LECTURE IV
London, 12th November, 1922
MY DEAR FRIENDS,
You
will remember that on the last occasion when I was able to speak to
you here, I gave you a description of the experiences of the soul
during sleep. Today I would like to carry the subject a little
further. It will, I am sure, already be clear to you that one whose
knowledge of human life confines itself to daytime existence,
knows only half the life of man; for things of the very greatest
importance take place during sleep. There is no need for me here to
explain first the methods by which one comes to know these things; I
assume from the outset that you receive what I say as coming from the
exact clairvoyance which you will remember I described in my lectures
here in London, a few months ago. [Knowledge and Initiation and
Knowledge of the Christ through Anthroposophy. Two lectures, London,
14 and 15 April, 1922.]
When
man passes from day-consciousness into sleep-consciousness
which is for the man of the present time unconsciousness he
is not in his physical body, nor in his etheric body. During sleep he
is a purely spiritual being. On my last visit I gave you a
description, from one aspect, of the experience man undergoes as soul
and spirit between the times of falling asleep and awaking. Today I
want to describe this experience from another side.
You
will remember how in sleep man goes out into the cosmic ether, and
feeling himself in the midst of a vast and vague unknown is at first
overcome with anxiety and apprehension; then you will also remember
how in this moment something awakens in the soul which one can call
borrowing the expression from conscious life a yearning for
the Divine. And we went on to speak of how in the second stage of
sleep man experiences a reflection of the movements of the planets,
and how, for one who has already a relation to the Mystery of
Golgotha, Christ then appears, to be his Guide through the otherwise
chaotic experiences that come to him while he is living his way
through a kind of reproduction or copy of the life of the stars
and the planets. For now comes the experience of the fixed stars. Man
goes forth, from the planetary spheres we mean of course the
copy of the planetary spheres and enters upon an experience
of the constellations of the fixed stars. So that between falling
asleep and awaking, man actually covers the whole cosmic
existence beyond the Earth. I told you moreover that it is the forces
of the Moon (the spiritual counterpart of what reveals itself to us
in the various lunar phenomena) that bring man back again in the
morning or whenever he wakes up bring him back into
his physical and into his etheric body.
And
now I should like, as I said, to describe these experiences from
another angle. Unless we have allowed ourselves to become completely
involved and imprisoned in the materialistic ideas of modern
times, the conscious life that we lead in the daytime has for
us a moral and also a religious foundation. We have our knowledge of
Nature; but we cannot help feeling that we have in us something more
than knowledge and science, that we have as well, moral duties,
moral responsibilities, and we feel moreover that our whole
being is grounded in a spiritual world. This latter realisation
may be described as a religious consciousness. It is, however, only
because he is in the physical body, that he is able to have this
religious consciousness. It is, however, only because he is in the
physical body, that he is able to have this religious consciousness
in waking life. For you must understand that in his physical body man
is not alone, but with him are spirits of higher cosmic rank; in
his physical body, man lives together with higher spirits. And man
lives, in his ether-body, with the moral purposes of these higher
spirits. Thus, the religious consciousness of man is dependent
on his life in the physical body, and his moral consciousness on his
life in the etheric body. And this leads us to distinguish two parts
in the cosmic ether, from which, as you know, our own ether-body is
derived. One part is warmth, light, chemical ether, life ether. But
behind all this, behind the warmth and light and chemical processes
and life, is a moral element the moral essence of the cosmic
ether.
Now
this moral essence of the cosmic ether is present only in the
neighbourhood of stars and planets. If you are living on the Earth,
then you are not only within the cosmic ether, but also within its
moral essence, although by day you do not know it. And when you
wander through the cosmos, then whenever you are in the environment
of a star, you are in the moral essence of the cosmos ether. But in
between the stars, the moral element is driven out of the ether by
the action of the sunlight. Note that I say the sunlight, not the
Sun, which is a cosmic body within which is contained the very source
and origin of the moral ether; but when the Sun shines, then by means
of its light it drives away the moral essence of the ether. And so it
comes about that when we look out through our eyes on to the world,
we see flowers, we see springs and brooks, we see the whole face of
Nature, but without any moral element discernible within it; the
sunlight has killed out the moral element. And when we fall asleep
and leave our physical and etheric bodies, then we take with us what
we have acquired in this way during waking hours on Earth by
beholding Nature; but strange as it may sound, we leave behind us our
religious feeling and our moral feeling, we leave them behind with
the physical and with the ether-body, and our soul and spirit live as
an a-moral being during the time of sleep.
This
has an important consequence for us. We are living during this time
in a world that has been irradiated by the light of the Sun. This
means that the moral ordering of the world has gone out of the ether.
Consequently the Ahrimanic Being has access to the ether in which we
find ourselves as soon as we fall asleep. And this Ahrimanic Being
speaks to man while he is asleep. And what he says is most
mischievous, for he is rightly called the father of lies; he
makes good appear bad to the sleeping human being and bad good.
Reference
has been made in the newspapers recently to questions that are being
investigated by scientists, as to why criminals sleep well, while
moral people with a good conscience often sleep badly. The matter is
explained when you consider what I have been telling you. In the case
of a highly conscientious and devout man, who has a fine moral
feeling, his moral sensibility enters so deeply into his soul that he
takes it with him into sleep; with the result that he sleeps badly,
believing as he does that he has been guilty of many misdeeds. A bad
man, on the other hand, whose moral sensibility is very little
developed, will carry with him into sleep no such pangs of
conscience, and this will mean of course at the same time
that he will have, spiritually speaking, an open ear for the
whisperings of Ahriman who makes evil appear good. Hence the quiet
and contented sleep of the criminal! People say, it is not fair
that criminals should sleep well, while good people often have poor
and disturbed slumber. The fact is to be accounted for in the way I
have shown.
The
enticement to evil to which man is exposed during sleep is, in truth,
exceedingly great, and it can easily happen that in the morning he
brings over with him from sleep terrible demonic forces of
temptation. Only when he has come down again into his physical
and etheric body, will a man who is not very good and upright begin
to feel pricks of conscience, not before. There is thus
abundant possibility for, man to fall a victim to Ahriman during the
time of sleep.
The
danger has by no means always been so great as it is today. In the
course of the centuries it has gradually come about that men are so
gravely exposed during sleep to the seductions of demonic powers,
which make evil appear good. In earlier times of the evolution of
mankind things were different. Man had then, as I have often
explained to you, nothing like so strong an ego-consciousness as he
has now. In the daytime, when he was awake, his ego-consciousness was
weaker; and that meant also that during sleep he did not sail so
smoothly into evil as he does today. He was protected. The fact is,
we are living today in a time that is bringing us to a certain crisis
in evolution. It behoves men to arm themselves against the
powers of evil that approach them when they fall asleep. In older
times men were protected through the fact that when they went to
sleep, they entered more into the group-soul. During sleep man lived
in the group-soul. We today still live to a certain extent in the
group-soul during our waking hours; we feel we belong to a particular
nation, often even to a particular clan; or perhaps we are inclined
to put on aristocratic airs, and like to feel ourselves as members of
a certain family. But sleep takes us right out of the group-soul
feeling. It is hardly possible for the man of today to be an
aristocrat in sleep. Yes, sleep is a great educator, more than you
would think; on the one hand it educates man, it is true, in evil, as
we have seen; but on the other hand, it educates him in democracy.
The man of olden time passed into the group-soul when he fell asleep;
and when he awoke and returned to his physical and to his etheric
body, he brought with him a strong feeling of belonging to his group.
There
you have the one side of man's life, what he is during sleep.
Man, of course, carries in him all the time the part of his nature
that is exposed in sleep at the present day to the temptations of
demonic forces, he has it in him continuously. Only, when he is
awake, he has to let it merge into the moral and religious
consciousness. The religious side of man is given to him, as we saw,
by the powers that live with him in his physical body, and the moral
side by the powers that live with him in his ether-body.
The
man of an older time, who during sleep lived strongly, as we have
seen, in the group-consciousness it was with the Mystery of
Golgotha that all this became changed for the further evolution
of mankind the man of an older time, when he dived down
again, on awaking, into his physical and his etheric body, began to
live then more in himself, But here we discover another difference
between him and us. For when he was waking up and coming down again
into his physical and ether body, before he was quite awake, he had a
clear consciousness of the life he had lived ere he descended to
Earth. And he had the same clear consciousness again just before
falling asleep. Whilst, therefore, on the one hand he developed a
strong group-consciousness, he had at the same time also a strong
feeling of belonging to the life that is beyond the Earth. He knew
quite well that he had come down from the spiritual world, had passed
through the world of the stars, and had chosen for himself a physical
body here on Earth. As time went on, this consciousness became
darkened. In compensation, men became clever as
we understand the word today. They developed powers of judgment and
discrimination. This kind of faculty has evolved only in the
course of time. It is our physical body that gives us the power of
judgment, and this is the reason we are able to exercise the
power best during the morning hours. We enter more deeply in these
days into our physical and etheric bodies than men did in olden
times. Consequently, while they had a consciousness of their life
before birth, we have a consciousness rather of earthly
existence. We establish ourselves firmly in our physical and etheric
body. They did not do so. They might be said to carry
their physical and etheric body, they carried it round with them,
feeling it as something external to themselves, rather as we feel the
clothes that we wear. We have quite lost this feeling. We no longer
say as they did, when they were going through a door: I carry my
physical being through the door. That was for them an entirely
natural way of speaking. We would never say that; we say: I walk
through the door. We press our I, our ego, right into the physical
body; it is therefore perfectly natural for us to express ourselves
in this way. And in consequence of this development, we have lost
also the consciousness of our connection with the spiritual world and
with the world of the stars. The man of an earlier time knew that he
was connected with the world of the stars. He knew quite well that he
was connected with the world of the stars, and also with the
spiritual world that is behind the world of the stars: he knew
that he had descended from these worlds to earthly existence.
Modern
man will say: In order to live, I need meat, vegetables, eggs, etc.
He needs, that is, products of the physical world, and with these he
must concern himself from birth to death. Please do not imagine
for a moment dear friends, that I mean to speak scornfully or
slightingly of the food we eat. It is good in itself and belongs to
life; let that be fully recognised. I want only to point out that the
men of olden time[s] knew that in order to have strength to live, man
needs more than the forces of the Earth that reside in beef and
cabbage and egg, he needs also Jupiter and Venus and Saturn, They
knew for a fact that just as man, when he is here on Earth, needs to
eat eggs, so too has he need to have received, before he came down
to Earth, the strength of Jupiter and of Venus; otherwise he could
not be earthly man at all. Modern man feels united with the Earth and
is very much concerned about what he must eat to keep his body in
health. The man of an older time felt a need to be in right
relationship with the stars. He said to himself: If I suffer,
here on Earth, from some inability or lack of skill, it must be that
I did not acquit myself well while descending into the world of
the stars; I must put that right next time I make the journey from
death to a new birth.
It
is indeed so that in those times man evolved what might be called a
spiritual diet. In the Mysteries there were leaders and guides who
were not unlike our modern doctors of medicine. The modern doctor
gives his advice about man's body. That is quite understandable, and
no reproach is intended. But the leaders in the Mysteries, who were
also physicians, would for example, if a man suffered from some
physical infirmity, give instruction as to how he could better his
relationship to Venus, or it may be to Saturn. It was thus advice for
the soul that these leaders in the Mysteries gave. Let us
suppose a physician of this kind found that the person who had come
to him for healing was too strongly attracted to his physical
body. Instead of feeling his body merely as a garment for his
soul, he was firmly bound to it, rather like a man of the present day
who persisted in sleeping in his clothes. The physician would say to
such a person: When the Moon is full, try going out for a walk in its
light, when it is rising in the evening; and while you walk, repeat a
certain mantram.
Why
did the physician of the ancient Mysteries give this advice? Because
he knew that when a person goes for a walk in the light of the Moon,
repeating the while certain mantrams, that will counteract the Saturn
force, and so it will come about that Saturn has less power over him.
For, you see, this physician of olden times knew that the clinging
to the physical body, the being so closely knit with it, was due to
the fact that the person in question had held on too strongly to
Saturn when he was passing through the world of the stars, on his way
from the spiritual world into earthly life. This excessive attraction
to the life of Saturn had given him the infirmity from which he was
suffering. But now the two heavenly bodies, Moon and Saturn, tend to
counteract one another. In order, therefore, to cure an affliction
due to the Saturn forces, the physician would have recourse to the
forces of the Moon. He would, in effect, prescribe a spiritual diet.
We
have today a physical diet and that is quite right and suitable for
us. In the olden times man felt the need for a diet of a more
spiritual kind, and we must now learn to add to our physical
diet also a spiritual diet. That is the mission of the present age;
we have our physical diet, and we must regain a feeling for the
importance of a spiritual diet as well. If we can do this, it will
enable us to achieve the tasks that call for fulfilment at this
present moment in earth evolution.
This
is what I wanted to put before you in the first part of my lecture.
*
It
is a satisfaction to me, my dear friends, that I shall be able to
give you two more lectures after today, and so I do not need to hurry
as I would otherwise be obliged to do but can go more
fully into that which lies on my heart to say to you on the
occasion of this visit.
Vision
of the pre-earthly life, of the life man lived in the spiritual
world before he united himself here on Earth with a physical and an
etheric body, was possible to the men of old, for they possessed an
elemental clairvoyance. To attain such vision today we need the help
of anthroposophical science. When with this help we have learned to
look with the consciousness of Inspiration upon the time we pass
through before we descend to Earth, we behold how we live for a long
while in an entirely spiritual world, a world where there is no
mineral kingdom, no plant kingdom, no animal kingdom, a world
where there are not even the stars that we see shining far away in
the encircling heavens, a world, where we have around us spiritual
beings, beings of the higher hierarchies. Throughout this period of
the time between death and a new birth, we live among spiritual
beings. And then we begin to travel through the starry heavens on our
way back to Earth, passing now with more, now again with
less, sympathy through the various starry spheres. And this
is the time when we prepare our coming earthly life. For according
as we relate ourselves to the starry spheres through which we pass,
so will be our life on Earth. Let me give you an example of how this
preparation takes place.
Coming
forth from the world that is purely spiritual, we pass first through
the sphere of the fixed stars. Of these I will not speak just now;
that will come in the next lecture. Then we pass through the spheres
of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, through the Sun sphere, and through the
spheres of Mercury, Venus and Moon, and so by gradual stages come
down to Earth. You will realise from the description that we approach
the spheres of the stars from the other side. When you stand on Earth
and look at Jupiter, you are seeing Jupiter from one side. And when a
being in this case, a human being is descending from
the spiritual world and passes, on his way to Earth, through the
spheres of the stars, then at the time when we, looking from the
Earth, see Saturn, this being, as he approaches Saturn, will be
seeing it from the other side. It will be the same with all the
stars. Coming from the spiritual world, he approaches the stars from
behind, as it were, and sees the reverse of what men see on Earth
with physical sight. You will not of course imagine that the human
being who is making his journey to the Earth sees in
the way we do. He has no eyes as yet, he will only get eyes when he
has a physical body. What he sees is spiritual. He sees Saturn,
Jupiter, Mars, Sun, in their spiritual aspect; Venus also, then
Mercury and Moon. And according to the measure of the sympathy or
antipathy with which he passes through the one or other sphere, so
will be the forces he receives in the course of his descent from
each sphere in turn, forces of Saturn, forces of Jupiter, and
so on.
Let
us imagine a particular case. In consequence of the way in which he
lived his former life on Earth, a human soul may have the feeling,
when the time comes to descend to a new life: It will be good if this
time I come to Earth as a woman; if this time I incarnate in a
female body.
It
is an important question for the descending human soul to decide,
whether it shall become man or woman. Its whole destiny on earth
depends on the decision; for it is by no means a matter of
indifference whether in one particular incarnation we go through our
life as a man or a woman. But it is not enough for the soul simply to
come to the conclusion: I will be a man, or, I will be a woman. Due
preparation has to be made. If the soul desires to be a woman, it
will approach the Earth at the time of Full Moon. When we, looking
from the Earth, see the Moon full, the soul that is approaching from
the spiritual world will see it dark. Now what the soul sees is of
course, the spiritual aspect of the Moon. Seeing it dark, the soul
sees it peopled, as it were, with certain beings. And
these beings it is who will prepare the soul, so that, when it comes
on Earth, it shall be attracted to a female body. On the other
hand, when we, looking from the Earth, see New Moon which
means, we cannot see it at all then the soul that is
descending and sees the Moon from the other side, will see it
lit up, will see the light that rays forth from it out into cosmic
space, that is, of course, the spiritual in the light. In
this case, the soul can become a man. Whether it receives the
forces that bring it to a male or to a female incarnation depends,
you see, on the manner of the soul's journey through the spheres of
the stars.
And
now, in addition to passing through the sphere of the Moon, the soul
has also to go, for example, through the spheres of Mercury and
Venus. While the manner of its journey through the sphere of the Moon
determines whether the soul is to become man or woman, by its passage
through the sphere of Venus the soul is endowed with greater or less
sympathy for a particular family. For the soul could, of course, be
man or woman in this or that or any other family. This attraction to
a family is determined in the following way.
A
human soul may be descending, for instance, at a time when Venus is
right on the other side of the Earth, and the soul may thus be able
to disregard the Venus sphere. Such a soul will then have no great
connection with his family. Or the soul may, on the other hand, go
past Venus, and it can do so in a variety of ways. It will then elect
to take the path through the Venus sphere that guides it to some
particular family. For the soul has this possibility; it can
prepare itself for belonging to a particular family by choosing, as
it were, the ray that goes from Venus to this family.
Coming down from the other side, the dark side, of Venus, the soul
then draws near to Earth and finds its way to that family.
The
same kind of thing may happen in regard to the Mercury sphere. The
sphere of Mercury leads the soul to find its way into a particular
folk or people. When the region inhabited by this people is receiving
rays of Mercury, then the soul, coming from the other side and
approaching the dark side of Mercury, will be helped to find its
way to this people.
Thus
are human souls prepared for life on Earth. Through the influence
of the Moon and when we speak of these heavenly bodies, it is
always the spiritual in them that we have in mind through the
influence of the Moon, preparation is made for the soul to become man
or woman; through the influence of Venus, for the soul to belong to
some family; through the influence of Mercury, to belong to some folk
or people.
The
whole life of man on Earth depends, as you see, on the relationship
he establishes with the spheres in the course of his descent from the
spiritual world. The knowledge of this has been lost. We must regain
it. We are accustomed to think of ourselves as composed of hydrogen,
oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, sulphur, etc. But we must come also to feel
quite simply and naturally that we are composed and
are created out of the world of the stars. For we are not just
physical human beings made up of protein and a few other substances.
All the forces of the universe have combined to form us. These forces
of the universe work upon us while we are descending. When we come to
Earth, we have them within us, and something of a memory of
this remains to us in sleep. Memory is however always, as you know
very well, weaker than the actual experience. When someone who is
dear to you has died, think how the memory of the event grows less
vivid and powerful as time goes on. And it is the same with the
memory we still have in sleep, of how it was with us when we had
living and present experiences of the spiritual world, and of the
world of the stars. The memory grows dim; and that is why man is
exposed now in sleep to the temptations I described earlier in
today's lecture. Thus a dim and feeble after-image in sleep a
weak cosmic memory is all that is left of the experience we
had with the spiritual world and with the stars during the time
between death and our last birth.
This,
dear friends, is what I wanted to say to you today byway of
introduction. We shall continue with it next time we meet.
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