
living beings exist within the muscles of animals. As I have
already mentioned, they can rapidly increase in numbers. No
sooner does one appear — particularly one of the smallest
kind — then the next moment there are millions. The
infectious diseases are based on their capacity for
tremendous multiplication. These minute beings do not
actually cause the illness, but a feeling of well-being is
engendered in them when something is ailing in us. Like
the plant in manure, these little beings feel well in the
stricken organs of our body and like to remain there. Anyone
who claims that they themselves cause disease is just as clever
as one who states that rain comes from croaking frogs. Frogs
croak when a rain shower comes because they feel it and stay in
water that is stimulated by what is active in the rain, but
they certainly do not cause the rain. Likewise, bacilli do not
bring about a disease like the flu; they only appear whenever
the flu appears, just as frogs mysteriously emerge whenever it
rains.
One
must not say, however, that research with bacilli has no use.
It is useful to know that man is exposed to a certain
illness, just as one knows that frogs croak when it rains. One
cannot pour the baby out with the bathwater and say that it is
unnecessary to examine the bacilli, yet one must realize that
they do not cause the illness. One never gives a proper
explanation by merely stating that for cholera there are these
bacilli, for flu there exist these other bacilli, and so on.
That is only a lazy way out for people who do not want to
examine the actual causes of illnesses.
Now,
if you take these infinitesimally small living creatures
away from their habitat, they cannot continue to live. For
example, cholera bacilli taken out of the human
intestines die. This bacillus can survive only in the
intestines of men or of animals like rats. All these
microscopic creatures can live only in specific environments.
Why? That these tiny beings need a specific environment is an
important factor. You see, if you consider the cholera bacillus
at the moment when it is within the human intestines, the force
of gravity does not have as strong an effect on it as when it
is outside. The force of gravity immediately ruins it when it
is out of its element. Man, too, was initially a tiny living
being just like these countless little creatures. As an egg, an
ovum, the human being also was such a microscopic living being,
such a miniature living creature. With this, gentlemen, we come
to an important chapter.
Compare a cholera bacillus, which can exist only in the human
intestines, with the human being. All these bacilli need to
live in a place where they are protected from the earth. What
does this imply? It means that an effect other than that of the
earth influences them. The moonlight that shines sometimes in
one way, sometimes in another has its effects on the earth, and
it is indeed so that the moon influences all these living
creatures. It can be seen that these creatures must be
protected from the earth so that they can surrender themselves
to the cosmos, especially to the influence of the moon.
Now, in its earliest stage the human egg also surrenders to the
moon's influence. It gives itself up to the moon just before
fertilization. Just as the cholera bacillus exists in the
intestines, so this tiny human egg exists in the female and is
initially protected there. The female organism is so
constituted, however, that the human egg is protected only in
the beginning. The moment it passes too far out of the body it
becomes vulnerable; then the earth begins to affect
it.
Women
discharge such human eggs every four weeks. At first they are
given up to the moon's influence for a short time and are
protected. But when the female organism dispatches the
human egg during the course of the monthly period, it comes
under the influence of the earth and is destroyed.
The
human organization is so marvellously arranged that it
represents an opposite to the bacilli. Cholera bacilli, for
example, remain in the intestines and are careful not to
venture too far out. Left to their own devices, they remain
where they can be protected from the earth's influence. The
human egg also is initially protected from the earth's
influence in the mother's body, but then it moves outward
because of the blood circulation of the mother, and comes under
the influence of the earth's gravity. With the occurrence
of the monthly period, which is connected with the moon's
course and influence, an ovum is destroyed; the human ovum is
really destroyed. It is not an actual human egg yet, however,
for it has not been protected from destruction through
fertilization.
What
really happens through fertilization? If left only to the
earth's influence, this human egg would perish. Through
fertilization it is enfolded in a delicate, etheric substance
and is protected from the earth. It is thus able to mature in
the mother's body. Fertilization signifies the protection of
the human egg from destruction by the earth's forces. What is
destroyed in the infertile egg passes over into the
environment; it does not just disappear. It dissolves in the
totality of the earth's environment. Eggs that cannot be
utilized for the earth disseminate in its atmosphere. This is a
continual process.
We can
now look at something that people rarely consider. Let us
draw our attention to the herrings in the ocean. They lay
millions upon millions of eggs, but only a few are ever
fertilized. Those that are fertilized become protected from the
influence of the earth. It is a little different in man's case,
because he isn't a herring — at least not always [Play on
words. In German, “Hering” is a very skinny
person.] — but all these herring eggs that are not
fertilized and are cast off in the ocean extricate themselves
from the earth's influence by evaporation. If you consider the
herrings and all the other fishes, all the other animals and
also human beings, you can say to yourselves, “My
attention is directed to something that continually arises from
the earth into cosmic space.” Gentlemen, not only does
water evaporate, but also such infertile eggs are always
volatilized upward from the earth. Much more happens in cosmic
space than materialistic science assumes.
If
someone were sitting up there on Venus, for example, the
vapours that arise and condense again as rain would hold little
interest for him, but what I have just described to you, rising
constantly into cosmic space, would be perceived up there as a
greenish-yellow light. From this we may conclude that light
emerges from the life of any given cosmic body. We will also be
led to the realization that the sun, too, is not the physical
body materialistic science pictures it to be but is rather the
bearer of even greater, mightier life. It is as I have
explained earlier; something that radiates light must be
fertilized, just as the sun must be fertilized in order
to radiate light through life. So then we have this difference:
When a human egg is not fertilized it goes out, it evaporates
into cosmic space; when it is fertilized it remains for awhile
on the earth.
What
happens is like inhalation and exhalation. If I only exhaled, I
would give my being up to cosmic space as does the infertile
human egg. Consider how interesting it is that you exhale, and
the air that you have exhaled contains your own carbon. It is a
delicate process. Just imagine that today you have a tiny bit
of carbon in your big toe. You inhale, and oxygen spreads out.
The small amount of carbon that today is in your big toe
combines with the oxygen, and tomorrow this little particle of
carbon is somewhere out there in the atmosphere as carbon
dioxide. That is really what happens. During his lifetime man
constantly has in himself the same substance that the human egg
contains when it is fertilized. If we only exhaled and never
inhaled we would always be dying; we would continually be
dissolving into the atmosphere. By inhaling we guard ourselves
against death. Every time we inhale we protect ourselves from
death.
The
child that is still maturing in the mother's womb has come into
being from the fertilized human egg and is protected from
disintegration. The child takes its first breath only at the
moment of birth when it comes into the world. Before that it
must be supplied with oxygen from the mother's body. But now
with birth something quite significant happens. At birth
man for the first time receives from the outer world the
capability to live. After all, man cannot live without oxygen.
Although in the mother's womb he exists without oxygen from the
outer air, he does get it from the body of the mother.
Thus,
one can say that when man emerges from his mother's body and
comes into the world, he actually changes his whole life
process. Something radically different happens to it. He now
receives oxygen from outside, whereas before he was able to
assimilate it in the body of his mother. Just ask yourselves if
there is a machine anywhere in the world that can supply itself
with heat first in one way and then in another? For nine or ten
months man lives in the body of his mother before he appears in
the external world. In the womb he is supplied with what life
gives him in a completely different manner from the way
he does after he has taken his first breath.
Let us
examine something else connected with this. Imagine that
your sleep has been somewhat disturbed. You are awakened from a
fitful sleep by a quite frightening dream in which you perhaps
experience that you came home to a locked house and cannot get
in. Someone in the house is expecting you so you struggle to
unlock the door. You may have experienced something like
this. In dreams we do indeed experience such conditions
of anxiety.
Now,
if you examine what actually happens when the human being has
such nightmares, you always discover that something is amiss
with the breathing. You can even experimentally produce
such nightmares. If you take a handkerchief and plug up
your mouth or cover your nose, you will dream the nicest
nightmares as nightmares go because you cannot inhale
properly.
It is
rather strange that our having such conditions of anxiety
depends simply on inhalation and exhalation, in other words, on
oxygen and carbon. We can deduce from this that we live in the
air with our soul element. We do not live in our muscles or in
our bones with our soul element but rather in the air. It is
really the case that our soul moves along with the air during
inhalation and exhalation. Thus, we can say that the soul
element seeks out the air in which it floats after the child
has taken its first breath. Earlier, it had absorbed oxygen in
a completely different way.
Where
does the human being get oxygen prior to birth? In the prenatal
state an actual breathing process does not yet exist. There is
no breathing while the human being is in the mother's womb;
everything takes place through the circulation. Various
vessels that are torn away at birth pass into the embryo from
the mother's body, and with the blood and fluids oxygen also
passes into the embryo. With birth man carries his basic life
principle out of the watery element into the air. When he is
born he transposes the life principle from the fluid element in
which it existed before birth out into the air.
From
this you can conclude that before conception the human being is
first an entity that, like the bacilli, is not fit for the
earth at all. Initially he is a being alien to the earth. Later
on, he is shielded from the earth's forces and can develop in
the mother's body, but when he is actually born and emerges
from the surroundings of the maternal womb, he is exposed to
the forces of the earth. Then he becomes capable of life only
by becoming accustomed to an activity that enables him to live
in the air. Throughout his earthly life man protects himself
against the forces of the earth by living not with the earth at
all but by living with the air.
Just
imagine how hard it would be if you had to live with the earth!
A man who steps on a scale finds that he weighs a certain
amount — a thin one less, a fat one more. Now
imagine that you had to grab yourself by the hair and
carry your whole body all the time, constantly carry your own
weight. Wouldn't that be an exhausting chore! Yet, although you
do indeed carry it around with you, you do not feel this weight
at all, nor are you aware of it. Why? Your breathing protects
you from the heaviness of the earth. In fact, with your soul
you do not live in the body at all but rather in the breathing
process.
You
can now easily comprehend why materialistic science does not
find the soul. Materialistic science looks for the soul in the
body, which is heavy. In its research it dissects a dead body
that no longer breathes. Well, science cannot discover the soul
there, because the soul is not to be found in such a body.
Materialistic science could find the soul only if our
constitution were such that in walking around everywhere we
would have to carry our own bodies, sweating profusely
from
the effort. Then it would make sense to seek for the soul with
materialistic means. But the way things really stand, it makes
no sense at all. We sweat for other reasons. When we emerge
from the maternal womb, we do not live within our solid
substances. As it is, we are only ten percent solid
substance. Nor do we live in our fluid element, to which
we bestow life. With our soul we actually live in our
breathing.
Gentlemen, please follow me now in a train of thought that
belongs to the most significant matters of the present time.
Let us picture to ourselves a human fetus. Through birth it
emerges into the outside world and becomes a full-fledged human
being who now inhales air with his lungs and exhales again
through his nose. It should be quite self-evident to you that
when a person is born, he actually lives with his soul in the
breathing process. As long as he exists in the mother's womb,
he lives in a watery element. In a sense, he emerges from the
water into the air when he is born. As earthly man you can live
only in the air, not in water. But before birth you lived in
water, and up until the third week you were even shaped like a
little fish to enable you to live there. You lived in water up
to the time of birth, but the earth does not allow you to live
in that element. What does it signify that before birth you
lived in water? It means that your life cannot derive from the
earth at all, that it must originate from beyond the earth
because the earth does not permit you to live. We must lift
ourselves up from the earth into the air to live.
Because we have lived in water up to the moment of birth, we
may conclude that our life is not bestowed by the earth. Our
life of soul is not given us by the earth. It is impossible for
the earth to bestow this life of the soul on you. Hence we may
understand that it comes from beyond the earth. When we
comprehend how life is actually contained in the breathing
process, and how life already exists in the embryo but in a
fluid element, we immediately realize that this life has
descended from a spiritual world into the mother's ovum.
People
will frequently call such statements unscientific.
Nevertheless, we can study a lot of science and reach the
conclusion that what the illustrious scientists do in their
science is much less logical than what I have just told
you. What I have now told you is absolutely logical.
Unfortunately, things are such in our age that children are
already drilled in school to turn a deaf ear to something like
this; or if they happen to hear it, they will say at most,
“He's crazy. We've learned that everything grows out of
the human egg.” Well, it is just as ridiculous as
learning that the human head grows from a head of cabbage. A
human head can grow from a cabbage no more than the human
element, the whole human activity during life, can be derived
from the human egg. But children are already taught these
completely nonsensical things in school.
I have
already given you an example of this. Even the smallest
children are told that once the earth, along with the whole
planetary system, was one huge primeval nebula. Of course, the
nebula does nothing when it is still, and so it is made to
rotate. It starts to revolve quickly, and as it turns it
becomes thinner and thinner. Eventually individual bodies split
off, and a round one remains in the middle. The children
are shown with a demonstration how this can be imitated.
The teacher takes a piece of cardboard, sticks a needle through
it, and puts a small drop of oil into a glass of water. He now
turns the piece of cardboard and the oil drop, which floats on
top of the water, begins to move. It starts to rotate, and tiny
oil drops split off. A large drop of oil remains in the middle.
This is a little planetary system with its sun. You see,
children — so he says — we can do it on a small
scale. So it is quite plausible that there once existed a
nebula that revolved, and from this nebula celestial bodies
gradually split off, leaving the large star remaining the
middle.
But
now, gentlemen, what is the most important factor in this
experiment? Why does the drop of oil rotate in the glass of
water? Because the teacher turns the piece of cardboard.
Likewise, a great cosmic teacher had to sit somewhere out there
in the universe to turn things around, spinning off celestial
bodies! Gentlemen, when from the beginning someone
teaches children such things, they become “clever”
as adults. When someone wants to be logical and expresses
doubt, they call him a dreamer because they know how the world
began!
You
see, such thoughts contain absolutely no reality. This
rotating, primeval nebula thought up by Kant and Laplace has no
reality at all; it is really quite foolish. To postulate
such rotating nebulas is really rather stupid. The only grounds
for it are the supposedly spiral nebulas observed through
telescopes. Out in the wide cosmic spaces there are indeed such
spiral nebulas; that is correct. But if by looking out there
with a telescope and seeing these spiral nebula, a man should
say, “Well, yes, our whole solar system was once such a
nebula too,” then he is about as clever as one who takes
a swarm of insects in the distance for a dust cloud. This can
happen, but the swarm of gnats is alive while the dust cloud is
lifeless. The spiral nebula out in space is alive; it has life
within it. Likewise, the whole solar system had its own life
and spirituality in earlier times, and this spirituality
continues to work today.
When
the human egg is shielded in the body of the mother by
fertilization, it can unite with the human spirit. When we
gradually grow old, the heaviness slowly makes itself felt by
the fact that our substances are seized by the earth's gravity.
Suppose a person's digestion is amiss and, as a result, the
life forces do not properly pass through it. Then all kinds of
tiny solid particles form in the muscles. They become filled up
with these small solid bodies, which are minute uric acid
stones, and then we have gout. We begin to be conscious of
heaviness, of gravity.
When
we are healthy and oxygen invigorates us through our breathing,
such uric acid deposits are not formed, and we do not become
afflicted with gout. Gout occurs only if oxygen does not pass
through our body in a truly invigorating manner and does not
assimilate carbon correctly. If oxygen does not pass through
our organism in the right way, carbon will cause all kinds of
problems; then there will be present everywhere such minute
particles in our blood vessels. We feel that as an effect of
the earth in moving around. In fact, we have to be shielded
from the earth. We remain alive only because we are constantly
protected from the earth and its influences by the breathing
process. The earth is not damaging for us only because we
are constantly being shielded from it. We would always be sick
if we were always exposed to the earth.
You
see, in the middle of the nineteenth century, when natural
science had its greatest materialistic successes, people
were completely stunned by its accomplishments and
scientists wanted to explain everything by way of what
happens on the earth. These scientists were extremely clever,
and they liberated man from much that had encumbered him.
Nothing is to be said against them; they can even be praised
but they were utterly stupefied by scientific progress and
tried to explain the whole human being in such a way as if only
the earth had an influence on him. They did not realize that
when the earth's influences begin to take effect on man, he
first becomes nervous and then becomes ill in some way. He is
well only by virtue of being constantly shielded from earthly
influences.
Eventually, however, man is overcome by these earthly
influences. How do they make themselves felt? The earthly
influences assert themselves because man gradually loses the
art of breathing. When he cannot breathe properly
anymore, he returns to his condition before conception.
He dissolves into the cosmic ether and returns to the
world from which he came. With his last breath, man sinks back
into the world from which he emerged. When we correctly
understand breathing, we also comprehend birth and death.
But nowhere in modern science do we find the right
understanding of breathing.
In
sum, man first learns to live with the world through the female
ovum, then learns to exist independently on the earth for a
certain length of time by virtue of the male
fertilization, and finally returns to the condition where
he again can live on his own outside the earth. Gradually one
learns to comprehend birth and death, and only then can one
begin to have the right concept of what man is regarding his
soul, of what is not born and does not die but comes from
without, unites itself with the ovum in the mother, and
eventually returns to the spiritual world.
The
situation today is such that we must comprehend the immortal
soul element, which is not subject to birth and death. This
applies especially to those who are active in science.
This, indeed, is necessary for mankind today. For hundreds and
thousands of years, men have had a faith in immortality that
they cannot possibly retain today because they are told all
kinds of things that actually are nothing and fall apart in the
face of science. Everything that a man is asked to believe
today must also be a matter of knowledge. We must learn to
comprehend the spiritual out of science itself, the way
we have done here in these lectures. That is the task of the
Goetheanum and of anthroposophy in general: to correctly
understand the spiritual out of natural science.
You
see, it is difficult to get people somehow to comprehend
something new. It is Christmastime now, and people could say to
themselves, “Well, we must find a new way to understand
how the spirit lives in the human race.” If people
would stop to think how the spirit lives in mankind, and if
they would try to arrive at this understanding through real
knowledge, we would find everything renewed. We could even
celebrate Christmas anew, because we would observe this holiday
in a manner appropriate for the modern age. Instead, on
one hand, people continue to observe only what is dead in
science and, on the other, they perpetuate the old traditions
to which they can no longer attach any meaning. I would like to
know what meaning those people who exchange gifts can still see
in Christmas. None at all! They do it merely from an old
custom. Side by side with this, a science is taught that is
everywhere filled with contradictions. Nowhere does anyone wish
to consider the fact that science presents something that can
lead to the realization of the spiritual.
Today,
one can say that if Christianity is to have any meaning at all,
one must once again embark on attaining a real knowledge of the
spirit. This is the only thing possible; it is not enough just
to perpetuate the old. For what does it imply to read the
Bible to people on festive occasions, or even to children in
school, if along with this one tells the child that there was
once a primeval nebula that rotated? The head and the heart
come completely to oppose one another. Then man forgets how to
be a human being on the earth because he no longer even knows
himself.
Anyone
is a fool who thinks that as human beings on the earth we
consist only of what is heavy, of the body that is put on the
scale and weighed. This part we do not need at all. It is
nonsense to think that we consist of these material
substances that can be weighed. In reality, we do not
become aware of the body at all, because we shield ourselves
from it in order to stay well. The curing of illness consists
in expelling the earthly influences that are affecting
the sick person. All healing is actually based on removing the
human being from the earth's influence. If we cannot remove man
from the earth and its influences, we cannot cure him. He then
lies down in bed, allows himself to be supported by the bed and
gives himself up to weight. When one lies down one does not
carry one's own self.
So we
have the old customs on one hand and, on the other, a science
that does not enlighten man as to what he really is as a human
being. Nothing positive can come from all this. It is true that
the World War, with all the consequences that still
afflict us today, would not have occurred if human beings had
known something of the inhumanity beforehand. Even now,
they do not want to know. Even now, they still want to get
together at congresses without any new thoughts and just repeat
the same old things. Nowhere are they able to conceive new
thoughts. What at first existed in mankind as confused ideas
became a habit and then became our social order today. We are
not going to get anywhere in the world again until from within
we really feel what in fact the human being is.
This
is really what those who understand the aims of anthroposophy
conceive of as Christmas. Christmas should remind us that
once again a science of the spirit must be born. Anthroposophy
is the best spiritual being that can be born. Mankind is much
in need of a Christmas festival. Otherwise, it does away
with the living Christ and retains only the cross of Christ.
Ordinary science is only the cross, but once again we must
arrive at what is living. We must strive for that.
Well,
gentlemen, that is what I wanted to mention on this particular
day in addition to the other things. With this, I wish you all
pleasant holidays!